2020-07-11 // a few nice cli things
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Huzzah! It's the weekend!

Getting used to OpenBSD as my daily driver OS. Enjoying it so far,
although sometimes I do bump up on limitations I wasn't expecting to
bump up against. Firefox runs abysmally, for instance. Chromium is as
snappy as I've experienced elsewhere. Sometimes I have to restart X
after the screen locks. Spotify's web client doesn't work because they
apparently use some DRM plugin I've never heard of, Widevine [0], which
doesn't run on OpenBSD. Gaming, of course, is pretty much not a thing,
at least compared to being able to load up GOG games on Linux (or via
Wine). Fortunately, I've been doing my gaming on a Nintendo Switch Lite
so this doesn't hit as hard as it might've last year.

But, where there are limitations, there are also some alternative
solutions! I'd like to share a few things I've become fond of recently:

* There's a CLI curses-based Spotify player called ncspot [1]. It works
  pretty darn well, although it took a little bit to get used to the
  keyboard interface. Vi-style navigation keys, though!

* Speaking of command line, I *really* like Fira Mono [2] as a console
  font. Ordinarily, I have a strong preference for slashed zeroes, but
  damn! This font looks *amazing*.

* VimWiki [3] is a great way to keep notes if you're a fan of vim.
  There's a little bit of a learning curve learning the syntax. It's not
  terribly different from Markdown, though. I've been using VimWiki for
  the better part of a year and it's been a great way to keep track of
  just about everything. I've got a nice little wiki built up at work,
  but one of the nice things about running it at home on OpenBSD is that
  files and links are opened up in the appropriate program. Hit [Enter]
  on an HTTP link and your browser opens to the URL under your cursor.

* There's a CLI Mastodon client called toot [4]. I just discovered this
  today, so maybe I'm on the steep part of the learning curve, but the
  interface is... _okay_. Not great -- it's a little hard to navigate
  around. Viewing someone's profile from a toot you ran across involves
  leaving the main screen and re-invoking the toot program with new
  arguments, for instance. On the flip side, keyboard navigation on a
  console interface! :)

Just a few CLI things that've put a smile on my face recently. It's past
midnight, I've got some Ursula K. Le Guin to read, and my eyelids are
getting a bit heavy so I think I'll wrap up for now.

Until next time, sundogs!

kvothe@SDF.ORG

[0]: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Widevine
[1]: https://github.com/hrkfdn/ncspot
[2]: https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/fira-mono
[3]: https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
[4]: https://github.com/ihabunek/toot