Topic: Productivity

*tl;Dr>* I got one of those nifty laptop risers that puts your laptop up closer to eye level, and it has pretty much improved all of my interactions with computers a thousand fold and it’s made it possible for me to effectively use two screens. This post explores this.

One of my coworkers had a laptop stand she wasn’t using and I asked to borrow it for an afternoon, and my neck stopped hurting. I never thought my neck hurt before, but apparently it does.

Or did.

But there’s more: for years now I’ve kept an extra monitor around (and had one at work) but the truth is that I have never really felt like I’ve been able to get the most out of an external monitor.

Somehow, putting my laptop 4 inches in the air was the little change that made everything better. The laptop is generally on the left of the external monitor, and I have task lists, notes buffers, the chat window, and my status logging window on the laptop, and then three windows on the external (emacs buffer, terminal, emacs buffer) on the right. My primary focus centers between the monitors, but probably edges slightly toward the external, most of the time.

Also, I discovered that I--apparently--have a slight processing/attention defect whereby I find it painful and difficult to focus on things that are happening on the right side of the screen for any amount of time. Which is weird because my right eye has always been noticeably stronger. I’ll ponder this more later.

My virtual desktops for email and web browsing are a bit less rigid, but the same basic idea. Somehow it seems to work. I’ve done a little bit of work recently to get the layouts right, to minimize the impact of the window management of most context switching (scripting various transitions, saving layouts, etc.) In all things are going great.

It strikes me that I’ve not posted here even a little about my setup in a while. The truth is that it’s not terribly surprising and I’ve not changed very much recently. I’m back to one laptop, and as anxious as having one laptop makes me sometimes (I fear the lack of redundancy,) not having to keep it synced makes life easier. I’ve put some time into doing a little bit of polish on all of little bits of configuration/code that I have that makes my computing world go around, but mostly it’s pretty good.

It’s nice, and I’d write more about it, but I want to get back to getting things done around here. Exporting and exploring some of this stuff in greater depth is definitely on my list, so hang in there, and if there’s something you particularly want to see, be in touch.

I have an Aeron chair at my desk at home. Confession.

I got it in April when I moved to New York City. The only piece of furniture that I had that I couldn’t move in my (now former) car was my desk chair. I found a good deal on an Aeron chair and I rationalized to myself that the cost of the chair was actually about the cost of movers. Savings right?

It also helped, that I was leaving a job where I had an Aeron chair in my office, and I knew that in the short term I would be working from home. While my old desk chair was (and is) quite nice, it’s not quite the same. Sit in an Aeron chair for a couple of two years, and it’s hard to go back. I’ve sat in other chairs since then, and it’s never quite the same.

Having said that, after a cleaning incident today, I would like to collect a few gripes about the Aeron chair for your consideration.

• The assembly right beneath the chair collects dust and dirt in a proportion that doesn’t seem quite possible. It’s clearly an artifact of the mesh, and likely a commentary on the air circulation of my apartment.

  Regardless, dusting nightmare.

• The arms scuff and scratch on desks, if the bottom of the desk isn’t completely smooth. This isn’t an actual problem: the chair still works fine and is as comfortable as ever, but it’s a annoying.

I’ve never looked at the underside of a desk before seriously. With every other chair I’ve either ordered a variant sans arms, or I’ve take then arms off as soon as possible.

The Aeron arms are low enough that they’ve never bothered me, so I thought “might as well.” But it’s still annoying.

That’s all.

This post is mostly just an overview of Epistle by Matteo Villa, which is--to my mind--the best Android note taking application ever. By the time you read this I will have an Android Tablet, but it’s still in transit while you read this and that’s a topic that dissevers it’s own post.

Epistle is a simple notes application with two features that sealed the deal:

1. It knows markdown, and by default provides a compiled rich text view of notes before providing a simple notes editing interface. While syntax highlighting would be nice, we’ll take what we can get.

2. It’s a nice, simple application. There’s nothing clever or fancy going on. This simplicity means that the interface is clean and it just edits text.

For those on the other side there’s Paragraft that seems similar. While in my heart of hearts I’m probably still holding out for the tablet equivalent¹ of emacs. In the mean time, I think developing a text editing application that provide a number of paradigmatic text editing features and advances for the touch screen would be an incredibly welcome development.

In the end there’s much work to be done, and the tools are good enough to get started.

I have a question for my system administrator readers. And maybe the rest of you as well.

I run a web server on my laptop that hosts about 8 test sites. Nothing special: mostly test and development sites for various public sites, but from time to time I think, “shit, wouldn’t it be nice if I could just give someone a link to this.” My solution is generally to copy whatever it is that I’m working on up to the server that runs this website, and while that generally work just fine, it could be better.

So here’s what I’m thinking:

I’d like to be able to hook my laptop up to the internet and be able to let people access (some) of the content running on this web server. I don’t want it to be automatic, or open my entire machine to the world (though… I could secure it, I suppose.) The options I’ve considered.

• I set up a VPN that I can connect to the public server (that hosts this website) from the laptop, and I have a virtual host (or set of virtual hosts) that proxy requests to the laptop. Wherever I am, it works. I’m not worried about the bandwidth or the strain on the server given the usage pattern I’m expecting.

  • Pros: Simple, Secure, works even if I’m on a weird local network. Potentially useful for other kinds of nifty hacking including tunneling all traffic through the VPN on insecure connections.
  • Cons: Way complex, and I’m not sure if it will work. I’ll need to set up VPN software. And it’s total overkill.

• Some sort of scripted dynamic DNS solution, probably involving running my own DNS server.

  • Pros: less proxy madness. Pretty simple.
  • Cons: running a DNS server. Won’t work on some (most) local networks.

• There has to be some sort of alternate approach using a minimalist tunneling solution. There are a few of them, I think they’re nifty, and it would probably be perfect. I’m just not sure what it is.

  …and then half the night later, I finished deploying the VPN. I have to say that I’m really pleased with it:

• It can (and has) replaced my ssh tunnels for sending email. That’s pretty great.

• The web server stuff works, though I don’t have anything really up there yet. I feel like I need some sort of access restriction method, but I don’t really like any of the options. HTTP Auth is annoying rather than protective, SSL is terribly imperfect and fussy, host based control isn’t very tight.

• I think I will be able to finally sacrifice a laptop to the “homeserver” because aside from dis/re-enabling the “sleep on laptop close” function. If needed it’ll be dead simple to convert a sever laptop to a mobile laptop.

Thoughts?

The ideal writing application is emacs, at least for me. In the absence of emacs (as on a tablet,) I’ve been thinking about what features I actually need in a writing application. While I’ve grown to admire the power of a full Lisp machine in my text editor, I accept that it’s not, strictly speaking required. Here’s a first stab at the list of requirements. Feel free to comment or submit a patch to this page.

• Simple, primarily full screen editing.
• The ability edit very large files, 100kbs should present no issue.
• Some sort of syntax highlight during the editing process, preferably support for LaTeX, Markdown, and org-mode.
• Word count generation for the entire files and for current selections.
• Auto-save as crash protection.
• Undo/Redo last typing action.

Nice to have (but not crucial) features:

• The ability to edit one file and reference another (or potentially edit) at the same time. Bonus points for being able to switch between to parts of a single file at once.
• The ability to hide or collapse some sections of a file.
• Optional spell checking.
• Parenthetical and double-quote matching.
• Soft and hard line/word wrapping.

Other than that I don’t think there’s anything that I really need to have to get writing done 90% of the time. How about you?

I’ve only had the tablet for a few weeks, but I’m pretty sure the tablet incarnation of Android is probably 80% of what most users need in a workstation. I’m not most users, but I figure: hook up a big screen and a real keyboard. Create some key bindings to replace most of the gestures, and write a few pieces of software to handle document production, presentations, and spreadsheets in a slightly more robust manner, and you’re basically there. I wouldn’t give up my laptop today for a tablet, and I think the platforms still have a ways yet to go, but that’s not insurmountable.

Prediction: in the next decade, we’ll see embeded tablet-like devices begin to replace desktops computers for some classes of use and users. General web surfing, reading, quick email, and watching videos on YouTube seem like the obvious niche for now. I started to explore this in “Is Android the Future of Linux,” but it’s not abusrd to suggest that Android or iOS like devices might begin to address more “general purpose desktop computing.”

I want to be clear: we’re not there yet. These systems aren’t versatile and fully featured enough to keep up with full time use on an extended basis. This is mostly an application/software problem. As applications evolve and as more functionality moves to remote systems anyway (this is the “cloud,” we’ve heard so much about,) tablet operating systems will seem much more capable for general purpose work. Better mobile productivity software will help as well. Eventually, I think Android and similar platforms will have a shot at the desktop market for most usage because:

• IT departments will get a lot more control over intra-organization information flow, which could save a lot of money for various IT categories: administration, support, and data protection costs.

• Behind the firewall dropbox-like services, and creating some sort of centralized workstation configuration management (which makes sense for a flash based device,) means backups can happen automatically, and if devices need to be re-imaged or are lost or damaged, it only takes a few minutes to get someone back to work after a technology failure.

• Limited multi-tasking ability will probably increase productivity.

• Disconnecting keyboards from the screen will probably lead to better ergonomic possibilities.

• Eventually, it will be easier to integrate Android-like devices with various workflow management/content management systems.

  The technology needs to mature and workers and IT departments need to become more comfortable with tablets, without question. Also, there are some fundamental developments in the technology that need to transpire before “desktop tablets” happen, including:

• More power user-type interface features.

• Split screen operation. There are enough “common tasks” that require looking at two different pieces of information at the same time that I think tablets will eventually have to give up “full screen everywhere,” operation. Conventional windowing is unnecessary, and I don’t think anyone would go for that, but displaying two different and distinct pieces of information at once is essential.

• Better “Office” software for spreadsheets, presentations and document preparation. A necessary evil.

• Behind the firewall (preferably open source) solutions to replace services like Dropbox/Box.net and whatever other services emerge as essential parts of the “tablet/smartphone” stack.

• VPN clients and shared file system clients that are de ad simple to use. I think these are features for operating system vendors to develop.

Thoughts? Onward and upward!

This post is adapted from a post I made to the org-mode email list a few weeks ago. I proposed an application to compliment MobileOrg for writing. Where MobileOrg collects the core bits of org-mode’s task planning functionality in a form that makes sense for smart phone users, the parts of org-mode functionality that people use to for writing and organizing the content of larger form projects isn’t particularly accessible.

I spend (or should spend) 70% or more of my time in front of a computer writing or editing something in org-mode. Most of my org files have tens of thousands of words of blog posts, notes, drafts of articles, and so forth. While I can store that data on an android device with only minor problems using a little script that I put together, and I can capture content into my org-files using email and some nifty filters, and there are text editors that can let me edit these files: it could be better.

The proposal is simple. Can we build something like Epistle for org-mode? It might just render org-mode text to HTML, and frankly that would be enough for me. If the editing interface had an org-indent-mode equivalent, org-syntax highlighting, and even collapsing trees or org-narrow-to-subtree, that’d be kind of like heaven.

I’m not a mobile developer, so I can’t promise to start making an app this instant if there’s interest but if anyone’s bored and thinks this might be a good idea (or knows of something that might work better for this.) I’d love to hear about it. If someone wants to start work on this, I’ll do whatever I can to help make this a reality.

Onward and Upward!

I’ve been using FBReaderJ to read .epub files on my tablet recently, and I discovered a nitfty feature: you can adjust the screen’s brightness by dragging your finger up or down the left side of the screen. Immediately this felt like discovering a new keybinding or a new function in emacs that I’d been wishing for a while time. Why, I thought, aren’t there more tricks like this?

The iPhone (and the iPad by extension) as well as Android make two major advances over previous iterations of mobile technology. First, they’re robust enough to run “real” programs written in conventional programming environment. Better development tools make for better applications and more eager developers (which also makes for better applications.) Second, the interfaces are designed to be used with fingers rather than stylus (thanks to capacitive touch screens) and the design aesthetic generally reflects minimalist values and simplicity. The mobile applications of today’s app stores would not work if they were visually complex and had multi-tiered menus, and hard to activate buttons.

The tension between these two features in these platforms makes it difficult to slip nifty features into applications. Furthermore, th economy of application market places does not create incentives for developers to build tools with enduring functionality. The .epub reader I mentioned above is actually free software.¹ I write a couple of posts a while back on innovation (one and two) that address the relationship between free software and technological development but that’s beside the point.

Given this, there are two major directions that I see tablet interfaces moving toward:

1. Tablet interfaces will slowly begin to acquire a more complete gestural shorthand and cross-app vocabulary that will allow us to become more effective users of this technology. Things like Sywpe are part of this, but I think there are more.

2. There will be general purpose systems for tablets that partially or wholly expect a keyboard, and then some sort of key-command system will emerge. This follows from my thoughts in the “Is Android the Future of Linux?” post.

I fully expect that both lines of development can expand in parallel.