{"id":15882,"date":"2020-03-06T22:23:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T22:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=15882"},"modified":"2022-02-13T11:08:12","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T11:08:12","slug":"what-your-contributions-buy-a-writing-axe-i-can-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2020\/03\/06\/what-your-contributions-buy-a-writing-axe-i-can-love\/","title":{"rendered":"What your contributions buy: a writing axe I can love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This weekend I am working on the book about Facebook’s Libra \u2014 a really big<\/em> dumb and bad idea in cryptocurrency. Resisting the urge to compile LibreOffice from git master yet again, one of my favourite displacement activities.<\/p>\n

Might stop down the local CEX and see about an 11\u201d laptop \u2014 it\u2019s time to get back to a netbook. A writing device that\u2019s mine<\/em>. And cheap enough that if it breaks, I can just get another one.<\/p>\n

I had a Dell Mini 9 ten years ago, and I loved it so much. The loved one and oldest daughter got a Dell Mini 1012 each too, and the youngest used 1018’s at school. If these took more than 2GB RAM, they’d be candidates.<\/p>\n

I have a very powerful Lenovo X390 for the day job \u2014 4-core\/8-thread i7, 32GB RAM, compiles LibreOffice from source in 90 minutes! \u2026 and a fragile screen. I\u2019m hell on laptops<\/a> anyway, but I already broke the screen on this one previously,<\/a> and I now regard this \u00a31,300 corporate beast machine as a fragile toy I don\u2019t want to risk touching too hard.<\/p>\n

I went to Curry’s on Monday and tapped away on some tiny laptops. 11″ laptops seem to have close to full-sized keyboards these days! I’d love the new 12″ HP Chromebook x360 if it was cheaper…<\/p>\n

Likely going for one of the underpowered Windows 10 Chromebook competitors with 4GB RAM \u2014 I traveled to Vancouver last month with the loved one\u2019s Chromebook, a grey 14″ HP thing, and even posted to the blog from it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wholeheartedly recommend a Chromebook as a travel laptop \u2014 precisely because it\u2019s cheap, cheerful, and not a disaster if it\u2019s lost, stolen or broken \u2014 but it turns out I really like having PgUp\/PgDown keys.<\/p>\n

Though I\u2019d accept a sufficiently \u2019l33t, or cheap, Chromebook. And then put GalliumOS on it,<\/a> the Ubuntu variant for Chromebooks.<\/p>\n

I thought I wanted a Microsoft Surface Go \u2014 I am deeply impressed by a 10\u201d tablet that is genuinely a proper PC, and apparently they Linux surprisingly well<\/a> \u2014 but the form factor isn\u2019t quite right for what I want, which is sitting on the couch and typing a lot. I need a laptop, not a tablet that sort of does being a laptop. (The loved one would really like a Surface Go as an artist’s tablet, though.)<\/p>\n

And if I want literally today\u2019s build of LibreOffice, I can build it on the work laptop and copy over the installation directory. You can do that with LibreOffice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Update:<\/strong> patron David S. H. Rosenthal on his tiny travel laptop experiences.<\/a><\/p>\n

Update 2: <\/strong>netbook managed! I got a Hypa Flux from Argos. Here’s my review.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Become<\/a>

Your subscriptions keep this site going. Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My computing environment\u2014 and the sort of 11″ laptop I hope to get tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1710,322],"class_list":["post-15882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-hypa","tag-libreoffice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/dell-mini-9.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15882"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21910,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15882\/revisions\/21910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}