I have ended up in my (well, not mine but anyway) lakeside home for the week, due to a broken down car that’s in the shop right now. This isn’t all bad, although I’m not looking forward to the mechanic’s verdict and what it’ll cost me. Since my lakeside home is free of anything resembling real broadband, which in my world is 100 Mbit in both directions, this means I’ll have to adapt to a different working style. I’ve got a decent 3G connection (1-2 Mbit) so I can get just about everything done that I otherwise would’ve done from home or the Odd Alice office in Stockholm, so no worries there. However, I don’t have all the equipment I usually rely on.
- No Apple 27″ LED display for massive screen real-estate
- No Wacom Intous 4 drawing pad for logos
- No ergonomically correct chair nor desk
- No 120+ GB of music
- No movies, TV series, nor the will to download it over 3G
- No Nespresso coffee machine
What I do have is my light travel gear:
- 11″ MacBook Air with charger
- iPad and iPhone, with iOS cable and charger of course
- A stylus pen for said iOS gadgets
- Mifi 3G router with USB charger cable
- Battery for charging USB powered devices
- The X100 camera
- USB flash drive
That’s it, not counting clothes and stuff like that.
What does these circumstances really mean for my ability to get work done?
Not much, it would seem. Most of my work at present is either light coding (no worries, not even on the 11″ screen) and/or writing (the Air is the best typewriter available) which means I can do that right here. I even have all the necessary data thanks to Dropbox (aff link), where I store everything, and the 3G connection is fast enough to keep it snappy.
I did find fixing a logo took longer than expected on the Air, but that was because the source files were for Adobe software and I’m keeping the Air free of those bulky beasts, relying on the excellent Pixelmator. And then I realised we had screwed up with extension cords for MacBook chargers so there were no extra ones here, but that’s really not an issue.
I had planned to be here for two, maybe three nights, a long weekend. Now we’re looking at perhaps as many as ten.
And work won’t suffer.
Circumstances, sometimes they just don’t matter much.