I'm sure you've heard this before:
"Consumers want computers that are appliances, or appliance like."
What does this particular phrase mean?
1) Little to no maintenance
2) Basic knowledge is required to manipulate its functions
3) Repairs are easy, fast and cheap...
4) ...unless the entire machine needs to be thrown out and replaced
It's easy to see why people would want an appliance for a computer. Have you ever heard a relative ask you for their refrigerator to be fixed? It actually sounds minimalist, to a degree, to want a machine like this.
My only issue with an appliance is that strictly in the theoretical sense, a computer cannot and never will be an appliance. Every person uses a computer differently - the more we try to limit the instructions a computer can be given, the less useful a computer becomes. Don't be distracted by the pretty language; appliance is simply another word for "limiting the functions to manufacturer's orders."
I've heard arguments that we should ditch the folders and files paradigm and go into a more iOS like system, where the application deals with the data itself (an appliance-like system). But then you get into the issue of having programs share data among each other. How would we do this, so that programs could transfer and read each others data? Well, we make a common API, right? Oh, I've got a good one, you may have heard of this: it's called the "My Documents" folder, or even "/home/user" on some computers.
I've also heard the argument that "Users shouldn't have to learn how to use or run a computer. These things should just work."
Could things be less complicated? Sure. You won't hear me speak ill of actual progress in design. However, with all of the complicated things a computer does on a daily basis, it's a wonder a computer is generally regarded as "too much work for me to learn." A computer does your taxes, helps you type documents quickly as well as create many other types of fantastic things, browses web pages on a vast and global scale, plays every sort of media imaginable including movies, games and music, keeps data on you and your family in ways most people don't realise, and all together has become the single most powerful object in households today.
With this breadth of creation and consumption, you're going to have to introduce complexity. There's no way not to. How much you introduce is correlated to how many tasks you do on a computer.
If you want an appliance, you'll be limiting yourself to a very focused set of tasks based on, not your choice, but the choice of the manufacturer. As much as I like the Kindle, it is an appliance more than it is a computer. It does a very limited set of actions that, while are expertly chosen, are not in my control. Same with an MP3 player. And we know that even devices this limited still have the same issues of complexity and simple failure that computers do. Kindles crash, MP3 players crash, my iPod touch crashed when I had it. Problems happen.
Furthermore, the appliance idea also stems into not having enough power to fix your own problems. Hardware issue? You better hope the manufacturer can fix it for you, for a nominal fee. And you can't do what I did with my computers - I took lots of old computers, found the best parts in all of them, combined them into a mega machine, and I still use it to this day. I can replace any failed component for $40 or less (usually only $10). Try doing that with an Xbox, which is arguably the best executed appliance concept in the past ten years.
Can we expect users to learn to use the machine that more or less runs modern society? I guess not. However, complexity is derived from the actions we choose to do on a given device. Limiting that set of actions, however, or giving power to a corporation for them to make the choice for us, seems to be the wrong path to tread. There are good things to complexity.
Windows XP
I'm still a fairly basic Linux user (as these pages will show, undoubtedly - I've only been using and learning Linux for three years) which is why I still find it valuable to try out competitors for some perspective. Seeing as I had a Windows XP and several CD Keys, I decided to try it out again, to see if my memories hold up.
I also had other motivations, such as a couple of new PC Games that I received over the holiday break. Keep in mind that my desktop is not very powerful relative to the average gaming build, and that it used to be running Windows 7.
Everyone who has installed both Windows and Linux on a bare machine knows that it's no contest: modern Linux distros are so much easier to install that it's unbelievable. Windows 7 isn't as bad as XP, but it still has a way to go. I'm also surprised how finicky the CD-Key system is - it sure goes through a lot of fuss to activate your copy of Windows. I found myself wondering when the activation server will shut down, leaving XP dead in the water.
My CD of Windows XP also turned out to be Service Pack 1, whereas Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 and 3 since then. Thus began my slow crawl towards security. This is possibly why Linux distros try and release every two years or so - I've never installed so many patches and bugfixes in my life, and the constant restarts were baffling. While that was going on I managed to install my drivers, but only because I used Ubuntu before I started to find out the names and model numbers of my wi-fi and graphics card.
After that I combed the internet for my favorite windows applications (it's been a while since I used Foobar2000), which made me appreciate package management quite a bit. Then I went into the settings, turned mostly everything extraneous off (such as that blue and green interface) and got to work on installing my games.
On my box, Windows XP uses under 200 MB of RAM, where Windows 7 uses over 550 MB. A strategy game, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, runs much better in XP than 7, where it barely ran at all. I cannot say that all games run faster (they're still downloading at this point) but Firefox is certainly snappy, though not quite as quick as a well oiled Debian install.
This all just reminds me that in all of the progress that we've made in the past twenty years with computers, software has simply used it all up to display pretty graphics and flashy buttons. For what? An endless hamster wheel of progress where we never actually move forward.
Am I hypocritical for buying a handful of games and a cheap HDMI graphics card? Seeing as this poor beast can barely run anything vaguely new (2007 seems to be the age limit) I'd like to think not. Gaming is a fun hobby for me and, like computers, I have more hand-me-down game consoles than I'll ever find the time to play with. I probably don't need even the light gaming PC I have, but it's hard to turn down Christmas presents when the older, cheaper PC games are actually a lot of fun and I can install Windows XP in an afternoon.
In any case, I'm glad I downgraded to XP for the benefit of my games' performance, and it reiterated my usual thoughts on why I use Linux. My conversion is complete and at this point, there's no returning.
I also had other motivations, such as a couple of new PC Games that I received over the holiday break. Keep in mind that my desktop is not very powerful relative to the average gaming build, and that it used to be running Windows 7.
Everyone who has installed both Windows and Linux on a bare machine knows that it's no contest: modern Linux distros are so much easier to install that it's unbelievable. Windows 7 isn't as bad as XP, but it still has a way to go. I'm also surprised how finicky the CD-Key system is - it sure goes through a lot of fuss to activate your copy of Windows. I found myself wondering when the activation server will shut down, leaving XP dead in the water.
My CD of Windows XP also turned out to be Service Pack 1, whereas Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 and 3 since then. Thus began my slow crawl towards security. This is possibly why Linux distros try and release every two years or so - I've never installed so many patches and bugfixes in my life, and the constant restarts were baffling. While that was going on I managed to install my drivers, but only because I used Ubuntu before I started to find out the names and model numbers of my wi-fi and graphics card.
After that I combed the internet for my favorite windows applications (it's been a while since I used Foobar2000), which made me appreciate package management quite a bit. Then I went into the settings, turned mostly everything extraneous off (such as that blue and green interface) and got to work on installing my games.
On my box, Windows XP uses under 200 MB of RAM, where Windows 7 uses over 550 MB. A strategy game, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, runs much better in XP than 7, where it barely ran at all. I cannot say that all games run faster (they're still downloading at this point) but Firefox is certainly snappy, though not quite as quick as a well oiled Debian install.
This all just reminds me that in all of the progress that we've made in the past twenty years with computers, software has simply used it all up to display pretty graphics and flashy buttons. For what? An endless hamster wheel of progress where we never actually move forward.
Am I hypocritical for buying a handful of games and a cheap HDMI graphics card? Seeing as this poor beast can barely run anything vaguely new (2007 seems to be the age limit) I'd like to think not. Gaming is a fun hobby for me and, like computers, I have more hand-me-down game consoles than I'll ever find the time to play with. I probably don't need even the light gaming PC I have, but it's hard to turn down Christmas presents when the older, cheaper PC games are actually a lot of fun and I can install Windows XP in an afternoon.
In any case, I'm glad I downgraded to XP for the benefit of my games' performance, and it reiterated my usual thoughts on why I use Linux. My conversion is complete and at this point, there's no returning.
Uses for a headless desktop
Despite my minimalist nature, I can't turn down an old desktop to play with now and then. But sometimes I run out of monitors for these poor things and need to run some computers headless. What can we do over SSH? Here's what I've come up with.
-rtorrent. Not only is rtorrent one of the most powerful bittorrent clients I've ever used, but it's also command-line based and easy to configure and walk away from. Run once and walk away, basically. Keep seeding those Debian CD's, boys! More bandwidth on the ports!
-Internet radio. You could run your own with Icecast if you feel like playing a random jukebox across your stereo systems, or you could listen to one already on the net. My favorite is SomaFM (Groove Salad!) and there's a variety of codecs to choose from. I use the AACPlus 64k stream just because my bandwidth is in low supply, but I imagine an MP3 stream would be easier for some older computers.
To play Groove Salad, I install MPlayer, and then I get the download location of the playlist SomaFM gives me and I give that to mplayer.
And it's off. Plug in some stereos and you've got an internet radio player. Alternatively, you could use the MPlayer options to record the music stream for later listening, like this:
Keep in mind this fills up pretty quickly, though, so make sure you have enough hard drive space to leave it running! After you're done recording, you could break it up with Audacity and encode it with Vorbis tools or LAME for a portable music player.
-Newsbeuter has some downloading options I haven't played with yet, but if you have podcasts or a netlabel you follow in your RSS feeds, you could set Newsbeuter up to download them for you so they're ready to be listened to.
-Games. Actually, it's funny how handy it is to have a server lying around for games, especially if my friends come over and want to play Minecraft together. Most games have Linux server options.
But there was another option I had in mind. Console games like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup tend not to use much (if any) computational power, but there are some like Dwarf Fortress that are pretty heavy on the processor. DF isn't purely text out of the box, but you can mod it to be so. Dwarf Fortress is a very powerful simulation game that requires more power than your usual used computer can handle, so this is a great idea for situations where your laptop is less powerful than your desktop.
Any other ideas?
-rtorrent. Not only is rtorrent one of the most powerful bittorrent clients I've ever used, but it's also command-line based and easy to configure and walk away from. Run once and walk away, basically. Keep seeding those Debian CD's, boys! More bandwidth on the ports!
-Internet radio. You could run your own with Icecast if you feel like playing a random jukebox across your stereo systems, or you could listen to one already on the net. My favorite is SomaFM (Groove Salad!) and there's a variety of codecs to choose from. I use the AACPlus 64k stream just because my bandwidth is in low supply, but I imagine an MP3 stream would be easier for some older computers.
To play Groove Salad, I install MPlayer, and then I get the download location of the playlist SomaFM gives me and I give that to mplayer.
mplayer http://somafm.com/groovesalad32.pls
And it's off. Plug in some stereos and you've got an internet radio player. Alternatively, you could use the MPlayer options to record the music stream for later listening, like this:
mplayer -playlist http://somafm.com/groovesalad32.pls -ao pcm:file=mystream.wav -vc dummy -vo null
Keep in mind this fills up pretty quickly, though, so make sure you have enough hard drive space to leave it running! After you're done recording, you could break it up with Audacity and encode it with Vorbis tools or LAME for a portable music player.
-Newsbeuter has some downloading options I haven't played with yet, but if you have podcasts or a netlabel you follow in your RSS feeds, you could set Newsbeuter up to download them for you so they're ready to be listened to.
-Games. Actually, it's funny how handy it is to have a server lying around for games, especially if my friends come over and want to play Minecraft together. Most games have Linux server options.
But there was another option I had in mind. Console games like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup tend not to use much (if any) computational power, but there are some like Dwarf Fortress that are pretty heavy on the processor. DF isn't purely text out of the box, but you can mod it to be so. Dwarf Fortress is a very powerful simulation game that requires more power than your usual used computer can handle, so this is a great idea for situations where your laptop is less powerful than your desktop.
Any other ideas?
Decibel - music player
Decibel is a music player for Gnome (and other GTK desktops). It has an optional file browser on the side, and a playlist to add songs to below the controls.
It reminds me of Amarok 1.4, but with the restraint of Potamus. I like Potamus, but it forces me to have an extra window open to add songs to the playlist, unlike Decibel.
It's in most distros. Give it a run.
Fewer Files
The day after finals were over, I reinstalled Ubuntu onto my laptop as a temporary measure until CentOS or Scientific Linux stabilize. It's fantastic.
I transferred only the following:
-my URL file for newsbeuter
-a couple of files off of my music player (have I mentioned how much I love Kahvi Collective?)
-a saved archive of the latest Dungeon Crawl source code
The rest I forced myself to obtain naturally, on the internet. No old wallpaper folders. No gigantic music libraries. No random text scraps of ideas littering my documents folder.
My productivity jumped drastically. My dependence on my files and the management of them takes up too much time. Some of the times I do need, sure. But I don't need to transfer over 30 GB every time I get a new OS install!
I didn't feel in the mood to build up to my usual Ubuntu installation, so I built down this time, and it left me in a pretty good position. And I have to admit, uninstalling 600 MB of programs and libraries feels pretty good.
I've said before that less isn't very useful unless you're doing it for the right reasons, but it's still a very powerful tool, as everything can be.
I transferred only the following:
-my URL file for newsbeuter
-a couple of files off of my music player (have I mentioned how much I love Kahvi Collective?)
-a saved archive of the latest Dungeon Crawl source code
The rest I forced myself to obtain naturally, on the internet. No old wallpaper folders. No gigantic music libraries. No random text scraps of ideas littering my documents folder.
My productivity jumped drastically. My dependence on my files and the management of them takes up too much time. Some of the times I do need, sure. But I don't need to transfer over 30 GB every time I get a new OS install!
I didn't feel in the mood to build up to my usual Ubuntu installation, so I built down this time, and it left me in a pretty good position. And I have to admit, uninstalling 600 MB of programs and libraries feels pretty good.
I've said before that less isn't very useful unless you're doing it for the right reasons, but it's still a very powerful tool, as everything can be.
Self Control
This article was sent to me and I gave it a good read. It's a New York times article about people discussing the ways the brain might be changing due to constantly multitasking with technology. The brain discussion was interesting, though I would have preferred some more concrete terms and research than the ones offered, but hey, it's the newspaper.
I couldn't relate to the main characters of the article! They're described as endlessly checking e-mail, to the detriment of the people around them (I often wonder how they find these random people for introductions in news stories); off checking Facebook as they're doing homework or reading Twitter as they're preparing for a presentation.
Why don't I feel the same way? Certainly I spend some time on the internet, checking Reddit like the family in the story do. But I don't seem to have issues beyond entertainment value. Could it be that I run a blog with the word "minimalist" in the title? Perhaps! I could offer some solutions at least.
The biggest thing that jumped out at me was not that the people in the story couldn't help themselves, but that they didn't. The biggest example was the father who knows that Twitter gives him useless information when he's trying to do work. Why doesn't he turn off the Twitter feed? A lack of self control? A misplaced priority? A desire to know information when it happens? Certainly all of these things.
No one would be surprised if you placed yourself under four screens and an iPad filled with distractions and when you were asked to do work, nothing materialized. It takes self control many of us do not possess to get work done in an environment that breeds uninterest, so we must have the foresight to eliminate these things ahead of time.
How does one focus with technology pestering us so often?
1) Eliminate the internet's immediate gratification.
I find that doing simple things like unplugging the router or using a blocking program on your computer doesn't quite do it. I've seen friends of mine simply get up and plug the router back in, or reboot their computer to get around their artificial limitations. It's sad, really, but I see why. Some pope just can't go on without something, anything.
The best way to eliminate the internet is to set up a torrent on a headless second computer in a remote location in the building. Download something like Ubuntu so that it uses all of your bandwidth, and choose a good file size so that you have an allotted time. You can still access web pages and email on your other computer, sort of, but it takes a long time to load and by the time it does, people who have low self control have already moved back to their work.
2) Get rid of everything else.
Twitter feed? Close it. Email client? Nuke it from space. RSS? Fagettabahdit. Just turn it all off. If you're managing text, go X-less. Remove until you cannot remove any more. And don't be like the people in the story, who would most certainly say, "I can't remove that!" You can and you will.
3) White noise. Yes, it works. If the white noise irritates your ears, try some thunderstorm sounds instead. The internet's full of both.
4) Make a schedule, Gatsby style.
From The Great Gatsby itself:
Be even more ridiculously specific than that. Break down every task you have into smaller chunks. Estimate the amount of time needed and craft a schedule from that. Print out the schedule and paste it over your workspace. Stick to it. Cross off time sand appropriate if you need to, but your shame for muddying up your lovely schedule will most surely bring you back to your task.
5) Make resolves, Gatsby style.
Again from the book:
You don't need to have life improving bullet points. Mostly "Get it done and do it right the first time." I like to make these more interesting by adding expletives and insults to the sentence, to make it sound gruff and edgy like a wise, tough old man is passing down his wisdom through tough love.
I couldn't relate to the main characters of the article! They're described as endlessly checking e-mail, to the detriment of the people around them (I often wonder how they find these random people for introductions in news stories); off checking Facebook as they're doing homework or reading Twitter as they're preparing for a presentation.
Why don't I feel the same way? Certainly I spend some time on the internet, checking Reddit like the family in the story do. But I don't seem to have issues beyond entertainment value. Could it be that I run a blog with the word "minimalist" in the title? Perhaps! I could offer some solutions at least.
The biggest thing that jumped out at me was not that the people in the story couldn't help themselves, but that they didn't. The biggest example was the father who knows that Twitter gives him useless information when he's trying to do work. Why doesn't he turn off the Twitter feed? A lack of self control? A misplaced priority? A desire to know information when it happens? Certainly all of these things.
No one would be surprised if you placed yourself under four screens and an iPad filled with distractions and when you were asked to do work, nothing materialized. It takes self control many of us do not possess to get work done in an environment that breeds uninterest, so we must have the foresight to eliminate these things ahead of time.
How does one focus with technology pestering us so often?
1) Eliminate the internet's immediate gratification.
I find that doing simple things like unplugging the router or using a blocking program on your computer doesn't quite do it. I've seen friends of mine simply get up and plug the router back in, or reboot their computer to get around their artificial limitations. It's sad, really, but I see why. Some pope just can't go on without something, anything.
The best way to eliminate the internet is to set up a torrent on a headless second computer in a remote location in the building. Download something like Ubuntu so that it uses all of your bandwidth, and choose a good file size so that you have an allotted time. You can still access web pages and email on your other computer, sort of, but it takes a long time to load and by the time it does, people who have low self control have already moved back to their work.
2) Get rid of everything else.
Twitter feed? Close it. Email client? Nuke it from space. RSS? Fagettabahdit. Just turn it all off. If you're managing text, go X-less. Remove until you cannot remove any more. And don't be like the people in the story, who would most certainly say, "I can't remove that!" You can and you will.
3) White noise. Yes, it works. If the white noise irritates your ears, try some thunderstorm sounds instead. The internet's full of both.
4) Make a schedule, Gatsby style.
From The Great Gatsby itself:
Rise from bed 6.00 AM
Dumbbell exercise & wall-scaling 6.15 – 6.30 AM
Study electricity, etc 7.15 – 8.15 AM
Work 8.30 AM – 4.30 PM
Baseball & sports 4.30 – 5.00 PM
Practise elocution, poise & how to attain it 5.00 – 6.00 PM
Study needed inventions 7.00 – 9.00 PM
Be even more ridiculously specific than that. Break down every task you have into smaller chunks. Estimate the amount of time needed and craft a schedule from that. Print out the schedule and paste it over your workspace. Stick to it. Cross off time sand appropriate if you need to, but your shame for muddying up your lovely schedule will most surely bring you back to your task.
5) Make resolves, Gatsby style.
Again from the book:
No wasting time…
Read one improving book or magazine per week.
Save $ 5.00 $ 3.00 per week.
You don't need to have life improving bullet points. Mostly "Get it done and do it right the first time." I like to make these more interesting by adding expletives and insults to the sentence, to make it sound gruff and edgy like a wise, tough old man is passing down his wisdom through tough love.
Maximalism versus Minimalism
I've seen the concept of "maximalism" echoed through the web sphere a couple of times and I wanted to discuss the difference between it and minimalism.
Maximalism, as I'm lead to believe, is the act of pushing what you already have as far as it can go, finding new and inventive uses for the gadgets and computers that you bought.
Minimalism is (in the classical sense) the act of toning down what you do in order to focus, utilizing what you already have in more efficient ways.
Both ideas stem from the idea of "what you already have;" aka not going out and buying a new laptop because the old one doesn't do what you want any more. They're both tweaks of the perspective that end up with the same result: "I'm fine where I am."
The only difference between them, then, is why you feel fine. "I'm fine with what I have because I still manage to push its boundaries above and beyond!" versus "I'm fine with what I have because I can shrink my needs to work for me and the boundaries of my currently existing machine."
I doubt I'll make a distinction in the future between the two, but I think both can be followed in tandem.
Maximalism, as I'm lead to believe, is the act of pushing what you already have as far as it can go, finding new and inventive uses for the gadgets and computers that you bought.
Minimalism is (in the classical sense) the act of toning down what you do in order to focus, utilizing what you already have in more efficient ways.
Both ideas stem from the idea of "what you already have;" aka not going out and buying a new laptop because the old one doesn't do what you want any more. They're both tweaks of the perspective that end up with the same result: "I'm fine where I am."
The only difference between them, then, is why you feel fine. "I'm fine with what I have because I still manage to push its boundaries above and beyond!" versus "I'm fine with what I have because I can shrink my needs to work for me and the boundaries of my currently existing machine."
I doubt I'll make a distinction in the future between the two, but I think both can be followed in tandem.
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