Joshua Blais is back on the podcast, and this episode goes all over the place: Guix, Nix breaking, distro hopping, Emacs, Neovim, 34-key keyboards, home row mods, back pain, ADHD, Adderall, phone addiction, online presence, AI, spirituality, gratitude, community, and making money on YouTube.

We start with Linux and editor talk, including why Nix broke, what Guix is, why Joshua uses Emacs, whether he might go back to Neovim, and the difference between Doom Emacs and vanilla Emacs. Then we get into the ergonomic side of tech: back problems, chairs, keyboard placement, Colemak, concavity, 34 keys, where Shift goes on a tiny keyboard, ZMK, QMK, switches, and how keyboard choices affect your body.

The second half gets more personal. We talk about substance abuse, Adderall, the ADHD trend, putting your phone away, whether kids should have phones or tablets, trying to build an online presence while also wanting to go offline, monetizing YouTube, having a community, IRC, networking, AI, spirituality, gratitude, and whether the Luke Smith path is the right path.

Video:

https://youtu.be/btAOBkcLEkg

What's the best way to support me?

https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

Timeline:

00:00:00 Highlights

00:02:25 What do you do for a living and what are the coaching sessions about?

00:07:06 How does it feel to work for yourself and not depend on a company?

00:09:46 Why cool hairstyles and looks every week?

00:11:17 Do you make significant money out of YouTube?

00:15:51 What is emacs-plus on macos?

00:16:50 What is the --with-native-comp install flag and is it needed?

00:17:58 How to install emacs as a macos user and why emacs 30?

00:19:52 Emacs --fg-daemon, what is it and why?

00:21:24 I deleted the .emacs.d directory and also created a symlink

00:25:25 Doom emacs, evil mode or vanilla emacs?

00:29:21 Why is Linkarzu trying emacs?

00:32:02 menu-bar scroll-bar visible-bell lexical-binding

00:34:52 How to disable the yellow annoying warning on Mac

00:39:30 Should I finish the emacs tutorial as a beginner?

00:42:17 Why do you use Home, PgDn, PgUp, End

00:45:35 macOS supports emacs keybindings by default

00:50:56 Why you use the arrows to navigate in emacs?

00:53:50 Install some packages, vertico, marginalia, orderless

01:04:58 What do you think of AI for learning emacs?

01:10:14 Install marginalia

01:14:40 M-x marginalia-mode to toggle marginalia

01:15:57 Modify savehist

01:18:15 What is orderless and how to install it

01:26:32 Thoughts on homerow mods, one shot modifiers

01:29:42 Bob gigalord kofi donation. What to talk in coaching sessions. Read superchats

01:33:37 Let's continue with orderless

01:36:40 custom-file, export some config to another file and read from it

01:44:24 How to select text in emacs and configure delsel

01:48:35 Homework for next week, emacs tutorial, create an org file

01:50:58 This first video will be in the podcast channel, the rest in the normal channel

01:53:16 We'll see you live next week

Joshua Blais is back on the podcast, and this episode goes all over the place: Guix, Nix breaking, distro hopping, Emacs, Neovim, 34-key keyboards, home row mods, back pain, ADHD, Adderall, phone addiction, online presence, AI, spirituality, gratitude, community, and making money on YouTube.

We start with Linux and editor talk, including why Nix broke, what Guix is, why Joshua uses Emacs, whether he might go back to Neovim, and the difference between Doom Emacs and vanilla Emacs. Then we get into the ergonomic side of tech: back problems, chairs, keyboard placement, Colemak, concavity, 34 keys, where Shift goes on a tiny keyboard, ZMK, QMK, switches, and how keyboard choices affect your body.

The second half gets more personal. We talk about substance abuse, Adderall, the ADHD trend, putting your phone away, whether kids should have phones or tablets, trying to build an online presence while also wanting to go offline, monetizing YouTube, having a community, IRC, networking, AI, spirituality, gratitude, and whether the Luke Smith path is the right path.

Video:

https://youtu.be/9ziLQK_kmKY

What's the best way to support me?

https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

Timeline:

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:00 Highlights

00:03:17 Nix: the unbreakable OS broke

00:05:15 What is GUIX?

00:06:06 Topics and who is who in the thumbnail

00:07:23 The podcast has its own youtube channel now

00:08:24 Distro hopping and GUIX

00:18:10 Plans on going from Emacs to Neovim (again)?

00:21:15 Doom emacs vs vanilla emacs

00:26:03 Back problems in the tech community

00:35:50 Yoga balls? Herman Miller chairs are garbage

00:37:50 How do you sleep, you like to be hugged or be the hugger?

00:40:40 Back problems aggravated by your keyboard, colemak?

00:47:24 Where can people find your book?

00:49:50 34 keys, homerow mods, where you put shift?

00:52:34 Hot take about keyboard concavity, keyboard placement

01:00:50 zmk, qmk, gui tool for configuring or in text editor like a chad?

01:03:18 What type of switches, soft, hard, noisy, silent

01:05:20 Difference between linear and tactile switches

01:06:45 Resources for learning emacs as a beginner?

01:10:51 Substance abuse and adderal consumption, the ADHD fashion

01:18:05 Can you put your phone away for a couple of days?

01:19:47 Will you give phone or tablet to your kids?

01:22:00 Tough to try to have an online prescence but trying to go offline?

01:34:05 How to monetize this youtube thing

01:37:09 Having a community? IRC?

01:40:39 My networking journey

01:42:48 How do you feel about AI nowadays?

01:45:35 Thoughts on spirituality?

01:52:35 Being grateful

01:57:58 Is the Luke Smith path the right path?

Interview with Dmitriy Kovalenko, creator of FFF, a fast file search picker for Neovim that describes itself as “the best file search picker for neovim. Period.”

We’ll talk about why he built FFF, how it compares to tools like Telescope, fzf-lua, and snacks.nvim, and why file picking in Neovim is still such a hot topic. We’ll also get into performance, memory usage, plugin bloat, Rust, Neovim workflows, and the fun drama that happens when someone says their tool is the best.

Dmitriy is also known for having strong opinions online. We’ll talk about open source, controversial takes, what makes a Neovim plugin actually good, and whether modern Neovim setups are becoming too bloated.

Video:

https://youtu.be/HRx3B5wYcrI

What's the best way to support me?

https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

Timeline:

00:00:00 - Highlights

00:01:14 - Why are you so hated in the Neovim Subreddit?

00:06:22 - Snacks smart picker demo and why fff was born

00:09:44 - FFF weird view when small resolution. Previewing images

00:12:19 - What is FFF? Demo comparing it to snacks in chromium codebase

00:17:47 - Can you change the sorting options in FFF?

00:20:29 - Thoughts on telescope?

00:21:07 - how to search in hidden files?

00:26:49 - fff jacket giveaway

00:27:53 - Why Neovim and not other editor?

00:31:51 - Why Kitty and not Ghostty?

00:35:11 - Kitty sessions? Thoughts on Tmux?

00:38:57 - Kitty Sessions demo

00:40:48 - FFF sloppy

00:42:23 - FFF vs Snacks on the linux kernel codebase demo

00:44:34 - Typos for being so fast?

00:50:20 - Thoughts on mini.pick and Echasnovski's plugins

00:52:50 - Rust is your main language?

00:58:07 - Why are you daily driving macOS?

00:59:39 - Any apps that leverage FFF in a GUI?

01:04:08 - FFF sorting capabilities?

01:05:24 - Plans for future projects?

01:12:48 - Dmitriy Kovalenko youtube channel

01:14:33 - What do you do for a living?

01:15:25 - Feel depressed about AI?

01:19:30 - Chat content idea: react to folke's plugins, do you hate Folke?

01:27:42 - What does FFF stand for?

01:28:47 - FFF started as a Neovim plugin, what is it now?

01:30:57 - Where can people find you on twittter or github?

01:31:38 - Why can't AI edit videos?