Why I actually like customizing my PC

I said I’d write about customization at some point this week, right? Well, I meant to do it earlier, but instead I spent the last couple of days customizing Emacs. I was having too much fun to appreciate the irony of the situation. On the bright side, I’m just about ready to use Emacs for damn near everything ever, which should be fun. This has an unexpected benefit to you, my dear reader, because you’ve been saved from a lengthy post.

        Originally, I was going to write about the process of setting up my system - I figured that someone, somewhere, would appreciate it. I used to get really jealous of people’s desktop setups a few years ago, and I would have loved to see them include instructions on how they did it. I took a bunch of screenshots to build the post around, and I even knew what I was going to write about them. You can still see those screenshots here, if you want (not pictured: drop-down terminal, best used with Cygwin’s bash). If you like what you see, I’ve got contact info at the bottom of my actual tumblr page - I’d be happy to help!

        While some of the changes I’ve made are purely cosmetic, it’s all been about setting up a system I’m happy with. More importantly, setting up a work environment I’m happy with. I use my laptop for taking notes in class, where battery life trumps all other concerns. I use my laptop for writing papers, for writing code, for browsing the web, for keeping in touch with friends - the list goes on. Long story short, I’ve been working for a couple of years now to get a user experience I’m happy with on my laptop. With this latest round of customizations, I think I’ve finally gotten there. I’m embracing the keyboard a lot more to get things done quickly, and with AutoHotKey, I’ve got a lot of power to make things juuuust right. I turned my right alt key into ctrl, for example, which keeps me from stretching my pinky all the time. I found out about using ctrl+backspace to delete the entire preceding word rather than mashing the backspace key a bunch - then I remapped a key combination to do it without taking my fingers from the home row. Now I’m typing away as fast as I can think, and it’s awesome, and I’m genuinely happy to be using my computer.

        When I’m not wrestling with inconsistencies created by multi-platform software interfacing with Cygwin behind my back, anyway.

        So this post isn’t as horrifically boring as I thought it might be. On the other hand, it’s nowhere near as interesting. Hmm. Well, you’ve got the pictures, right? Look at them! I’ll have more interesting things to say in the next post, about software, because that’s where the magic happens. In the mean time, I’d better start actually using Emacs to do work…