Calming the technology layer in my life
Every details count when aiming for a
calm technology in my life. From how I
use my phone, my laptop, my desktop, my
servers and media computer. Simplifying
one elements ripple off in effect to the
other tools.
Today, I've simplified my cellphone UI even more.
You can see what my home screen looks like here:
gopher://gopher.club/I/users/gef/img/homeScreenAndroid.png
I'm pretty pround of it, and it really annoys
my daughter who loves more visuals! The desktop
is clean black, there is no clock in the top
bar and the color scheme is from white to
dark gray. There are no visual stimuly, it's
actually calming and... yeah boring, like
what a tool should be. Efficient, minimal,
somewhat boring. Would that be consider
brutalism? It's not entertaining, my
phone is not for fun. I can go for a walk
in the wood, play music, read a book or watch
a movie for fun, not play with my phone!
This is the 'last launcher' it's an unmaintained
android launcher. I probably should maintain
a branch of it.... But my general inclination
these days is to do less tech. I'd love to be
able to boost the font size even more for example,
something that should be easy to change in the
source code.
You can see all apps are replace with words,
no 'branding' come and polute my use of the
cellphone. I find that even banded icons,
like firefox, or other tools still leave an
imprint. I just want to call, I just want to
visit the web, I just want to text, I'm not
interested in using 'firefox' or other brand.
The camera is activated with a double press
of the power button, the flashlight by
shaking the phone. Some other apps that
I use less often are hidden but accesible.
I've removed all email accounts but my
business one from my phone too.
So there is not much personal life
to be reached out on my phone. There are
no social network apart from gopher on there
and I can reach sdf from termux. On my
ferry travels that lasts about 40 minutes,
I love chatting on com while listening
anonradio on my phone. I'd love to find
a way to broadcast from my phone sometime
like Dj Markus does in his show~
I've also reduce my phone processing power
with more agressive battery power saving
settings. When the phone sleep no background
process are running.
And then today, I turned off my phone...
It was weird. I kept on trying to wake
up my phone, realizing it was off. That
felt weird, but great. Like a glitch
in the matrix. Why would my phone be on,
on my weekend? How often can I turn off
my phone? Why not having it off by default?
I've also turned off my main computer,
which weirdly never happens. With my
laptop off, my cellphone off, my main
desktop off, only my servers are still
online and running. I have a couple server
running and I am debating if I should
have only one... I have a thinkcenter
little machine that is pretty awesome
but probably consume more power than
needed, and a raspberry pi.
I'm really attracted to openBSD and at
the same time I'm burnt out of having
to learn more technologies.
OpenBSD feels calm and comforting, but
having used Archlinux for the last 10
years, it would be quite an investment
of time and energy for... a change of OS?
Will it make my life easier, or will
it bring more challenges?
Archlinux has been awfully stable.
I took the approach to have a very
low tech stack. Without a desktop
manager or a boot manager. I boot
directly to the console then I
startx, since it remove all these
other dependencies. Then I run
i3, which has been flawless for all
these years. By minimizing my tech
stack it create less of a surface
for bug or problems. That has been
a general rule of thumb in my life.
How can I reduce this and that to be
more in 'balance' in my life.
Like, instead of needing solar and wind
to fulfill my power needs for all I need
to consume for power, I can reduce my
needs to the minimal, then solar and
wind can be enough. When eating, in
oder to reach a 50% of greens and vegetable
I can eat a lot more vegetable, or simply
eating less of everyting else, so that
I can reach that 50%.
I wanted to start with running an
openBSD server, as I think everyone
should have a server, we should all
host our own data and share that to
the world. But it didn't run well
on old raspberry pi. And on new
raspberry pi it seems more like a
hack and that real solution. I was
given a think center and since I
like my thinkpad laptop, I
'by association' liked the thinkcenter
and the form factor is pretty sweet.
So I'm debating, one server on openBSD
to run it all? Or just keep on my
raspberry pi? The raspberry pi is running
some sort of debian in any way, which is
not arch linux, so might as well be on
openBSD for all my server's need and
arch for all my desktop needs?
