trisblog

[trisblog]

Working in the Sun

The sunnier months are finally here, and this year I have promised myself to get out and enjoy the rays a little more.  I work from home, and I’m lucky enough to have a nice deck and a back garden.  But the problem is, every time I go and try to work from either of those locations, I’m reminded that it is basically impossible to work outside on conventional laptops or tablets if the sun is really shining.  So, I end up heading back to my study, tail between my legs.  Then the kids come home from school, then the sun goes in, and I’m -1 day closer to the dream of working outside sometimes. 

Enter eInk.  We are all probably familiar with it by now. Most of you will have certainly heard of the Kindle. Absolutely fantastic for reading in the sun.  But you can’t work on a Kindle.  Then along came the Remarkable and the Remarkable 2. Great devices,  good sizes, (remarkably) thin, and they feel like you are writing on paper.  But due to their locked-down operating systems, unless you draw for a living, you cant work on a Remarkable.

OK, so what about an eInk monitor? Yeah, sure…  Pay the best part of 2k for one and then haul the extension lead out onto the deck for a few hours, and then carry it back up into the office.  No thanks. You can work on an eInk monitor, but it's not really made for working outside, is it?

Relatively recently, Boox have released a few pretty capable eInk tablets.  Boox uses Android as it’s operating system, and modern variants come with Google Play preinstalled.  Even more recently, these tablets now support colour eInk!  But can you work on an eInk tablet?  This is the question I wanted to answer. 

Boox have a pretty mental naming scheme, where it is basically impossible to understand what each tablet is meant to be used for, but they seem to break down into a few categories.  

Phone-sized e-readers (I actually own a Boox Palma, and love it for reading in bed)

“Kindle” sized e-readers

7” notebook-style e-readers with pen capabilities

10.3” note style devices

10.3” tablet-style devices

13” note devices

13” tablet devices

Recently they have released the Tab X C, which is a 13” color tablet powered device. It looks great!  But you cannot get hold of it for love nor money, so that was not an option.  They do a 13” black and white tablet, but that has no backlight, and I’m a software developer, and we use color quite a bit in our editors for sytax higlighting, so that was not an option either. 

So the remaining options were 10.3” devices.  I loved the idea of a smaller device, with a pen, because I could also read on it and use it to replace paper notes. A smaller device would be easier to carry around, and would probably stand a higher chance of becoming something that I would use quite often.

But… Can you write code on a 10.3” tablet?

Turns out you can...

Visual Studio Code does not have an Android version. Which is very sad indeed, because with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab Ultras, which are fantastic work horses, there is a real gap that needs to be filled.  But VS Code does have something called code-server, which you can run on a host machine, and then get VS Code working in a browser.  This works quite well, it means you can run VS Code on anything with a web browser,  including the Boox Tab Ultra C Pro, which is what I opted for.  Paired with a MX Master mouse and the epic MX Keys Mini.

However, I write lots of code for lots of different things, including mobile phones and mobile sites.  The workflow normally involves running Chrome in debug mode, and VS Code either side by side, or alt-tabbing between 2 windows. Well, Chrome does not have developer debugging on Android.  You can do without it, but it's a bit of a pain.

Worth a shot though, right?  For sure.  So I installed Termux, & Chrome on the Tab Ultra C Pro (TUCP) and ssh’d into my code server host, forwarding the ports needed for local access to the code server on 127.0.0.1 and also 8080 and 5001 for other ports needed for the apps to be debugged.  After putting VS Code into a light theme, it became very eInk friendly.  Even more so if you use a high contrast theme.  However, you will need to allow Chrome and Termux to run in the background, otherwise one or the other gets killed when you tab between things.  Add in Slack and email, and you have a pretty decent workflow even in the brightest of environments!

Boox Tab Ultra C running VSCode in Chrome, in a high contrast eInk-friendly theme

But I wanted more. 

Why not try VNC’ing into my regular working environment?  Well, that didn't go so well. X11Vnc shares the primary monitor, which seems like a great idea on the face of it, but the resolution you are running on your 4k 27 incher on your desktop does not play so nicely on the TUCP.  Nor do the dark themes that I prefer on regular working rigs.  So I set about modding one of my laptops to fit the bill precisely, until I realised I was being an idiot, and that's what virtual machines are for!  VMs also have the benefit of pretty free scale resolutions, so scaling it to be the perfect size was going to be easy!

I installed my current daily driver, Ubuntu Budgie on a VM and set the resolution to match the TUCP (1240x930).  I then chose a system-wide high contrast white theme, which worked amazingly.   I then got to installing all the apps I would be needing.  VS Code, Chrome, Slack X11Vnc and configuring the connection to my VPN.  A vpn is useful here as you can address the virtual machine using the vpn IP rather than having to configure bridged networking, and also you can of course, then access the machine from outside, if you are on the same VPN.  So the TUCP needed to have the OpenVPN client installed too. Once all installed, I configured VSCode to use the same high contrast white theme as the screenshot above. 

The result is a full desktop “running” on the TUCP in eInk-friendly colours.  Mouse input is, of course, laggy, but that would be the same on any eInk setup, and it is perfectly usable.  I can now pretty much replicate the workflow I use on my primary setup, under brilliant sunlight, sipping coffee on my deck!  If only my chairs were as comfy as my office chair.  My back is not going to thank me!

Boox Tab Ultra C Pro working with a remote eInk-friendly virtual machine

So I'm left with an eInk tablet that I can read my books on, take notes, scribble over PDFs, catch up on Slack, write articles and indeed, write code on. All while basking in glorious sunlight.

By the way, this article was written entirely on the TUCP, just using Google Docs and the MX Keys Mini.  Writing on this thing is an absolute pleasure.  I had to do a response to a set of data and infrastructure security questions for a potential client recently, and it was a breeze.  I was finally living the dream… ;)

I’m cold now, and my back hurts.  Where is my Hoody?