Title: Daily life with the offline laptop | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 18 February 2020 | |
Tags: life disconnected | |
Description: | |
Last year I wrote a huge blog post about an offline laptop attempt. | |
It kinda worked but I wasn't really happy with the setups, need and | |
goals. | |
So, it is back and I use it know, and I am very happy with it. | |
This article explains **my experience** at solving **my needs**, I | |
would | |
appreciate not receiving **advice** or judgments here. | |
## State of the need | |
### Internet is infinite, my time is not | |
Having access to the Internet is a gift, I can access anything or | |
anyone. But | |
this comes with a few drawbacks. I can waste my time on anything, which | |
is not | |
particularly helpful. There are so many content that I only scratch | |
things, | |
knowing it will still be there when I need it, and jump to something | |
else. The | |
amount of data is impressive, one human can't absorb that much, we have | |
to deal | |
with it. | |
I used to spend time of what I had, and now I just spend time on what | |
exist. An | |
example of this statement is that instead of reading books I own, I'm | |
looking | |
for which book I *may* want to read *once*, meanwhile no book are read. | |
### Network socialization requires time | |
When I say "network socialization" this is so to avoid the easy "social | |
network" saying. I do speak with people on IRC (in real time most of | |
the time), | |
I am helping people on reddit, I am reading and writing mail most of | |
the time | |
for OpenBSD development. | |
Don't get me wrong, I am happy doing this, but I always keep an eye on | |
each, | |
trying to help people as soon as they ask a question, but this is | |
really time | |
consuming for me. I spend a lot of time jumping from one thing to | |
another to | |
keep myself updated on everything, and so I am too distracted to do | |
anything. | |
In my first attempt of the offline laptop, I wanted to get my mails on | |
it, but | |
it was too painful to download everything and keep mails in sync. | |
Sending | |
emails would have required network too, it wouldn't be an offline | |
laptop | |
anymore. | |
### IT as a living and as a hobby | |
On top of this, I am working in IT so I spend my day doing things over | |
the | |
Internet and after work I spend my time on open source projects. I can | |
not | |
really disconnect from the Internet for both. | |
## How I solved this | |
First step was to define « What do I like to do? », and I came with | |
this short | |
list: | |
- reading | |
- listening to music | |
- playing video games | |
- writing things | |
- learning things | |
One could say I don't need a computer to read books, but I have lots of | |
ebooks | |
and PDF about lots of subjects. The key is to load everything you need | |
on the | |
computer, because it can be tempting to connect the device to the | |
Internet | |
because you need a bit of this or that. | |
I use a very old computer with a PowerPC CPU (1.3 GHz single core) with | |
512MB | |
of ram. I like that old computer, and slower computer forbid doing | |
multiple | |
things at the same time and help me staying on focus. | |
### Reading files | |
For reading, I found **zathura** or **comix** (and its fork mcomix) | |
very | |
useful for reading huge PDF, the scrolling customization make those | |
tools | |
useful. | |
### Listening to music | |
I buy my music as FLAC files and download it, this doesn't require any | |
internet | |
access except at purchase time, so nothing special there. I use **moc** | |
player | |
which is easy to use, have a lot of feature and supports FLAC (on | |
powerpc). | |
### Video games | |
Emulation is a nice way to play lot of games on OpenBSD, on my old | |
computer | |
it's up to game boy advance / super nes / megadrive which should allow | |
me to do | |
again lots of games I own. | |
We also have a lot of nice games in ports, but my computer is too slow | |
to run | |
them or they won't work on powerpc. | |
### Encyclopedia - Wikipedia | |
I've set up a local wikipedia replica like I explained in a previous | |
article, | |
so anytime I need to find about something, I can ask my local | |
wikipedia. It's | |
always available. This is the best I found for a local encyclopedia, | |
works | |
well. | |
### Writing things | |
Since I started the offline computer experience, I started a diary. I | |
never | |
felt the need to do so but I wanted to give it a try. I have to admit | |
summing up | |
what I achieved in the day before going to bed is a satisfying | |
experience and | |
now I continue to update it. | |
You can use any text editor you want, there are special software with | |
specific | |
features, like rednotebook or lifeograph which supports embedded | |
pictures or on | |
the fly markdown rendering. But a text file and your favorite editor | |
also do | |
the job. | |
I also write some articles of this blog. It's easy to do so as articles | |
are | |
text files in a git repository. When I finish and I need to publish, I | |
get | |
network and push changes to the connected computer which will do the | |
publishing | |
job. | |
## Technical details | |
I will go fast on this. My set up is an old Apple IBook G4 with a | |
1024x768 screen (I love this 4:3 ratio) running OpenBSD. | |
The system firewall pf is configured to prevent any incoming | |
connections, and only allow TCP on the network to port 22, because | |
when I need to copy files, I use ssh / sftp. The /home partition is | |
encrypted using the softraid crypto device, full disk encryption is | |
not supported on powerpc. | |
The experience is even more enjoyable with a warm cup of tea on hand. |