Observing geeks

I've heard this story about Richard Stallman once that he is quite extravagant with his web surfing habits. This is the source. As we are mostly techie people it's our responsibility to keep up the illusion that we do science and computer. Hear my seven tiny tips to become a seemingly overly geek developer.


iRC

Use a good old iRC client to your communication. Chose one that terminal based, like irssi. When somebody looks at you, start typing random commands, like /help, /list or /join.

Sid

Drop your neo-hippy mp3 files and listen to Sid tracks. It saves you a lot of disk space and doesn't require a high quality sound system.

Vim

Use Vim or Emacs when editing files. Don't forget to split screen and use colors. Even better if you're watching Star Wars in a split tab through telnet.

Arduino

Buy an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi board and put the empty system terminal to a large screen. Even better if you buy one of those extension kits and play with the cables and leds couple of times a day.

Hacker typer

On busy days or on the train station it's common to patch or write a new unix kernel. Go to Hackertyper and do your job. Act like you think hard, and moan something about pointers.

Lynx

When you want to show a new cool site open Lynx. You can tell how proud you are that it doesn't generate that much traffic and don't download unnecessary images.

Htop

Keep one terminal open just for htop at all times. Don't forget to include htop to all your instagram pictures.

Nethack

Finally if you geek-ed yourself enough it's time to play - with NetHack. Who said it's not an e-sport? Ask your friends to grab a pint and watch you playing.

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Peter