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I noticed a lot of talk across geminispace lately about this idea of going offline as much as possible, whether it be to fight internet addiction, or to improve productivity, or what have you. I decided I wanted to attempt to participate a bit in this approach, primarily because I notice I also lose a lot of time and productivity staring into the infinite abyss of the internet.
What I've seen other people do, mostly, is having software or services which synchronize and download content for viewing later offline. While this is a perfectly adequate approach, I decided I wanted to do it a little differently, because as many have pointed out - in 2022 it is practically impossible to truly be offline. So I decided instead, I would simply limit the window of time in which I can be online. This also helps with the issue of the time spent reading that content offline. I know me, if I was sufficiently bored while being offline I would simply re-read the articles and posts I've already read about a dozen times. This wouldn't solve the issue, now would it?
My approach: literally disabling my internet connection during certain time windows. I've made a couple small bash scripts and a couple cron jobs which run at specific times. I use a laptop, so I use wpa_supplicant to enable or disable my connection, alongside dhcpcd. A very minimal approach but it works. See the scripts and cronjobs below.
/usr/bin/netup.sh ------------------ #!/bin/bash sv start wpa_supplicant dhcpcd &
/usr/bin/netdown.sh -------------------- #!/bin/bash sv stop wpa_supplicant
crontab (root) ------------------- 0 9 * * MON-FRI netdown.sh 0 11 * * 0,6 netdown.sh 0 21 * * * netdown.sh 0 6 * * * netup.sh 0 20 * * * netup.sh
I used root's crontab because the scripts enable and disable services, so it's necessary. As you can see, Monday through Friday the network is disabled at 9 AM. I start work at 7:30 AM on weekdays so this is frankly generous. Then on weekends the network is disabled at 11AM, to give myself time to sleep in before hopping on and checking geminispace, etc. On all days of the week, the network is re-enabled initially at 6AM and then again for an hour at 8PM. This ensures there's ample windows every day of the week for me to get bored enough to do something productive, instead of mindlessly staring at webpages and gemini capsules (though I love staring at people's gemini capsules!)
This also solves the problem of having a ton of content to waste my time rereading during the "offline" window! I would have to make a conscious effort to download stuff myself to be used while offline, which I simply won't do because I'm lazy. Ergo, I am forced to find something better to do with my time.
I hope you all enjoyed my - seemingly unique - take on the offline movement and consider using my approach!
-charick
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