Max Ogden is a developer who writes about Node.js, open data, web tooling and portable hacking setups.
HN commenters link his posts on WebView optimization, open data catalogs, and his Kindle-based outdoor hackstation as a thin-client workflow example.
I just had this light bulb moment about separating the writing and editing processes a few weeks ago. I am grad student and writing is an essential part of my job. I am not as good as I would like to be, but writing first and editing later removed a lot of mental load for me. I experimented with a couple of systems in the past, but always got paralyzed by my inner critic commenting on every sentence. It was exhausting to even produce "one page worth" of writing a day. I thought that as I was editing while writing, it would be of great quality, but it was usually of pretty bad quality. Last week I just connected a bluetooth keyboard to my phone, opened up my favorite writing app[1], and started typing while staring out of a window. I was dishing out page after page of moderate quality writing. I would then wait a day or two and edit it. It was far easier to convert the moderate quality stuff by removing the fluff than to try producing great quality writing directly as I did before.
Appendix: Previous systems
1) Try writing perfect prose on the first try: This is paralyzing. I would just sit staring at my computer screen for hours, thinking of the perfect introduction and perfect sentences. I have since realized that this is bad for my mental health and productivity.
2) Write on paper: I then tried writing on paper. Got more done than just staring at the screen. It is difficult for me to write for extended periods of time like this. My hands start aching, and my handwriting…
Here are the ones in my reader, admittedly I haven't visited often enough over the past couple of months:
http://www.igvita.com/
http://ejohn.org/
http://codingrelic.geekhold.com/ (Denny covers assembly and networking issues often in great detail)
http://buhrmi.tumblr.com/
http://elegantcode.com/
http://72lions.com/
http://kellabyte.com/ (mobile-ish dev)
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
http://ihumanable.com/blog
http://4loc.wordpress.com/
http://www.maxogden.com/
http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/
http://www.quirkey.com/blog
http://www.mikealrogers.com/
http://cocoawithlove.com/
Yeah thin clients [0] make a lot of sense with this kind of workflow. If you only really need text, living in the terminal and browser, it might make sense to use eink for eye comfiness and outdoor readability, something like this hack: https://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless. Or one of those eink android tablets.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client
Couchbase now includes the GeoCouch R-tree indexer by default: http://blog.couchbase.com/new-release-geocouch-extension
This is the same indexer that is powering open gov't projects around the world: http://maxogden.com/#blog/diy-open-data-catalog
Check out using the Kindle as a raspberry pi display:
http://ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/
https://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html
Pretty neat. I still like the concept of the kindleberry a bit better though: http://maxogden.com/kindleberry-wireless.html