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My Working Environment

16 minute read

This is a combined, single-page view of an original multi-part article.

Intro Part 1 of 5

I live and work in a tiny home and low-power environment. This is how I've adjusted.

Small Space, Small Footprint

(Cara)-Van Life

A few years ago I decided to leave bricks and mortar behind and move into a caravan. A small, summer touring caravan, German-built in 1983. The construction is more solid than a modern ‘van would be, but it is, ultimately, built for summer.

The first couple of winters in here were hard, but there was a feeling of excitement and adventure which made it tolerable. Now those feelings have lessened, but I’ve got better at managing the seasonal extremes of temperature, potential for damp/mould, adapted my cooking methods and so on. Now it’s just normal life.

And that incudes work.

Owning Things

Although I enjoy the caravan, my decision to move into it came from a more general desire for a change in lifestyle.

I used to have a lot of possessions. Having to drag them around with me was a limit on my options in life. Any new flat or house had to big enough. Larger homes cost more. Moving vans have to be bigger. Things need looking after, they get dusty or broken. As they say, “your possessions end up owning you”. I wanted to stop owning so many things and to feel more adaptable.

Now that I live in a tiny space I can’t afford to hang on to things “just in case”, anything I decide to keep has to have earned its place. Storage space is precious.

Minimalism has become fashionable and there are some extremists who treat it like a cult, never the less it contains some ideas which I find appealing. I doubt anybody would call my current living space minimalist, but I have applied minimalist thinking to decisions about what to keep and what to sell/give/throw away.

I am a maker though. I paint, cook, repair stuff, tinker with electronics. So I need at least a basic set of tools and equipment. And my space is really small (about 6ft wide, 6ft tall, 13ft long). So my home will never be one of those white empty halls you see in the pictures of minimalist homes. My space still looks cluttered… but everything in here does belong and has purpose.

Most importantly for me, I’ve changed my level of attachment to things. I still appreciate well-made objects which perform their role well. But I know now that when I no longer have those specific objects, I will pick up new versions. Things I need, to do what I want to do, will come and go. My attachment to the specific items is less than it used to be.

Digital Transience

The modern world of software fits nicely with this mentality. I don’t need hard drives full of stuff. Anything important to me is in git repos (I prefer Codeberg), or is backed up on somebody else’s computer (ie the cloud).

If I lose all my possessions tomorrow, the day after tomorrow (presuming some of my brain is still functioning) I’ll be able to start picking up from where I left off, even if all I can afford is an old Android tablet and Bluetooth keyboard.

Work Considerations Part 2 of 5

In here I'm less insulated from the outside world than I was in bricks and mortar. Thermally, but also acoustically, kinetically... barometrically?

I’ve had to adapt my working methods to fit with this current lifestyle, namely to solve problems related to the following key areas:

Physical Working Space

Small! So I have a couple of tablet arms extending from a pole near the ceiling. They provide me with a nice healthy angle for my tablets while I’m working, then when I’m not working and don’t need them they can be pushed out of the way so I don’t hit my head on them.

I also have a little tray to hold my keyboard and trackball . It can go on my lap or on top of a small beanbag (meditation cushion) for a change in position.

Noise

Rain on the roof is loud! And I’m often on farms where animals and machinery make noises. This is easily solved for me by earbuds, and for anybody I might be talking to remotely a mic helps. I use an MPOW Bluetooth Receiver which has a built-in mic and a 3.5mm jack to plug my earbuds into.

Thermal Comfort

It gets really hot in here in summer. As soon as the sun hits the metal walls I start to bake. For large parts of summer afternoons it’s 35C or above, it gets up to 45C at times if I use the oven in the afternoon! One pro tip is to not use the oven in the afternoon. I try to plan my summer cooking so that any oven usage happens as early in the morning or late in the evening as possible.

Eventually, clothing comes off. A fan also helps, I found some large 12V fans on Ali Express. One thing about solar power: if it’s hot enough to need a fan, there’s probably enough sun to power it.

And the winter she is cold. And damp. My first couple of years I had a badly-situated gas heater, and I hadn’t learned some of the basics, like:

In those early days I often sat in ‘ideal refrigeration temperatures’ (2-5C). Honestly it was quite miserable at times — that feeling of adventure and hot drinks were all that kept me going.

Nowadays I’ve got a lovely wood burning stove, wool everything and better airflow. It’s cosy.

Power

I sustain myself with solar/photo-voltaic for as much of the year as possible, but have to ensure I have access to mains electricity during the darker winter months.

In summer I have ample power, and there’s plenty of potential to extend the portion of the year when I can be electrically self-sufficient with some improvements to my system.

Soon I need to upgrade to better panels. Mine are old so not at their top efficiency, plus there have been technological improvements since they were manufactured.

When it’s time to upgrade my battery I’ll move from lead acid over to LiFePO4. Compaared to lead, these have a much better weight:capacity ratio, deeper discharge (lead acid have to be kept above about 50% charge so you only really get to use half of their rated capacity) and can hold a charge for longer.

Connectivity

Mobile broadband is good and relatively cheap in the UK, I keep 3 different SIMS/networks available via:

Each of these connections is on a different network provider, so between them I have 3 of the big 4 UK network operators covered and there aren’t many places where I can’t get a decent connection.

Router

The Spitz router is my main internet connection, the other 2 SIMs are on relatively low data bundles but can be topped up within minutes if my main connection is struggling and I need internet urgently eg for work.

The router spec is here. It says that the maximum power draw is 6W. There’s an option in the settings to turn down the wifi power. Lower power means the signal doesn’t travel as far, but in this tiny space I can turn it right down to its minimum without noticing any problems. I measure it at about 2-3W.

I also turn off the LEDs. This saves a minimal amount of power but I don’t like them flickering at night when I’m in bed.

Antenna

To maximise signal I’ve tried a few different antennae and ended up with the Poynting XPOL-1 which can be mounted outside on a pole. It’s unidirectional, meaning it doesn’t need to be pointed towards the cell tower.

With the radio bandwidths at which mobile networks operate, cables are really important too. Poynting supplies good thick cables and I’ve trimmed them as longer cables deteriorate the signal. From what I’ve read:

Time and Motion

A lot of modern life is about stability… we want to be at the same temperature all year round (so we can wear t-shirts in winter, for example). Buildings are about making a static environment. Nothing moves on its own. If you put something down somewhere (and live alone!) that thing will still be there in a day, a month, a year. We take this for granted but if you think about it, it’s a situation which wouldn’t often happen in nature. If you put something down in the forest, a creature or some weather will come along and move it soon enough.

My home wobbles when it’s windy. On dark stormy nights, when the paraffin lantern is gently swinging and throwing its light around dramatically, there’s no atmosphere like it. For maximum feeling add a Moby Dick audiobook.

Not to disparage the impressive achievements of technology but I like to feel the temperature extremes and to plan my day differently in summer vs winter. That’s one thing I love about living like this — I feel less insulated from the seasons, they have more meaning for me than they used to.

Solstices and Equinoxes

The length of the days and angle of sun in the sky throughout the year affect how many photons I can harvest for power.

I never expected to pay such close attention to equinoxes and solstices, those key points in the annual solar cycle. I feel a deeper understanding now of why they would have been so important to our ancestors, to the point that they were celebrated.

Not everybody knows what these things are, so just in case:

All the above is ‘roughly correct’, the exact days and times vary depending on how far away you are from the equator and the year, and can drift by a calendar day or so.

I also notice the moon more than I used to. I have large windows on every wall, none of them more than a few feet away. I use thermal blackout blinds (they help in summer) but moonlight bleeds around their edges, so there’s always at least a vague awareness of how bright it is. I also have a skylight which is usually open when I’m in here, and in certain positions at certain times the moon shines right down through the opening, onto me as I sleep. I’m often woken in the middle of the night by a moonbeam.

Keeping My Equipment Powered Part 3 of 5

From solar power, to having a backup power source, to preferring low-power devices; these are my strategies for keeping the electrons agitated.

Solar Power

My aim is to live completely off solar power. I’m not quite there yet. With my current system it works out roughly like this:

If you’re used to having normal mains electricity, it can be hard to understand how much of a difference small changes to electrical usage can make to my day. People are naturally used to thinking in terms of cost: “that only costs a few pounds a year to run, it’s basically nothing”.

For me it’s not about cost — at least not directly — it’s about “can I watch a film this evening on the large tablet instead of the medium-sized one?” or “can I get through to December instead of November without hooking up to the grid?”. The difference between using a 10" or 15" tablet (a difference in electricity usage which might add up to pennies a month from the grid) is noticeable for me. The step up to my (low power!) desktop is significant.

As a rough guide, I average about 1 unit (kWh) of electricity a day (if you’re in bricks and mortar that’s about 25p’s worth at time of writing). If you don’t know what that means, look at your electricity bill and see how many units you use a month or quarter. According to Ofgem at time of writing, a low-usage average 1-2 bedroom flat will use about 1,800kWh annually, so about 5kWh/day which is around 5x my usage.

I realise a lot of people would hate living like this, but I enjoy it. I find it fun and interesting. What needs to get done, gets done. I work full-time hours (on my own projects if I don’t have a contract). I bake bread, cook most of my food from scratch from basic ingredients. I paint, I solder, I do bad carpentry. I watch films, listen to music. It’s all fine.

Flank it

I’m pragmatic and prioritise work over my lifestyle experiments. If it’s the dead of winter and I need to work on something that requires me to use my desktop, I’ll get plugged in to mains. But outside that, I’m always looking to extend the proportion of the year where I can support myself with solar, with the end goal of course being 100% of the year.

To do this I squeeze the problem from two sides:

Also, as a long-term bearing I steer more towards work which suits lower power, eg vanilla JS over long NPM builds, Vim over VSCode and so on.

Applying Progressive Enhancement to Choosing a Device

There’s an idea called ‘mobile first’ or ‘progressive enhancement’ in web development, where we aim first to make a website work properly on mobile devices, then work up through larger devices (tablets, desktops), tweaking visuals and possibly adding features as the devices get larger and more powerful.

I don’t personally like removing features for mobile devices — the fact that I’m using a mobile device should not be taken as a signal that I want to be excluded from accessing functionality of your site.

In terms of visual/interface design though, things do need to work differently depending on whether you’re at a small or large device, whether you have a touchscreen, a physical keyboard, are using a screen-reader due to problems with vision or some other reason…

I apply something similar to this method of progressive enhancement when choosing which computing device to use for work. My preference is to use an Android tablet (where you can get a surprising amount done nowadays), stepping up to a Linux PC when more power is needed or tools aren’t available on Android, then adding virtual machines if eg I need to use Windows.

So I start at the top of this list and work my way down as the jobs get bigger.

  1. Android
  2. Linux PC
  3. Windows/MacOS VMs
  4. Online build tools

My 'Big PC' Part 4 of 5

Sometimes Android won't do, then it's time to wheel out the mediocre guns!

Sometimes I need to step up to the next level and use a desktop PC:

So I also have a small form-factor desktop PC, a Beelink SER4. It’s tiny, silent (after I modded the fan) and draws <10W during my average usage.

I have it stuck underneath a storage cabinet with velcro . It has no display, keyboard or mouse attached, so I continue using my Android tablet as a display, remote controlling the desktop via VNC (using AVNC). That way I carry on using my preferred trackball, keyboard and the OLED tablet display that I enjoy so much.

The SER4 is running Void Linux. Void is great, and it can do anything any other Linux can do, but it is quite niche, and sometimes things need to be done in different ways. So I have an Ubuntu virtual machine too, plus some other VMs like Windows and MacOS for occasional testing.

Update: Now I use Proxmox, info coming soon

Staying Pragmatic Part 5 of 5

I'm on a journey and the path is curly.

I’ll never stop learning new things. A while back I built my first Garmin watch app. This involved using:

Most developers are doing this on Windows, using either Eclipse or VSCode. VSCode is very nice software but I try to avoid Microsoft. If I must use Windows I boot up a virtual machine, hold my nose and get the job done. But I prefer to use Linux.

Arguments about Microsoft and their effect on the world tend to get long and boring, so I’ll just say I don’t like them myself and personally avoid their products insofar as it’s practical. No this doesn’t mean I like other megacorps like Google or Apple instead.

Regardless, pragmatism means I have to use things from some of these companies some of the time. To exclude all megacorp-related products I’d have to avoid everything to do with computing. However, in life we have a finite number conscious moments. It’s not possible for every one of those moments to be spent perfectly, but the more I can move towards spending more of them in places I like, supporting things I believe in, and away from places I don’t like and things I don’t believe in, the better.

Anyway when you’re learning new computer stuff, you’d best be using the same environment as the majority. Otherwise, you’re going to have lots of extra problems outside the normal expected beginner problems in that space. I don’t always mind this, I believe that doing things the hard way is rarely a waste of time as you have to solve problems which is, if nothing else, a useful exercise that keeps you sharp. Sometimes I can’t afford to take the hard way because of real time constraints or because I’m working on somebody else’s time. But not always.

So if you want to learn how to develop for Garmin devices, or Android apps in Flutter, and you want to use Linux, the easiest way is to use the most popular/mainstream distro, Ubuntu. Instructions will usually be aimed at Ubuntu users, and the differences between Ubuntu and other distros aren’t always easy to work out.

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