Michael Rill

Einfach machen

Category: Technology

  • My new blogging machine

    A few months ago I tried out ChromeFlex. This is a version of ChromeOS that’s easy to install on traditional laptops. I had an old Surface Pro 3 machine which was collecting dust. It just waited for me to carry it to electronics recycling. As it turns out, ChromeFlex gave it another lease on life. The installation was easy. You create a bootable USB drive via a Chrome browser extension. Then you can choose whether you want to just try (boot from USB drive) or go all in(wipe machine and install ChromeOS for good).

    The whole process took less than 30 minutes. Booting from pressing the on/off button to entering your Google ID to enter the machine takes 20 seconds. And then you are ready to go. The gist of ChromeOS is that everything runs in a browser. My nearly nine year old Surface Pro can watch YouTube, I can use the web version of WhatsApp, of course manage my email, run Microsoft Office in the browser (even inking in OneNote works without problems), … and last, but not least, write blog posts without problems. I have a dozen browser tabs open without any performance issues. There are some UI glitches on YouTube, but nothing that makes YouTube unusable.

    The wonderful thing about this approach are the limitations. There is not an unlimited amount of apps and configurations, and one has to get a bit creative on how to get things done. For example: How do I get images from my phone into my blog, while converting from Apple’s HEIC image format to JPEG. It took me a while, but now I know that …

    • selecting the relevant photos on my phone, …
    • uploading them to Google Photos to then …
    • download as JPEG and …
    • upload into the WordPress Media Library

    does the trick. Sounds complicated? It is. But WordPress is partially at fault, because I have not managed to understand how I could upload photos from my phone to my self-hosted WordPress instance. Somewhere between my phone, my host and my WordPress installation the system breaks. The workflow above is cumbersome, but it works. And it works on my new/ old machine. Because it is so limited, it takes out the complexity that comes with having degrees of freedom. Besides, creativity thrives under constraints. And ChromeOS has just the right amount of constraints while getting the basics (i.e. speed, speed, speed) right.

    Long story, short: If you have an old machine lying around, give ChromeOS Flex a shot. It is a lot less complicated than installing a Linux distro … although, ChromeOS is based on Linux itself.

  • Tech Shabbat – Going offline for a day

    Tech Shabbat – Going offline for a day

    Short disclaimer: I’m not a religious person and I’m not Jewish. So, I hope I don’t offend anybody with this post. But I think the concept is so good that I’d like to share it.

    A couple of months ago, I listened to an OnBeing episode where Krista Tippet interviewed Tiffany Shlain, a filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards. In that episode Tiffany mentioned something she calls Tech Shabbat. It applies the concept of Shabbat as the day of rest for technology. It’s pretty simple: on Friday at sunset you turn off all your devices and only turn them on at sunset on Saturday. For our purposes we defined devices as phones, computers, tablets and TV. We allowed  kindles without wifi and old-school iPods.

    This arrangement creates some interesting constraints on your life:

    • You’re suddenly disconnected, i.e. if somebody wants to reach you, they have to come around to your house – no email, no phone, no Snapchat, no WhatsApp. You are only available to the people around you, which removes the feature of your brain that is constantly scanning whether somebody wants to reach you.
    • You don’t have access to an abundant world where everything is available at your fingertips. No more 30 million songs on Spotify, 40 million articles on Wikipedia or billions of interesting articles on the Internet.
    • You have to plan ahead and get creative. Since you are no longer able to coordinate with other people as you go, you have to arrange time in advance and then stick to the plan – no last minute changes.

    We greatly enjoy tech Shabbat whenever we commit to it. Time suddenly expands. All those little moments that are sucked up by a quick check of email or Twitter, are suddenly empty. You mind slows down and takes a well-deserved rest. It’s like a day-long mindfulness meditation. A Jewish friend recently described Shabbat as a block at the of the week that allows you to slow down, take rest and reflect. It prevents life from becoming a constant blur, where everything flows and becomes indistinguishable. Tech Shabbat seems like the light version of it, as I noticed that I’m definitely more present during those 24 hours.

    The other aspect I greatly enjoy are the constraints that tech Shabbat imposes. To listen to music, I had to dig up my old iPod and connect it to a pair of speakers. It was nice to rediscover old playlists and albums. When we met with friends, we had to print out the map in advance. Normally I’m totally reliant on Google Maps navigating me through the world. Reading a paper map was a nice challenge. Uber is no longer an option and I had to figure out the public bus system for certain trips. People often say that creativity thrives on constraints and I can say that I get a lot more ideas on Tech Shabbat.

    Most people I’ve told about this experiment are intrigued, but also commented that they wouldn’t be able to do it. We don’t do it every week, but I can highly recommend it and encourage anybody to at least give it a try. It’s only 24 hours and  afterwards you get back into the connected world.

    Tiffany produced a short video explaining Tech Shabbats in more detail. Have a look and find your courage to give it a try. It’s worth it.

    Photo credit: Andrew Huff via Foter.com / CC BY-NC