There’s an almost OCD quality around the art of minimalism. Owning only the fewest of items necessary to deliver the quality and experiences you desire from life. Everything in its place and position. Feng shui’d to perfection if you will. A tidy desk / room / office / house is a tidy mind as they say.
I’ve been thinking about minimalism recently, but in terms of the digital world. I hate clutter. I mean I really hate it. Things have to be tidy and in their place, and this goes for my devices. My laptop and tablet desktops need to be organised and de-cluttered. The amount of apps installed must not be excessive. The amount of data on my hard drives should not be more than is necessary to allow me to complete my work and to entertain me. Anything else should be backed-up to secure storage.
Many years ago when working for a large corporation, one of my tasks was OS-hardening. This involved taking a working solution and performing a deep-dive into the operating system of each server with a view to reducing its footprint. By that I mean reducing the amount of hard drive space needed in order for the system to perform the required tasks to the agreed requirements, securely. That meant removing all unnecessary applications and files, streamlining the OS down to the bare minimum, thus reducing its footprint. This reduced the need for large storage media, sped up install and backup times, and reduced the attack surface.
Although I no longer perform OS-hardening these days, I still have this almost OCD compulsion to continue to optimise all my devices, reducing the amount of apps installed to just enough to perform the required tasks, and to keep the data on the devices to a minimum. It can be very cathartic at times, and it keeps my devices from running out of storage space and from draining the battery too quickly.
I call it digital minimalism.
Category: hardware
Remembering computer fairs
I saw an advert on FB recently for a local computer fair and it took me back twenty years to when I used to be a frequent visitor to them. I’d buy everything I would need to build a desktop PC from scratch and I would assemble it immediately when I got home. I’d haggle over each and every component umming and ahhing over specifications and budgets. Those were the days.
Today I prefer portability. Either a laptop or a bluetooth keyboard to turn my smartphone into a laptop. Something that I can slip into my backpack and set-up anywhere. Desktops seem so.. retro. Bulky, heavy, taking up too much space and not portable at all.
Still, it was enjoyable, albeit briefly, to recall the fun I had going to computer fairs and building a PC from scratch all those years ago.
The life of an SD card
I’ve purchased many SD cards and USB sticks over the years and I have a few thoughts on them.
You can shop around, do your research, and then buy cheap or expensive ones but regardless of what you buy you will still usually encounter the following:
1. The specs may not be as advertised. It may be slower than advertised for example.
2. It may be a fake. Even if bought from a legitimate source it may still be fake as there are so many of them about.
3. It may just die for no reason and you can’t return it if it has your private data on it so you are out of pocket.
4. It may need resizing on one OS and then fixing for use with another. Especially if being used to install or upgrade an OS like Linux.
5. It may corrupt your data, especially large files.
Smaller cards, especially microSD cards, die quickly in Kindle devices and dashcams. It’s something about how they are mounted and continually written to that just causes them to expire.
I go through SD cards and memory sticks fairly often. I have yet to find a make or model that can last years.
Musings on buying a laptop
I’m often asked how I purchase a laptop. What sort of things I consider. So I thought I’d jot them down here:
1. First I need a minimum spec as a starting point. You can get this by looking at the software or games you want to run as they publish the minimum and optimum PC specs they require. Do you want to run virtual machines? How many?
2. Once I have a rough idea of the spec I look at screen size and case. Do I want a small compact laptop that I will dock at home/office so I can use external monitors and peripherals, and it takes up less space when travelling? Or do I want a big screen?
3. Next I look at battery life and the battery itself. Is it replaceable and is there a market for third-party batteries for that range of laptop?
4. Next is the manufacturers themselves. I opt for ones I’ve used in the past and trust such as DELL or ASUS.
5. And lastly I’ll look to buy from a reputable source that I trust with a good return and repair service.
When buying a laptop spec you need to take into consideration the processing power (Intel/AMD, speed, number of cores), the amount of memory (8GB, 16GB, etc), the amount of hard drive space and whether it is solid state (no moving parts so less drain on the battery), the battery life and replaceability, and screen size. You may also wish to consider the amount of ports and type of ports it offers but you can get adaptors and splitters to enhance those.
The most expensive liquid is..
..printer ink.
No seriously, I have been thinking about this for some time. By volume printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids known to man. It’s so expensive that supermarkets have even taken to putting security tags on the cartridges it sells to reduce theft. It’s more expensive than alcohol and most top-shelf perfumes per volume.
Long gone are the days where you would take your USB sticks to a print centre to print copies of your resume (CV) or dissertation. Nowadays most people want to print from the comfort of their own home using their inkjet printer. And they apparently are prepared to pay to do so.
Buying a new or replacement printer generally involves weighing up the cost of the ink. Most manufacturers will sell you a printer at cost or even a loss knowing that they will make the money back on the ink. With third-party ink sellers trying to steal market share they’ll try every trick in the book to make sure that you buy their ink using firmware updates that ensure that third-party ink is not recognised, or makes it appear to run-out sooner, to selling you ink subscriptions that automatically send you ink when you are getting low, at a premium of course.
Considering that we are talking millilitres here not litres it’s amazing that you are paying a small fortune for such a small quantity of liquid, yet somehow the home printing industry has mastered the art of making liquid gold.