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                    JOURNAL FOR WEDNESDAY 26TH JUNE, 2013
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: Monitoring failure :(
   DATE: Wed 26 Jun 23:07:18 BST 2013

Today my main monitor failed ... 22" 1680x1200 16:9 DVI. Nice size as I
usually have a terminal open running vim - with a vertical split and two files
open side by side - in the main area with additional terminals open down the
right hand side. Then there is a secondary monitor to the left which usually
has a browser running full screen on one desktop and 3-4 VMs running on other
desktops. Quite a busy machine.

Now my secondary monitor is currently my main monitor ... 19" 1280x1024 4:3 DVI.
This has been crippling as the whole screen has as much real estate as vim
normally takes up - leaving no room for the terminals down the right hand side
unless I want to really squish things up.

Current my secondary monitor - I usually run dual monitors - is a spare 17"
1280x1024 4:3 VGA analogue.

As I run dwm[1] as my window manager flitting around the open windows,
desktops and between screens using just the keyboard is very fast - and
confusing for people watching :)

When working on WolfMUD I usually have vim in the main area editing code and
stacked to the right of that a terminal for compiling/running the server and
one or two terminals running telnet.

Now with less screen real estate I have vim open on one desktop and the server
and telnet sessions on another desktop. When a compile fails I now have to keep
flipping backwards and forwards to check error messages, check source code,
edit, flip back to compile again, flip again to vim - Aargh! it's driving me
nuts :( The alternative is to not split vim and only view one file at a time -
I hardly use the horizontal split as my code usually fits a width of 80
columns and it's a waste of space ...

It's amazing how something a simple as changing a monitor can kill your
productivity. If I'm sitting in front of a monitor for 12-14 hours a day I
want it to be a descent one dammit! I don't like change either.

Oh, and the latest Firefox 22 update today broke the pentadactyl[2] addon. So
I'm glad I use Firefox mainly for testing web stuff and xombrero[3] as my main
browser - because it's keyboard driven and fast. Before you ask - I find
Chrome to be a pain in the arse. I've tried it, I've tried to like it, really
I have. I've even tried making myself use it inplace of Firefox for a day -
but no dice. The main problem is I don't turn JavaScript on by default.
Without it most plugins do not work as they are written with HTML, CSS and
JavaScript! Let me turn off JavaScript execution on the page and from 3rd
parties but let me run local JavaScript and I'd be happy. Or let me remap the
keyboard to vim like bindings - yes there are plugins to do this but they are
written using ... JavaScript ... *sigh* I don't like grabbing the rodent just
to browse, it's simply not quick enough once you start using 'f' to follow
links using link hinting - especially if you are testing and know to follow
link 5, 52, 7 then 9 over and over for some particular test.

So after a lot of reconfiguring, tweaking and grumbling I've little time left
for a WolfMUD Wednesday session so I'm going to postpone it till tomorrow
evening now :(

--
Diddymus

  [1] https://dwm.suckless.org/ Love the domain name :)

  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentadactyl

  [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xombrero


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