.._________.__ __ .__
/ _____/| | _____ ________/ |_|__| ____ ____ ____ _____
\_____ \ | | \__ \\_ __ \ __\ |/ __ \ _/ ___\/ _ \ / \
/ \| |__/ __ \| | \/| | | \ ___/ \ \__( <_> ) Y Y \
/_______ /|____(____ /__| |__| |__|\___ > /\___ >____/|__|_| /
\/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/
.___ _ _ _______ _______ _______ _____
| |_| || |_\ _ \ \ _ \ \ _ \ / | | http://slartie.com/
| \ __ / /_\ \/ /_\ \/ /_\ \ / | |_
| || || |\ \_/ \ \_/ \ \_/ \/ ^ / Giving you the heads up
|___/_ ~~ _\\_____ /\_____ /\_____ /\____ | on everything console.
|_||_| \/ \/ \/ |__|
===============================================================================
09 June 2013 -- slartie -- Final NEWSLETTER ISSUE 0004
===============================================================================
===============================================================================
WARNING IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
===============================================================================
If you're easily offended by foul language or views on a particular
matter, which might not agree with your own, you should probably get the
fuck out of this document right now. Seriously.
===============================================================================
INTRO
===============================================================================
It's getting warm here, and here's a new set of rants for your
delectation. Some of it might be a bit incoherent. Most likely due to the
fact that my rotating fan had a breakdown during the week and rather than
pausing my writing, I decided to press on despite the blistering heat. The
fun never stops.
Guides are forthcoming. You can see them listed in the 'GUIDES'
section. If you'd like to see a guide for something that isn't on the
list, throw me a message somewhere. Look for details below.
===============================================================================
CONTENTS
===============================================================================
WARNING (It's for your own good)
INTRO (You just came from there)
CONTENTS (You are here)
TOPIC 01: My Rant (Less bitching, more work)
TOPIC 02: Love your TERM (Distraction-free workspace)
TOPIC 03: Dwarf Fortress (Gaming is good for you)
TOPIC 04: Links (Places to visit)
CLOSING (Final thoughts)
ABOUT (About the author)
LICENSE (Because we all need one)
===============================================================================
TOPIC 01: MY RANT LESS BITCHING, MORE WORK
===============================================================================
I get it. It's good to be passionate about something. Otherwise, for one,
I wouldn't even be doing this newsletter. But there's a time and a place
for everything. And more to the point, don't confuse passionate with
arrogant, fear of change, being delusional, etc.
Parts of the Open Source Software Community (Say that ten times without
sounding like Daffy Duck) is known for flamewars, hissyfits, and the:
'fine, I'll just take my toys and leave'. I'm not going to list any of
them here, but if you've spent any length of time in and around the
community, you're sure to have your own mental list of projects that can
feel like time just warped and we're all caught in a loop where everyone's
no more than 4 years old.
Granted, this way of 'communicating' works for some projects, but a fair
number lead to forks (the best outcome of a bad situation) or the projects
simply die off, because nobody agrees on anything and the original author
decides to no longer accept / merge patches.
Forks can be good. If enough people agree on working on it, the project
lives on in a new part of cyberspace. But if it's one of those numerous 50
/ 50 type deals, where we assume that each side consists of equally good
developers in each of their fields, you get the scattering of gray
matter. Assuming the fork doesn't get as much attention initially, you
have less developers having to deal with the same code, and thus slowing
everything down. Maybe a major refactoring job or a core rewrite is needed
to meet the goals of the fork. Don't expect people to be jumping over each
other to take the lead on that one despite being full of good ideas before
the fork happened.
That's not to say that a slower pace is outright bad, but my own
experience tells me that often you'll get forks with initial bursts of
activity, which then slows to a crawl and eventually also die out, because
only a couple of dedicated souls actually do any of the work.
Wouldn't it be amazing if these projects, before they end up being a giant
clusterfuck resulting in a fork, contacted someone who could act as the
diplomat of the group, help getting things a little more organized and be
the go-to guy for ironing out differences of opinion. Yep, that sounds
like a grand idea. Put enough geeks into the same chatroom / mailing list
without supervision and you will get shit slinging.
It's crazy enough that it just might work.
===============================================================================
TOPIC 02: LOVE YOUR TERM DISTRACTION-FREE WORKSPACE
===============================================================================
In an earlier newsletter I hailed the great i3wm for giving you full
control over your desktop pixels. When you're doing any kind of serious
work, you would hopefully want to have all of the screen at your disposal,
all the time. i3 just makes sure you have plenty of RAM available for all
that important work you're about to do, as well as being minimalistic and
just kick-ass amazing at the same time.
Once you've gotten used to working in i3wm, that you will no doubt have
installed immediately after reading about it, you've probably already been
taking the next few steps - the first of which is to spend more time in
the terminal.
Anything worthwhile, can be done from the terminal. I'm not saying you
should, but I'm saying you can.
If you're a developer, author, or anyone else who types a lot, your text
editor should always be front and center. Emacs and vim users already know
this, but some of you may be used to Gedit or whatever the fuck it's
called these days, and love your mouse, toolbars, 20px wide scrollbars and
so on.
Give your eyes a break and start up a terminal based text editor. Emacs is
an obvious choice for discerning developers, but you are of course allowed
to choose vim or its equally worthy cousin, nano. See what I did there?
Most of the useful text editors for the terminal will give you ways of
making vertical and horizontal splits. If it doesn't, consider changing to
a proper editor, or at the very least use tmux to give you a way of making
splits. Hell, you should be using tmux all the time anyway, so what are
you waiting for?
While we're at it, stop using Terminator, Gnome Terminal or whatever the
hell else has come along lately. They've got weird implementations of the
terminal standards (although that in itself is a bit of a joke), but
really - they all come with a bunch of keybindings you might not even be
able to unbind, and they take up a shitload of RAM just to run. Sure some
of these terminals can make their own splits or even fancy schmancy tabs,
but from what I've seen so far, it's at HUGE resource costs. Even decent
computers will experience laggy scrolling and other weird effects. It's
like they just don't like to be used too much.
Switch to urxvt with a decent config and your computer will be thanking
you ad nauseum.
So get to it. Get a good editor, start up your terminal (full screen mode
anyone?) and start changing the world.
===============================================================================
TOPIC 03: DWARF FORTRESS GAMING IS GOOD FOR YOU
===============================================================================
You can only be in work mode for so long before you have to kick back for
a while and just be boring and lazy. Good news! There's one way to make
sure your analytical mind keeps working even though you're relaxing. Flex
those brain muscles!
A game that has a very devout following to say the least, is called Dwarf
Fortress.
It's a top down, dwarf community, fortress (city) building, hunting,
gathering, epic, sims-esque simulator. And then it's a whole lot more. It
is probably the most complex game you will ever play.
Some consider it a spreadsheet managing game, but there are so many things
that can happen that you have to be supervising your minions constantly.
It's an ASCII based game that supports tilesets, so no matter what, it
will not be the most graphically amazing piece of work you have ever
seen. But once you get used to the 'art style' or lack thereof, you will
feel like you've seen the real matrix - and let me tell you - it's
gorgeous.
Given the complexity of the game, it has a very cliff like learning
curve. And after a year you will most likely still find things that you
could have done differently, which would ensure your dwarven colony didn't
die horribly when the wolves decided to invade your little city in the
mountain.
If you can survive the first few years in Dwarf Fortress without any
serious injuries to your populace, you get the stamp of nerd approval.
Happy gaming.
===============================================================================
TOPIC 04: LINKS PLACES TO VISIT
===============================================================================
Stuff I've mentioned in this newsletter deserves some link love, otherwise
you'd have to step out of your comfort zone and use a search engine. Where
would we be if that was required?!
This isn't WikiPedia, so I'm only going to link to stuff I think is worth
looking at.
Dwarf Fortress [ http://bay12games.com/dwarves/ ]
RXVT Unicode [ http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html ]
Tmux [ http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ ]
===============================================================================
CLOSING FINAL THOUGHTS
===============================================================================
The newsletter this week is even more ranty than usual. And to make it
even better it's a day late. I blame Dwarf Fortress, and so should you.
The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that I've expanded the site a
bit. I've made a 'GUIDES' section with a bunch of placeholders. All the
guides listed on that page are being worked on right now. I just need to
give myself a swift kick in the arse and get one of them uploaded as an
initial draft or something like that.
I fully expect the guides to be in a semi-permanent non-complete
state. Expanding, changing and so on as needed.
Stay focused.
===============================================================================
ABOUT ABOUT THE AUTHOR
===============================================================================
````...-------------......````` Slartie has been working
``...-----::////////:::----....```` with open source software
`...---:://+++++oo++++++//::---....`` and the community since the
`..-:://++ossyyyyysssssssso+//:--...` early 90s.
`.-:/+oossyhddmmmmdddddhyoo+//::-----.` `.`
`.-/+osyhhhdddmmmmmmmdhyyssoo++++/:---.`.+:` He's considered a little bit
`-::/+osssyhdmmmmNNmddddddmmmdhs+///---.:+: crazy by his peers. Mostly
`-::+osyyhdmmmmmmNmmNNNNNNNNmyo++oso/::-/s- because he likes working with
.:/oydmNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNmhsoyddmmdhys/:+s. the console so much.
./syhmNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNmddms//syooydds/++`
`:+ossssssyhmNNNNNNNNNNMmmdyo+os//shds//- His day job is (sadly one
:shdhhyoooyhdMNNNNNmdmmmddNmmdhssyhyo/-` might say) working with MS
.sdo+oyyhdhhmmdhdmdhyyhdNNNNNNNdhhhyo/. Windows clients and servers.
```/yysymNNNNNmddyyddyydmmNNNNNNNNmdhhs/.```
`````.`-osyhmNNNNNmmhsymdysydNNNNNNNNNmmdhy/.````` After hours are spent with
`.....--+yhmNNNNNNMmsoymmhssssdMNNNNNNNNmdy/--...- coding, tinkering, IRC and
:-:--://+ydNNNNNNNMy+ohmdyo+oshNNNNNNNNNmds/::--:- generally being a nerd.
::::::///smNNNNNNNMmddNNNNmmNNNNNNNNNNNNNds/::::::
///////++oyNNNNNhsso++yNMNNho++sso+sdNNNmho//:::/:
+++++++++ooymNNs:--...-/++:-...-:::-:omdhs+//::///
ooooo+ooooo+smh/-://-----:::::/+hho/:-/oo//++///++ You can get in touch using:
ssssoooooosooss/-/yNdhhhhhhmmmmmmmy/-...-:/++///++
ysssssssssssso:..:+hdysssss+++oos+/-.````./++//+++ Twitter: @slartie
yyyyssssssssss:.```.-:///:/++/++:.```````:+o++/+o+ IRC: slartie (FreeNode)
yyyyyysssssyys+.`````.-:/oyyo/:-..`````./+ooo+++oo E-Mail: [email protected]
===============================================================================
LICENSE BECAUSE WE ALL NEED ONE
===============================================================================
Slartie.com Newsletter (c) by slartie
Slartie.com Newsletter is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
You should have received a copy of the license along with this
work. If not, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.
===============================================================================
09 June 2013 -- slartie -- Final NEWSLETTER ISSUE 0004
===============================================================================
Created with Emacs - http://gnu.org/software/emacs/