Owen - Great post. Hope some other folks will respond in kind. Might be interesting to get an 'inventory of digital lifestyles'. - Grant
Sent from my iPhone On Jan 24, 2013, at 10:16 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Our recent conversation on buying a computer made me repeat a mantra I use > whenever asked what to buy for a camera, phone, TV, computer and so on: Its > The Digital Ecology that matters: what do you do, how does your work/life > flow work, what do you care about in terms of these devices. How do they > interact. > > I'm often met with skepticism: you cant mean that, your a mac fan-boy, right? > Well, yeah we have a lot of Unix around .. er Mac OS X. But I mean a lot > more than that. > > But when asked a year or so ago about getting a computer, my advice was: > Mine would be to consider your entire ecology of computational devices: > Phones, Cameras, Desktops, Servers/Hosting, Web Services (Google Mail, Cal, > Docs), and see them as a whole. Then see if a change or two makes sense in > this larger whole. > > I'd like all of us to appreciate just how rich our digital lives are, how > full our DE's are. > > So I just sat down for <15 minutes typing as fast as I could think about just > what our DE includes. And I bet I'm only fairly standard user. Most folks > that I know use 10x the apps that I do. > > So here's what it looks like with LOTS left out, I'm sure. Let me know what > I've forgotten and what you use. > > -- Owen > > Digital Ecology: > > In terms of "computers", our house has 3 laptops (2 MB, 1 MBA), and a server > (Mac mini) which also acts as a desktop. > > Our network is 5Gb/s wifi dual radio (guest and home networks) making > in-house backups, media sharing, file sharing, screen sharing fairly simple. > For example, my server's screen is available to all the laptops, letting me > "administer" its tasks easily (VNC). > > We also use ethernet-over-powerline for our TV which has no easy way to put > it on the wifi network. The mini has recently started using an ethernet > rather than wifi connection to our wifi base station. > > That is because I've recently lost a backup disk, our Time Machine (Mac > versioned backups .. "wayback" access to every version of a file during its > life). This prompted me to buy a NAS RAID (Network Attached Storage; > Redundant Array of Independent Disks) box for $200 with two 2TB SATA server > grade disks. Total $400 for very reliable in-house storage. > > The NAZ as we like to call it is busy 24/7. I certainly hope the disks are > as good as advertised! 2 TB (4TB RAID'ed) is really not as huge as it might > seem. It, being a Linux box, can run a seriously wonderful Transmission > torrent web UI, making all the computers in the house able to mange media, > see below. > > We watch TV. Never "live". This has gotten me involved with Torrents which > give us access to great video archives: Downton Abbey, Boston Legal, Get > Smart, Legend, Mission Impossible, Numb3rs, Secret/Danger Man are our current > dramas. We also use a TiVo for timeshifting current TV shows, mainly ESPN > daily sports and talking heads (PTI, Arround the Horn, NFL32), The Chew, > Sherlock, this year's Downton Abbey, Eureka, etc. > > The TV is feed from cable and the Mac mini. The latter via a Python pyTiVoX > server which transcodes and uploads the torrents to the TiVo. We also have > an Apple TV hooked up to the TV for photos, music, and media. Both the TV > and mini have UPS power protection (Uninterrupted Power Supply), basically > enough battery to coast through power surges and be a gentle let-down in case > of longer power outage. > > Dropbox is used on all but one of the computers, making internet backup > natural. It provides a folder that is constantly sync'ed between computers > .. and phones and tablets. Arq is now used to backup onto AWS S3 for > "archival" media such as our picture collection. > > Mobile devices include GSM capable iPads and iPhones (GSM for travel and > SIMs). The iPad (Dede's) having cellular networking has been quite useful in > Italy. Most mobile devices have kindle apps .. and we have a 1st gen kindle > which still gets used due to its hugely long batter lifetime and internal > cellular network. > > Dede lately bought a wireless phone system (VTech) which allows bluetooth > access to our cell phones. Thus when we get a cell phone call, our house > phones can answer the call. It has the ability to download our contact > lists, both Google and Mac and "speaks" the caller's name receiving a call. > > Our cloud usage is primarily for music (iTunes match) and photos (AWS), as > well as Google docs (Google Drive). But now it is also being an archival > backup (for photos now) and likely more in the future. And Dropbox is just > amazing for having all your daily files everywhere. > > Chrome is part of this as well. It's sync features have made it possible to > have my three systems be identical. > > Recent android/ios apps have started invading my old Taurus car. Stitcher, a > mobile app, makes any podcast available trivially w/o docking with computers > .. its all internet based. So while driving, I listen to the usual news > programs, as well as 4 italian news shows .. all piped via the phone into the > car's radio. > > Books are really getting into the act lately. Tech books, which grow out of > date quickly, are entirely digital, via OReilly and a host of other digital > publishers who provide not only the book (.mobi, .epub, .apk, .pdf), but > periodic updates with each new "printing". This has made reader apps > important on the iPads. > > Skype is important as well, we take weekly Italian classes with our teachers > in Italy. Naturally its used for "business" as well. > > GitHub has started to be an important collaboration with us .. working with > SimTable, Redfsih and Northwestern University on AgentScript, a JavaScript > Everywhere approach to Agent Based Modeling. > https://github.com/backspaces/agentscript > Git has been quite a surprise, being very effective as a local versioned file > system and a remote repository for collaboration. > > A TextDrive/Joyent web host provides blog and file sharing, and a good > developer site for trying new Javascript technologies. It's login is > completely public key cryptology thus avoiding password exposure. Ditto for > the local mini so that it can be accessed from the internet w/o passwords, > only keys. > > Our name services and registrars (NameCheap/RegisterGo/Joyent) let us use > "backspaces.net" even though we're using cybermesa and gmail for mail and a > variety of services for other backspaces branded access. Having our own name > makes changes in ISPs etc transparent. > > OSX has been a nice surprise. It comes with ruby, python, c/c++, /usr/bin, > bash, /usr/local all built in along with Apache for local web use. It is > trivial to have a node.js server, a command-line JavaScript/CoffeeScript > shell. I may be extreme, but my bashrc/profile has over 100 custom commands: > Home|~/ebooks[713]: typeset -f | grep '()' | wc > 111 222 1052 > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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