Episode: 1460
Title: HPR1460: The road warrios command line combat life.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1460/hpr1460.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:30:11

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Hello Hacker Public Radio, this is Nightwise Calling with another cast from the car from
the road and currently stuck in traffic, so why not?
For those of you who don't know me, I am the host of the Nightwise.com podcast, the podcast
with the hacks, tips and tweaks for cross-platform geeks.
That means we're aimed towards sliders, people who move from operating systems to operating
and want to take their digital life with them wherever they go.
For me personally, I work in the Netherlands and I live in Belgium. That means that I'm on the road
quite a bit and that I also find myself in situations where I am a little bit bad with impaired.
Either I don't have a good connection or the connection that I have is via my cell phone and
it's pretty expensive per megabyte because here in Europe, roaming charges are pretty heavy.
So I'm also not always able to use my own laptop. Sometimes I have to use different systems,
my work laptop or some random machine. But regardless of all of this, I still want to be able to
access my digital life. Now, what is my digital life? Well, my digital life is my ability to
communicate, to consume and to create content. And I have a couple of requirements when I do that.
One of them is that I want my data and my digital life to be available just about anywhere.
No matter what machine that I'm on, I want to be able to access it.
Two, if possible, I don't want to use a local client. I don't want to install a piece of software
on some random machine, if possible. Three, I want set communication to be secure. I don't want any
passwords or data going across the internet in a clear text. So how am I setting all of this up?
Well, let's just say what I think that my digital life is really all about.
Well, first of all, I want to be able to communicate. I want to be able to create content and
I want to be able to consume content. And in order to do this, I've actually set up a Linux
machine at home. It's a Ubuntu 12.04 server. And it is running an SSH server Damon. That means I
can connect to it using SSH. I have installed a couple of applications on there that enable me to
do what I want to do from the command line. The first one that I have installed is B-Y-O-B-U.
B-Y-O-B-U is a variant on-screen. And this enables you to have a terminal open. And inside
that terminal have several terminal windows, which you can flip through using the F3 and F4
function keys. When you disconnect from set terminal, the applications that you've opened up
continue to run. And you can pick up that connection from wherever you go. So it's not that you
have a terminal open. You disconnect. The terminal is closed. The application is closed. No,
you continue to have that application running. And you can just reconnect to it from somewhere else.
Once I have with B-Y-O-B-U running, it's time to choose a couple of command line applications.
Because I say command line applications because they are quite bandwidth-friendly. They don't
require a lot of data. And even if you have a slow connection, like sometimes I even have GPRS,
I still am able to quite swiftly interact with those applications.
I like to chat. I like to hang out in chat rooms like our cast planets, like Ubuntu,
Dash, UK, and of course the nightwise.com IRC channel. I like hanging out with the geeks there,
and no matter where I am, I can chat and I can get advice for technical things. I can just, you know,
hang out. In order to do this, I've installed IRSSI. IRSSI is an application that is not
pronounced easily nor fast. You can try seeing it 20 times in a row. But it is a great IRC
application. I've got that running. I've got several channels open, and I love using IRSSI to do
my thing. You can switch between channels using the escape and the number key for its set channel,
and it's a light, fast, and easy way to connect with IRC. On a second screen in my terminal,
because I'm running BYOBU, remember, I have my email client. I have Alpine set up because
that really nicely interacts with my Gmail account. Now, I know it's perhaps a little bit of a hassle
to have a command-line application talk to a cloud service in order to get your email. But for me,
having a text interface and just going through the emails wherever I am on whatever machine
that I am is something that's pretty productive to me. I don't get distracted. I don't have to open
up a browser. I don't have to log in. I don't have to do this and that. I just have my emails
and to quickly respond and read my emails, I really like it. There are ways in Alpine to send
attachments, and God knows what. But for me, just scrolling through the emails and replying,
and reading them is all I need to do when I'm abroad or away from home. And Alpine really does the
trick nicely. There's also Muts, but I haven't played around with Muts a lot, so I use Alpine.
The third application that I have is Instant Messaging. Facebook is a part of my daily life.
I have quite a few geeky friends and non-geeky friends who are on Facebook and Facebook chat
is, well, let's say the return of MSN Messenger. You can't afford to go without it. Now, I do know
that I have a Facebook client on my smartphone and God knows what, but not my smartphone is not
always online, so I want to be able to have a way to interact with Facebook chat without
having to open up a Facebook page on my laptop. So, Centering, Center I Am is a great client that
allows you to chat on several Instant Messaging services, like, for example, Jabber for Google Talk
and Google Hangouts, not with the video hangouts, but just text chat.
Facebook chat supported and even MSN and ICQ are supported. Should you ever consider going back
there? So, Centering, also a nice application. It's really like an ASCII application, just like
IRS as I is in a way, and it allows me to quickly respond to messages and set up chats with whoever
I want to, no matter where I am, using the same command line window. Then there is my
willingness to create content. Sometimes I want to write a blog post, I want to write things
down. Now, you can do it in an email, send yourself set email, copy it over, stuff like that. You can
have a text document that you write, save it to Dropbox, take it back, open it up, copy paste,
God knows what. It all works, but it's a hassle. I want to have my word processor, if it's called
like that, or text processor, or text editor, available in that same command line window.
So, I use word grinder. Word grinder kind of reminds me of word perfect. It's easy to use
quite advanced, if you want to, way to edit text, you can have bold and inline and paragraphs,
and all that you want. But for me, just hammering out text files in that is great. I mean, you can
also use nano, but nano doesn't really support word or wrapping the sentences around when you come
to the end of the screen and stuff like that. And word grinder does do it well. You don't have to
remember all of those keyboard commands, like for example, in Vi, in order to save and do stuff
like that, because you have, actually have a little bit of a menu where you can use, where you can say
file, save, and stuff like that. Really nice. When we're on this topic of files, anyway,
if I have to move files around on that machine, yes, I use the command line most of the time,
but when I need to do a little bit more and select several files and stuff like that, I use
MC, Midnight Commander. It's an ASCII version or text version of Midnight Commander
on my little terminal, also running on one of the BYBOBU screens. And finally, I also like to
consume content. And what I've got running on it is called Snow News. And Snow News is a
command line based RSS client. You just import the opml file that you want or add RSS feeds to your
liking, and you can browse through them and read them in the terminal. Now, I know what you're going
to say. Likewise, why do you do so much via the terminal? There are so many easy and convenient
web services out there. Well, yes, but you know, having everything in a browser is very distracting.
I mean, you tend to wander off across the internet. And before you know it, you're surfing
some web page or you get distracted by this and by that. And I love the command line interface
and the text interface of it all because it's not only very fast on a slow connection.
It doesn't have any ads. You can access it from any device and we'll get to that a little bit
later. And it's really easy to focus on what's on the screen that way. I think it's quite elegant,
elegant, actually. Now, those are just a couple of the applications that I have running and that
I use the most. I don't have a myriad of applications, but those are the ones that I work with every
single day. Client side. When I want to access my server over SSH, on my Android phone, I use
an application called connect bot, which supports connecting to an SSH server and having a
command line interface with it. And when I want to copy over files from a directory on that server
to my Android smart phone, I use bot sync, which is kind of like a synchronization app for SFTP.
So also quite nice. When I'm on a Windows machine, I use a potty. I just have potty on a USB
stick with my preferences set and I run it as a portable app from there. When I'm on a Mac
or a Linux machine, I just use the terminal of set machine. And when I'm on a machine that does
not enable me to run portable applications, I use a Chrome extension. And for the life of me,
I can't remember the name right now, so please forgive me. But if you Google for SSH terminal
in the Chrome store, you will find it. It's a great Google. It's a great Chrome extension that
gives you a terminal. And you have all the commands and all the shortcuts that your fingertips and
you can even run it as a different tap on its own. And it's really like having a command line
terminal, but instead of having a terminal on a machine or an application like potty running it,
you can just run it from Chrome. I really, really like it. And it even works with portable Chrome.
So that's also a nice app. When it comes to security, I don't always have the luxury to work with
a key exchange and a passwordless login because I am sometimes a different machine. So what I use
is a very, very, is quite a long passphrase, which I change regularly. I don't have my SSH
server running on port 22. I've got it up in one of the high random ports that I know because
when you leave it running at 22, a lot of Chinese guys will try to brute force your SSH server,
and it's really funny to see them try, but you don't really want to have that. So you know,
hide it up in some non-random port. To find my SSH server across the world wide web, I use
no-ip.org, which is a free service that offers the same thing that DIN DNS used to offer, but
they just do it for free because DIN DNS doesn't do it anymore. So that's my little setup that
allows me to connect to my SSH server and my command line applications at home. In a way that does not
require me to install any local application, it does not require a lot of bandwidth, it's safe,
it's secure, and it allows me to take my digital life with me anywhere. So I hope you found
these tips helpful. For Hacker Public Radio, this was Nightwise, the host of the Nightwise.com
podcast, telling you to let technology work for you, and nut the other way around. See you guys!
You've been listening to Nightwise. You can find more articles and the Nightwise.com podcast
at www.nightwise.com. That's kn-i-g-h-t-w-i-s-e.com. The podcast with hacks, tips, and tweaks
for cross-platform geeks.
Nightwise.com
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