Yesterday night was a nice, warm mid-August evening. Where I live dark usually equals cold, but at this time of the year we are moving away from the white summer nights while the last warmth of the summer still lingers on. The rest of the Europe has been scorching under a heatwave but here this summer has been - or at least felt - quite cool since July.
I was sitting on our backyard patio, reading a book and enjoying the peaceful evening after a great day of activities (book shop, art exhibition I understood absolutely nothing but appreciated the look of the pieces, dinner with friends and their doggos). I kept reading as long as I could, expecting the cooling evening to drive me inside with the sunset, as it had done pretty much every night. Well, last night it did not, and I stayed outside until it got dark. I could have retreated inside to keep reading my book but instead I wanted to stay outside, enjoying the warm-ish and dark evening so rare in these parts.
I grabbed my laptop, opend a terminal, increased its font size so that at full-screen it was something like 80x25 and hit the full screen button to get rid of anything reminding me of a modern OS's UI around it. Then I read some long articles from my offpunk toread list and browsed the Low Tech magazine with Lynx. I had always loved the VT100 terminals my university had sprinkled everywhere in the 90s and I still like the distraction-free feeling of being in a full-screen terminal, especially for reading.
Black framing around the display, terminal on full screen with black background and light grey text on a large font, Lynx only occassionally showing something in light blue (I have replaced the default rainbow colour scheme with a milder one). Laptop brightness minimised, a bit of light flowing to the patio from the windows and street lights, sky still light enough to see the dark shadows of small bats dashing after insects. Surprisingly quiet for a late Saturday evening. The fragrances of late summer flowers, so different from the early ones.
Somehow the technology on my lap did not feel out of place in this serene setting. It did not try to grab my attention, just mediated someone else's thoughts to me. I was free to occassionally look around the tiny garden, the white flowers still visible in the darkening evening and insects and bats against the not completely dark sky. And then come back to the other person's thoughts when it suited my mood.
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pv@smolpub.mail.kapsi.fi