TRST_Blog

I don't know when the seed was planted, but I've been giving BSD a good hard look lately. There is just something about the argument BSD is an operating system whereas Linux is a kernel that is appealing to me.

I don't ride the leading edge. Sometimes I pretend, sure. But I use a terminal, a text editor, a browser and an email client. My window manager of choice is pretty lean and depends on relatively modern libraries, but there are alternatives, but I've searched the FreeBSD ports repositories and everything I need is already there or I could build the tiny few things I need from source.

I have a hard time with leaning on 3rd party applications. I install them, run them once and ultimately forget about them. So long as I have access to the web, I don't need much else.

So if software isn't an issue, then why not jump. What's the most I'd lose? Nothing. Is there a potential upside? I think so.

Take a wild guess what I'm doing/writing about this weekend?

Forgive me for a bit of navel-gazing, but it's been one whirlwind year. I was living in the UK, now I'm not. I was working in one industry, now I'm working in a completely different one. I was using Apple products full time, now I'm living in a multiple-OS bizzaro land. So much of my day-to-day has been turned upside down; now feels like as good a time as any to write about some of my changing technology. (I'll leave the specific applications I use for another day I'll just focus on hardware and operating environments for now.)

I still have a great affinity for the sense of purpose/vision of Apple. Their hardware is beautiful, refined and is generally (save their recent keyboards) reliable. There's a uni-body MacBook or two still kicking around the house from 2008! (No, they are not security supported, but they are still workable, viable machines even today.)

That said, I've moved onto a cheapo, salvaged Lenovo ThinkPad T440s. Yes, I know I should have gotten the T440p, but this was a better deal and some kind soul did all the mods I was going to do anyway.) It's got an i7 (4600U), 12GB of RAM and an okay-ish 256GB SDD. If you're keeping score at-home these specs aren't setting the world on fire, but I spend most of my time in a terminal hammering out web code, what more could I ask for :D

I've been running various forms of Arch Linux as my distro of choice. (Currently I am running an Arch derivative called Manjaro which has most of the benefits of Arch Linux for those people who have to get on with their day). There's no reason I need the bleeding-edge, rolling release operating system, but I've convinced myself that I'm a Wayland person-thing. And being the unreasonable person-thing that I am, means that none of the software I use for my Desktop Environment/Window Manager is included in more stable repositories.

Speaking of Desktop Environments, I've given up trying to make too much of a statement and I install Gnome as a base, yet never boot into it. I use Sway as a window manager instead. It tiles all the windows. I have to set their size, position, workspace, etc., but generally it fills up the maximum amount of space with a window and I swap between them mouselessly. Honestly, not that different from the limited window managing on iPadOS (ugh these names).^[1] It saves my wrists, I look like a 1337 H4X0R and there are so few things to customize that I can paradoxically invest all my time into customizing them (see the aptly named r/unixporn thread on Reddit).

I still use an iPhone X. I will pick up the next round of iPad Pros. Navigating between these devices and my laptop is not as seamless as relying on iCloud, but not terribly painful either. I setup a Nextcloud instance on a Digital Ocean Droplet and that's how I sync documents, pictures, whatever between them. (Moving this onto my own infrastructure using a Raspberry Pi 4 is my next little project, more to come.) Honestly, almost everything has a cloud relationship these days, so migrating between OSs has been pretty painless. It's a huge pain in the butt to re-login to all of my services, but beyond a few moments of pain everything starts right up where I left off.

There are a few applications which are still iOS/MacOS only, but it turns out that using my phone alongside my computer is fine.

I have a long-in-the-tooth 2011 MacMini that gets fired up for some legacy software. I worry that it's no longer receiving security patches. Perhaps it will go the way of becoming a Wireguard server, or perform some media center function, who knows. I'd set it up as a NAS, but it doesn't support USB3 unfortunately. Sad to see a machine I once used daily to sit idle.

After all that, I'm pretty happy. It could be smoother, sure. But I am self aware enough to realize that I don’t actually want 100% stability; I enjoy tinkering with my setup and different applications.

Have a suggestion or some cool cross platform software to try out? Let me know. I'm open to try anything these days.

Saw lots of people jumping on this idea in my timeline today (see Om Malik and Shawn Blanc, CJ Chilvers, among many others): effectively, why leave writing everyday to the NaNoWriMo crowd? Let's blog everyday in the month of November!

I've done a blogging month-style challenge before and I enjoyed it immensely. So I think I'll partake in this community challenge as well. I'm not sure it's warranted for a writing challenge but I feel like I ought to set a vision for the month. Brent Simmons’ You Choose piece has been bouncing around my noggin for a bit and I'd like to fill the Internet with a bit more sparkle.

Writing creatively or covering things that inspire, that's the measuring stick for the month. If whatever I write doesn't size up, then I'll have to move on, no “Negative Ned”, no fear-mongering. You get the idea.

I encourage you to join the cause and fill your November with blogging. Don't worry if you're coming to this late either, just write a couple of extra posts to make up for time, or go a few days into December. What's the worst that could happen :P

P.s.: If you jump on the bandwagon, send me your RSS feed so I can follow your progress!

I'm standing in the kitchen, tiles torn from the wall, dust is everywhere. It's chaos.

There's no reprieve at the other end of the house, either. We got antsy and went for it; drying paint fumes fill the bedrooms and every spare nook and cranny filled with refugee furniture from far off rooms.

Home renovations, the perfect respite from an unsettled soul. I jumped ship a few weeks ago and instead of making a smooth transition into my new career, every thing has been complicated instead. My house looks like the inside of my head.

But none of that matters because things are moving. The times are a changin’. New things are coming in and my old “normal” is falling away.

At once, it's both deeply uncomfortable and exhilarating. I'm lucky, honestly. I'm confident I can ride the storm and I have the backing of my family. For the first time in a good long while, I'm standing at the beginning of a season of change but I'm not afraid. I don't know what shape the future will take but I am excited to make its acquaintance.