7 ms·

Unix is digital clay - Matt Might

104 points by g3orge 15y ago

tl 15y ago
One thing that I'm trying to figure out: if you block all potential "timewasting sites" and only get your information from 1-2 hard news sources, where do you learn about the existence of the tools listed? If you rely on being around "sharp colleagues" don't you have a tragedy of the commons problem when everyone starts doing this?
- chriseidhof 15y ago
  Yes, but not everyone will do this. I hardly read any newspapers and try to avoid news sites, but if something's really interesting my friends will bring it up. For now, this strategy works just fine.
jcfrei 15y ago
having just browsed through the post - is there a recommendable tiling window manager for windows (7)?
- kruhft 15y ago
  You might want to try HashWM: https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM. Might not be perfect, but you have the source so can fix it up/enhance it.
- headbiznatch 15y ago
  Try Divvy - http://mizage.com/#windivvy http://mizage.com/#windivvy It may not qualify as a "tiling window manager" depending on what you think that should include, but it's excellent for arranging windows.
- cycojesus 15y ago
  you can try http://windawesome.codeplex.com/ http://windawesome.codeplex.com/
tuacker 15y ago
Again and again when I visit linked product sites I'm greeted with pages like this[1]. Even though the link in the article has a country specified in the URL. After selecting the location I'm not forwarded to the requested product page. In this example I got redirected to some ad with Jennifer Lopez[2]. I can't even select US as region, it just sends me back to the localeselector. Stop this. [1] http://www.harmankardon.com/pages/localeselector.aspx http://www.harmankardon.com/pages/localeselector.aspx [2] http://at.harmankardon.com/jennifer-lopez-and-harman-kardon-at.html http://at.harmankardon.com/jennifer-lopez-and-harman-kardon-... (I suspect this link won't work) Edit: This is hilarious. The Kensington remote link opens the product page and then overlays a country selection. Selecting my country redirects me to the homepage in my language. At least I can close the selection window and stay on the product page.
- wazoox 15y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this,it really drove me mad after a couple of tries; I swear that I'll never return to harman kardon website, and won't buy their products, ever. May their webmasters die a slow, painful death. So much anti-usability deserves it.
philsheard 15y ago
I've got a very similar setup to Matt. No Macbook Air though, best get shopping :)
g3orge 15y ago
This is the "12 resolutions for programmers" guy.
- silentbicycle 15y ago
  There's a lot of other good content on his site.
  - g3orge 15y ago
    I know. I already subscribed to the feed.
agumonkey 15y ago
<pre> When I was young, I dreamed about building a “nerd cave” full of fast hardware, big monitors, sleek software and cool gadgets. I see now that technology can only nip at the margins of happiness (...) </pre> love his conclusion
simonista 15y ago
Matt, for irc you should check out Limechat. I just switched from Colloquy and am loving to so far. I set it up with the three panel view, and was at first confused about the lower window (which is like a "everything you can't see in the main room window" view), but i've found myself using it a lot just to glance at conversations in other rooms.
- mattmight 15y ago
  You're so right. That lower window is a great idea! Upgraded.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
lewispb 15y ago
How come he has two brothers and three sisters-in-law?
- mattmight 15y ago
  I have two brothers. My wife has three sisters.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- noblethrasher 15y ago
  His wife has between one and three sisters.
- delinka 15y ago
  If he's married, his spouse has a sister. Or there's a typo. Now I'll go read the article...
akg 15y ago
I agree about the point regarding tile based window managers. Few others come close to maximizing productivity of windowed apps; but OSX's various other productivity enhancing features make it not worthwhile to switch back. Of course tools (hardware and software) can only take you so far. I find that most productivity comes from being surrounded by sharp hard-working people trying to push the envelope. Working with hard-working people creates a cyclic motivational cycle, all pushing each other to be more productive.
- g3orge 15y ago
  you can use Divvy on Mac OS X. I use it for managing windows with the keyboard.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  I've given tiling WMs a shot from time to time. I keep returning to WindowMaker. Steve Jobs screwed up aqua, but this on (WM is based on NeXTstep) is pretty close to perfection.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  I think you can get XMonad working on OS x; I know a couple of people who were using it. I also think the "productivity enhancing features" broadly overrated and better in Linux, but that's neither here nor there.
lol_hn 15y ago
oh god, not another of these masturbatory articles
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  it's not masturbatory because at the end he says it doesn't matter. please pay attention.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Hi and welcome. Please read the HN guidelines on what to post: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
wyclif 15y ago
This is going to sound n00bish, but why doesn't he just backup to the cloud instead of dealing with all the external HDDs?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 15y ago
  Price, maybe? He had a 2TB Time Capsule; the same storage space on S3 would cost $265/month, excluding traffic (that's $.12 more per GB downloaded). Not to mention that restores would be much slower. I don't know about you, but I know I'd rather use those $3200/year on other stuff and just get a decent NAS.
  - crymer11 15y ago
    Crashplan and backblaze both offer unlimited storage for way cheaper (roughly $260 dollars a month cheaper). Don't get me wrong - I'm all for onsite backups, especially for speed of recovery, but there are realistic & affordable options for cloud-based storage.
icebraining 15y ago
You will find 85 Watt MagSafe laptop power adapters (sometime two) pre-installed everywhere we frequent in my house: the couch (x 2), the kitchen desk, the home office (x 2), the rocking chair and the bed. How are current power adapters in terms of energy wasted when not being used, but connected to the plug? I use to keep them all unplugged because I remember they used to waste a lot of watt-hours doing nothing.
- runjake 15y ago
  I'll plug mine into a Kill-A-Watt and let you know tomorrow.
  - Nick_C 15y ago
    How did you go?
judofyr 15y ago
> To make up some more, I pin applications to one of six desktops: (1) terminal and text-editing; (2) real-time communication; (3) browsing; (4) organization and planning; (5) reading; and (6) media and games. Each desktop captures one frame of mind. I think it's interesting to see that so many uses application-specific desktops. I've always used project-specific desktops: one desktop for random stuff (Twitter, browsing, terminal for quick stuff), one for communication (because no IM app is fine-grained enough for my case) and the rest for projects. Nearly all of the project desktops have a terminal and a separate Chrome window.
- keithpeter 15y ago
  I use activity based workspaces as well. My density of activities is quite low, so the applications that tend to be on more than one workspace are LibreOffice, Gimp and Firefox (Ubuntu).
- zem 15y ago
  i've settled on a two-monitor, three desktop setup. one monitor has a maximised terminator window, which i use to manage my xterms (i find it handier than letting xmonad handle individual xterms, because terminator allows for both splits and tabs). the other monitor alternates between office browser and personal browser. i would normally have had an im window too, but i decided to give not signing into personal im at work a try when i started my new job (july), and so far it's actually worked out very well. my friends know that i check email constantly, so if they need to get my attention they can do that, or sms if its urgent. temporary things (like launching openoffice or reading a pdf in fullscreen) happen in a fourth desktop, and get closed when i'm done with them.
Encryptor 15y ago
not news
chriseidhof 15y ago
"I can’t afford time off work to exercise" This sounds quite scary to me. I would think that exercise is not something that goes at the expense of working, it might even increase productivity. Even if it's long walks outside. However, I don't have any references on this except for my very limited personal experience.
- zem 15y ago
  i thought the exercise bike he bought looked excellent, though. i'm tempted to get one so that instead of lying on the couch reading i can sit on the bike and get some exercise without having to devote singletasked time to it.
- nemoniac 15y ago
  Read a little further. He has a special needs kid. I don't know how demanding that is for him but I do know that getting the worklife/homelife balance right and finding time to exercise can be quite a challenge even with regular kids. And btw, I've read his blog for some time now. While I don't make all the same personal choices as he does when it comes to getting things done, I've found his reasoning-from-principles approach to it very helpful.

104 points by g3orge 15y ago

tl 15y ago

One thing that I'm trying to figure out: if you block all potential "timewasting sites" and only get your information from 1-2 hard news sources, where do you learn about the existence of the tools listed? If you rely on being around "sharp colleagues" don't you have a tragedy of the commons problem when everyone starts doing this?

chriseidhof 15y ago
Yes, but not everyone will do this. I hardly read any newspapers and try to avoid news sites, but if something's really interesting my friends will bring it up. For now, this strategy works just fine.

jcfrei 15y ago

having just browsed through the post - is there a recommendable tiling window manager for windows (7)?

kruhft 15y ago
You might want to try HashWM: https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM. Might not be perfect, but you have the source so can fix it up/enhance it.
headbiznatch 15y ago
Try Divvy - http://mizage.com/#windivvy http://mizage.com/#windivvy It may not qualify as a "tiling window manager" depending on what you think that should include, but it's excellent for arranging windows.
cycojesus 15y ago
you can try http://windawesome.codeplex.com/ http://windawesome.codeplex.com/

tuacker 15y ago

Again and again when I visit linked product sites I'm greeted with pages like this[1]. Even though the link in the article has a country specified in the URL. After selecting the location I'm not forwarded to the requested product page. In this example I got redirected to some ad with Jennifer Lopez[2]. I can't even select US as region, it just sends me back to the localeselector. Stop this. [1] http://www.harmankardon.com/pages/localeselector.aspx http://www.harmankardon.com/pages/localeselector.aspx [2] http://at.harmankardon.com/jennifer-lopez-and-harman-kardon-at.html http://at.harmankardon.com/jennifer-lopez-and-harman-kardon-... (I suspect this link won't work) Edit: This is hilarious. The Kensington remote link opens the product page and then overlays a country selection. Selecting my country redirects me to the homepage in my language. At least I can close the selection window and stay on the product page.

wazoox 15y ago
Thank you for mentioning this,it really drove me mad after a couple of tries; I swear that I'll never return to harman kardon website, and won't buy their products, ever. May their webmasters die a slow, painful death. So much anti-usability deserves it.

philsheard 15y ago

I've got a very similar setup to Matt. No Macbook Air though, best get shopping :)

g3orge 15y ago

This is the "12 resolutions for programmers" guy.

silentbicycle 15y ago
There's a lot of other good content on his site.
- g3orge 15y ago
  I know. I already subscribed to the feed.

agumonkey 15y ago

<pre> When I was young, I dreamed about building a “nerd cave” full of fast hardware, big monitors, sleek software and cool gadgets. I see now that technology can only nip at the margins of happiness (...) </pre> love his conclusion

simonista 15y ago

Matt, for irc you should check out Limechat. I just switched from Colloquy and am loving to so far. I set it up with the three panel view, and was at first confused about the lower window (which is like a "everything you can't see in the main room window" view), but i've found myself using it a lot just to glance at conversations in other rooms.

mattmight 15y ago
You're so right. That lower window is a great idea! Upgraded.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

lewispb 15y ago

How come he has two brothers and three sisters-in-law?

mattmight 15y ago
I have two brothers. My wife has three sisters.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
noblethrasher 15y ago
His wife has between one and three sisters.
delinka 15y ago
If he's married, his spouse has a sister. Or there's a typo. Now I'll go read the article...

akg 15y ago

I agree about the point regarding tile based window managers. Few others come close to maximizing productivity of windowed apps; but OSX's various other productivity enhancing features make it not worthwhile to switch back. Of course tools (hardware and software) can only take you so far. I find that most productivity comes from being surrounded by sharp hard-working people trying to push the envelope. Working with hard-working people creates a cyclic motivational cycle, all pushing each other to be more productive.

g3orge 15y ago
you can use Divvy on Mac OS X. I use it for managing windows with the keyboard.
dredmorbius 15y ago
I've given tiling WMs a shot from time to time. I keep returning to WindowMaker. Steve Jobs screwed up aqua, but this on (WM is based on NeXTstep) is pretty close to perfection.
tikhonj 15y ago
I think you can get XMonad working on OS x; I know a couple of people who were using it. I also think the "productivity enhancing features" broadly overrated and better in Linux, but that's neither here nor there.

lol_hn 15y ago

oh god, not another of these masturbatory articles

andrewcooke 15y ago
it's not masturbatory because at the end he says it doesn't matter. please pay attention.
icebraining 15y ago
Hi and welcome. Please read the HN guidelines on what to post: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

wyclif 15y ago

This is going to sound n00bish, but why doesn't he just backup to the cloud instead of dealing with all the external HDDs?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 15y ago
Price, maybe? He had a 2TB Time Capsule; the same storage space on S3 would cost $265/month, excluding traffic (that's $.12 more per GB downloaded). Not to mention that restores would be much slower. I don't know about you, but I know I'd rather use those $3200/year on other stuff and just get a decent NAS.
- crymer11 15y ago
  Crashplan and backblaze both offer unlimited storage for way cheaper (roughly $260 dollars a month cheaper). Don't get me wrong - I'm all for onsite backups, especially for speed of recovery, but there are realistic & affordable options for cloud-based storage.

icebraining 15y ago

You will find 85 Watt MagSafe laptop power adapters (sometime two) pre-installed everywhere we frequent in my house: the couch (x 2), the kitchen desk, the home office (x 2), the rocking chair and the bed. How are current power adapters in terms of energy wasted when not being used, but connected to the plug? I use to keep them all unplugged because I remember they used to waste a lot of watt-hours doing nothing.

runjake 15y ago
I'll plug mine into a Kill-A-Watt and let you know tomorrow.
- Nick_C 15y ago
  How did you go?

judofyr 15y ago

> To make up some more, I pin applications to one of six desktops: (1) terminal and text-editing; (2) real-time communication; (3) browsing; (4) organization and planning; (5) reading; and (6) media and games. Each desktop captures one frame of mind. I think it's interesting to see that so many uses application-specific desktops. I've always used project-specific desktops: one desktop for random stuff (Twitter, browsing, terminal for quick stuff), one for communication (because no IM app is fine-grained enough for my case) and the rest for projects. Nearly all of the project desktops have a terminal and a separate Chrome window.

keithpeter 15y ago
I use activity based workspaces as well. My density of activities is quite low, so the applications that tend to be on more than one workspace are LibreOffice, Gimp and Firefox (Ubuntu).
zem 15y ago
i've settled on a two-monitor, three desktop setup. one monitor has a maximised terminator window, which i use to manage my xterms (i find it handier than letting xmonad handle individual xterms, because terminator allows for both splits and tabs). the other monitor alternates between office browser and personal browser. i would normally have had an im window too, but i decided to give not signing into personal im at work a try when i started my new job (july), and so far it's actually worked out very well. my friends know that i check email constantly, so if they need to get my attention they can do that, or sms if its urgent. temporary things (like launching openoffice or reading a pdf in fullscreen) happen in a fourth desktop, and get closed when i'm done with them.

Encryptor 15y ago

not news

chriseidhof 15y ago

"I can’t afford time off work to exercise" This sounds quite scary to me. I would think that exercise is not something that goes at the expense of working, it might even increase productivity. Even if it's long walks outside. However, I don't have any references on this except for my very limited personal experience.

zem 15y ago
i thought the exercise bike he bought looked excellent, though. i'm tempted to get one so that instead of lying on the couch reading i can sit on the bike and get some exercise without having to devote singletasked time to it.
nemoniac 15y ago
Read a little further. He has a special needs kid. I don't know how demanding that is for him but I do know that getting the worklife/homelife balance right and finding time to exercise can be quite a challenge even with regular kids. And btw, I've read his blog for some time now. While I don't make all the same personal choices as he does when it comes to getting things done, I've found his reasoning-from-principles approach to it very helpful.