Gargoyling on the go
Kovacsics Robert
I have a setup for coding on the go which I have had a few people compare to gargoyles from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash1. Gargoyles are people who are connected to their terminals all the time by wearing goggles and other tech equipment.
Which is precisely what I am doing on the overground, during my commute to and from work (one hour each). It does make me look a bit odd (if I’m being generous), but it means I spend that time constructively, and to be honest, who cares about other people on the London public transport.
Though I don’t spend my time in the metaverse, instead I code, either for fun
or work. Or occasionally play some games. My set-up is currently using the
DO52Pro keyboard, the XReal Air 2 Pro glasses, and a trackball until I fix the
trackpoint on my DO52Pro. My computer is my phone, which Termux/Termux-X11, so
I have a setup which is reasonably like my normal desktop environment, if
somewhat slower2. (And I don’t use a proot distro in Termux, if I can help it,
as those are even slower.)
The benefit of attaching my keyboard to my thighs is two-fold. One is that during my commute when I need to change trains, I can hop off and hop on, without having to put the keyboard away, but the bigger reason is that with split keyboards, they wobble if you put them on your legs, so you need something to give it a bit more stability.
The glasses are okay, not better than a monitor, but I’d prefer it to being hunched over a small laptop screen. The biggest issue is the edge blur, which I have been told might be due to my inter-pupillary distance being different to the one the glasses were manufactured for. But they don’t really give me any motion sickness.
I use them without the spatially mapped screen (that the XReal Beam, or the XReal One provides), because with the resolution only being 1080P, the aliasing from the spatial mapping makes it a lot harder to read. I would say it’s not quite there yet for mass use, but it’s now not that far off from the price of a regular monitor.
The glasses could also do with better durability, the speakers on my glasses broke after about half a year of continuous use. And the background dimming button doesn’t work. But at least the glasses are still useful as a monitor, getting near to a full year of continuous use.