Before we begin, I’ll admit that this is yet another unedited post. This time, it’s mostly to prove something.
If you’ve been poking around my Mastodon account recently, you’ll have noticed that I’ve become a bit obsessed with carrying out actions using the Command Line Terminal. It started out with me deciding to build Version 1.5 of this website via the terminal solely to be able to redirect any Mastodon searches for my website domain to my famichiki account. From there, things might have spiralled out of control.
As a teacher, I believe in life-long learning. Even if it means throwing away the equivalent to US$25 a month in order to maintain the virtual machine on which I’m typing this post on, I daresay that it’s still a worthwhile investment.
Naturally, there will be drawbacks. I’ve been fooling around with the “Toot” Mastodon client, and while I have been able to discover and try out the hidden functions via its built-in help command, there are things that it’s not able to do due to the limitations of a word-only interface. But then again, there are plenty of ICT tools that we take for granted, and it’s understandable if we end up feeling frustrated if using the terminal becomes a slog.
I do see opportunities to create something different, though. If I were to keep and use just three computing devices, I’d stick with a smartphone, my M1 iPad Pro, and a Debian-powered single-board computer. Obviously, my smart devices would do most of the heavy lifting, but I can envision just spending an entire day messing around on the SBC with minimal distractions.
I’d have to learn how to properly use the termux tool, which can be tricky if I’m using a virtual machine.
I wonder what other command line tools I’ll be able to make use of.