punkforpez

 

dwm and not looking back

I have been a WMFS user as long as I have been an Arch one.  For the past few weeks I have been testing out dwm and have decided that it is indeed the new window manger for me.  I absolutely love how it's edited in C and recompiled in order to implement changes.  Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love WMFS and still suggest it to people as their entry into tiling window management.  But, for something more advanced and I have decided to land on dwm.  Will I keep using it?  Absolutely.  Will I make it the only tiling window manger I'll ever use?  Probably not.

I won't lie, dwm makes me feel like a coding ninja.  There is a bit of elitism and status-flashing that goes along with using a WM that most computer users probably wouldn't even begin to understand.  Yes, it's elitist of me to think that way.  No, I don't care.  I want to be different than your average computer user.  I have a long history of computer use and love that I am not constrained within Windows or Mac OS in order to get stuff done.  I don't think Linux is for everyone but it is absolutely for me.

Linux is refreshing and smooth.  Arch Linux is minimal and simplistic and beautiful in its execution of these traits.  It is everything I have ever wanted in my OS.  It fits me.  It shares my sense of minimal style and beauty and yes, I am one intense proponent of Arch now.  I have adopted it on all of my computers now and will continue to install it on every computer in my future.  Dwm is quickly becoming the exact compliment to that method that I have been searching for all this time.  

 

The Android Did A Double Lindy

It's been a few months, and I have finally adjusted to my life without my Android phone. It all happened when were were in Los Angeles over the holidays for the yearly trip to Disneyland. Nice day, recovering in the RV from a long day in the park when I go to get my charging HTC off the table and the power cord snags on the lamp causing the phone to skyrocket out of my hand and directly into the dog's water dish.

... Damn.

I loved my Android phone. It was my way of being a sort of mobile hacker type. Look at my phone, look what it can do! Rooted, custom roms. Suck on that iPhone fanboys. And now I'm back on my iPhone 4. I know, I know. I just called half the mobile market fanboys. In a way I am too. But I like both of them. I always say if I could afford both phones I would have two mobiles. I miss my Android phone. Yes, I prefer the apps on the iPhone but I miss the hacking and customizing.

I miss people being in awe when I show them my minimal interface and fancy Android custom rom awesomeness. Jailbreaking an iDevice is just not the same as rooting an Android. Jailbreaking feels like just following in someone's footsteps whereas rooting an Android device feels like standing on the edge of the mountains, looking into a valley full of possibilities. I miss it.

 

New WMFS setup.

I have been spending more time than ever in WMFS and have since redone a few things for my setup.

In the "clean" shot I have changed to a lighter background to help with contrast.  I kept finding myself getting a little confused on which screen I was on if I had a bunch of terminal stuff (same color as previous wallpaper) up and going and switching back and forth among workspaces.  The "dirty" shot is setup in Grid-Horizontal (one of my favorite WMFS layouts) and has from Left-to-Right, Top-to-Bottom:  

URxvt term with my own custom Irssi script based off Zhafte.  I'm calling it Pez for now.  I also lurk heavily in the #archlinux channel on Freenode, so why mess with tradition there.  The theme is very much a WIP, I actually just finished my rough draft at the time of this post.  Some colors are bound to change.  Irssi is nesting in a tmux session running two instances of Irssi: one for Freenode and the other for Quakenet (where I run a channel with friends).  The tmux config is based very heavily on Jason Ryan's work.  The guy does some awesome Linux stuff.  Check him out.

The output of colors.sh.  This is my color setup for terminals and is based off of a few color configs I came across on the Arch Linux Forums.  Scrot takes the screenshot.  Still giggle everytime I use it.

Starting off a new game of Crawl: Stone Soup after getting my ass handed to me by a snake in the last game.  >.<  Damn snakes.

This is me fixing and messing with stuff for the Pez theme, in Vim.

(download)

 

Helvetica Neue

Alright, I'll admit it. I fucking love Helvetica Neue. I love Helvetica, who am I kidding? I have been building up a portfolio of my personal design work and hope that I will eventually be able to call myself a designer. Part of this process has involved researching every aspect of typography, including amassing a collection of personal favorites for all the various font types and weights.

I keep coming back to Helvetica Neue. I know I shouldn't. It's Helvetica for godsakes. It's so damn overused that it's almost become full-blow elitist. Hell, it's been that way forever! Still, it's beautiful. It's so damn beautiful I want to hug it and wrap it in a fucking snuggie and make it breakfast. It's very deserving of it's status.

 

SOPA

Today is SOPA/PIPA Awareness/Blackout Day. Reddit is down, which should lead to massive profit-increasing productivity throughout the whole world.

Instead of following the path a lot of people are taking by bringing their sites down for the day, which I respect(!), I have decided to let them have their style and me, mine. Therefore I just want to post a few little nuggets for us to chew on:

“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned  Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!” - Kurt Vonnegut 
“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by  supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”- George Bernard Shaw

 

Unemployed and the Pythonista Path

I have not had much success in my recent move to Central Oregon, and in an effort to keep things positive I have taken this extra time in my life to really sit down and learn Python.  Python has become my favorite programming language and I am hoping to eventually be able to add "Pythonista" to my code-repetoire.  I have also been learning Java, C and some Haskell (the latter being one I'm not sure I completely understand yet) and am really regretting not spending more time with all of these languages when I was younger.

My small stint in the public education slave system had me learning how to design small (pointless) games and simple parsing apps in C and C++, but that was several years ago and I have forgotten far more than I have retained.  I am currently working through several Python books (until Skyrim comes out in a few days at least) and really want to progress in to some sort of profitable and professional environment.

 

15 Beautiful Libraries

From Twisted Sifter:

I would love to spend eternity in any of these amazing places, though Number 10 is my favorite.

 

A beach bum finds the desert.

It has been too long since my last post. If you can even call it a post. It was more of a pic upload of a silly graph I found nerdy and awesome from my Arch box. Yay!

I need to dust this thing off more and return to my daily posts. Or at least weekly. Hell, at least one post! I find I am more willing to work on this blog and post things to it when I am on the MacBook Pro and mostly far away from the usual distractions I run into with my main computer. World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Starcraft 2, Civ5, EVE, the list goes on.

Tomorrow I am throwing myself into my densely-packed, moderate-sized SUV and driving halfway across the state, forsaking my beloved beach community and embracing life in the new high-desert city. I imagine things will be more or less the same however I will miss the ocean. I have been excited about this move for some time but I am sad to leave the restrictive comfort of my life here. I am just too absorbed in the 'beachy' lifestyle and I have lived here for so long that the beach way seems like the only feasible way. Things work at a slower pace here. Hell, we even have a phrase for it. Beach time. It's kind of like Gandalf's famous "A wizard arrives precisely when he means to" bit, only with more intoxicants and a lot of sand.

However, life moves forward and so should all of us living it. Cheers to new environs, new endeavors and (hopefully) some new adventures!