Modes of travel

In this age it’s really simple to roam the world – for the price of one four-person four-week high-season vacation you can easily get a round the world ticket from various merchants. Add 50% and you can even travel round the world business class.

But this comfort comes at a price – an it’s a price that makes the merits of the journey questionable.

The price of course is the loss of flexibility. And spontaneity. And rapport.

(to be continued…)

@ MP, Udo and other RSS users: Do you get an update when I change this article (which just happened BTW)
And how about updates when I update the “published on” attribute?

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Selecting a market

Options:

• Microsoft Windows
• Apple Computers (OS X)
• Microsoft Mobile
• Apple iOS (aka mobile)
• Google Mobile (aka Android)

• Web

Approach:

I think I’ll go with a weighted matrix for the target market in the end, but following my general idea of ‘scratching my own itch’ I’ll probably start with some OS X stuff and extend that towards iOS. A couple of Applications for the Web might turn up as side effects. And I’ll try to push some little “just download and run” tools into the market targeted at software development teams in large corporations where installation options are limited.

Setting up the utilities

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get from naught to operations with regard to software development?
In the end this post will describe how to go from a clean OS X system (aka out of the box) to a development machine for the types of development I’m aiming for.

But of course this is just my idea of  the way to get to a clean and maintainable system – remember that YMMV!  But this approach works for me.

1. Bare System
2. + Xbench [a + indicates an installation ]
3. Update OS X to current version
4. + Skype
5. + iWork
6. Update all software to current version (via software update)
7. setup Safari (No auto-load, bookmarks, homepage)
8. Backup (Time Machine)
9. + SuperDuper!
10. Backup (SuperDuper)
11. Clone Disk (twice)
12. enable sudo
13. + homebrew (download instead of curl to tar)
14. + xcode
15. + brew git [+brew means installed via homebrew, which btw worked on 966 files requiring 18M and completed the build in 73 seconds]
16. + Click to Flash
17. + Flash [Note the order!]
18. + Perian
19. + Growl
20. + twitter (via appstore – gasp! )
21. generate ssh keys
22. + github (connection to)
23. + dropbox
24. +MacVim (because I’m a keyboard junkie and because Yehuda said so 😉 )
25. +teleport (because I’m still working with my regular laptop as well)
26. +gpg (via GPG-Tools after sone consideration)

Specific Setup for Website development

1. IcoMaker to create favicons
2. CSS-Edit – at least until I really know CSS

Of course this list is not yet (2011-02-25) complete by far! But since this is not my primary computer I can take a real long time to set it up.

Principles for the new label

I sure do pursue lots of goals – but this new label is meant to target only a few of them.
New label? Which new label?

1. Make personal computing personal again

<explanation follows>

2. Software should work without interference with the base system

<explanation follows>

2.1. It should not need to be “installed”

<explanation follows>

2.2. It should (be able to) work offline

<explanation follows>

2.3. It should not need administrative rights

<explanation follows>

3. Prefer store-and-forward concepts over online connections

<explanation follows>

4. Concentrate on one capability per tool

<explanation follows>

5. Honor Postel’s law

<explanation follows>

6. Scratch my own itch & eat my own dogfood

<explanation follows>

I’m still working on the wording for # 2. I’d like to phrase the things in positive terms.

Is this an enterprisey thing to do? Stating the principles? Or the believes?

I don’t think so – and if they become enterprisey in my own view I can always adapt. For example by deleting them.

Reducing the Software Load

Another question that arises is the necessary amount of software to take on such a journey. Apart from the development tools (handled later on) one of the more annoying topics is the choice of an office suite.

Honestly I wouldn’t want to use one at all if that would be possible. Most of them do much more than I need for software development and marketing so I’d love to go just with the development tools. After all each installed program needs maintenance – and office suites tend to be very bandwidth hungry when it comes to updates.
But as long as I have to interact with the rest of the world for business purposes I don’t think I’d be happy with that for a long time. Currently I see three options:

• Apples iWork
• OpenOffice (brought to us by Oracle…)
• Microsoft Office

If I would go only by functionality I’d take Keynote from iWork, the spreadsheet from OpenOffice and just skip the word processing part (e.g. use Scrivener for creative writing and Mail for communication). Unfortunately I’m afraid I won’t be able to convince the vendors to unbundle their packages and from past experience I won’t be able to convince my business partners to not send me *.doc files.

So I intend to start with only one office suite.

And the winner is:

iWork by Apple

Why?

Because I’m thinking about taking the iPad with me as a backup device and there is a slight advantage in synchronization when the office-suite is iWork.

[this entry inspired by @MichaelPreuss]

Curious? Stay tuned…

As Alan Kay once said (IIRC):

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

And for my future I predict lot’s of upcoming changes…

Current Stage: Preparation
Estimated day of bigger changes: 2011-04-01