Tooling

I recently have moved on from using monitors and am working (professional and writing endeavours) only via a 13 inch laptop. It is definitely a different workflow than what I’m used to.

It has been around 10 days I’ve been doing this and here are some observations:

• I’m able to focus better as I’m forced to enlarge my context maintaining capabilities; for I don’t have the luxury to look back and forth with just my eye movements.
• I can work from anywhere. I change places and posture every 1.5 hours, 5 times a day.
• Given I move between a couple of meets during the day, I don’t have to adjust to differing window management mannerisms as I only ever work on the same screen now.
• I work in at most two splits now compared to the 5+ previously: it is all simpler and the monitor has started to seem like a vanity rather than essential accessory.
• I don’t have to switch keyboards between my desk and meets: I don’t mess enough as much now.
• I can start looking down upon people that are bound to monitors, thinking that they’re spoiled or aren’t minimal enough.
• I’ve started preaching about the spartan-ish effects of working only via your laptop
• I spend more time on screen, on my bed: consequently I’m writing more.

I definitely do miss reading papers and books on a larger vertically oriented screen but I’m going to stick to this for a while.

There’s this saying :

If you’re stuck on an island and have the opportunity to build all of the software landscape again, the programming language you should choose is C. But the first thing you should write is a lisp interpreter.

I’m going to do that with Go.

As for the saying, I’ve heavily paraphrased (aka butchered) that and don’t quite recall the source so do excuse me for that.

This is how I time my workblocks these days…

Prerequisites

• ALSA : https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture

Functions

single_beep() {
( \speaker-test --frequency $1 --test sine )&
pid=$!
\sleep  0.${2}s
\kill -9 $pid
}

morse(){
for i in {1..3};
do
        single_beep 400 $1
        \sleep 0.${2}s
done
}

sos() {
    morse 200 500
    morse 400 500
    morse 200 500
}

timer() {
    \sleep $1 && sos &
}

Usage

The above can be sourced in your shell rc.
I store it in a .bash_funcs where I have all my functions and source them in the end of my rc as source ~/.bash_funcs.

EDIT : 0x22D2 : Fri Sep 27 03:51:30 PM IST 2024

• I’m thinking I’ll proceed in common lisp
• do read on for amusement though

As of 0x22CE (Mon Sep 23 06:48:40 AM IST 2024), These are the operating systems I’ve used:

• Open Suse TumbleWeed
• Fedora, CentOs, Rocky
• Debian, Ubuntu, Kali
• Arch
• Windows XP,Vista,7,10,11

I recently moved away from Fedora 40 to Tumbleweed (I deleted some core python libraries that are essential for yum and dnf (I know, I’m an idiot))…

I recently shifted my operations to a thinkpad x13g4amd (Ryzen 7840U + 780M Radeon) and am using this transfer as an opportunity to realize and improve my work related habits.

GNU/Linux

All of my pipelines are based around Linux and the core GNU utils. I had to use windows for a while due to org-wide constraints but I’ve recently been given the signal to shift to linux.

I rarely used any windows native tools for my workflows and there was always a layer of linux emulation/virtualization (wsl, scoop, and the likes) upon which I conducted my usual operations. Given I use Debian at home, a non native linux experience was frustrating at best and depressing at worst. No more, do I have to confine myself.

I’m an AI Research Engineer and that involves messing around a little with python. I’ve spent the past 4 years perfecting a disciplined, minimal, but enabling setup.

This is a tour of my trusty set of tools, in the hopes that it will help you find the same CLI zen that I’ve been enjoying for a while now.

Tmux : towards an Eternal Shell

I start my work sessions off by ssh’ing into my remote compute cluster.