Leaving Android Behind

If someone were to have told me that I’d be leaving Android at the start of 2019, I’d have told them they were crazy. After all, when I switched to Android from iOS in 2015, I decided that I would be staying with the platform for the foreseeable future. And the further I got into that future, the more entrenched I became in the Android ecosystem, to the point that switching would be painful on both my pocketbook, and on my daily life. But here we are: it’s September, and I’m officially leaving Android behind, and switching to an iPhone. So… why an iPhone? After all, I’m a Linux user, right? Wouldn’t it make more sense to move to another Android-based system, or a Linux phone?

Abandoning Audible

Every year, when it comes time to renew memberships and subscriptions to various online services, I sit down and re-evaluate if they are still worth the amount of money that I am spending. It is relatively rare that something gets added to the yearly subscription list, and even rarer when a service gets removed. I’ve also found that, year after year, there have been a collection of services that I haven’t even considered removing. And up until this year, Audible was one of those services…

2018 Year in Review

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Gandalf

Well, it’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone! I was told growing up that time flies the older you get, and I’ve generally noticed each year seeming to go by slightly faster than the one before. However, this year seemed to go especially fast for me. In a recent sermon from my pastor, I was challenged to look back at 2018 and what God has done in my life. And so, with that goal, here’s a brief recap of what I decided to do with the last 365 days!

Mycroft Mark 1

I have been dabbling in smart home technology and voice assistants for several years now. I was one of the first people I know to own an Amazon Echo (the original black tube), and used it until November 2016, when the Google Home first came out. Since I am an Android user, and I use Google’s services heavily in multiple areas of my life, I made the switch to the Google Home and never looked back. That is, until mid-2017, when the Mycroft Mark 1 Kickstarter was first announced.

Reflections on a Year With Linux

A little over a year ago (Nov. 2016), I made the switch to using Linux pretty much full time. I wrote a few blog posts about it during the first month, but I have been relatively quiet since then. So, I thought it was about time that I gave a public update.

First of all, am I still using Linux as my daily driver? For the most part, yes. In fact, I’m writing this blog post on one of my Linux machines. Both my main laptop (the Asus ZenBook) and my main desktop computer (an old Dell Precision T3600) run Arch Linux as the OS, with KDE Plasma 5 for the desktop, and I have had very few issues with them overall. Arch gives me the latest version of pretty much any Linux software I want to run, and KDE gives me a nice, fluid desktop experience that doesn’t feel stuck in the 90s/early 2000s like some other desktop environments do (not to disparage them – just not my preference if I have the option).

2017 Year in Review

Wow. It’s hard to believe that today is the last day of 2017 already. Since this has been a very busy year for me, I thought it would be good to look back at some the major events in my life. This is more for my own benefit than anyone else’s, if I’m honest. It’s always good to remind myself of what God has done in my life over the year, and what he’s helped me to accomplish throughout the year. So, as Ro (from Nerdy Nummies) would say… Let’s Get Started!

Site Redesign and Migration

Note: This blog post is outdated, but left in place for historical reasons.

As you may have noticed if you’re reading this on justinvollmer.com (instead of an RSS reader), my website has undergone some visual changes. This was due in part to my choice to migrate away from Squarespace, where my site had been hosted for the last few years.

So, why the change? Well, for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which was cost. I was paying close to 100 USD a year to Squarespace, and I felt that I could find a cheaper solution elsewhere. Also, while Squarespace is extremely easy to use, it was also beginning to feel a bit limiting. I’ve been looking at using Amazon Lightsail to host my own server for a few months anyhow, and my impending renewal on Squarespace gave me a good incentive to make the switch. And since I had a few days off from work, it felt like a good time to make the changes.