Uses

This page is a succinct overview of the tools I use, manage, and self-host. I try to use open-source where possible.

Primary Computer & Development.

• Operating System: macOS on a MacBook Air M1.
• Browser: Firefox as a daily-driver, Chrome for work.
• Search Engine: Juggling Google and DuckDuckGo at the moment.
• Email: Fastmail (previously Migadu).
• IDE/Code Editor: VS Code.
• Terminal (Shell): Apple Terminal (zsh).
• Image Editor: Photopea.
• API Testing: cURL, Insomnia, Postman.
• Database GUI: Postico, Sequel Ace, DBeaver CE.

Other devices.

I use an iPhone 13 Pro and an iPad (2021, 9th gen, 64 GB + Wi-Fi).

On short travels, I try to skip carrying the MacBook Air entirely and default to my iPad.

Tools to Manage My Life.

Although I’m excited to see both Obsidian and Focalboard mature, I don’t think they’re ready for production usage.

Instead, I rely on proprietary tools here:

• Bear
• Notion

Self-hosted.

I self-host some services on Racknerd.

I do this as a way to have more freedom and control over my own data, as well as to cater to my personal-professional needs.

For a note on how I’ve set things up, refer to this blog post I made in March 2022.

Feed reader — Miniflux.

Miniflux is a minimalist and opinionated feed reader.

Miniflux’s marketing site

I have written plenty about the feed reader now and then — for the curious.

Bookmark manager — linkding.

Self-hosted bookmark service

linkding’s GitHub page

I have not written much about it — it mostly just works!

Filtered Reddit consumption — Reddit Top RSS.

Generate RSS feeds for specified subreddits with score thresholds.

GitHub page

I have also written about this:

Conscious Reddit consumption using non-default RSS feeds.

Miscellaneous

There are also more services I use that are worth a mention. These may be hosted by friends or a generous company and such. 🙂

Publishing platform — WordPress.

WordPress is open source software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app.

WordPress’ marketing site (self-hosted)

I have been asked why I use WordPress. While there is no single post elucidating this point, the following series of posts might help drive a point:

• Waving a thankful goodbye to: static-websites and more.
• Three months later: a follow-up on ditching my static site and IndieWeb.
• Why do peo­ple even bother with sta­tic sites?

Federated micro-blogging — Hometown.

A supported fork of Mastodon that provides local posting and a wider range of content types.

Hometown’s GitHub page

Hometown powers SmallCamp. Up until April 2022, I spent my free time on running and managing it. Unlike the others, this was and continues to be a system installation (instead of Docker). There are certain advantages to it and I felt those were very much welcome in this case!

It is now managed by clic2000.