Glen Scott - Keeping it simple » computing

Removing digital distractions 2010

Glen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:21:36 +0000

Over the years I have built up an digital environment that demands my attention – both online and offline. Today, I have started to remove the clutter from this digital life in order to add more clarity and give me breathing space.

Mac/iPhone

Focussing on important apps

Backdrop is a tool I’ve mentioned before. The aim is simple; it blacks out your screen allowing you to pick only the essential applications to focus on.
WriteRoom is a decent text editor that uses the same black-out effect as Backdrop, allowing you to concentrate purely on writing.

Removing notifications

Growl notifications seemed like a good idea once-upon-a-time. More often than not, they serve only as an annoyance and break my concentration.
I’ve disabled iPhone push notifications for Mail as e-mail is never important enough that I need to read it straight away

Online

The key question that I kept coming back to as I sifted through this mess is

How does this support my life as it is now?

Unsubscribing from e-mail alerts

I’ve unsubscribed from the following e-mail alerts:

Facebook notifications (57 different notification types in all!)
Twitter user follows
Google alerts
Dozens of music and tech mailing lists

Knowing that my level of e-mail will now drop, I’m less inclined to check it as often.

Unsubscribing from blog RSS feeds

I had 82 feeds in my feed reader, and I realised that I read new items from them very rarely. I’ve now unsubscribed from all but 3;

I’m sure these actions will be helpful in the long run, I am hoping this is a step towards a less overwhelming environment.

ADSL router for sale

Glen — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:04:37 +0000

I’ve put my spare ADSL router onto eBay. If you’re interested, bidding starts at 99p:

SpeedTouch 580 Wireless Multi-User ADSL Gateway on eBay, also Wireless Routers Access Points, Wireless Networking, Networking, Computing (end time 03-Nov-08 18:13:43 GMT)

GoboLinux proves that AmigaOS was ahead of its time

Glen — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:18:49 +0000

GoboLinux is described as “an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy”. Not particularly snappy, but the concept behind it is very clean and simple: there is no need for package management, because every program resides in its own directory. This is a great concept because it means you don’t get libraries scattered around your system which can cause dependency problems, and makes un-installing applications much easier.

GoboLinux uses the filesystem to organise program installation so that, for example, OpenOffice and all of its required files would be installed under /Programs/OpenOffice/3.0/.

Mac OS X also uses this concept: right-click on an application in /Applications and select the Show Package Contents option to see this in action.

A post entitled An old OS idea is new again: non-installation by Carl Sassenrath reminded me that the AmigaOS was doing this back in 1985.

I have a lot of time for the Amiga, and particularly its OS. As well as this “non-installing” feature, one of my favourite concepts was the DataType. This was a method of allowing the OS and its applications to recognise new filetypes by abstracting the loading, decoding and saving of file formats into a file descriptor. It meant, for instance, that you could add PNG support to a graphics application simply by dropping a PNG DataType file into the Prefs/Datatypes directory.

Java fighting a losing battle

Glen — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:37:35 +0000

Interesting article from Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans on how the Java world is leveraging dynamic languages such as Ruby and PHP in order to remain relevant in the web application world. The obvious question is, though, whether using JRuby has enough advantages over using Ruby or PHP in a plain Linux environment without a JVM.

Today Sun is investing in JRuby Ruby and Jython Python support for its Java EE solution; the IBM Websphere group has realized the ineffectiveness of the Java EE platform for running modern Web workloads and has invested heavily in Project Zero which aims to make big blue a Web 2.0 player and initially delivers support for Groovy and PHP; BEA has also had some incubation projects going but with the upcoming sale to Oracle it is unclear whether any of those efforts will materialize.

Andi on Web & IT: Java is losing the battle for the modern Web. Can the JVM save the vendors?

Ridiculous SQL

Glen — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:45:56 +0000

I miss playing around with SQL. It can be fun, sometimes. Other times, however….

I need help on simplyfying this Update query!

Creator of ELIZA dies

Glen — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:13:17 +0000

Joe Weizenbaum, the creator of one of the earliest examples of Artificial Intelligence, has died. Weizenbaum created ELIZA, the “virtual therapist”, which I’ve played around with in various implementations over the years. It inspired me to investigate Lisp, so for that reason alone I hold Weizenbaum in high regard.

“A computer will do what you tell it to do, but that may be much different from what you had in mind”

cyclotram: Joe Weizenbaum dead at 85. ELIZA in denial.

My favourite monospace font

Glen — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:50:19 +0000

ProFont has been my monospace font of choice for many years now, and I’ve yet to find a font that comes close to its clarity. I use 9pt ProFont in both my text editor and Terminal, with no anti-aliasing applied.

ProFont for Windows, for Macintosh, for Linux

Stephen Fry on the EEE PC and Open Source

Glen — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:19:41 +0000

“The two great pillars of Open Source are the GNU project and Linux. I shanâ€™t burden you with too much detail, Iâ€™ll just make the outrageous claim that your computer will be running some descendant of those two within the next five years and that your life will be better and happier as a result.”

Deliver us from Microsoft

Computers I have owned

Glen — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:12:36 +0000

I have been reminiscing today, so to continue the theme, here is a list of the computers I have owned over the years, starting with my earliest:

Amstrad CPC 464
Amiga A500
Amiga A1200
Apple iMac G3
Apple iMac G4
Apple iMac Intel

I’m going to detail my experiences with each over the next few weeks… what a treat!