Idea: Not Online or Offline but "Thinline"

Over the last couple of years Iā€™ve had an offline-ready setup for core systems like email. My primary use case for this was scenarios like travel or working outdoors.

More recently, Iā€™ve been thinking about an idea thatā€™s not fully online and not fully offline. But ā€œthinlineā€. Itā€™s a controlled access to necessary systems while blocking the optional and distracting. I can currently trigger going offline using a script that turns off wifi but when Iā€™m at home I would still like access to services on my local network like my network attached storage that my music is on, or other services like my network-connected heat pump and electricity monitoring tools.

Iā€™m experimenting with this and will report back when I have something useful to share.

Update: I wrote a script that helps me manage this ā€œthinā€ connection. Read about it here:

Midline: Midway Between Online and Offline