New Year's Resolutions

[azurelunatic]

Again with the new -- in the coming year, my resolutions for home are:

1366x768
+
1960x1080

This past year, I kept the same (frustrating) laptop, but swapped out my old and dying external monitor for a new one.

I'm not sure offhand what my work resolution is, but it's likely to change as well -- my Overlady has cast an eye upon the situation and declared that when she's got two monitors and is using zero, and I have one monitor and am using it, perhaps some hardware should be shifted within the department. And I am inclined to agree.

Less snarkily, I intend to continue with my current self-driven, fitbit-monitored program of rehabilitation, and see where it takes me.

I have recently seen general improvements in energy and wakefulness, and I intend to bring some of my increased resources to bear on work. I find when I'm working flat-out but have the energy to do so, this has good knock-on effects to the rest of my life (versus when I don't, and then it's bad).

I should also follow up with that likely-looking apartment complex, because the rent here isn't getting any cheaper.

Comments

[majoline]

I hope you have a Happy New Year and everything goes your way.

(Ugh, I need a new laptop too. I have learned that Toshiba makes shit laptops.)

[azurelunatic]

I really do want another desktop. One with onboard support for multiple monitors. I like having oceans of screen real estate, a screen for the IRC windows, and enough power to have upwards of 100 tabs open, plus IRC, plus iTunes... weirdly, increased power on phones and such have made a portable computer less of an absolute necessity for me.

[majoline]

*nods* Oh yeah, if I had a desk, I'd totally be in the market for a sweet desktop rig. I've been admiring the bf's Das Keyboard too.

[azurelunatic]

Ooo keyboards. What kind? I have the Microsoft ergonomic one at home, and work kitted me out with the Kinesis split model.

[majoline]

Back when I had a desktop, I used the Microsoft ergonomic one, but I'm not sure about the split models. They look cool though.

The bf has this one and I wouldn't mind getting one myself: http://shop.daskeyboard.com/collections/products/products/das-keyboard-ultimate-model-s

[azurelunatic]

I wasn't sure either at first, but basically it lets me sit with my arms straight to type, rather than having chicken-wing elbows, so it has turned out well.

[majoline]

Having a desktop rig is a faraway dream right now, but that is such a good point that I will really have to think about what I want in a keyboard.

[wibbble]

Given that 'open tabs' is largely a memory-limit rather than CPU-limit, and high-end smartphones are shipping with 2+GB of RAM these days alongside their quad-core ARM CPUs, once again I think it's a real pity that Ubuntu for Android (http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android) turned into vapourware.

Sure, yeah, a Sony Xperia Z1 costs a fortune, but if it could literally replace your desktop (with just a monitor and bluetooth keyboard/mouse) it starts to look a bit more reasonable, and network subsidies are available with a contract.

I'm really intrigued by the idea of keeping my core workstation with me at all times, and really, even low-end smartphones (like the Moto G - US$100, contract-free, in Best Buy right now, apparently - with 1GB of RAM and a quad-core ARM CPU) are still powerful enough for the sort of use most people put their computers to. (And if you need to run anything compute-heavy? Well, it's a phone so you're guaranteed internet access, spin up some VMs on either a public cloud provider, or in a corporate setting you could use a private, internal, cloud, which is something Virtual Hammer have a lot of interest in. :o) )

So, so disappointed about Ubuntu for Android.

[azurelunatic]

I have, heh, some unfond memories of trying to get serious shit done on a virtualized Windows desktop environment via a thin client. And that was with a full-sized keyboard/mouse/monitor. Though that was not persistent, which was at least 25% of the problem. There was a problem with the mouse location drawing being out of sync with how the rest of the screen was drawn, which resulted in untold woe (I think the mouse was faster). My favorite, though, was the way the volume would reset from 2% to 100% the instant the login locked.

[wibbble]

Ah, I've seen systems like that before - the cursor's rendered locally 'for speed' due to latency.

The Ubuntu for Android thing is a bit different - it's running Ubuntu locally on an external screen, and calling out to the cloud would be for the sort of thing that developers are using Vagrant for to run VMs locally. Your average user really never needs it at all - that quad-core ARM CPU really is powerful enough for anything most people do on a daily basis.

Even if you actually did need full-blown Windows and had to spin up a Windows EC2 instance, these days remote desktop's good enough to be usable on a medium-high latency connection. I wouldn't seriously try and control it with the phone's screen, though.

After leaving that comment, I found this: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/linuxonandroid so it looks like there's some hope for this model.