2024-01-02 from the editor of ~insom
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There's some Life Stuff(tm) happening right now so it feels
weird to write here at all, but I've been thinking about
coziness (and relatedly: self-care) in times of stress, and
specifically how it relates to my computing practice.
I'm writing up a little "my machines" page for my website,
not because anyone else will care but because I will and
because it feels like a "personal website" kind of thing to
do. In doing it, I realised two things:
One: It feels really great to just write HTML. Markdown is
great, and all, but it feels like somehow over the last 10+
years I have convinced myself that building web pages in
HTML is for the birds and everything must come via a CMS or
an SSG or at least a templating system. No. You can just
write HTML. It's fine. Then you can style _just this one
page you are working on_ exactly how you like it, and not
worry about any other update anywhere else ever breaking it.
Two: I own several computers which I bought, or at least
configured, to be "cozy". They are explicitly limited
machines with small capabilities. They're either very old,
kind of small, or just unsuited for the real world.
Specifically, they are unsuited for productive "production
quality" work.
One is Haiku machine made out of a thrift-store find, the
other is my Cyberdeck project (A Raspberry Pi 400 with a
recycled LCD panel from a laptop in a custom wooden case I
designed and fabricated).
When I was stressed by work, I retreated to a contrast from
work computing. Where work involves a powerful machine,
Docker containers, large scale and complexity, cozy
computing became the opposite.
It is about wasting time, reading and writing, talking to
friends on IRC. Mastodon, at a stretch, although that's also
not neccessarily cozy.
It meant programming in Scheme and C. Writing small things
just for myself. Doing things by hand instead of summoning
big frameworks and automation. Hand configuration: no
Ansible or Chef or Docker.
Some coziness comes from affordances of the experience: 4:3
screens. A real hard-disk drive (in the case of the Haiku
machine). Orange tinted screens and pleasant terminal
colours. Loading times: a chance to pause. Fonts with single
deck lower-case "a" glyphs. A keyboard that feels good to
type on. A machine personalized: stickers, repairs,
additions.
I don't have an especial point to this. It's not an article;
just a few observations. In one way I feel like I need this
less: I'm not working, so I don't need the contrast -- but
in another way it still seems comforting. I think there is a
very small anxiety caused by using an incredibly capable
machine (which effectively all modern computers are). It has
so much potential! And I am not using it.
I bought a 12th generation Core i5 machine back in March. It
was specifically for building large C++ and Rust code bases
and was to be my main computer. It was, for several months,
but _man_ that thing is a beast. Apart from a few hours a
week compiling stuff I am wasting it! No one cares! But I
kind-of do.
