!My horseman hat was hung here --- f6k's lair in the digital meadow 29 July 2022 @ 09:40 UTC --- written on x270 with jmacs on otaku.ssh.org on the living room table as Itz bath our toddler --- After my night shift, I came back home but I didn't went to sleep since I needed to do important stuff in the morning. First, I went to buy two vaccines for the baby; then I had to write a mail and send it to my manager about some overtime hours made this month that were not taken into account yet; and, last, I made that phone call mentioned in my previous note to the college's hotline so they can debug my problem with the registration process for law school. All done. It's now 10:43 am. And since we have an appointment at the nursery at 1pm and then at the pediatrician at 3pm for vaccinations, I avoid going to bed. To pass the time, and to help keep me awake, I'm taking a walk in the large digital meadow while mom and baby have a bath. I stopped by agk's gopher hole in SDF's gopher.club. I've read with attention her Advice to expecting mom (published on July, the 7th). This is the second time I'm reading it. I'm no mom but a dad, either way it is full of useful tips that are always good to keep in mind. In addition, I had never heard of the benefits of catnip tea, nor my wife; thank you Anna for that! We will surely try it at home. Then I went through her archives and found her posts about her Pinebook Pro wrote in May and October 21 where she explains how she uses her (then) new laptop. She mentionned it in an old discussion on SDF's bboard(1) (see below), and that's why I launched lynx(1) to browse Gopher, ending up in her online diary. * * * agk inspired me (again!) to do something similar. And to honor the afflatus she brought in spite of herself, I'm using her textfile decorum and current 54 columns right margin (yes, sorry for not telling earlier; if you're reading this file, Anna, I hope you didn't just think I was shamelessly ripping off your style---cuz I'm not; rather please see it as a kind of tribute; a homage, if you may; pinky swear). Also, I will try to have her conciseness despite my tendency to ramble (it's already off to a bad start, have you noticed too? Well, keep in mind I'm quite exhausted for lack of sleep at this point). Structure and furniture ----------------------- I have a second hand reconditioned Thinkpad X270 bought from an IT broker for about 200 euros. QuadCore i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz, ~250Go NVMe drive, and 8 GB RAM. It's the most powerfull machine I've ever had. The screen is 12,5" with a huge 1366x768 resolution (I mean huge for me, and compared to what I am normally used to and had before). It runs Debian stable even though I much prefer Slackware (but I had to make the installation of the system just before our newborn came to life four months and a half ago (I mean, I had no time to make a nice post-install configuration like Slackware deserves it, so I went for the easiest (GODS! Will you stop with the parenthesis, f6k?! We said: no ramblings!))). Machine and system are both robust and reliable. The OS is lightweight and configured in such a way that it does not pump too much on the batteries. Yes, plural: I am fortunate to have two of them, including one internal, which leaves me with many hours to spare (I have not yet managed to drain them both completely in one day of work on batteries!). Everyday environment -------------------- As a window manager, I've recently switched to i3(1). I was using OpenBSD's cwm(1). I like the latter but I'm happy to come back to a tiled window manager. I've modified a little the default keystrokes to change the focus ($mod+vi-keys) and configured some of the extra FnKeys. I'm using conky(1) to display various information on the bottom right of the screen (hour, current date, load average, temperature, batteries status (only when not on AC), CPU heat (if it's too high), fan (if it's too fast), Wi-Fi (if connected), and VPN (if connected)). I'm using a JSON text configuration for a better integration with i3bar (I also tuned the color rendering according to the default i3 theme, so everything match and appears as a whole). I didn't want to use a third-party launcher. And I found that I can launch apps directly from i3 thanks to "modes". I use something like this: > grep -A6 Apps ~/.i3/config set $app_launcher Apps: [f]irefox [z]zz bindsym oe mode "$app_launcher" mode "app_launcher" { bindsym f exec firefox-esr; mode "default" bindsym z exec systemctl suspend; mode "default" bindsym Escape mode "default" } So each time I press "²" on my French keyboard (just above the tab key), I have a nice bar showing me a menu next to the desktop indicators. As it happens, when I press "f", it launches Firefox and the bar disappears by itself (thanks to command chaining). I also like that i3 allows me to load predefine layout for the windows. Indeed, I always sort my windows the same way. I have four xterm(1) combined with tmux(1) on desktop 1, ordered like this: +------------------+------------------+ | | | | 1 | | | | | +------------------+ | | | | | | 3 | | | | | 2 | | | | | | +------------------+ | | 4 | +------------------+------------------+ You should know that XTerm 1, 2 and 3 have the same tmux session ("tmux new -t ") so I can copy/paste easily from window to window without using the mouse (prefix-key+] and +[). Above all, It allows me to reshape the content of the terminals without having to actually move the windows (does it make sens explained like this?). XTerm 2 and 3 are my main work spaces, i.e. where my active cursor is most often, with priority given to XTerm 3. XTerm 4 is usually used to launch mplayer(1), mpg123(1), moc(1), zathura(1), htop(1), or any quick command. Textual screenshot ------------------ Right now, in XTerm 1 I'm connected to alt.org's NetHack server from which I look with a distracted eye Doy playing a game (she/he's currently solving the Sokoban in dungeon level 5). In XTerm 2, I have less(1) displaying my config file for i3---so I could make the copy/paste above. In XTerm 3, I'm connected to SDF where I have jmacs(1) open to write this text file, within an other tmux session hosted on SDF. In this tmux, I also have an other pane with irssi(1) running (idling in #helpdesk, #sdf and #anonradio on irc.sdf.org, among with other channels on irc.libera.chat), and a third with bboard(1) open on the "Desktop Environment / Window Manager" discussion on UNIX board. Finally in XTerm 4, mpg123 is playing the aNONradio stream. World News just started (it is now 12:01 pm in France (and yes, it's been more than an hour I'm writing this but I had to take breaks to take care of the baby (absolutely, the bath did him good, thank you very much for asking; and he's now eating with mommy... (Well, actually, mommy is eating while he looks at her with wonder, even if I mostly think he's just waiting for her to breastfeed him (Ah no! He was waiting for her to give him banana with a little spoon (What a funny face he makes when the banana arrives in his mouth; he really seems to like it!)))))). (OH GODS! Help! The ramblings went quite bad this time!). Concerning other virtual desktops, the second one is exclusively dedicated to Mozilla Firefox, while third is for Zathura (which I use to read PDFs and CBZ). Desktop 4 is reserved for graphical video games. It should be noted that I run MPlayer in floating mode, mostly on desktop 1. * * * To conclude, I will add that I do not use a file manager---like nnn, Midnight Commander, nor things like fzf. I am satisfied with what is offered by coreutils, bsdutils and bsdextrautils (Debian package names certified). And I think it's useless now to say that I spend most of my computing time in a terminal. Well, it's almost time for our baby appointments. I'll discuss daily life applications maybe another day. In the meantime, take care. :)