Weekly Journal 31 - Burnout, aerc

Synopsis

As much as I hate to admit it, I think I’m definitely suffering from burnout again. aerc looks like an interesting alternative to Mutt.

Burnout

For the time being, I think my output on personal projects is going to be drastically reduced. I can’t quit my job for numerous reasons, but I can control my computer exposure outside of paid work time. I plan on still updating my blog weekly, but my personal projects will be limited to only what I absolutely need to work on, like finishing my email migration away from Google Mail.

Hopefully by taking a break for a bit I will get the energy and desire back to start working on personal projects again soon.

aerc

aerc is a modern take on a CLI email client. It’s written in Go, and includes built-in support for notmuch. It has a tabbed interface that I really like, and it’s quick and responsive. The two downsides I see are having to relearn all the keyboard commands as they are completely different from Mutt, and that pre-built binary packages aren’t readily available. The project only creates packages for Alpine Linux, Arch Linux, and MacOS. (I don’t run Arch, btw…)

Ubuntu 21.04 has outdated packages, but Ubuntu 20.04 doesn’t have any packages at all, which also means it isn’t available for WSL without setting up a Go build environment and compiling it from source. I haven’t decided if it’s worth the effort of compiling it from source yet, but with the previously mentioned burnout I doubt it’s something I will attempt soon. In the meantime I’ll continue to use Mutt or possibly Neomutt.

What’s Next?

Figuring out how best to manage my email between the IMAP server at Migadu, and managing a local copy on my laptop. I want to keep mail on the IMAP server so I can access it from my mobile devices, but tools like notmuch need a local copy in order to function properly. I’ll give Google points for having a cohesive experience on both desktop and mobile devices.