In the last few weeks I’ve been giving some thought to my computing setup and how it might change in the next few months. At the moment I use 3 machines regularly — an old Mac Mini, a Linux laptop that’s about 3.5 years old and an Ubuntu netbook that’s about a year and a half old. Unfortunately the Mac Mini is showing it’s age and I’ve always had mixed feelings about the netbook. The linux laptop was always too heavy to actually carry around much and now I tend to use it only for programming. And in about 2 months I’m graduating from college and starting graduate school. Over the last 3 years I’ve experimented a lot to figure how I best use computers, but as I start grad school I want to settle down with a setup that I can use for a good few years without constant tweaking. Here are some rules for computing happiness that I’ve come up with in the last few years to help make my computing more sane.
- Use as few physical machines as possible. Keeping files and projects in sync across machines is too much of a hassle and can easily become a productivity sink. Rule 2 below is an exception.
- Keep work and play separate. No Twitter or IM clients allowed on the work machine unless they are part of the job.
- Get a Linux machine for programming. Get as many monitors as you can afford and run a tiling window manager. I suggest either a larger laptop or a desktop.
- Get a lightweight Macbook for non-programming tasks. Maybe an external monitor. I would like to suggest getting an Air unless you really need a larger drive, but not sure about that yet.
- Keep a backup server, either physical or virtual. Do not try to do actual work on the server unless you really need to. Use a lightweight Linux distro for this. I suggest Arch Linux, but use whatever you’re most familiar with so that you don’t need to spend time learning the ropes.
- Learn and customize your tools. Make sure that the customizations are saved and backed up and can be restored easily.
- Use public computers (including library and lab machines) as little as you need to. They probably can’t be customized and you’ll be stuck using generic tools which means you won’t be working as efficiently as you could.
- Pay for good software if you need it, but only after you’ve tried it out for a while.
- Keep information in open formats, preferably plain text as much as possible.
- Use version control on all projects, even if they’re not programming related.
You do me proud!
[...] As I’ve been thinking of my computing habits and how to get the most from them I’ve decided to get back to using tiling window managers. [...]
[...] is thinking that I can get serious work done at a library or lab machine. I alluded to this in my rules for computing happiness. I use a lot of specialized software that helps me to work faster and better and I lose all of that [...]
[...] Unfortunately, as Seth Godin says, we’re using the same tools for both work and play and that doesn’t turn out well. It’s hard to concentrate on writing or hacking when there are email and Twitter alerts clamoring for our attention. And it’s not just the momentary interruptions. Even if you aren’t getting bothered by notifications, it’s hard to gather the mental energy to create when it’s easier to play a game or check the latest Internet happenings. Seth Godin’s solution is actually deceptively simple: use separate machines for work and play. In fact, this is something that I had written about in my rules for computing happiness. [...]