I like the idea of a terminal so I bought a chromebook. I think it’s best of both worlds!
I <used to> like doing it the hard way
If you’re anything like me you hate middle ware. I always thought middle ground technology is useful and helps get things done. But for other people. I started out making games before engines and middleware were the thing. I didn’t have the money to buy a license for one so I wrote my own stuff and over the years I got used to doing it that way.
Not anymore
Last year I went through a small existential, career related, crisis. I wrote about a small subset of it here. In order to overcome it I decided to try out something new and decided to change most of my work process. Part of the change was also switching my creative process platform. I ditched my desktop, my blog and my job. One of the first things I bought was a Chromebook. Initially, because I wanted to experience a unfamiliar platform just to see how it is and what I could do with it. I bought it for the platform and battery life and stayed for all the middle ware (or apps).
It’s all about the limits
I can’t use Paint.NET anymore. Can’t write OpenGL code and I cannot develop PC/Mobile games on it. And luckily enough, on my Acer 14, crouton doesn’t really work so no Linux to sidestep the limitations. And I’m loving it. A friend of mine’s birthday is on the day of the new year and we have a long tradition of me recording and editing a video of me saying “Happy Birthday”. Normally a short 2 minute video would take me a few hours to make (recording, editing, publishing) and I’d be a lot of time wasted in Sony Vegas doing basic things. This year I had it done in 45 minutes using an Android App on the Chromebook. Took the video with my Motorola G4 phone, uploaded it to Google Drive, fetched and edited it using WeVideo on my Acer 14. And it took this long because I’ve spent more time trying to get the recording right. Making the actual video came down to selecting the proper clips, dragging them around and applying a theme to it. It looks professional and it took almost no time.
I used to run a self-hosted blog that was mirrored to wordpress.com as a backup. I decided it was time to let it go after about 10 years. Traffic wasn’t big but really good for me. My fans and followers used it to keep up-to-date with my projects. It was a hassle to write on, especially since I had to mirror the content to the backup blog and do moderation on both of them. I took it down and searched for alternatives with less hassle. Since my Chromebook supports Android apps I looked up a bunch of blogging platforms. Found Medium and fell in love with it. Way easier now to post my thoughts.
The battery life is amazing. My old laptop could barely get 3 hours on a good day. Now I’m getting about 9–10 hours after 2 hours of charging. Good trade off.
So much with so little
But what I like about my new platform is that it’s so limited I get almost no distractions. I understand now how people can spend so many hours staring at their phones. I’m doing the exact same thing but on a laptop. And now I can do so much more with so little. Can’t remember the last time I posted two blog posts in the same day. As for getting work done I’m happy with using it as a terminal. I SSH into a VPS and do my work there. When I need to create sprites for my games I use a pixel editor for Android. It’s back to the basics but much faster than before. People should try it. I was a hardcore believer in re-inventing the wheel in order to get it to perform better. Now, I’ll approach the wheel as a challenge for the creative process. But for day-to-day stuff? There’s an app for it!
