General on Justin Vollmer

App Defaults 2026

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 11:30:00 -0600

All the cool kids, or at least Robb, Matt, and Jan-Lukas are updating their app defaults, something that started in the blogosphere back in 2023. And I can’t resist jumping on a fun bandwagon when I see one, and so… here’s mine! (honestly not much has changed since 2023 and 2024)

✉️ Mail Service: iCloud, Fastmail, Zoho, all with custom domains
📬 Mail Client: Apple Mail
☑️ Tasks: Todoist
📓 Notes: Obsidian
📰 RSS Service: Feedbin
🗞️ RSS Client: Fiery Feeds
⌨️ Launcher: Alfred
☁️ Cloud Storage: iCloud, Nextcloud
🖼️ Photo Library: iCloud, with Immich backup
📷 Photo Editing: Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Photo, Adobe Photoshop, darktable
📹 Video Editing: Final Cut Pro
💻 Screenshots: CleanShot X
🌐 Web Browser: Firefox
💬 Chat: iMessage, Matrix, WhatsApp
📆 Calendar: Fantastical
🌤️ Weather: Mercury Weather, Radarscope
🎙️ Podcasts: Overcast
📚 Audiobooks: Prologue with self-hosted library
🎵 Music: Plexamp with self-hosted library
📜 Word Processing: Pages
📈 Spreadsheets: Numbers
📊 Presentations: Keynote
🔑 Password Management: 1Password
💁‍♂️ Social Media: Mastodon
🐘 Mastodon: Ivory
🧮 Code Editor: Sublime Text
👨‍💻 Git Client: Sublime Merge
🔎 Search: Kagi
✈️ Flight Tracking: Flighty
✨ AI Chatbot: Multiple via Kagi Assistant (mostly Claude)

2026 Goals and Aspirations

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0600

I did a little review, and unless I’ve missed a post somewhere, I’ve only once written a public “New Year’s Resolutions”. I considered titling this post my “2026 Resolutions”, but that doesn’t exactly capture what I’m going for. Rather, these are intended to be goals and aspirations that I can measure myself against at the end of the year, and if I chose to ignore, change, or rewrite them throughout the year, then so be it. 🙂

Personal Goals

Read 18 or more books. As noted in a post at the end of 2025, last year my reading took a hit. I feel better about myself when I read more, and I enjoy learning new things by reading (history, personal development, etc), and enjoying the imagination of the authors (in fiction specifically).
Reduce morning screen time and rebuild devotion/reading habit. There’s not much to say about this; my reading habit took a hit because I started scrolling the web on my iPad in the morning. My goal is to get back to reading books during my morning coffee.
Revive my GTD habit/practice. I’ve written about my interest in the Getting Things Done methodology before, and while I’m not convinced that every single piece can be applied to my life well, I definitely feel more on top of things when I am doing brief morning reviews (daily) and a weekly review on the weekends. Maybe I should track this in my weekly review post? 🤔
Visit family for at least 4-6 weeks. During 2025 I spent close to 6 weeks (between vacation and remote work) visiting family, if I did my calculations right. As long as they’ll have me, I’d like to aim for the same in 2026. Something I realize as I get older is that I didn’t prioritize family as much as I should have when I was younger, and I don’t want to continue making that mistake.
Contact distant relatives for genealogy research. I mentioned in my year-in-review that I have received family histories from relatives; I want to be intentional and begin building out a list of family members that I keep in contact with, on both sides of my family.
Double the number of old family photos digitized. I currently have 450 family photos that have been scanned, edited, dated, and cataloged in my photo library. While I have many more digitized and waiting for me to edit them, I want to increase the total number that have been through the full process to 1000 this year (i.e., roughly doubling).
Take more photos with my GH5 and lens collection. I also mentioned in my year-in-review post that I was getting back into photography with my GH5, instead of only relying on my phone camera. I want to expand that usage this year, and perhaps do some sharing on my blog?

Health/Fitness

Rebuild daily workout habit. Last year my daily workouts took a hit, mostly because I didn’t prioritize them. I still was active during the day, but I didn’t spend 30 minutes each morning in either cardio or weight-based workouts, and I think I feel better when that habit exists.
Reduce snacking outside of meals. This hasn’t been a huge issue in 2025, but I think there is a direct link between lack of weight loss and evening snacking habits. So here’s another area I can improve in!

Work

Obviously, I’m not going to post my professional S.M.A.R.T goals here for the world to see, as they are confidential, but I can at least share a few work-related areas I want to improve.

Increase the timeliness of replies, especially via email. I’m normally good at replying to Slack messages quickly, but sometimes email falls by the wayside. I think this can tie in well to my refocusing on my GTD habits, as they tend to go hand in hand.
Improve project-management habits. I don’t exactly know how to describe this, but keeping accurate notes on the state of projects and revisiting them when needed has always been a struggle. Maybe this could tie into my reading and GTD habits, as both an area of study and something to revisit daily/weekly?

Blog/Website

Post at least weekly (Weekly Reviews). I like the idea of weekly reviews as a way for me to look back at what has occurred this year, and as a way to share interesting things I’ve read, found, etc. And perhaps this year I can expand them to also help track habits? (I’m still pondering this.)
Write more interesting posts. I think sometimes my posts, especially weekly reviews, became too formulaic. I want to keep things interesting, both for my readers (hi! 👋) and as a way to improve my writing style. I’ll probably keep using LLMs for proofreading, but I doubt I’ll use them at all for drafts, as I experimented with briefly last year. I ended up rewriting them all anyhow, as I don’t like how… fake? LLM-generated posts sound.
Tweak my website design. This is at best a maybe. Do I actually have anything I want to tweak right now on my website? Not really, other than perhaps a little formatting and choosing different fonts. I’d say I’m 90% happy right now, but occasionally the theme I’m using doesn’t match what I’d personally do. I did fork the theme a year ago, so making personal modifications wouldn’t be that hard.

Home/Tech

Replace my aging R710 home server. While my old Dell server has been holding up well overall, I’m reaching the storage limits of expandability, and it definitely feels slow at times. For what I use it for (primarily music/audiobook libraries, photo backup, and storage) it works alright, but in the coming year I’d like to migrate to something a bit newer and more capable.
Find a new project to self-host. Okay, yes, this is vague. Really vague. But I want to keep my eye on cool open-source projects, and if there’s one that either fills a current hole (maybe that I didn’t know I had), or else replaces something I pay for today, it would be fun to move to a self-hosted solution.
Stop switching productivity tools. This is specifically aimed at the amount of time I have wasted over the years hopping between Todoist and other tools. Look, is Todoist perfect? No. But I think most of my issues are normally self-induced due to lack of good habits (looking at you, weekly reviews), and not something wrong with the tool itself. I need to get over “grass-is-greener” or “shiny-new-tool” syndrome.
Become more intentional in maintaining my photo library. I still don’t have a good way to describe this, but album creation, tagging, etc (and maybe pruning?) is something I want to get better at. Another idea is to potentially share pictures with family in a printed photo book… I’ve heard the guys on the ATP podcast discuss it a few times, and it could make for a fun gift!
Create one personal project (coding or building/assembly). This is still pretty ambiguous too. However… Most of what I create is for work at this point, and I’d like a personal passion project to work on. I don’t have a great idea for what it should be, or what it should entail, but it seems like something that would be worth focusing on? 🤷‍♂️

Conclusion

Okay, I probably don’t need a header for this! 😂 Anyhow. That’s my goals and aspirations for 2026! In a year, I’ll get to look back and score myself on how everything went! (And maybe, just maybe, I’ll add in some weekly or monthly updates…)

2025 Year in Review

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:00:00 -0600

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings

That remains one of my favorite quotes. I’ve used it before, and decided instead of as the ending quote, it would be my opener. Anyhow… on to my year in review!

Another year in the books! As has become my yearly routine, I’m taking time to reflect on the major changes and areas of focus across different parts of my life, rather than walking through a purely chronological recap. 2025 brought some meaningful shifts - some intentional, some just… life happening? - and it’s worth documenting (if only as an exercise for myself).

Life

This year kicked off with a major first: I traveled internationally for the first time, visiting Brazil for a week to see some friends. The whole experience was incredible: first international flight, first time experiencing a completely different country and culture in person, and first time using a translation app for a lot of my interactions. 😂 The highlights included exploring the sights, diving into actual Brazilian food (not the Americanized versions I’d had before), hitting the beach (yes, I know, hard to believe… but I legitimately enjoyed it!), and catching a local concert.

I also made it out to visit family in both South Carolina and Ohio this year, which also meant my first multi-city flight (Peoria - Charlotte - Fort Wayne - Chicago - Peoria) in the Spring. The rest of my personal travel was all by car, as usual, and I was able to find time to be around family for nearly a month combined this year (with some remote work thrown in… not all vacation).

There’s not much to report on my church life. I’m still attending the same Lutheran church, still actively involved in my congregation, and that’s been a consistent anchor. I’ve reduced the amount of theological research/reading that had become my normal over the past few years, though I want to increase that in 2026.

On the personal projects side, family history got more serious attention this year. A family member who had done genealogy work passed away, and her husband shared with me what she’d compiled, though that wasn’t the only catalyst. I also received some new information from other distant family members that opened up some breakthroughs, including finding (more) distant relatives still alive that I didn’t know about, and managing to push further back up the family tree. (Or would that be down? Hmm…) I didn’t find anything overly surprising, but it felt like important/useful work. I even set up and maintain a Gramp Web-based website for my family to access, which has become a nice way to share my research, and interact with family members.

Family photos continued to be a real focus this year too. I’ve been systematically scanning in old family photos and editing them (cleaning them up), which has been both tedious and rewarding. There’s something about handling physical photos, seeing the quality and texture of older prints, that I think has shifted some of how I think about photography.

In parallel, I’ve been taking more photos at family events with my GH5, and I think perhaps the scanning work actually intensified my appreciation for the aesthetic of photos taken with a real camera. Seeing how differently film-era photos express themselves compared to digital phone snapshots… it’s like the scanning project gave me a new lens for understanding why I prefer shooting with actual gear. 😉 I’ve also been listening to a few camera-focused podcast episodes this year from Waveform/MKBHD and the guys from Accidental Tech Podcast, which have definitely helped feed the interest.

My media consumption shifted somewhat noticeably: I’ve watched way more YouTube than traditional movies or TV this year. My gaming also stayed light - mostly RuneScape and Northgard - and that’s tied to a bigger tech decision I’m currently debating: I’m seriously considering removing/mothballing my Windows computer. More on that later.

Health/Fitness

Unfortunately, my workouts took a hit this year: life got busy, and I didn’t prioritize it the way I should have. I’m calling this out mostly for my own reflection and accountability (this means you, future Justin): it’s something I want to improve in 2026.

On the diet front, I’m about 75% convinced the changes I’ve made are good. I spent roughly seven years eating low-carb/keto, and this year I expanded my dietary options to basically a standard diet, though still biased slightly low-carb. My energy levels remained high, and overall I feel decent, but it’s still something new and different. That’s partly why I’m still on the fence… the change seems to be working, but there’s an adjustment period to something that was a habit, and effectively part of my identity for so long.

Work

My work responsibilities shifted/increased again this year, though there’s not much else to report on the surface. I did travel twice for work out to Fargo (see previous blog posts), which means I flew noticeably more than I have in previous years. Nothing particularly standout came from those trips beyond what I’ve already written about elsewhere, but I’m becoming increasingly comfortable with what all air travel entails. Oh! And I got TSA pre-check, which made work and personal travel a lot more seamless.

Blog & Website

I stuck with my goal of posting weekly throughout 2025, even if a few were slightly late. That consistency feels good, though I’ve noticed it’s meant fewer standalone blog posts. That’s something I want to improve in 2026.

I also remained committed to GitHub & AWS for hosting and deployment, which continues to work well for my needs. I switched to my current workflow during Thanksgiving 2024, and while I sometimes debate if I want to continue to rely on big tech for my website, the publishing process is about as seamless as it can be while still using a static site generator. Most writing and posting still occurs from my computer, but occasionally I’ve authored and posted updates from my phone and/or iPad.

Home & Tech

My self-hosting setup got a significant upgrade when I switched from running Ubuntu as a bare-metal server to standing up TrueNAS on my Dell R710. It’s been a solid move, though it took some getting used to, and there were definitely some false starts. I also ditched traditional VPN services like PIA, which I’d been using on my phone when not on my home network, and instead have been using Tailscale to tunnel directly into my home network when out and about, with one of my computers operating as an endpoint.

As already noted in my post on what I read in 2025, my reading dropped noticeably this year compared to normal. I think it was for a few reasons, chiefly that I changed one of my habits (negatively) from reading from physical books in the morning to reading off my iPad. That’s something I’m planning to revisit in 2026.

On the task management/GTD front, I took another swing at OmniFocus (my third documented attempt for those counting), but ultimately migrated back to Todoist (again). The OmniFocus apps just had too much friction: too many clicks, a busy interface, occasional syncing slowness, and the overhead of managing task notes, descriptions, and attachments felt like unnecessary lift. Todoist’s simplicity wins (which, you know… I should have known. I kind of wrote about that before.)

And on a completely separate topic that I never thought I’d be writing about (because visual apps have never clicked for me before)… I’ve been thoroughly enjoying another app from the OmniGroup, OmniGraffle, for diagramming and visual thinking. It’s become a genuine tool in my arsenal, not just an experiment, and I’ve found myself using it in meetings (for drawing out product concepts), on my own to understand/diagram concepts, and even to make a pattern for my sister for sewing (a stretch, but it worked!).

Switching gears: my photo library got a bit of an overhaul this year. Ever since I’d moved back to iPhone, I’d been using Apple Photos to some extent, but had been using Immich as my primary library. By the middle of 2025, I made the decision to use Apple Photos wholesale as my primary library, with Immich and Google Photos specifically as backup layers. I wrote a bit about my photo backup strategy and workflow earlier this year, if you want the details on how that works.

In less groundbreaking news, I upgraded my video conferencing setup with a Stream Deck Mini (for easy control) and Elgato Key Lights, which has made remote calls feel a bit more polished. Does anyone else notice? Not really. But having a well-lit video feed makes me happy.

I also referenced this in my notes on gaming earlier, but I’m increasingly debating if 2026 is the year that my Windows gaming computer retires. At this point, I use my Mac about 90% of the time, and my Linux machine the other 10% or so, except for gaming, and taxes once a year. However, Steam Proton has continued to improve the Linux gaming situation, and for the style of games I have time for now, it works fine. I’m seriously wondering if in the coming year I will migrate to only two primary computers, a Windows VM for the few times I need it. 🤔

And with that, we’re to the end of my review! 2025 was an interesting year across a lot of different areas of my life. As is usual, some things improved, some things I let slide, and some things shifted direction. But, that gives me someplace to start and improve from in 2026! See y’all next year! (And because I’m me… I’ll leave you with another quote.)

“Look back and be grateful. Look ahead and be hopeful. Look around and be helpful.” - Paulo Coelho, Manual of the Warriors of the Light

Update #1 (2026-01-01): I originally had a disclaimer on this post noting that while I wrote the content myself, I used an LLM for proofreading and light editing. Instead of a per-post note, I’m choosing to have a single place where my LLM Policy exists.

Books I Read in 2025

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

I’ve seen a number of other bloggers writing year-end book reviews and commentary on what they read (shoutout specifically to Manu, SuperBetsy, and Jeremy Keith), and I decided to join the fun!

I already keep a reading list of every book I finish (see here), so the following list is copied from there.

Books I Read (Finished) in 2025

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac; 408pp (01/07/2025)
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen; 20h47m (02/03/2025)
Team: Getting Things Done with Others by David Allen, Edward Lamont; 9h46m (03/08/2025)
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams; 400pp (03/24/2025)
We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1 by Dennis E. Taylor; 9h56m (05/08/2025)
The Invisible College: The Invisible College, Book 1 by Jeff Wheeler; 10h39m (06/08/2025)
Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart; 18h50m (09/05/2025)
The Sword of Shannara: The Shannara Series, Book 1 by Terry Brooks; 26h21m (10/26/2025)
Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist; 17h16m (11/30/2025)
Magician: Master by Raymond E. Feist; 18h22m (12/21/2025)

Commentary

This year I read fewer books than in any other year since I began keeping track. I debated why, and I think it came down to a few reasons:

Early in the year I picked up a new iPad, which is often what I look at in the mornings while having morning coffee. This is sometimes a positive, as it means that I skim emails, prepare for the day, and can explore topics that interest me. However, it has had a negative impact on my reading habits, as mornings are when I read physical books.
In either May or June (I don’t recall the exact date), I had a failure in my primary server, which ended up taking it offline for a few months while I debated what route I wanted to take. That happens to be the same server I host my audiobooks on. While there was no data loss (thankfully - I keep multiple backups), it did mean that my book-listening plan was disrupted for a few months, and the solution I used in the interim had more friction. I eventually rebuilt my original workflow, which is working much better. 🙂
I spent more time listening to podcasts than audiobooks this year… looking back, I’m not sure that was the right decision for my goals.

My Photo Backup Strategy

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:15:00 -0500

Yesterday afternoon in the office, one of my coworkers asked me (paraphrasing) how I back up my photos so that everything isn’t only in iCloud, and what I would recommend that she do. And, because I’m a geek (and a bit extra at times), instead of just sending her my recommendations, I decided to turn this into a full blog post that I can point others to in the future. 😁

My Photo Workflow + Backup Strategy

So first off: how do I manage my photos? The answer has changed some over the years, but my current system is designed around the Apple Photos/iCloud system, both on my Mac and my iPhone. As you’ll see, I’m not entirely comfortable putting all of my eggs in one basket, and so I have backups outside of the Apple ecosystem, but that’s where my day-to-day photo library lives. All photos that I take on my iPhone are automatically synced, and any photo that I take with my big camera, or that I scan in via one of my photo scanners (for old family photos) goes into iCloud first.

Once the photos are into iCloud, then the rest of my strategy kicks in. I back up photos three separate ways currently:

Full backup of my Photos library via Backblaze on my Mac (where I have Photos set to download originals)
Backup via the Google Photos app on my iPhone to Google Photos, with settings set to “maintain original quality”
Backup via Immich on my iPhone to Immich running on my TrueNAS server, which is in turn backed up to Backblaze B2

Let’s break those down a bit.

First up - Photos on my Mac, backed up to Backblaze. When I made the decision to center my photo workflow around Apple Photos, I knew that I wanted to also back up my Apple Photos library, as that’s where the bulk of my efforts take place. The simplest way to have an offsite backup of both my Mac and my Photos library was to use Backblaze, and so I added a full Mac backup to my strategy ($9.99/month). Because I have Photos set to download originals to my Mac, every photo in my library is stored on my Mac at full original quality, and that (along with my library metadata) gets backed up to the Backblaze servers on a set schedule.

Next, Google Photos. I used to use Google Photos more heavily in the past, especially when I was running an Android phone, but when I moved back to iPhone, I also moved my photo library away from Google. At this point, it’s my “backup of last resort,” effectively. I have my settings set to backup from my iPhone to Google Photos at full quality, though I maintain a healthy skepticism about Google’s app settings, as spot checks have revealed to me that some files are not the same size as the originals. However, it’s another low-cost location to back my photos up to.

And third, I have an Immich instance set up on my home TrueNAS server, which I have my full library (via my iPhone and the Immich iOS app) syncing to. From all of my testing, this does in fact capture photos at original quality and file type, and is probably what I would choose to switch to if for some reason Apple Photos ever goes away (whether because I left, or because Apple killed the service). I then have my Immich library backing up to Backblaze B2 nightly, so I have another offsite copy of all of my original files.

My Family’s Photo Workflow + Backup Strategy

Years ago, my family used Google Photos much the same way I did, but in the early 2020s, when I switched back to iPhone, I brought my family along with me, which meant that their photos were split between some old folders on local desktops, their Google Photos library, and an iCloud Photos library. Instead of paying for multiple solutions, my dad and I made the decision to set up a NAS at my parents’ house, which would become their primary photo backup target. For that purpose, we selected a 4-bay Synology NAS, and I have each of their iPhones (their primary picture-taking devices) set up with the Synology Photos app, which periodically syncs to their NAS. The NAS is in turn backed up to Backblaze B2, which provides an offsite backup in the event of a hardware failure.

Recommendations to Others

First up: if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, by far the best first thing you can do is pay for enough iCloud storage to sync your photos between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Since iCloud is a sync service rather than a backup solution (meaning deletions sync across all devices), the best way to preserve everything you’ve done with your library is to have a Mac with a large enough SSD (internal or external) to download all originals, and then pay to back your Mac up to Backblaze.

For the slightly more intensive route, my next recommendation would be to set up a Synology NAS for yourself (preferably 4-bay), and use the Synology Photos app to back your photos up to your own NAS. It’s entirely up to you if you want to manage your photos in Synology, or just use it as a backup target, but it’s a still semi-inexpensive way to have a local copy under your control. For bonus points, set that to back up offsite to something like Backblaze or AWS S3 as well.

If, like me, you’re willing to do some extra work to host your own server, my “advanced” recommendation is to set up Immich the way I have, either on a Linux server or TrueNAS, and then back that library up offsite to Backblaze (or an equivalent). That strategy has the least vendor lock-in, and gives you arguably the best long-term strategy if you don’t want to use Apple or Google’s photo management tools for your libraries.

Conclusion

And so, those are my recommendations as of December 2025! Will my opinions change in the future? Of course - my recommendations a year ago wouldn’t look exactly as they do today, and I’d be fooling myself if I thought they wouldn’t change again. Hopefully that is helpful though, and if my workflow or my recommendations change heavily in the future, I’ll either update this post, or add another blog entry that supersedes this one.

The Scientific Classification of Christmas Music

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 15:30:00 -0500

Over lunch, some colleagues and I were discussing why Christmas music is its own genre, with specific sounds. For fun, I asked an LLM to generate a plausible but fictitious explanation, and a few seconds later, this amusing anecdote was born…

The Scientific Classification of Christmas Music

The Temporal Frequency Hypothesis

Christmas music constitutes its own genre due to a rare phenomenon known as Yuletide Acoustic Resonance (YAR). When temperatures drop below 45°F and decorative lighting exceeds 10,000 lumens in a given radius, the human ear undergoes a temporary recalibration that makes jingling bells neurologically indistinguishable from traditional percussion instruments. This is why the same person who despises tambourines in July will enthusiastically tolerate “Jingle Bell Rock” in December.

The Lyrical Density Principle

No other genre maintains such a high concentration of words that rhyme exclusively with “snow.” This creates a self-referential loop where artists, desperate to complete their verses, have collectively locked Christmas music into its own hermetically sealed linguistic ecosystem. Attempts to escape this cycle (such as “Christmas in July”) fail spectacularly because the YAR effect is dormant.

The Forced Joy Quotient

Christmas music is scientifically engineered to sound jolly at all times, regardless of lyrics about lonely nights or relationship dissolution. This paradox—sad words set to aggressively cheerful melodies—is so unique that it essentially violated genre conventions and created its own category out of sheer necessity.

Conclusion: Christmas music transcended genre status somewhere around 1950 and has been occupying its own dimensional frequency ever since.

🎅

Rethinking My Note-Taking App Decisions

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 16:35:00 -0500

Intro

Over the past 48 hours I’ve once again been on a journey to rethink how I take notes. Why? I’ve actually been struggling to answer that question for myself, and I’ve boiled it down into a few potential reasons:

I’ve never felt fully at home in Obsidian ever since moving to it, even though I’ve been using it for over 2 years now.
I miss the seamlessness in my life of old Evernote, and constantly wish that there was an alternate that filled the same role in the same way.
I have liked Bear from the time I first saw it, and wish that I could convince myself that it fills all of my use cases.

What Do I Miss From Evernote?

I started using Evernote back in the early 2010s (I think 2014; I’ve not checked the exact date while writing this post), both as a way to store personal notes and documents, and for some work-related project notes.

The things I miss from Evernote boil down to a few key capabilities that other apps can do, but not as well in my experience:

Evernote was very good at parsing forwarded emails, PDFs, hand-written notes, and regular text, and quickly surfacing what I needed based on a search with a few tags. It was my single external brain, in many ways.
Evernote had a cloud, desktop, and mobile component, and for me they always stayed almost perfectly in sync until right towards the end. I was able to reliably switch between devices and pick up where I left off, with only a few seconds of syncing required (at least, that’s my recollection). Because of the cloud component, I could actually work from basically any web browser if I had to (combined with Todoist for task management).
I honestly didn’t normally feel the need to use things like backlinks, even when they became available, because a series of tags were able to succinctly tie notes together.
When I moved away from Evernote I felt a little like I split my brain into multiple locations. I’ve mostly gotten used to a system with multiple tools now, but it feels less natural.

Why Not Use Bear?

When I was originally looking for Evernote alternates, one of the options I ran into was Bear, and I immediately loved how capable but simplistic it was, and the amazing mobile and desktop experience. Bear is one of the most aesthetically-pleasing apps I’ve ever used, and the iCloud sync seems to “just work” every time I’ve used it.

So if I like Bear so much, why don’t I just move to using it full time? I’ve actually tried this multiple times (and did live in it exclusively for a few months a couple years ago), and during this last bout of indecision I actually tried using Bear almost exclusively for a day full of meetings. And it honestly worked well, but when I tried to move a few pieces of my knowledgebase to it I was reminded of the hangups I always run into (and I’ll document them for future-me to review):

Bear has no concept of a difference between a note’s title and a header, and therefore, the way my brain works, I basically can’t use H1 anywhere other than for the title. This eventually leads to me using more header levels than actually look good throughout the rest of the note.
Bear has a web app on the way, but no Linux app, and therefore for now all of my work has to occur on either my MacBook or iPad. I like both, but sometimes I want access on my Linux computers.
Bear’s tag structure is both amazing and annoying. I like being able to file a note in multiple categories, but I miss the way that notes in Obsidian (and in Evernote previously) kept the filing largely out of my way, not as part of the body of the note.
I wish that the note navigation (header levels, etc) were always visible while working on notes. I use that and backlinks quite often currently, and having them hidden away in a pop-up menu doesn’t work well for me.
Bear has decent backlink support overall, but I wish it had recommendations like Obsidian does where it surfaces recent documents you’ve been working on. Almost all of the time that I’m creating backlinks I’m referring to a note I was just editing, but I may not recall the exact name of that note (I create a lot of meeting notes for work).

What’s Wrong with Obsidian?

So why am I constantly tempted to move away from Obsidian? I think my primary problems with Obsidian are two-fold:

Using Obsidian Sync, I cannot access my notes from a device that isn’t syncing my notes.
I still do not enjoy parts of the Obsidian UI/UX, and this is exacerbated on iOS (iPadOS is in between).

Let’s dig into those further.

Local Notes + Sync

In general, I actually like having my notes stored locally. There have been a number of times over the years where I’ve lost network access during a meeting, or I’m in an area without network access (plane, rural area, etc), and having my notes stored locally and synced between devices has actually been fantastic. There’s nothing that prevents me from continuing about my business, and then syncing when I again have network access.

However, there are a few downsides to this too.

When I first go to set up a new device, I have minutes worth of syncing that must occur before I’m able to use my notes. This is a minor use case, but it’s still annoying. This also impacts my workflow slightly when I jump between devices (between computer and mobile, or computer to computer); there is always some amount of a sync required before I can begin taking or modifying notes.

Also, I have no way to access notes without syncing my notes to that device. This is very rarely an issue, but occasionally I wish I could log into a website to access my notes, instead of having to sync my notes to a computer before accessing them. Normally I work around this my only using my mobile device in such a scenario, and copy/pasting what I need to a chat app or website temporarily that I can access both places.

Now, yes, there are ways to sync between devices using something other than Obsidian Sync, and I’ve considered them, especially iCloud sync. However, from both my brief testing and what I’ve read online, Obsidian Sync is by far the best and most robust option, and neither of the above issues has been large enough that I’ve wanted to find a workaround yet.

UI/UX + Non-Native App

Over time, the Obsidian UI/UX has grown on me, but I still find it inferior to Bear in a few regards. Specifically, multi-level bulleted lists don’t render as nicely in Obsidian as Bear, and the UI has a tendency to feel more cluttered than I would prefer. Some of the clutter is entirely my fault, as I’ve chosen to use two plugins that add content to the side panels (Recent Files and Calendar), but I would argue that some of it is inherent to the design of Obsidian as well.

I’ve looked multiple times at using a different theme, and for a while I stuck with the Minimal Theme by Steph Ango (kepano), but none have to this point stuck quite as well as the default Obsidian theme. I probably could go about creating my own theme, but I have yet to be able to identify exactly what I’m looking for; I can tell that I don’t like a look and feel, but determining the why often escapes me.

Additionally, I think part of me still really likes having a native app look and feel, specifically on Apple platforms. Even though I’m typing this on my Linux desktop currently, my primary use case for a notes app is on an Apple-based device: my MacBook Pro, or my iPad or iPhone when on the go. Obsidian works well overall, but does not have the feel of a native app. Or maybe it’s the UI of a native app that I’m missing. To my point earlier, I struggle to identify exactly what bothers me at times.

Conclusion

So what is my conclusion? Honestly, I barely have one. For the time-being, I’m going to stick with Obsidian, as I have thousands of notes that would need migrated if chose a different solution, and I have yet to find anything that is a clear winner.

I will probably continue to look for ways to customize the look and feel of Obsidian to make my experience more enjoyable, and I’ll also spend some time reconsidering how I take notes. I do think that consolidating some notes into larger long-running documents will work better and help me keep from feeling like something is falling through the cracks.

And maybe I need to re-evaluate my move away from Evernote… I migrated due to some concerns of vendor lock-in and pricing, but if it solves all of my problems and the team that acquired it didn’t negatively change UI too much (which I’ve seen some online comments on), perhaps that’s the right call.

11 Years with Todoist

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 19:30:00 -0500

Today is an interesting anniversary for me, one that I never thought to keep track of until about a year ago. You see, on a fateful (but otherwise mostly forgotten) day 11 years ago, I began subscribing to Todoist Pro.

I don’t entirely recall at this point how I stumbled upon Todoist, though I do generally remember why. At the time, I was working for InSource Technologies as an embedded software developer, and I was finding that the amount of tasks & projects that I was keeping track of at work, along with those at home and at church (where I was heavily involved as a volunteer), were making me feel like I was constantly forgetting things.

Somehow, I both began learning about the GTD methodology (though it would be years before I actually attempted to implement it well), and the Todoist app. I’m guessing I tried a few other apps too, although I only really remember Wunderlist. Maybe I actually started out using Wunderlist? Who knows. Regardless, once I started using Todoist, I very quickly purchased Pro, and really didn’t look back.

Todoist has lasted me through two jobs (InSource + my current position at Precision Planting), helped me move to a new state, handle multiple professional and personal projects, take multiple trips (including international!), assist my church as a volunteer, and ensure that I don’t miss important dates and deadlines (including birthdays - my sister will never let me live down that I missed wishing her a Happy Birthday once, and ever since it has been a recurring task in Todoist for me!), and countless other tasks both big and large. I also use it for my shopping list, and sometimes even for taking quick notes to be transferred later to a notes app!

Over the years, I’ve been tempted by other task management applications, which I’ve documented on my blog. However, I’ve always come back to Todoist, probably due to its inherent cross-platform nature, ease of use, and reliability. I’ve had remarkably few issues with it over the years, and don’t recall any actual issues in probably the last 5 that rose to the level of causing me problems or that I reported.

And thinking back, I’m honestly not sure that I’ve ever relied heavily on any of the changes that the Todoist team has introduced along the way. Most of the functionality I rely on today is the same core functionality that brought me to the platform years ago: ease of use, natural language processing + task creation, cross-platform syncing, good design, simplicity with extra features when needed.

If you’ve never given Todoist a try, and you’re in search of a good, robust, but simple to use task management app, I strongly recommend checking it out!

Note: This is not an ad or sponsored content, simply a post from a happy user!

A Digital Home

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0500

Yesterday, in my post on Blogging Expectations, I mentioned the concept of a website as a virtual home, and wanted to expand on it.

I like having a singular place on the internet that I can point people to and say “This is Justin’s virtual home. You want to know what Justin is thinking, or what’s going on? Start here!” And I hope that’s been reflected in my blogging and my site design…

Justin Vollmer

As I’m sure any longtime reader of this site could have guessed by now, the concept of a blog or website as a virtual home is not a new idea, and I’m definitely not the first to use that phrasing. I’ve seen it in multiple places over the years, but in recent weeks it showed up on a few different blogs I follow, and I wanted to elaborate on the topic a bit more.

When I was first introduced to the internet in the early 2000s, none of the current social media platforms existed, and the primary way people communicated online was via email and instant messaging. A few people I knew used message boards or websites via the likes of Geocities, but having your own website was an anomaly. However, fairly early on my cousin began explaining basic HTML and CSS to me, and I quickly put together a simple site (which I was very proud of, though in retrospect it was nothing spectacular).

Fast forward to my high school and college years, and Myspace and (later) Facebook were becoming popular. I had accounts on both over the years, but looking back, neither ever felt quite right to me. Sure, I enjoyed being able to communicate with friends and share status updates, but the pages were never mine. They were someone else’s space that I was renting, or occupying, like a town square, which matches Naz’s interpretation:

A platform or network doesn’t allow for much configuration. The town square isn’t owned by you.

Naz Hamid

By the mid-2010s I was beginning to tire of social media platforms as my primary online presence, and once again began working on hosting my own site (through various platforms - if you want to see the full history, check out my 10-Year Anniversary post). But it honestly wasn’t until about 6 years into having my own website that I started to make it mine, and another couple of years after that before I started really using my website as my home base. As Shellsharks put it:

A website, your own personal website, is … a digital home, on the web. … You can design it how you want, add rooms (pages), invite friends over, paint the walls, hang some art, share your recipes, get some much-needed peace and quiet, anything!

Shellsharks

And if I’m being honest… I’m still learning what all I can choose to do with a personal website! I’m slowly figuring out blogging, and I’m also getting better about my website being the place from which I publish my thoughts and ideas (see my POSSE page for more on this concept). But, just like with a physical house, I can always continue to improve it. I can build new rooms (pages, subdomains), I can create more posts (books in this analogy?), and I can change the design (wallpaper? art? paint?). My own imagination is really my only limit!

So… final thoughts? Go create your own home on the internet! Buy a domain name (a plot of land), and start small, and make your site whatever you want it to be!

Blogging Expectations

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0500

A few days ago I ran across the post Blogging Expectations by Kev Quirk, and a quick read told me that it was something I wanted to add my commentary to.

…Okay, I just glanced at the date on Kev’s post. “A few days ago” was over a week ago. Apparently my backlog of post ideas is taking longer to review than I anticipated.

Anyhow, today I re-read Kev’s post, and (of course) followed the links to the posts his thoughts were based on, and a few thoughts stuck out to me.

I’m haunted by a feeling that it’s all about attention and that I’m doing everything in my power to hide that reason from myself. That thought leaves a bitter aftertaste, and I’m not comfortable with it.

Robert Birming

I like attention, I want my blog posts to sometimes show up in Hacker News or get shared on big social media sites … I want people to send me an email sharing their thoughts or opinion on it …

Joel Chrono

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to have engagement from your writing. Similarly to Joel, I love it when I get engagement from my posts - I enjoy the discourse that comes from them. The recommendations. The friendships. It’s great.

Sure, I write for myself, but I also write for you guys too. Does that make me an attention seeker, or an narcissist? Maybe, but so what. 🤷‍♂️

Kev Quirk

Sometimes I ponder why I write blog posts. Is it for myself, as a way to process things? As a way to attempt to get engagement, and seek attention? As a way for friends and family (and future Justin) to see what is/was going on at any given date?

I think for me, it’s a little of all of the above. I like having a singular place on the internet that I can point people to and say “This is Justin’s virtual home. You want to know what Justin is thinking, or what’s going on? Start here!” And I hope that’s been reflected in my blogging and my site design, although I know I could do a better job of it if I’d focus on it.

I also like feedback and interactions with others on the internet. Does a lack of interaction cause me to stop posting? No, but an increase in interactions does cause me to increase my posting. Is that a problem? Similar to Kev, I don’t think it is, as long as I don’t let attention seeking become the driving force for my blogging. 🤷‍♂️

Operating Rules for Email Collaboration

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 16:00:00 -0500

Today, while following a blogger/IndieWeb rabbit rail (when I click on a link from someone I follow, and then promptly begin following other links to other sites that interest me), I ran across an excellent post by Naz Hamid on Operating Rules for Email Collaboration, and promptly decided I needed to link to it with light commentary on my site.

I’ve slowly been improving my email usage over time, since my tendency left unchecked is to be verbose. However, I’ve learned that verboseness should not be the norm when communicating via email, as it can cause your thoughts to be lost in the weeds. And now that I am using email much more than earlier in my career, learning to use it well is important.

A few of Naz’s points stuck out to me:

Clarity and conciseness are your friends.
Use headers. Or bold them. And even use italics.
Lists are your best friend.
Order your asks or feedback in lists by order of importance.
Read your email before you send it.

I do some of these today (specifically headers, bolding, and italics, and proof-reading of my email before sending… this is where I make heavy use of delayed Send options). But I definitely have room to improve, and I’ll be reviewing his recommendations when authoring emails in the future.

If email is a form of communication you use often, I strongly recommend reading through his whole post (with an example!). And even if it’s not, there is probably some concept that is worth applying to whatever text-based form of communication you do use! 🙂

An Amusing Incident at the Office

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 05:35:00 -0600

I’ve shared this story with a few coworkers and family members, and decided to write up a short post to share with y’all as well. I’ve left out the names of those involved, purely out of a respect for their privacy, and used only titles as descriptions for the story.

As a part of my current job, it is fairly common for me to have meetings with various vendors, and this past Thursday was no exception. As I was walking between buildings to get to a meeting with a vendor that had stopped by our offices while in town, I met one of my coworkers, the IT manager, and we stopped to chat briefly.

Now, a little backstory here - I’ve worked with this individual for a few years, and in general we get along fairly well, and have had a number of wide-ranging conversations throughout our time working together. Our topic of conversation today veered towards individuals in the office coming in when they were feeling under the weather, and we were both a bit animated on the topic. (In case you’re curious, we both strongly prefer that if an individual is not feeling well, they take extra precautions and work remotely, and not spread whatever they have to the rest of the office.)

As we’re standing in the hallway talking, another coworker, the head of events for our company, walks up, and asks me if I’m okay, or if the pressure of my job is getting to me, and I’m losing it?

… What? I was confused.

It’s only then that we find out that from the perspective of those in outside of the hallway, the IT manager is just out of view behind a door, and so it appears that I’m standing in the hall talking animatedly to… myself!

All involved had a good laugh, and I assured everyone that I was not losing my mind and talking to the wall, at least not yet!

2024 Year in Review

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:50:00 -0600

I know that they say time flies by faster as we age, but this year I’ve noticed it to be true more than in recent memory! For my yearly review, I’m once again attempting to highlight major changes or areas of focus in my life, instead of doing a chronological review of the past year.

As was true last year, very little has changed in my personal life this year. I am continuing to attend the same LCMS church, and have begun to get more involved as time goes on. I have picked up a couple of new personal projects that give me a fun diversion on occasion, which includes expanding my work on my family history, and beginning to digitize old family photos and videos. Both will continue throughout 2025, with the digitization process being one of my biggest goals to spend time on in the coming year.

In my professional life, my job has largely remained the same, though I would say my workload has increased some. I’m still in the office 4-5 days a week, though I could dial that back to 3-4 if I really wanted to. A lot of my job continues to include interacting with team members across multiple departments, which is often made easier by being in person, instead of relying solely on Slack conversations or Zoom meetings.

Over the course of 2024 there have also been a number of personnel changes at work that have affected me to various degrees, with two of the departures being individuals whom I’ve worked with for years. It has taken some adjustments on my part to get used to them no longer being present in the office, and along the way I’ve also had the opportunity to take on some roles that are continuing to challenge me!

Throughout 2024 I’ve stuck with my primary laptop being a Mac, although I’ve used my Linux laptop and desktop a little more in the past few months as well. I continue to try to choose cross-platform tools when possible that allow me to work seamlessly on whichever computer I feel like using, and I’ve been looking at a few alternatives to Apple-based tools, specifically photos. I’ve been using Immich for a while now as a backup solution, and have begun experimenting with it being my primary photo repository, instead of relying on Apple Photos for everything. The jury is still out on if I’ll fully embrace Immich, but so far I’m really liking it.

My note-taking/PKM and task management setup have largely stayed the same throughout 2024. I’ve tried OmniFocus 4 a few times, but have always come back to Todoist for tasks, which I think boils down to ease of use and cross-platform ability. For notes, I’m still using Obsidian, and I honestly haven’t looked closely at alternate options much. I’m fairly happy with the overall abilities, and for the same reasoning as why I’ve stuck with Todoist… Obsidian is insanely powerful, and works well across multiple platforms. I do wish it was a little nicer on my phone, but I normally only glance at notes there, and don’t do heavy editing.

My reading took an even bigger hit this year than last, though I’ve yet to put my finger on exactly what the reason was. I had at least one two-month period where I didn’t complete any books, and a few other near-month-long stints. What I was doing, I honestly don’t recall… I know that I’ve struggled to spend as much time reading in the mornings as normal, largely due to being distracted with other projects and ideas. My goal is to once again increase my reading rate in the year to come.

In website news, I’ve stuck with Hugo, though over the past few months I’ve made a fairly large number of changes, starting with the overall design. By early November I was tiring of the theme that I’ve been using, and so I made the switch to my own fork of the Bilberry theme. The change in themes also gave me an opportunity to add a new status update content type to the site, which in conjunction with Robb Knight’s Echofeed is allowing me to attempt POSSE, where I post updates to my own site, then syndicate them elsewhere (currently only Mastodon, but I’m experimenting with Bluesky as well).

I also migrated my website’s hosting from DigitalOcean to AWS (more on this at a later point, I think), and have successfully run that setup for over a month. DigitalOcean was a great way to start out, but I was running into some limitations in their app platform approach based on what I wanted to do with this site, and it gave me the perfect excuse to play with AWS a bit more as well.

I originally intended to post weekly on my website throughout 2024, though by mid-Spring I had fallen off the bandwagon, and my approach just wasn’t working. This caused me to pause posting for a while, though I began adding new posts again in the fall as I began spending more time with the site overall. I haven’t decided if I want to attempt a post a week in 2025, though I definitely do want to continue to increase my writing output.

And thus concludes my 2024 year in review! I continue to thank God for all the blessings of the past year, and I look forward to finding out what is in store for 2025!

Happy New Year!

You’re a Blogger, Not an Essayist

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 07:00:00 -0600

While I don’t recall how I found it, earlier this week I ran across You’re a Blogger, Not an Essayist by Barry Hess, and a couple of points stuck out to me.

First off - go read Barry’s blog post, it’s worth it. I’ll wait.

⏱️

You’re back? Good, on to my thoughts!

You don’t need to labor over your posts. You don’t need to have perfect grammar or spelling. You don’t need to leave a post in draft for seven months, pouring over research. (Though you can if you want!) You don’t really need to have an idea.

Just write. Then share.

As I’ve noted in other recent blog posts, learning to just spend a short time putting my thoughts down in a blog post and then publishing is something I’m intentionally working on. My perfectionism streak causes me to often a) doubt that my thoughts are worth posting, and b) spend a lot of time debating phrasing, honing my points, etc.

But you know what?

You don’t have to be an essayist. … Don’t let those essayists discourage you from blogging.

Barry’s right. There are essayists, some of whom write amazing essays for their blog, and I greatly appreciate reading them. But that’s not me. It could be if I really wanted to spend all of my time writing, but that’s not the path I chose in life. My blog is a way to share my thoughts and interests with others, and sometimes my future self, and a way to start conversations.

And so, with that, I’ll thank Barry for blogging and giving me something to think on and blog about (thanks Barry!), and conclude this short post with Barry’s closing thoughts:

Just write. Just blog.

The Colbert Questionert

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:00:00 -0600

I enjoyed reading Hyde/Lazybear’s answers to the Colbert Questionert in my RSS feeds earlier this week, and thought it would be a fun little exercise + post for my Saturday morning.

And so, without further ado…

Best sandwich? A burger of some form
What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out? CDs/DVDs containing old video effects (lower thirds, transitions, etc)
What is the scariest animal? The Anglerfish
Apples or oranges? Oranges
Have you ever asked someone for their autograph? Yes, after a concert at a signing table; never at random
What do you think happens when we die? As a Christian, I believe our bodies will rest in the grave awaiting the final day when soul and body are reunited, and the souls of all who die in faith are immediately in the presence of Christ.
Favorite action movie? I have a few, but currently Edge of Tomorrow
Favorite smell? A spring rain, or freshly cleaned clothes. Or coffee…
Least favorite smell? Rotten chicken or eggs
Exercise: worth it? Definitely!
Flat or sparkling? Sparkling
Most used app on your phone? It’s either Slack or Safari
You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? Jupiter by Holst, or Riverdance by Bill Whelan
What number am I thinking of? 43
Describe the rest of your life in 5 words? Family, Learning, Tech, Work, Food

On Blogging and Substack

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 19:15:00 -0600

Last week, Manu’s post on blogging, substacking (?), and owning digital real estate crossed my feed, and caught my attention for a few reasons: a) I read a lot of Manu’s posts, because I find his thoughts interesting, and b) because blogging and owning digital real estate is high on my priority list/topics of interest currently, for reasons that I don’t fully understand yet.

For myself, I looked briefly at Substack a few years ago, but didn’t feel like it offered anything for me based on the way that I run this website. I’m not a prolific enough writer that I need a newsletter, and I definitely have no plans to request compensation for anything I write (unless I choose to change careers, and that isn’t something I’m considering). Also, I’ve held the opinion for a while that if someone is going to go to all of the work to write a newsletter, they should ideally be in control of the domain and infrastructure it’s posted on, since platforms come and go. I will say that I followed Moly White’s migration from Substack to self-hosted Ghost with interest though, and on the off-chance I ever need a guide, I’ve bookmarked her post detailing her journey.

A few hours after I saw Manu’s post, Kev followed up with a post agreeing with Manu’s sentiments, and recommending that his readers go and read Manu’s post, which I will whole-heartedly second. And like Kev, I wanted to highlight one of Manu’s final comments:

[I]f you care about the web, get off social media platforms and get yourself your own piece of digital real estate. And if you don’t know where or how to start, reach out. There are plenty of people out there—including myself—who are more than happy to help you.

Kev and Manu are infinitely more capable than myself when it comes to web design, blogging, etc. But if I can in any way provide insight on how to get started, perhaps from a different perspective than theirs, please reach out!

You Should Have a Website

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 20:45:00 -0600

I’ve championed owning your own website for a while now, and have been posting more heavily about it over the past year or so. My own journey to running my own website was born out of a combination of desiring the challenge of maintaining my own site, wanting a place where I could control what I post and how it looks, and wanting some longevity and permanence for my web presence. And over time, I’ve begun to believe that it would be beneficial both for the individual and for society at large if more people followed suit.

I’ve also been keeping an eye out for other bloggers with a similar ethos, which is how I ran across The Website Manifesto by Nora Reed yesterday, and thought they made enough good points that it was worth rebroadcasting. I won’t rehash the post here, as there are too many good points. You should read it yourself.

I’ll leave you with the final thought from Nora’s manifesto:

My hope is that dipping your toe into making a website will be a first step toward having agency over your web presence and, ultimately, your relationship with technology in general. So much of the web as it is right now is social media websites that try to maximize how much time you spend looking at their ads, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Making a website is a tiny way to get a little bit of that agency back. I hope yours serves you well.

Seconding the Call to Blog More Often

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 19:55:00 -0600

Consistency is a common challenge for bloggers.

Blog consistently and your followers will look forward to reading your posts. Blog infrequently and your readers will forget about you.

This evening while browsing my RSS reader (Fiery Feeds, for those interested), I ran across A Call to Blog More Often by Cole, which is quoted above, and wanted to second his call, and add my two cents to the conversation.

Outside of a few news sites, blogs are one of the primary forms of written content that I follow online. Bloggers are often where I get ideas for new personal projects, books to read, places to visit, or interesting ideas to consider. I’ve constantly grown the number of blog feeds I subscribe to over the years, and there are certain individuals whose content I’m excited to read every time I see a new post in feed reader.

Personally, I’ve attempted to write more often, but consistency is still a struggle. Much of my recent work on this site has been with the express purpose of making my interactions with the site and its content more engaging for me, to increase my desire to post more consistently.

So, I second Cole’s call. Blog more often, and with consistency. Your readers, such as myself, will greatly enjoy and appreciate it!

Note: I’ve written about my love of RSS feeds here, and if you’re new to the concept, I highly recommend taking a look. RSS feeds aren’t new tech, but are still an amazing way to consume content at your own pace, and without the distractions much of the modern web seems to contain.

App Defaults 2024

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:40:00 -0600

It’s been just shy of a year since I posted my default apps of 2023, and after seeing a few other bloggers post updates to theirs, I decided to do the same!

Overall, not much has changed, it turns out. I’ve sampled multiple alternates in the past 12 months to almost all of the apps and services I use, but I’ve only actually migrated two:

📰 RSS Service: Newsblur
- I got tired of maintaining my self-hosted FreshRSS instance, and settled on Newsblur as a viable (paid) alternative. I’m mostly happy with it so far after multiple months, though I’m keeping an eye on self-hosted options still.
🔑 Password Management: 1Password
- I switched off of Bitwarden early in 2024, due to an interest in trying out some of the developer-focused options built into 1Password. So far, I’m a happy customer, and have recommended it to multiple friends and colleagues.

Truth Is, I Don't Need an Excuse

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 19:40:00 -0600

When traveling by car, I normally split my time between listening to audiobooks, podcasts, and music. However, on my way home from visiting family for Thanksgiving, I wanted a break from the podcasts I was listening to, and so decided to have some blogs I subscribe to read to me by (I think?) Siri.

Now, the fact that a blog post was read to me by a voice assistant is NOT the point of this post. That in and of itself is not groundbreaking, although I did find that listening to my current Siri settings (an Australian sounding voice) narrate a blog post was an experience.

No, the point of this post is to add my own commentary to one of the posts I listened to: I’m Switching Back to Android by Kev Quirk.

Kev’s post initially caught my attention because I was curious what was driving him back to Android, as it’s a move I’ve considered in the past but never acted on. I’ve always come up with good reasons for not switching away from the Apple ecosystem, though I still keep an eye on the Android world, and attempt to make tool choices that allow me to migrate between platforms if needed.

But the part of his post that I really wanted to comment on was this line towards the end of the post, under the heading “Why Switch?”:

But in all honestly, I think it just boils down to the fact that I’ve been on iOS for quite some time now and I fancy a change. I think I was looking for an excuse to switch in my last post. Truth is, I don’t need an excuse, so I’m switching just because I want to. 🤷‍♂️

That’s a way of thinking that I need to consider more often. There are many times, both in technical decisions and in the general choices of everyday life, where I attempt to come up with an excuse for why I’m making the decision, and in some cases (or, let’s be honest, in a lot of cases) I don’t ultimately make a change, because the main reason I could come up with is “because I want to”. Is having a reason for my choices good? Yes, most definitely. But from time to time, the reasoning or excuse may be “because I want to”, and so long as my choice isn’t hurting someone else, that’s a completely acceptable approach!

So thanks, Kev, for switching to Android, and blogging about it, and giving me something to think on. I don’t intend to make the same change when it comes to my smartphone (at least, not yet), but I fully intend to more often consider the last line of that paragraph:

I fancy a change… Truth is, I don’t need an excuse: I’m switching just because I want to.

Bluesky and Enshittification

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:00:00 -0600

Two days ago, Cory Doctorow’s daily Pluralistic post showed up in my RSS reader, and the title caught my attention: Bluesky and enshittification. I’ve read a number of his previous posts regarding “enshittification”, a term he coined to refer to a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality, and so I started skimming this article to see what Bluesky had done to catch his attention.

The details are probably not ultimately important for this blog post, but the short version is that Bluesky raised $15M in a series A funding round, led by venture capital fund Blockchain Capital. Many in the fediverse are concerned by the effects venture capital can have on platforms, and are especially skeptical of anyone involved with blockchains (see this article on The Fediverse Report for more details).

A few hours later, Molly White’s thoughts on the topic crossed my Mastodon feed, and I decided that I wanted to add to the conversation in my own little way, though it took me a couple of days to get around to it.

While I tend to not be quite as dogmatic as many in the fediverse when it comes to these topics, I too have begun to think more critically about where I post content, and how to have more control over the platforms on which I share my thoughts. That is one of the underlying reasons I started this website a decade ago, and is also one of the driving forces behind recent changes to eventually allow me to become a POSSE-er, joining individuals like Cory Doctorow, Molly White, and others on the IndieWeb whose voices I respect.

I like the idea of this website being my home on the internet, my little corner of the web, and being able to syndicate from here to the world. I like being able to point friends, family, coworkers, and anyone who is curious to a single location, from which they can read my thoughts, and learn about who I am, and what I value.

I’ll close with this quote from Doctorow. It’s a little more direct that my current views, but I more or less agree with the underlying sentiment:

“I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.”

Site Redesign

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 13:46:02 -0600

After weeks (or maybe even months) of considerations and playing around with various themes, I’ve decided to migrate from the venerable Hugo-Coder theme to a custom fork of the Bilberry Hugo Theme.

Why? For a couple of reasons.

First off all, every time I work on my website, I’ve felt that the design was getting a bit long in the tooth, and that it was time for either a platform change (migrating to a different static site generator), or at least a theme change. I’ve yet to find a different SSG that I’m ready to dive into yet, and so investigating alternate themes has been my primary focus.

I ran across the Bilberry theme about two weeks ago, but at the time, I wasn’t quite ready to take the plunge. There were a handful of design choices I wasn’t happy with, and so I kept looking for other options. However, none came, and so I began looking at the theme more closely, and considering a fork with the changes made that I care about.

Saturday, Nov 2nd, I finally decided to strike out and begin migrating my site.

The content was by and large trivial to migrate. Most of my work was replicating the features I liked out of Coder in Bilberry, and customizing its behavior. While I’m at it, I’m also beginning to make my website IndieWeb-compliant. I really like the POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) design theory, and so I’m beginning to take steps to make my website capable of that.

As of today, Sunday, Nov 3rd, I’m happy enough with the overall design and behavior locally that I’m going to merge the branch I’ve been working on into my main branch, and this change will go live.

A few notes:

There is a high probability that a bunch of old posts will show up in the RSS feed - my apologies. This is because I removed my old “archived” post section and am only keeping a single set of blog posts now.
If you want to see my long-form posts and my short statuses, etc, I recommend you follow my main RSS feed.

Removing giscus Comments

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 10:30:00 -0500

Back in January, I added giscus comments to my blog, as a potential way for readers to comment and react to my posts. At the time, I didn’t necessarily have expectations that anyone would, and that has borne out over the past few months.

And so, I’ve decided to bring the giscus experiment to an end. It’s one extra thing my website doesn’t need, and as I continue to reconsider how I use my website, removing cruft and visual clutter is high on the list of potential improvements.

That being said, comments and reactions are still welcome! I may add an email address or other additional contact mechanism in the future to encourage such interactions, but in the meantime, the easiest means of reaching me will be via my Mastodon account.

Quiet Weekends

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 16:30:00 -0500

As I’m typing out this blog post (in Obsidian, if you want to know), I’m sitting quietly in my living room, listening to the occasional sounds of vehicles passing by, and sipping on my final mug of coffee for the day. It’s Saturday, and while that has meant a day off from work for years, and often a day to relax, I’ve increasingly turned it into a day where my only interaction with others is virtually, and even that is limited.

My current approach started a little over two years ago, when my career took a turn from being largely an individual contributor who spent most days developing code, to a position in which a large portion of my time involves communication of some form, whether that’s via Slack, email, or verbal communications (meetings and video calls). It’s something I’ve slowly adapted to, and have honestly come to enjoy, but it does require some re-calibration of my personal life.

The more of my time that I spend in communication with others for work, the more I find that spending the weekend engaged in much more limited conversation is required for me to feel rejuvenated, which should come as no surprise for those familiar with introverted personalities. It is not uncommon for me to effectively not talk verbally to anyone for nearly 48 hours straight, and only do some light texting with friends and family.

Weekends have also become a time when I try to capture any outstanding ideas related to work or my personal life that have been bouncing around my head, but I’ve neglected to write down, either in a note or in my task manager. It’s a time for an occasional game, or perhaps a creative endeavor. Last week, for instance, I spent part of a day reorganizing my website, which had no tangible benefits, but I found it cathartic. This afternoon I spent some time investigating possible new themes for my website, though I’m opting to stick with Coder for the time being.

I’m not sure that there is an ultimate point to this post. Instead, I think I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out, and in a manner that differs from the rest of my week. And after all, the point of of having a blog is to use it in any way I see fit, right? :-)

Bad Days in History

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 19:05:00 -0500

A couple of weeks ago, while browsing through the book selection at my local Barnes & Noble (yes, they still exist!), I ran across a type of daily reading that I’ve never considered before: Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year. My normal choice for daily reading is generally either a devotional, or some kind of thought-provoking or inspirational reading, so I picked the book up with the intent of a quick glance… but definitely not a purchase.

However, by the very fact that I’m writing a blog post about it, you can probably guess what happened next. I flipped to the reading of the day, and found it amusing enough that I kept skimming. A few minutes later, the book was on my pile to purchase, and ever since it’s been part of my daily reading regimen.

But why is it so interesting, and why would I recommend it to others? It boils down to the combination of history and (grim) humor. I’ve always been someone who enjoys history and interesting facts, and so far this book is scratching that itch well. Plus, it adds a bit of randomness to my day right at the start!

My Software Stack is (Mostly) Old Too

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 05:45:00 -0500

After reading My software stack is old by Manu (Manuel Moreale), I became curious about the age of the software I use day in and day out as well. So, I spent a few minutes making a note of what tools I use daily, and found that I have an interesting mix of tools from basically two distinct time periods.

I’m writing this post presently in Obsidian (2020), which replaced Evernote (2000) a few years ago, and is the newest software I use daily. I’ll then be publishing to my website via Hugo (2013).

For work, I use Sublime Text (2008) and Sublime Merge (2018) on the software development side, and Altium (2005) for hardware development.

On the less technical side, I’m split between Apple Mail (2003) and Outlook (1997) for email (personal vs work), manage my tasks in Todoist (2007), communicate with coworkers via Slack (2013), and browse the web with Firefox (2004).

I think my summary after pondering that usage a little bit is that while I’m quite easily distracted by new tools, and enjoy investigating them, I rarely find a reason to move on from the older tools I already know and can rely on.

Sorry for the Spam in the RSS Feed This Morning

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 08:39:02 -0600

This morning I made some changes to the permalink structure of my blog posts, which inadvertently caused a number of my older posts to reappear in the RSS feeds. Sorry for the spam!

Adding giscus Comments

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 11:00:00 -0600

One day after the tenth anniversary of this blog, and I’m already making changes?!?

Yes, you read that right.

In both of the original incarnations of this website, via Squarespace and WordPress, I had a commenting system available and enabled, although I never received much feedback from it. If I’m honest, it was mostly spam, actually. And so, when I migrated to Hugo, I didn’t make finding a comment solution a high priority.

However, that’s not to say that I didn’t keep considering the options though. I glanced at some of the standard solutions (such as Discus & Commento), but as this site does not generate any income and only has a small number of monthly page views, I wasn’t ready to spend money just for comments.

Then, about a year ago, I got the idea to try out giscus, after reading Alan Pope’s blog post on the topic. Giscus looked interesting, but at the time I was unsure of exactly how involved I wanted to be in my blog, and so I simply filed the idea in in my Someday/Maybe list as a future possibility.

That all brings us to the past 24 hours, when, after writing my 10-year anniversary post, I began wondering what I could do to expand on my existing site. The idea of a way for readers to interact with me outside of Mastodon came to mind, and I once again began researching comment solutions. And, after reading many blog posts, Reddit threads, and examining features and pricing structures, I settled on giscus as a simple method for adding comments and reactions to my posts.

So what now? For my part, I’ll continue to post, and attempt to increase the frequency of my writing, as it’s good for me to push myself some creatively. And for you, dear reader: comments and reactions are now welcome!

10 Years of JustinVollmer.com

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of this website. It’s really, really hard to believe that I’ve been posting to and updating the site for a full decade already, and even crazier when I look back at how things have changed over the years, both in terms of the website, and in terms of me as a human as well.

Reflections on JustinVollmer.com

January 6, 2014, was supposed to be a work day for me. However, where I was living at the time was under a Level 3 snow emergency that day, and so instead of driving to the office, I stayed home. Back then, I was much less equipped to work remotely than I am now, and so I didn’t have anything pressing to work on, and decided to set up a website. I had heard of Squarespace, and after taking a quick look at its features, decided it was probably the easiest way to start out. And so, with that, JustinVollmer.com was born! 🎉 If you want to get an idea of my thought process at the time, check out my Welcome blog post, left up for posterity.

Now, granted, at the time it was fairly humble, and looked quite different than today. My intent at the time was to use my website as a combination blog, social media hub, and place to feature videos I was shooting for the church I attended at the time. Over the next few years I would tweak various pieces of the site, but I kept the same general theme, and always hosted some creative work, some blog posts, links to my social media, and even my resume for a while when I was changing jobs.

Over my holiday break in 2017, I decided to move away from Squarespace, and instead migrated my content to a WordPress site, hosted on Amazon Lightsail. I also took the opportunity to prune some of the content that I was no longer actively working on (specifically videos), and went with a more simple design. Unfortunately, I don’t have any screenshots from this period, but if you are familiar with any of the default WordPress themes from that time, it probably had a similar look and feel. I dabbled with blogging for the next few years, mostly posting about my tech decisions and thoughts, and also introduced my Year in Review posts, which I have continued to this day.

Nothing much else changed however until mid-Spring of 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when I decided to participate in the 100 Days to Offload challenge. I decided to focus my website even heavier on my blog during those 100 days, and actually managed to post something for 100 days straight, even though I would struggle to call some of the content a blog post in retrospect.

Unfortunately, the 100 days experience left me burned out to such an extent that I really didn’t touch my website until right before Thanksgiving, 2020, when I made the decision to both migrate my website from WordPress to Hugo, and also to switch my analytics platform. I spent a lot of time manually migrating all of my posts, ensuring that as many previous links worked as possible, and tweaking the config until I was happy with the end result.

And, really, my website hasn’t changed since the end of 2020. Of course, I’ve added a few pages here and there, and I’ve continued to post to my blog, somewhat sporadically. But I’ve left the overall design alone, and haven’t even replaced the theme. That’s not to say that I haven’t considered other options - I have. I just haven’t found a specific feature set that blends the easy support of Hugo with other features that are appealing enough to make me devote the time and energy required to migrate.

What will the future hold? I have no idea, honestly. I will continue to look at other options, I suspect, especially some of the CMS solutions that other bloggers use. Or perhaps I’ll look further into something like Eleventy (11ty), another static site generator, which has been on my radar for a while. I’m sure if and when I make a change, I’ll announce it with a post!

Reflections on Justin Vollmer

Ten years has also led to many changes for me, as a person. As I begin writing this section, I expect it will be less wordy than the writing about my blog, but we’ll see.

In 2014, I was working at my first full-time job after college. I was still living near where I grew up, and was not really sure what I wanted to do with my life. I enjoyed the engineering work I was doing, which was in my field, but I was also dabbling enough with video work for the church I was attending (a non-denominational church associated loosely with the Word of Faith movement) that I was considering what full-time ministry would look like.

That changed in 2015, when I accepted my current position at Precision Planting, and moved to Illinois. I also began attending a non-denominational church with a different theology, with a much more Reformed bent (though I didn’t understand that at the time). I began to volunteer at church in other ways, not necessarily as creative, and spent a majority of my time focused on my work, while also making time for friends and small group.

2020 was really a shock to me, although in retrospect it was very good in a lot of ways. Prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, I was becoming extremely burned out, and was about to take a step back from volunteering. The pandemic caused me to have to stay home, and gave me time to begin re-evaluating how I was spending my time, and to just decompress a bit. I have told people in my life, in all honesty, the 2020 to 2022 timeframe was one of the best for me personally, as it gave me time to work on myself as a person, to create some habits that have held to this day, and to just put my head down and do work in the comfort of my home, which helped me to feel extremely productive.

Mid-2022 saw a number of shifts though, in fairly rapid succession. First off, in the Spring, some theological study and re-evaluation that had been brewing for the past 9-12 months came to a head, and I made the decision to leave the church I had been at since moving to Illinois, and attend a church that matched what I now believe. Second, in the Summer, my career path at work took a turn, leading to my work now that is much less heads-down coding, and more project management focused, which includes what would have previously seemed to me an extreme amount of communication, but which I am now settling into with some degree of comfort.

And now, it’s 2024! What will the future hold for me? I also, of course, don’t know that. Or, rather, the parts I do know, I am not comfortable putting into writing yet. I have a few habits that I am working to rebuild this year, mostly from a health (physical and mental) perspective. I also have a few tech-related ideas that have been nagging at the back of my mind for a while that I may act on, mostly centered around how I accomplish certain tasks.

Conclusion

Okay, yeah, this probably didn’t need a header. But I’m going to create one anyways!

Like I said at the start, in many ways, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s already been 10 years since I began this website, and even harder to fathom everything that’s changed since then. But also, I appreciate this opportunity to reflect, and to be thankful for the blessings I’ve been given, and the way I’ve grown, and the things I’ve learned, in that timespan.

Here’s to another ten years! 🥂

2023 Year in Review

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 13:50:00 -0600

Wow, this year has seemingly flown by! Somehow, it’s already December 31st, which means, it’s time for me to publish my year in review! I’ve decided once again this year to focus on major changes (or how things have stayed the same) in the last 12 months, instead of writing a sequential highlight reel.

Not a lot has changed in my personal life over the past 12 months, which is largely fine with me (I’m sure that will come as a shock to those who know me well… sarcasm). I am still attending the same LCMS church that I referenced in last year’s review, and continuing my study of theology, though at a slower rate than in 2022.

I’m also still working in the office 4-5 days a week, and therefore make much less use of my home workstation than I did in 2020-2022. And, as I alluded to last year, my workload has continued to shift from largely siloed work as a programmer, to more day to day interaction with engineers across our R&D department. This even led to me presenting to our dealer network on an impending new product offering by the beginning of December, a large change for someone who is an avowed introvert! I am very much enjoying my work though, and am happy to be continually challenged with a variety of projects and task that push me to grow my skillset.

2023 has seen me continuing to move to a more Mac-centric tech life. I still run Linux on a number of systems at work and at home (and in the cloud), but my daily driver is my MacBook Pro at this point, as MacOS on Apple Silicon has proven to be an extremely reliable platform when at my desk, in meetings, and on the go. I still tend to choose cross-platform tooling where I can, but am less afraid of choosing a Mac-only tool if it fits my needs.

In last year’s review, I mentioned that I had returned to using Evernote, and to the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. Unfortunately, both of those changed some in 2023. I stuck with GTD through mid-Spring, one of the longest stints I have ever been able to keep the practice up. Around that time, however, I began to fall off the wagon, which also coincided with my continued concern with changes that Evernote’s new owner, Bending Spoons, was making to the tool.

Over the summer I made the decision to migrate away from Evernote, to two separate tools: DEVONthink 3 for document management, and Obsidian for note taking. I am not sure if I will continue with them both long term, but so far they seem to be sticking (or have for the past 6 months, give or take). DEVONthink is where I drop all of the PDFs I may need to access later (largely scans of physical documents so that I don’t have to rely on a filing cabinet), and Obsidian handles my day to day note taking, meeting notes, etc. I also happen to be writing this blog post in Obsidian. 🙂 I am still keeping my eye on Bear, and I may give it another try in 2024, as it is still one of the most beautiful note taking apps I’ve ever found, and I find it very pleasing to use. However, Obsidian’s cross-platform and open nature (a simple folder of files, ultimately), combined with some improvements to the UI, have kept me using it on a daily/weekly basis so far though.

I have continued to use Todoist for most of 2023 as well, although I have looked at a few alternatives throughout the year. The most appealing option I have considered is OmniFocus, especially with their latest major update (OmniFocus 4). It is much more full-featured than Todoist, and has a few options, such as defer dates, that Todoist doesn’t really handle yet. However, Todoist has literally a decade of momentum already in my life, and so any migration to another tool is a large ordeal, and one I won’t make unless I’m positive it will provide some improvement. We’ll see what happens in 2024…

Unfortunately, my reading took a bit of a hit this year, although I still read more in 2023 than in many years in recent memory. I knew going into this year that I finished an abnormally high number of books in 2022, and that this year was likely to be slightly lower. I’m finishing out the year with an average of two books per month, or a total of 25 books completed. I ended up starting multiple series this year, and intend to continue reading a few of them, especially Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series, and Naomi Novik’s The Scholomance trilogy. And, continuing on from last year, I once again used Prologue for all of my audiobook listening, with Plex as the backend library provider.

Speaking of Plex, I have continued to use Plexamp for virtually all of my music listening this year. I have continued to build my personal library of music, both by acquiring CDs (largely via eBay), as well as purchasing digital files when that is the more expedient (or only available) option. I have become accustomed enough to this style that of music consumption that I have a hard time even considering using a streaming service anymore.

In very brief JustinVollmer.com news, I have continued to use Hugo as my website framework, with GoatCounter as the only analytics on the site. I have continued to keep my blogroll and /uses page up to date, and recently added a /now page, inspired by Robb Knight’s recent The Web is Fantastic post.

And that concludes my 2023 year in review! I’m continually thankful for all the blessings of the past year, and I look forward to finding out what is in store for 2024!

Happy New Year!

Update 1 (2024-04-20): I decided that keeping my /now page updated is not something I currently enjoy, and so as of today it has been removed.

My Default Apps at the End of 2023

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 14:20:40 -0600

I first saw this trend a little over a month ago from Kev Quirk, and soon after, most of my favorite bloggers had joined in. Robb Knight has even been compiling a list, and I really wanted to jump on the bandwagon. But, unfortunately, I was busy enough that I didn’t have the time to write up my own post. That is, until now…

And so, without further ado, here’s a list of my default apps at the end of 2023:

✉️ Mail Service: Zoho, Fastmail
📬 Mail Client: Apple Mail, Thunderbird
☑️ Tasks: Todoist
📓 Notes: Obsidian
📰 RSS Service: FreshRSS
🗞️ RSS Client: Fiery Feeds
⌨️ Launcher: Alfred
☁️ Cloud Storage: iCloud, Nextcloud
🖼️ Photo Library: iCloud
📷 Photo Editing: Pixelmator Pro
📹 Video Editing: Final Cut Pro
💻 Screenshots: CleanShot X
🌐 Web Browser: Safari, Firefox
💬 Chat: iMessage, Matrix, Telegram
📆 Calendar: Fantastical
🌧️ Weather: Mercury Weather, Radarscope
🎙️ Podcasts: Overcast
📚 Audiobooks: Prologue
🎵 Music: Plexamp
📜 Word Processing: Pages
📈 Spreadsheets: Numbers
📊 Presentations: Keynote
🔑 Password Management: Bitwarden
💁‍♂️ Social Media: Mastodon
🐘 Mastodon: Ivory
🧮 Code Editor: Sublime Text
👨‍💻 Git Client: Sublime Merge

Experimenting with Immich

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 16:00:27 -0500

Something that’s been on my tech to-do list for a number of years is to set up a self-hosted photo/video storage solution for myself that utilizes my home server, and can be easily backed up to an external storage solution if/as needed. My plans have been for this to initially not be a replacement for something like iCloud Photos, but rather a complimentary solution, archiving photos in case something ever happens to my iCloud Photo library. This weekend, I took the first step in implementing such a solution.

Background

First, I should probably back up a little bit. Why do I want something external to iCloud Photos? Don’t I trust Apple? Of course I do, at least to some extent, or I wouldn’t be using their ecosystem! However, I long ago learned that keeping all of my (tech) eggs in one basket is dangerous. There are reasons that can cause an account to be shut down, and numerous news stories over the past few years have chronicled issues with relying on any one tech company as the repository of all of your data.

“But then, Justin, why not move to a self-hosted solution entirely?” That thought has crossed my mind too, but there are two reasons why I don’t think that’s the right option for me at this time. A) I am a very happy user of the Apple ecosystem, and having experimented with keeping all media outside of their system, I don’t really like it. And B) see the paragraph above about all of my eggs in one basket. Something could happen to my server as well, and so parallel pathing seems like the best option currently.

Almost two years ago I set my parents up with a self-hosted backup solution, Synology Photos, and was planning to eventually implement the same for myself. It has worked relatively well for them, but there were a few pain points when outside of their network that I wasn’t fond of, and I also don’t yet have a Synology of my own to install it on. However, I do have a Linux-based home server with plenty of storage on it, and so I started looking through other options. There are a number of great web-based solutions, but not many that include a mobile app, which I strongly preferred. And then I remembered Immich…

Enter Immich

I first heard about Immich a few months ago on the Ask Noah Show. At the time, I glanced through the webpage, thought it looked interesting, but didn’t make plans to use it since I don’t have Docker installed on my home server. Or, well… I didn’t have Docker installed. After looking Immich over again, I decided that I would set up Docker and give it a try.

My home server is running Ubuntu 22.04, and so installing Docker was pretty straight forward. I also set up Docker Compose at the same time, and then followed Immich’s documentation to get a local install up and running. A few minutes later, I was ready to try it out.

For the time being, I set Immich up to only be accessible inside my network. Especially since I’m not planning to use it yet as my only photo solution, it didn’t seem necessary to set up external means of access. After install, I logged into the web interface, created the admin account, and glanced through the settings, before moving on to the real test… the mobile experience.

First Impressions

I installed the app on my phone, pointed it at my server’s IP address, and held my breath… would it be that easy? The answer was yes, with a caveat. I had to adjust the backup settings, which were trivial, to tell it which of my photo albums to back up. I selected “Recent”, which ends up backing up my entire iCloud Photo library to Immich. Perfect! Or… not. Apparently there are some issues with RW2 images currently, which are the raw files M4/3 camera outputs. Also, it takes a long time to upload 100s of gigabytes of photos (shocker, I know). But, slowly, data began showing up in the web interface, and the face detection included went to work identifying faces for me to label.

My first impressions are that the app could use some UI improvements, but overall it’s slightly easier to make sense of than Synology Photos. The web interface is even better… the overall design is very clean and simple to understand, with most of the complexity hidden behind the Administration panel. The only thing I’m really missing currently is a way to do light photo editing (mostly rotation) on the images.

Conclusion

As of the writing of this post, I don’t yet have all of my library backed up, but I do have a large enough sample set to get a feel for how Immich works. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s not flawless, but that’s the first thing you see when you go to Immich’s website…

The project is under very active development. Expect bugs and changes. Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!

The face identification works well enough, and the experience is at least as good as, if not better than, Synology Photos in my mind, though definitely slightly more complicated to set up for the layperson. For the time being, I expect that I will continue to use it as my means of off-iCloud backup, and will make further decisions if/when when I upgrade my home server.

Mercury Weather

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 21:26:49 -0500

There is something special about using an app that the developer has clearly put a lot of time and effort into, and it shows in the small details, the little finishing touches that make the app a delight to use.

A few weeks ago I ran across a post on Mastodon by the developers of Mercury Weather showing off screenshots of their upcoming (now available) macOS version. I liked what I saw, and went and downloaded the iOS app to play with.

Mercury Weather is a pretty simple app on the surface. It shows the current weather conditions, an hourly forecast graph for the next 10 hours, and a daily forecast for the next 10 days. In general, it’s the same data that is available in many other apps, but with a very nice, distinctly iOS-like UI.

That same afternoon I went ahead and purchased the premium subscription, mostly just because I like to support developers whose work I appreciate, added a widget to my home screen, and didn’t think much more of the app…

… Until this evening, that is. I was listening to an episode of Mac Power Users yesterday while working around the house, where the hosts happened to be talking to one of the developers, Malin Sundberg, and I looked up the episode notes this evening to find a link to something they were discussing. While doing so, I remembered that the macOS app was out, downloaded it, and began playing around with it a little.

The first thing that slightly surprised me was that my iOS subscription not only includes the macOS app as well, but that there was nothing to do on my end to set the subscription up in the macOS app. It just worked. You’d be surprised how often there is some extra step to get such a thing to sync, though it tends to work seamlessly more often in the Apple ecosystem than any other I’ve encountered.

Second, the UI was just as beautiful on my Mac as on my iPhone. Again, I shouldn’t be surprised, given that the developers specialize in Apple platforms, but it was somewhat unexpected.

And then the real surprise came. I started looking at the “trip” feature, which I’d read about, but never tried personally. This feature, which is (I believe) part of the premium subscription, allows you to add an upcoming trip (with destination and dates) to the app, and it will auto-adjust the upcoming forecast to include the trip in it, so that your 10-day forecast matches where you’ll be, and syncs it with your other devices!

So, are any of these features groundbreaking? Maybe not. But the finesse and attention to detail that is obvious in the design of Mercury Weather makes it a delight to use, and going forward it is going to be one of my go-to apps, especially when I have upcoming trips!

Use a Custom Domain Name

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 19:38:50 -0500

From a blog post by Manuel Moreale:

Please, for the love of all things web-related, if you decide to do anything online, get yourself a domain name. Don’t rely on the 3rd party domain provided by services like Blogger, Substack, Tumblr, whatever. Yes, it’s an extra cost but owning your URLs is important. If Substack dies tomorrow, all your fancy-cool-name.substack.com URLs are gone. And all the links scattered across the web that were pointing to them are now broken.

I wholeheartedly agree with Manu’s thoughts on the matter - for anything you do online, especially something that you want to both last and be semi-easily found by you and others later, please use your own custom domain name!

This is something I put into practice years ago, and while I’m not the most prolific blogger, nor the best web designer, having a domain of my own on the web to point people to for both information about me (and ways to get in contact), as well as blog posts going back almost a decade, has been one of the better time investments I think I’ve made online.

As I quoted Monique Judge in a post at the beginning of this year:

We should all be in control of our own platforms. Owning your content and controlling your platform is essential, and having a personal blog is a great way to do that.

(So) buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.

An Update to My Reading List

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 16:01:47 -0500

This afternoon I updated the format of my reading list. For those who haven’t looked at it before, I’ve kept a public list of the books that I’ve completed reading since around 2016. Originally, I modeled it heavily on a similar concept from essayist Jamie Todd Rubin, and included notations for the format I the book was in (e-book, physical book, or audiobook), if it was a reread, and whether I recommended the book or not.

However, over the last year or so I’ve become increasingly annoyed at the layout I was using. It wasn’t that it worked poorly, but I didn’t necessarily enjoy determining whether or not I would “recommend” the book (since I would rarely recommend any book I’ve ready to everyone at large… I tend to recommend specific books to specific people). Additionally, I didn’t really like showing audiobook length by page count, and sometimes a book was technically a reread, but it was the first time it was making it on the official list.

And so, yesterday I started tweaking the list. I first looked at what Jamie was currently doing, and I noticed that he also had removed some of the extra formatting. (He’s actually using Obsidian Publish now to create his list, which I really like, but feels like overkill for what I’m doing currently). So, I borrowed a few ideas from his current list, added a little of my own spin, and as of this afternoon my updated reading list has been published!

I now show every book in roughly the same format, with a running count assigned based on books read since mid-2016 (when I started keeping track), a bold title, the authors name, and the length of the book in the format I read it in. That means that an audiobook now shows listened-to length, not page count.

I’m still not 100% happy with the layout, but it’s closer to what I want (I think). I’ll run with it for a while, and see how it works. At some point perhaps I’ll add back in some form of recommendation, if I can come up with a more nuanced way to show it.

Bring Back Personal Blogging

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 12:30:00 -0600

From Monique Judge, writing for The Verge:

In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs.

The best blogs gave us a glimpse into the life of someone we “knew” online. Good storytelling, coupled with a lively discussion afterward, kept us coming back for more day after day.

I want to go back there.

We should all be in control of our own platforms. Owning your content and controlling your platform is essential, and having a personal blog is a great way to do that.

(So) buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you.

Bring back personal blogging in 2023. We, as a web community, will be all that much better for it.

One of the best side-effects I’ve observed from the chaos surrounding various social media platforms in recent years is the return to personal blogging. Or, perhaps, it’s simply that I have been outside of mainstream social media’s orbit long enough to begin finding the excellent blogging community that has (in reality) been here all along. Regardless, I will continue to carve out my space on the web, and I encourage others to do so as well!

2022 Year in Review

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 14:52:08 -0600

It’s December 31st again! Every year, it seems like things move faster and faster. I could have sworn that it was just summer, but Christmas has already come and gone, and we’re almost to a new year! And that means, following a tradition I started in 2017, it’s time for my yearly review!

A brief note before I begin: instead of walking through the highlights of my year in sequence (as if on a timeline), I’ve decided this year to talk about some major changes I’ve made/implemented over the past year.

And, for those keeping track: yes, I did (intentionally) skip my 2021 year in review post, for a handful of reasons. Primarily, I took a year off because I was slightly burnt out, and didn’t really feel like writing a post. Additionally, I was in the middle of some research on online privacy, and so posting anything personal online was not high on my priority list. On top of all of that, I was doing a lot of self-evaluation on a number of topics, and was not prepared yet to mention any of them outside of my immediate family.

Now that 2021 is out of the way, what did 2022 look like for me?

Probably the largest change in my personal life in 2022 is that I left the church I had been attending for the past 6+ years of my life, and returned to the Lutheran church (Missouri synod). I had begun questioning certain teachings and hermeneutical approaches that were present in my (now) former church home, and my study of the Bible and theology (which eagle-eyed observers may have gotten wind of due to the books I was adding to my reading list) led me to realize that I did not agree with that church. By mid-March of this year I had decided that the disagreements were too great for me to continue attending, serving, and leading in that church, and so (with some sadness on my part) I left. Thankfully, I was able to find a church in the area that aligns theologically with my understanding of scripture, and that’s how I ended up in a Lutheran church by Easter.

The second largest change in my life has probably been an almost-complete return to in-office work. This shift was not forced on me by my employer, but rather occurred as a side-effect of some changes in my workload: I found it easier to coordinate with other engineers by being present in the office four days a week, and reserving Friday’s for working remotely.

A third, and fairly recent, change in my life is a return to both Evernote and the Getting Things Done methodology. I’ve known about GTD for years, and have previously implemented some of its techniques in both my personal and professional life. However, some of the changes in my professional workload made me realize that my pieced-together system was falling apart, and so I took the time a month ago to fully implement GTD, using Todoist for my list manager, and Evernote as my project support/reference tool. The thing that finally made GTD click for me was forcing myself to do a weekly review, which I’d always avoided before. That one to two hour block on Friday afternoons does wonders in keeping everything up to date!

In less life-changing news, I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing a number of people whose work I follow, mostly in the tech and journalism sectors, migrate from Twitter to Mastodon. While I’m not cheering for Twitter to fail, I greatly appreciate the influx of new users with a variety of interests and unique thoughts and opinions on topics I care about.

This year has also seen me read or listen to more books, by a sizable number, than in years past. Early in the year I began experimenting with different audiobook apps (due to my annoyance with some first-party apps and stores), and I finally settled on Prologue, a very impressive iOS app for Plex audiobook libraries. It worked well enough in testing that I migrated my 150+-book audiobook collection to my Plex server, and have been happily using it ever since. The new app also got me back into listening to audiobooks more often, which helped with the higher book-completion count this year.

And that wraps up my year in review! I’m thankful for the year past, and look forward to seeing what is in store for me in 2023!

Happy New Year!

Tag Update

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 13:49:44 -0500

For a while now I’ve been considering splitting posts on my site into different categories, primarily to allow myself more freedom in the type of content I author, while also allowing readers to filter out only the posts they are interested in seeing. To that end, moving forward, I will be attaching one or more tags to each of my posts.

If you are interested in only following a specific type of content, you can navigate to the tags page (also now located in the site menu), where you will find posts separated by the tags I’ve assigned. For those who use RSS, you can navigate to the tag you are interested in, and then add /index.xml to the end of the URL to get the feed for only that tag.

Enjoy!

Preserve and Play the Original Wordle for Decades with WordleForever

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 19:32:02 -0600

Federico Vittici, writing for MacStories:

With WordleForever, you can put the original Wordle on your iPhone or iPad Home Screen and play the original game (with the same words as everyone else) for years to come.

WordleForever is made possible by the fact that the original Wordle consists of an HTML page and a JavaScript file containing thousands of words the game will use in the future. That’s all there is to it.

Like many others, I became hooked on Wordle. While this shortcut doesn’t presently work in iOS 15.3, you can bet I will be trying it out once iOS 15.4 drops.

🔗

May '21 in Review

Mon, 31 May 2021 12:00:00 -0600

Happy Memorial Day!

Wow, the month of May (and 2021 in general) has flown by! It’s really hard to believe that tomorrow is already the first day of June.

First of all, website updates! I’ve not taken time to do any major work on my website as of late, but over the past few months I’ve made the following small enhancements and/or changes:

Updated my Blogroll with a few new blogs I follow
Added a podcasts section to my Blogroll
Pulled the Hugo theme I use forward (mostly minor visual enhancements)

My reading time has also been somewhat limited, but in May I also managed to complete the book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Waltar Isaacson, which turned out to be a fascinating look on RNA, CRISPR, and the use of mRNA technologies in SARS-CoV-2 testing and vaccines.

And to wrap up the month, I took a little vacation time to relax, visited family, and helped my sister start and/or wrap up a bunch of tech projects, including:

Migrating her personal website from Blogger to Wordpress
Setting up a secondary Wordpress site for a business she and a friend are starting
Setting up secured email for said business, with Tutanota (selected due to competitive price and feature set, plus my positive experience with them for the past 2 years)

And, that will wrap up this month’s recap. Next up: June!

iOS 14.5 with App Tracking Transparency + Apple Watch Unlock

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:18:59 -0500

iOS 14.5 was released yesterday (2021/04/26), bringing a whole host of changes that have been heavily covered on all of the major tech news outlets. Two of the changes, App Tracking Transparency and Apple Watch unlock for iPhone, caught my eye.

I’ve read the details on App Tracking Transparency, and I like what Apple is doing, though I’ve not actually experienced any of the changes myself yet. The TL;DR version is that companies are now blocked from tracking you across other apps by default, and you have to explicitly give them permission to do so, whereas before it was enabled by default, and you had to manually disable tracking. I don’t use many apps that this would apply to personally (from what I’ve seen at least), but I think this is a win for privacy-conscious individuals everywhere. For more details of the changes, see Why Apple’s new privacy feature is such a big deal by The Verge.

The feature that I have actively been using for the last 24 hours is the unlocking of your iPhone with Apple Watch while wearing a face mask. Basically, if you have an unlocked Apple Watch on your arm and near your iPhone when you attempt to unlock via Face ID, your iPhone will… unlock! No more having to remove your mask briefly, or use your passcode! While using my passcode has not been a huge deal for me, it can be an annoyance when trying to check my shopping list, reply to a message quickly, etc.. And, as with most things Apple, the new unlocking process is simple and flawless so far, and while it reduces security slightly.

A few notes: Apple Watch unlock is not enabled by default, so the user has to manually enable it in settings. Also, when this unlock method is used, a button comes up instantly on your Apple Watch, allowing to you re-lock your iPhone, and then requiring your full PIN/password to unlock.

While this option does reduce the security of your iPhone slightly, the convenience is worth it in my opinion, and Apple has taken some concerns into account when designing the feature.

For more technical details on Apple Watch unlock, see the Apple’s support page on the topic: Unlock your iPhone with Apple Watch when you’re wearing a face mask.

My Typical Day

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:00 -0600

I first got the idea for this blog post from Kev Quirk, and have since sought out other examples online to satiate my own curiosity on how people spend their days. While the following shift some, this is my mental plan for each weekday, and (with some minor exceptions) is also how I design my weekends as well. As you can see, I’m definitely a creature of habit, and like my daily routines.

04:00 - My alarm goes off (though I’m occasionally awake beforehand), and my daily coffee prep begins. I make 3 mugs worth of Storyville Coffee’s Prologue blend daily in a large French press: one mug to drink now, and the other two (in travel mugs) for later in the morning.

04:30 - With a mug of coffee in hand, I sit down for my daily devotionals, and to spend time reading whatever book I’m currently in middle of. I view this as (part of) my spiritual and mental “exercise” for the day.

05:30 - Time for some physical exercise! I have a simple basement gym (which I pictured in my 2019 Year in Review), so I can design different workouts daily based on how I’m feeling. My goal is normally at least 30 minutes a day, plus time for stretching.

06:30 - If I’m not intermittent fasting, I cook a quick breakfast (normally eggs of some form). Then it’s time for a shower, which wraps up my morning routine.

07:30 - 11:30 - The workday begins. For the past year this means heading to my basement, where I’ve set up a work-from-home workstation. In pre-COVID times, I’d be heading to the office. I rarely have many meetings, so from the time I begin work until lunch I can focus on projects, with occasional interruptions for Slack conversations with coworkers.

11:30 - 12:30 - Lunch time! I’m a creature of habit, and always have some form of a salad with varying types of protein. When in the office I would often eat at my desk, but at home I manage to take a short break and either listen to a podcast or read while preparing and eating my meal.

12:30 - 17:30 - I make a quick cup of tea, then it’s back to work. I again normally have the full block of time to focus on work, with a few Slack conversations interspersed.

17:30 - Dinner prep begins. For the past year I’ve been ordering meals from Trifecta Nutrition, so this time normally consists of heating up a meal, along with a short call to chat with family. Then I wash dishes, and set the kitchen in order for the next morning.

18:30 - The time after dinner is somewhat flexible, depending on what part of the year I’m in. During crunch time at work I will often put in another hour or two on the computer, then read a book for a while before bed. When I have time to relax, this time may be spent watching a movie or TV show, playing a video game, reading a book, or pursuing one of my other hobbies.

21:00 - I begin to prepare for bed. My goal is to get 6+ hours of sleep a night, and so this gives me time to read a book or listen to music before I finally go to sleep.

And, that’s my day! As noted above, I will sometimes shift things up slightly on the weekends, especially if I’m volunteering. I also occasionally have a commitment in the evening, though that really only affects my evening routines, and I still aim for a 22:00 bedtime.

Is it a bit boring? Perhaps. I can definitely imagine that some would view it that way. However, I have found that I function my best when I keep a semi-rigid routine, and that keeping these aspects of my life on the same plan day in and day out allows me to put some parts of my life on autopilot, and direct my focus and attention elsewhere.

Author’s Note: I do not receive any financial benefits from the links in this article. They are provided solely to improve the reader’s understanding of topics and/or products referenced in the article.

Experimenting with Fitness Tracking

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 18:00:00 -0600

Over the last few years, the general population has become increasingly more interested in fitness tracking, health metrics, and other associated smart wearables. Whereas heart rate monitors were once the realm only of fitness enthusiasts and professional athletes, it is now common to see the average individual tracking their heart rate, blood oxygen, and daily steps.

My Early Experience with Fitness Metrics

I first started counting my steps back when it was added to the iPhone 5s, around 2013, mostly as a curiosity. I didn’t pay attention on a day to day basis, but would occasionally look to see how many steps it estimated I had taken on particularly busy days. I continued to track steps through my switch to Android in 2015 (mostly in the background), and I would occasionally check my heart rate and blood pressure using a wrist cuff at home, but never really paid much attention to the results. I also picked up a smartwatch (Android Wear) in the 2017-2018 timeframe, but again, I never really paid attention to the information it could collect other than to note it when I was bored and looking at health information on my phone.

That would probably be the end of the story, had I not taken up cycling in the summer of 2018. Cyclists frequently track their heart rate, VO2 Max, and cadence (in RPMs), and so I began to track the same metrics using a Garmin bike computer and chest strap. However, I still rarely used the information beyond the initial logging step, and to compare to friends who I was cycling with. I did do some studying to understand what I was looking at, but it really didn’t change how I rode.

Enter the Apple Watch

In September of 2019, I once again switched phone OSes, and returned to Apple’s ecosystem with the iPhone 11 Pro Max (see this blog post for more information). At the same time I picked up the latest Apple Watch, partially out of curiosity (to see how it performed compared to the WearOS/Android watches I had used before), and partially because I like the ability to check messages, notifications, time and date, and other bits of info without pulling out my phone. I was moderately blown away by how well the Apple Watch performed when compared (it was nearly flawless), and as I continued to experiment with what the watch could do, I began to pay more attention to the health and fitness metrics it could collect in conjunction with Apple Health. While the heart rate monitor was perhaps not quite as accurate as a chest strap or the medical devices found in doctor’s offices, it was pretty good, and much more convenient (I mean, have you ever worn a chest strap?). I began to notice when I was nervous that my heart rate would spike (obvious, but I had never paid attention before), and I could easily keep an eye on how hard I was pushing myself during the occasional workout. However, I never really got into the gamification that Apple has built in (comparing yourself to your friends, and trying to “close all your rings”).

And then came 2020, and SARS-CoV-2. As is my usual, I occasionally did my own research (beyond what was found in the media) on early symptoms, along with related complications, and came to the conclusion that monitoring my average heart rate was perhaps slightly more important now than it once was. I also wanted to keep an eye on my blood oxygen, and so in the Fall I upgraded from my Apple Watch Series 5 to a Series 6. I still didn’t really watch the metrics on a day to day basis, but I did begin to look at my weekly averages in Apple Health, just to get a baseline for what is normal for my body with the amount of exercise I normally get.

Around the same time that I picked up the Series 6, I began to try out the Apple Fitness sharing options with a few friends. I didn’t compete very much, but it did push me to do more exercise than I normally would. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. There’s a reason that many companies have tried to gamify things, from fitness to productivity, and everything in between.

And that takes me to this year: 2021! I set out at the beginning of the year to try to get in 30 minutes of exercise daily. Using my Apple Watch to track the workouts is a good way to push myself to not shorten the workout arbitrarily because I got tired or bored, and the friendly competition with friends helps too. I am paying closer attention to metrics during my workout too, and increasing or decreasing the intensity of the workout based on what I’m seeing. And I haven’t stopped there.

Along Came Whoop

Earlier this week I ordered a wrist strap from Whoop, which arrived Thursday. Why Whoop? The Apple Watch tracks many metrics, but it doesn’t necessarily give me feedback on if I should increase or decrease the intensity, or what state my body is really in. Whoop, on the other hand, is more aimed at athletes, and so it is designed to estimate your daily strain, recovery, and sleep (based on heart rate). I’ve heard many athletes rave about how much they like their Whoop straps, and so I decided to give it a try. I’m nowhere near begin even an amateur athlete, but I was curious to see what information it could provide, and if I could use it to improve my workouts and my health in general.

And so, for at least the next month, I’m wearing two wristbands: my Apple Watch, and my Whoop strap, one on either arm. I plan to report back on my experience, and potentially compare the information, to see what I think. So far I’m very impressed with the data it provides, though it’s still early enough in my trial that I can’t utilize all of the information yet (it needs time to learn my normal routines).

But What About Privacy?

I’m sure this question will have arisen in some readers’ minds (it would have mine): what about privacy? Isn’t that a lot of data to give to share with a company? In a word, yes, it is. However, I have not found a good alternative that still allows me to collect the information I currently want, without adding a lot of extra work on my end. Also, Apple’s privacy statement at least claims that they back up the data in such a way that even they cannot read it. Whoop’s privacy principles are a bit more concerning, and I still haven’t decided for sure if I’m comfortable with them (hence why I’m currently only on a one month trial, and have not invested heavily in the system yet).

Also, while my Apple Watch has access to location data, that is not data that I haven’t already decided to share with Apple (I do use their phone + their Maps app). Whoop, on the other hand, can only track location data if I intentionally open their app and share it while recording an activity, which is optional. From my understanding there is nothing to be gained by doing that, and the strap itself cannot track location.

But What About FOSS?

I am, in general, a Free and Open Source Software advocate. So why not use a FOSS solution? First of all I’ve yet to even find a good FOSS solution for fitness metric tracking, especially if I don’t want to either build it myself, or do a lot of set up and maintenance. In an ideal world I would rather host my own server to collect and store my data on, but at this time that doesn’t seem like a realistic option. On top of that, I do kind of like the sharing and competition abilities with friends, and it is highly unlikely that I could convince them to move to a homebrew or self-hosted solution that they would have to do some amount of upkeep on.

Is Fitness Tracking Worth It?

Is tracking a bunch of health and fitness metrics ultimately worthwhile? I don’t have a good answer for that. For me personally, currently, yes. Tracking metrics provides me with some peace of mind (I know if things are out of the ordinary), and it encourages me to pursue fitness more, where my normal inclinations are to be sedentary. Will my mind change in the future? If the past is any indicator, probably. But for now, I’ll keep going with this experiment, and see what I can learn from both the Apple Watch and the Whoop strap. If it helps me to continue to improve my life, then I think it has been worthwhile.

2021 New Year's Resolutions

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 15:30:00 -0600

January 1st. The first day of the new year. Normally a cool, snowy (or icy) day where I live. And also, the day when people traditionally plan out or begin to implement their New Year’s resolutions.

My Thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions

I have an interesting relationship with New Year’s resolutions. I vaguely recall that, during my childhood, I somewhat embraced the idea of setting goals for myself: things that I would quit doing, start doing, improve, etc over the course of the next year. However, try as I might, rarely did a resolution stick. I would perhaps start out strong, but slowly, over the next few weeks and months, I would eventually give up, and settle back into my normal routine.

As I moved into my teens and early twenties, my outlook on resolutions changed. I began to view New Year’s resolutions a cultural norm that, while good-intentioned, ultimately failed to achieve anything worthwhile. I saw too many people excitedly planning out New Year’s resolutions, only to fail time and time again. My axiom became “Why make resolutions at a specific time every year? If you want to make a change, just do it. It doesn’t matter what the day is.” And in general, that worked well for me for many years.

But, as I continue to grow older, my opinions continue to grow along with me. While I still whole-heartedly believe that an individual shouldn’t only attempt to make life-changing improvements on January 1st, I’ve found that there is definitely something to creating a habit on the first of the year, with the planned goal to keep at it for a full 365 days. At least for myself, designing achievable goals that I begin working towards at the beginning of the year actually works.

Along with my opinions on resolutions, over time I’ve also changed my views on how to design said New Year’s resolutions. Historically I had always viewed resolutions as intentionally ambitious goals that I was setting for myself. And don’t get me wrong, those are still sometimes a good idea. But what often has been working better for me is to define a specific behavior I want to change, and then break it down into a daily habit. You see, I can achieve a daily habit. I’m a completionist. I will try to finish everything on my daily to-do list. Therefore, if I can break things down into manageable daily tasks, I can almost always make progress.

My 2021 Resolutions

So, what do my resolutions (or goals, as I refer to them) look like this year? My focus for 2021 is largely on fixing up some habits that I’ve let slip over the course of the past year, and also beginning to work on some problem areas that I’ve been ignoring for far too long. I do have a few more ambitious goals as well, though I will hold off discussing them for the time being, until I have a more concrete plan in place.

My first goal is building on a habit that I initially focused on heavily last year. I’ve always attempted to have a devotional time in the morning, followed by general reading time. For years I’ve said that I want to focus on my walk with Christ, and in 2020 I finally began pushing myself on that front. I maintained a devotional time throughout the entirety of last year, and this year I intend to continue that, though I’m switching up the format slightly. Unfortunately, my general reading time post-devotional suffered in the later half of 2020 though, so for 2021 I’m refocusing on reading at minimum 1 chapter a morning of whatever book I’m currently working on. I place a high value on continuing to expand my knowledge on a variety of topics, and spending thoughtful time reading daily seems like an appropriate way to make progress on that goal.

My second main goal is to exercise for at least 30 minutes daily throughout all of 2021. Once again, I started out fairly strong in 2020 with morning workouts, but shifting to working at home caused me to become lax in some of my routines. I’m still building out a plan of exactly what the morning routine will look like, but 30 minutes a day (minimum) seems to me to be a good target. It’s short enough that I should be able to keep myself engaged, but long enough that I can always get at least some movement in, and continue to improve my fitness level.

My final major goal will actually be the hardest, I think. I’ve attempted for the past few years to build a daily or weekly writing habit, and time after time that’s failed. So, for 2021, my goal is to write a single, quality blog post per week. That’s a rate that is slow enough I can spend a good amount of time working on the content, but fast enough that I have to keep at it. And to top it off, writing makes me think and process things in new ways, which is another growth opportunity.

Will I accomplish all of my goals for 2021? With the Lord’s help, yes. But even if I don’t, so long as I don’t stagnate, the effort to constantly improve myself will have been well worth it.

2020 Year in Review

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 10:51:23 -0600

December 31st, 2020. In some ways, it’s hard to believe that I’ve already reached the end of this year. In others, it seemed like this year would never end. Although 2020 definitely didn’t end up looking anything like what I had planned, there have been so memorable moments. And so, as is my tradition, here’s a look back at the last 12 months of my life.

The first few months of the year looked pretty standard, for those that have read previous iterations of these posts. I kept busy with work throughout most of January and February, along with my usual volunteering at church, and hanging out with friends for birthday parties, SuperBowl parties, and various small-group-related activities.

To keep things interesting, in mid-February my sister and I also started a podcast: Sibling Summit. We had kicked around the idea of a podcast off and on for years, but never actually moved on the idea until this year. Due to our schedules, we opted to only record twice a month, and intentionally recorded a week or more in advance of each post so that I would have time to edit the show down to the published form at my leisure. It provided a fun, creative outlet for both of us, and while it was time-consuming, we enjoyed it.

In early March, I was preparing to visit my sister for a weekend of hiking, when the entire world came to a standstill. I still recall some of my thought processes during that time, debating whether to go ahead with the trip or not. I made the decision to postpone the trip and remain at home, figuring that there would be a better time over the summer. Then came the news that my state, like many other states and countries around the world, was taking precautions to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and everything changed.

Okay, that’s perhaps a bit overly dramatic. While it’s true that many things changed, my actual schedule was perhaps not changed nearly as much as some, for which I’m grateful. In mid-March my workplace moved (like many others) to limit the number of individuals in the building, and I switched to working predominantly from home, with the occasional trip to the office when I needed something not already at home, or to assist in testing that could not be done remotely. Meetings transitioned to Zoom (both work and church-related), and much of my time was now spent in my home office, which thankfully was already somewhat set up for work and video conferencing.

Since we wouldn’t be traveling to see each other as much as we would under normal circumstances, and to keep in touch while maintaining a fun atmosphere, my family and I began playing Name That Tune remotely over Zoom on a weekly basis. I detailed my setup in a blog post, for those that are interested in a deep-dive on the game and how we play.

Another thing that both my sister and I started during the initial lockdown period was a blogging challenge: 100 Days To Offload. We both opted to post for 100 days in a row, and while the quality of the posts began to suffer after awhile, it was fun, and gave me a constant challenge. You can find an archive of my posts here.

And that was pretty much the story until June. During those three months at home I essentially only left my house for the occasional work or shopping-related activity, as needed. I occasionally augmented my work from home setup with new computer peripherals, and also probably more books than I will have time to read. My sister and I continued to record our podcast, which began to include an update on how the pandemic was affecting each of our lives.

In early June we began to work some more from the office. And so, whereas before my work was probably 80% at home, 20% in the office, things gradually shifted until it was probably the inverse, or close to it. That would continue on until early August, when a local spike in cases sent most of us back to a predominantly work-from-home plan.

June also saw the indefinite hiatus of my sister and I’s podcast. She was traveling back and forth to our hometown more, in preparation for an eventual move back, and so our schedules did not allow as much time for recording. We have talked about revisiting the podcast in 2021, but only time will tell if that works out.

In early July, I finally took time off to visit my family. After spending so much time at home, and not really driving anywhere except to the local supermarket and to work when needed, it felt very odd to travel a few hours away to visit family. I was very thankful for the opportunity to visit though.

After returning to work-from-home in August, not much has changed on the work front. Since it looked like that setup would not be changing in the foreseeable future, in early September I purchased a standing desk from VariDesk, and set up a more permanent home workstation in my basement. I’ve continued to occasionally augment my home setup with more peripherals as needed, though by this point not much is changing.

In August I also returned to volunteering at church (which had been limited due to lockdowns). Whereas in the pre-pandemic world I was volunteering on a weekly or every-other-week schedule, I backed off some to once or twice a month max for a period of time. I was (and am) still getting accustomed to my new schedule, and I’ve found that I am more mentally relaxed when I am able to take a majority of weekends off and just work around my house.

That brings me all the way to October. In mid-October, as I often do, I headed back to my hometown to visit family, and help out some with farming. This year I took along my GH5, and got a couple of nice shots of the harvest experience while I was there (below). I also got an opportunity to see some extended family that was visiting at the same time, and good food and fellowship were enjoyed by all.

After returning home, I refocused on work pretty heavily leading up to Thanksgiving. The end of October/early November saw a rise in local COVID-19 cases once again, which gave me an excuse to spend a large amount of time catching up on projects that had gotten behind. I also took some time over a free weekend in November to migrate my blog from Wordpress to Hugo, and remove Google analytics from my website.

At the end of November I spent a week visiting family for Thanksgiving, and enjoying some time off, and the change of scenery. We spent the time working on projects at my parents’ house, playing games, and (as always) enjoying food. While there, we also had family pictures taken by my cousin Rachel (Kharis Photography), who was also visiting her family for the holidays.

In the intervening three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas I once again kept busy with work (from my basement setup), with the occasional break to shop for Christmas gifts for family. Then it was once again back to visit family for Christmas, and to celebrate my parents’ 34th wedding anniversary! Thankfully the weather was relatively nice for the trip, and I even had a chance to go for a walk outside on the 27th without feeling overly cold.

And that brings me to the end of the year! As the final hours of 2020 wind to an end, I can look back at this year, and be grateful to God for the opportunities I had to spend time with my family. The year may not have looked like anything I would have expected, but I can be thankful that I still have a job, and that my family and I are still healthy!

Happy New Year!

Work/Life Balance

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 19:03:24 -0600

I frequently ponder the same question: if I’m doing what I’m enjoying, does it matter that I’m putting way more time into than is, perhaps, “healthy”? My question is generally specifically around the area of work. I’ve heard a number of arguments for why you should aim to achieve a “balance”, and why thinking about or focusing on work too much is a bad thing.

And yet, my question remains: what if I am actually enjoying what I’m doing? Am I getting paid extra? No. Am I putting in more hours than is perhaps “expected” of me? Yes.

But I’m enjoying it. And especially in times when I am actively thinking on a particular issue, or wanting to improve something specific with a project I am working on, I can’t necessarily turn it off easily for hours/days on end. In those cases, it can consume my waking thoughts.

I have heard one single, solitary argument for working more, and it went something like this: those who are truly great in there field didn’t get there by being balanced. Those that changed the world (or are changing the world) eat, sleep, live, and breathe the things they are passionate about.

Which leads me to my current conclusion, even though I will still question myself, I’m sure: for me, at this time, the balance is less important than doing what I’m enjoying. It’s not harming me. It’s not harming anyone else. If anything, it’s making improvements. And so, there’s no urgent reason for me to modify my routine.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 79/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Initial Thoughts on Google Stadia

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 17:55:06 -0600

I have occasionally described myself as a technophile, due to my tendency to enjoy reading about, buying, playing with, and testing out the latest technology.

For years I was in the Google ecosystem. Name a hardware device, and I probably had it. And even though I am no longer as heavily vested in that world, I still pay attention to new products. And therefore, when Google Stadia was announced (nearly a year ago at this point), I quickly signed up, and purchased a Founder’s Edition kit (1 Chromecast Ultra + 2 controllers). I received it last November, but I’ve honestly only played with it a total of… 2-3 hours since then.

Until today. I decided to set up everything, charge the controllers, and see how things were looking after nearly 8 months of development. And you know what? It’s not bad! Most of my testing today has been 2-player “versus” battles in Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid (against another human sitting next to me). And it performed at least as well as an Xbox or Playstation does, in my experience. Gameplay and loading was essentially flawless. The graphics looked decent (mid-tier gaming PC level, I would say). And… there’s not much else to say! It just worked. No installations. Very little setup.

Now, yes, you do need a Stadia subscription currently, which I think is like $10 USD/month. But they’ve also been giving subscribers 2-3 games to add to their library a month, so for the ability to play literally anywhere with a good internet connection… it’s kind of a steal, in my opinion.

Do I still maintain a gaming PC? Yes. Will I get rid of it anytime soon? Probably not. But I do think that Stadia and similar services are the future of gaming. Being able to play a whole list of games with only a controller (or your browser + mouse/keyboard) is amazing, and for the average consumer, it opens up a whole host of new games to play without requiring a high-end gaming machine.

Some closing thoughts: doesn’t it bother me that this is from Google? Yes. I don’t like their privacy-invasive tendencies. However, I also only have this connected to my network when I’m gaming. When I’m not, it’s disconnected. And what about if they kill it off? So far I’ve only invested in the initial hardware plus the aforementioned monthly subscription. I’m not yet comfortable purchasing any additional games through it, since they’re locked to the Stadia service. If there were some kind of sync between my Steam library and Stadia, I’d be a lot more likely to make such a purchase.

In short, if you are into gaming (especially if you’re on Linux), and don’t have a high-end gaming rig already, check it out! I’ve tinkered with Stadia using Google Chrome, and it also worked extremely well. And even if you do have a gaming rig, I’d still recommend glancing at Stadia. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Final note: You do need a good internet connection for Stadia. I’ve had good success with anything higher than 50 Mbps. At 100 Mbps+, no issues whatsoever. But to perform well, you’ll need that connection. Hopefully companies figure out a better solution for lower-end connections in the future.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 70/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Name That Tune

Sun, 17 May 2020 16:55:19 -0600

I wasn’t sure what to write about today. I didn’t want anything long, but I wanted an actual post as well. So, I decided to write up a little explanation of a game my family and I have been playing remotely!

For the past few weeks, at least once per week, my family and I have been playing Name That Tune via Zoom. The general setup and rules are simple:

I create a playlist with ~100 songs my family is likely to know ahead of time.
One by one I play through the songs (using the Random function to randomize the order).
Those playing have until the end of the chorus (ie, song intro + verse 1 + chorus on most songs) to tell me who the artist is (1 point), and what the song is (1 point). First person to shout out the answer gets the point.
There is a potential bonus point for anyone who also knows the album.
If no one guesses the correct artist/title, I get the points. I don’t get a point for the album.
Highest score wins. The goal is for me to be the lowest score, which means I chose songs well for my target audience.

It normally takes us 2 hours to play, but from what I’ve been told, everyone enjoys it (so far at least). My family is also getting competitive, and starting to intentionally try to listen to music they think I might incorporate into the game to get a leg up on the rest of the family.

Also, to keep track of what songs I’ve already used, and as a way for my family to look up the information at a later date, I’ve created a git repository with all of the playlists in CSV format. Obviously, what works for my family may not work well for others, but it gives you an idea of the songs we’ve used.

And a few notes on the technical side:

Every user needs to use headphones. Otherwise it’s VERY hard to play, in our experience.
I use loopback software on my computer to pipe the music to Zoom, while still monitoring it on my end. I can go into more detail on this at a later date.
While I like local media, for this I am using Spotify, as I simply do not have access to the sheer amount of music needed to keep this interesting. At this point we’ve covered over 800 songs since we began playing.

And that’s the game! If anyone tries this out for themselves, let me know what you think of it, and how it goes!

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 23/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Initial Thoughts on a Personal Wiki

Sun, 10 May 2020 16:39:35 -0600

Approximately two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post where I mentioned that I was interested in setting up a personal wiki, or something similar, as a way to keep an online commonplace book. I’ve been taking notes on the idea ever since, and today, I finally decided to give it a try.

Requirements

I had a few different requirements.

Easy to maintain & use
Markdown support
Accessible and editable on all devices
Web-based, so that I’m not handling syncing between devices
FOSS

Enter Wiki.js

After a decent amount of research, where I looked at pretty much every FOSS solution for a personal wiki, I settled on Wiki.js. There were a couple of features that lured me in.

First off, Wiki.js can be installed and maintained easily. While I’m technically capable of doing complex installs and maintenance of software, I very much prefer options that don’t require a lot of extra time to set up and maintain.. Wiki.js has install guides for pretty much every platform, including Docker.

Second, Wiki.js is designed to be both public facing, while still have private pages. I wanted a solution that I could post notes on and point others to, instead of having to copy files around (I historically have kept my own notes in Markdown, but they are not publicly accessible). Wiki.js allows me to do that, and store notes of my own behind a login (if I choose).

Third, Wiki.js has a number of page format options, one of which is Markdown. As mentioned above, I already use Markdown, and I prefer it for the portability and future-proofing it offers. So, I can simply copy my existing files to my wiki, and really the only extra work I need to do is choose the page hierarchy.

Fourth, Wiki.js, while being a web app, can sync all changes to a Git repository. In my mind, this is one of the killer features of the software. I can write notes on my wiki site, and they will be automatically synced with a private Git repo. So even if I choose to use another tool in the future, my notes are all in a Git repo that I can simply clone, and then import into whatever that tool is.

My Setup

I started setting up my wiki this morning around 11:30a.

My first step was to choose hosting. I use DigitalOcean fairly heavily, and Wiki.js has a one-click app in the Marketplace, so that’s what I went with. I chose a 5 dollar per month droplet (the smallest), and within a few minutes, the site was up.

Next up, initial login and setup. There’s seriously not much to talk about here. Everything was very straight-forward, and within another few minutes, I had my own wiki started!

The final step of setup was linking a domain name and setting up HTTPS. As I mentioned above, I started this journey a few weeks ago, and so I already had a domain purchased via porkbun.com. I once again followed the setup instructions on the Wiki.js website, and had no trouble completing the setup!

Total time from start to finish, including adding some pages, setting up a Git sync, HTTPS, and exploring the Admin area: ~ 60 minutes.

Current State

I’ve spent another hour or so creating and playing with pages since then. I’m very happy with how everything looks so far, and can’t wait to continue expanding the site. At some point, I will probably link to it here on my blog so that others can explore (it is primarily public-facing).

I’m also considering moving a few things that are hosted on Gitlab, or here on my personal website, to my wiki, especially the lists of the books I’ve read, and the books that I want to read.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 16/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

0 A.D.

Fri, 01 May 2020 13:43:58 -0600

Today’s post will be fairly short, for a few reasons. First, I’ve been busy, and don’t feel like writing a lengthy post. And second, I have been distracted playing 0 A.D., a free and open-source game of ancient warfare, akin to Age of Empires.

I’ve heard of the game prior to today, but it was brought back to my attention via a post by Kev on Fosstodon. And so, after work, I downloaded it and started to play.

Initial impressions: 0 A.D. brings back the nostalgia of playing Age of Empires for me, which was one of my favorite games growing up. The graphics are decent, though there is some noticeable lag and screen tearing at times (to be fair, this game is in alpha, so I can’t complain too much). The soundtrack/audio are great. And the gameplay is fun, although in all honesty, I have yet to win a game (played at Normal difficulty).

Now, back to trying to win a simple skirmish…

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 7/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Book Review: Console Wars

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 12:58:43 -0600

Earlier this year I began to renew my interest in video games, the culture surrounding them, and the all of the work that goes into their creation. One of the books that I heard about while listening to a gaming-related podcast was Console Wars by Blake J. Harris. And so, as I have a habit of doing, I immediately pulled out my phone, opened the Amazon app, and ordered a paperback copy of the book.

I started reading Console Wars soon after it arrived, but as this is a busy time of year for me, it took me a while to finish. But let me tell you, it was completely worth it. Throughout the book, Mr. Harris tells the story of the video game console battles of the early 90s, from multiple sides. It’s the story of the underdog, Sega, taking on the biggest name in consoles at that time, Nintendo.

Probably my favorite thing about the book was the great storyline that made me feel like I was living in that time period, watching events occur in near-real time. I’ve heard friends and coworkers, slightly older than me, talking about the days of the Sega Genesis with nostalgia. Or, perhaps they were a Nintendo family, and they were talking about the Genesis with disdain. And after reading this book, I finally get it (both sides)!

I don’t want to spoil too much that happens in the book, and there are many better reviews than mine that you can find online. However, I strongly recommend checking it out if you have the time, especially if you’re into technology and/or video games!

Micro-Update: Happy Easter!

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 12:34:32 -0600

2019 Year in Review

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 12:37:47 -0600

It’s hard to believe, but another year has come and gone. And so, to keep with my tradition (is 3 years enough to call it a tradition?), here’s a look back at the last 12 months of my life.

The beginning of 2019 was relatively bland for me. I was active at work, and volunteering at church, but not many noteworthy events occurred during that time. I did, however, make a small change in one of my habits: I quit listening to audiobooks on Audible. I wrote up a blog post about it in early March, so I won’t rehash the details here. But that change did see me begin to purchase and read more physical books than I did in previous years.

Then, towards the end of March, I took a week-long trip to the southern United States to see my sister, who was there for 3 months on an optometry externship. I should note, at this point, that traveling is highly unusual for me. I tend to stay home and just read or spend time by myself when I take time off of work, instead of traveling. But this seemed like a good opportunity to visit the area and do some hiking, so off I went. While there, my sister and I went hiking pretty much every day, and also visited a number of local restaurants (all of which were amazing). Below are some select photos from that trip.

And a few short months later, my sister graduated from optometry school! I traveled back to my hometown, where I met up with the rest of my family, and together we headed to the university for her hooding ceremony.

And to wrap out May, a group of production team members from the church I attend headed to Chicago for FILO 2019 (First In, Last Out), a 2-day conference for church production leaders, staff members, and volunteers. It was a great time of worship, learning, and growing in technical skills, as well as a great time to spend with friends from the team. You can see a recap of the event here (I couldn’t embed it in this post due to restrictions by the content creators).

Early June means the first of the local small-town festivals, and once again this year I went one evening with friends from church. While there, 2 of my friends competed in a competition to see who could hang from a bar the longest. Watching them compete got me thinking about my own lack of muscle, and so I began debating what to do about it. I have never liked exercise, but I know that physique does not improve by sitting on a couch. And so, a few weeks later, I began to build a home gym in my basement, working under the assumption that I would be more likely to use equipment if it was readily available than I would be to visit a gym. At that time I bought and installed a power rack, a bench, a bar, and a 165 lb plate set. Needless to say, I wouldn’t be outgrowing that anytime soon.

In midsummer (late June/early July), I took another step in leaving what I refer to as “traditional social media”. In last year’s retrospective I mentioned that I had left Facebook & Instagram. Now I shuttered my Twitter account, and chose to join Fosstodon, a FOSS-centric Mastodon instance (for the uninitiated, Mastodon can be thought of, in super-simplistic terms, as a federated Twitter alternative). I blogged about my experiences after leaving social media back in October (see this post), so once again I won’t go into too many details here.

Now, on to August! Ever since I’ve worked at Precision Planting, my coworkers have been trying to get me to attend the annual Farm Progress Show. Pretty much every agriculture company attends the event, showing off their latest and greatest, and it’s a good opportunity to see what’s going on in the industry all in one place. The show is hosted at two alternating sites, and this year it was in Decatur, which is around an hour away. I finally agreed to go, since it was close, and so on August 28th, 3 coworkers and I drove down early in the morning and spent the day touring the show.

Then, in early September, I made both a somewhat substantial purchase, and a very substantial change in my daily tech. After 4 years of using Android phones, I made the switch back to iOS with the release of the iPhone 11. I once again blogged about my decision (see this post), so I won’t cover my reasoning for switching here. I will say, however, that I have overall been happy with my decision to switch to a different mobile OS, and while I don’t believe that Apple is perfect, I’m more comfortable with them than with Google from a performance and privacy position, and there are no other options that I am ready to consider at this time (although I’m definitely keeping an eye on the PinePhone).

At around the same time, I decided to build out my home gym a little more, and add a trap bar and a dumbbell set. I had not outgrown what I had installed a few months before, but I was finding the limits of what I could do with the equipment I had, and a friend had suggested that I pick up some dumbbells due to their versatility. And so, after weeks of planning and pricing options, I went ahead and purchased some additional equipment. It took a week for it to arrive, and when it did, I was slightly shocked by the number of boxes that I would have to carry to my basement. Thankfully, the same friend was willing to come over and assist, and so between the two of us we got everything moved from my garage to the basement, and the dumbbells and trap bar unboxed. I spent the following day putting the dumbbell rack together and moving equipment around.

On to October! Every year, the young adult ministry I’m a part of holds a Fall Festival at one of the leader’s houses, complete with a bonfire, games, and food. This year it was held in early October due to scheduling, and one of the team-based competitions was pumpkin carving. My team, made up primarily of other leaders, struggled briefly on what to carve, but quickly settled on Bob & Larry from VeggieTales. We didn’t win, but we did come in second place! Below is a picture of our creation.

This brings me to November. In mid-November, I was invited to attend a men’s conference at a church in Indianapolis by my pastor (who was also one of the speakers), along with the other male leaders of my small group. We traveled there on Friday, spent Saturday morning at the conference, then returned home Saturday evening. It was a fun time with friends, and it was also great to just participate in the event, learn from those speaking, and enjoy a time of worship. The picture below was taken between sessions, when I (being the geek that I am) went up to look at their tech booth.

The following week, I made a short trip for work out to Los Angeles. I won’t lie, I was a little nervous about the trip, primarily because I didn’t know what to expect when it came to traversing such a large city. And while I definitely wasn’t as comfortable there as I am in rural communities, I’m glad I had the opportunity to go. Below is a picture I took from the window in my hotel room.

And the week after that was Thanksgiving! This year I traveled home for Thanksgiving to spend time with family for a few days. I had caught a cold about a week earlier (right after returning from LA), and so was unfortunately still a bit under the weather while visiting family. But thankfully I was able to rest and recuperate while there, take it easy, and overall it was a relaxing few days.

Then, it was back to my home for a few weeks! The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was busy with Christmas parties, church events, and shopping. And somehow, in the midst of that, I managed to find time for some mischief too! A week before our R&D Christmas party, some coworkers and I decided to wrap another coworker’s desk in wrapping paper, and then built an entire “gift box” around it. And to top it off, we blamed it on the elves (see below). Thankfully, the coworker we played the prank on took it well, and his desk became the talk of the company for the next week!

The following week was our R&D Christmas, which is always a fun time with coworkers. This year the event was held at a large venue nearby, and I was asked to take photos at the event, to be shared in the following days with the entire team.

That takes us to my family’s Christmas, which this year was held at my parent’s house. Just like Thanksgiving, it was once again a relaxing time, and also a fun time to spend with my parents and siblings.

And with that, 2019 comes to a close! I’ve spent the time since returning from visiting family catching up on projects around the house, and doing an excessive amount of reading (although, because I keep bouncing between books, I’ve only completed one during that time). As to what 2020 will look like for me? I have no idea. But I look forward to whatever God has in store!

Happy New Year!

Micro-Update: Quotes and Passages Page

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 12:16:42 -0600

I spend what is probably an excessive amount of time researching the art of studying, reading, and researching, driven by a desire to constantly improve not only myself, my skills, and my knowledge, but to also improve how I learn. Earlier today I came across the idea of publishing a “Quotes and Passages” page to my website while reading an article by Ryan Holiday. I skimmed through his implementation, and decided to begin implementing the same type of page here. My plan is for it to contain quotes from books, podcasts, etc than I find particularly interesting, inspiring, or noteworthy.

Update: After realizing that I was not utilizing the quotes and passages page on my site, it was removed. This post was left for historical purposes.

Micro-Update: User-Friendly Linux Mug

Sat, 09 Nov 2019 12:25:29 -0600

This is the first of what I’m referring to as “micro-updates”, based on the concept of micro-blogging. I occasionally have a short thought, or something I would like to share, but there isn’t enough content to create a standard-length blog post. So I decided to give this format a try.

Earlier this week, a co-worker sent me a link to an amusing mug on Amazon. I’m a sucker for things like that, and so it was added to my cart, purchased, and arrived on my doorstep in short order. While it’s not “accurate”, per-say, I can at times agree with the sentiment. As much as I love Linux, occasionally when troubleshooting something, it can be a tad annoying…

Asocial? A Life Without Social Media

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 12:27:34 -0600

In November of 2018, I logged out of Facebook and Instagram for the last time, deleted my Snapchat account, and removed the Twitter app from my phone. A few months later, I also shuttered my Twitter account. After debating it for many years, and attempting (and failing) multiple times, I was finally done with social media.

It’s been almost a year since that time, and so I decided to do a quick retrospective to answer the following question, something I wish I would have had to read before making my choice: what’s it like to be 30, in the tech sector, and not on any traditional social media platforms? In short, it’s both amazing, and also sometimes slightly annoying.

Background

Before I go into the pros and cons of not being on any of the major social media platforms, allow me to give a little bit of background on my decision, and the steps I took before and after deleting my accounts. I had considered deleting my social media accounts for a long time, for a few different reasons. First off, I knew that I was spending too much time scrolling through my various news feeds. Also, I was not particularly comfortable with any of the companies that ran the platforms knowing as much about me as they did. Facebook in particular had a much more detailed profile on me than I cared for them to have, and I had already begun to only use their website from inside a container on Firefox so that they could not track me around the web.

I made my final decision to begin removing myself from social media in early November, a few weeks before Thanksgiving. I deleted Instagram and Snapchat almost immediately. I had never used Snapchat heavily, and so removing it was a simple choice. When it came to Instagram, most of those I followed were also on Facebook, and while I enjoyed seeing the pictures that friends and family posted, I knew that I still had other means of communicating with everyone.

Then came Stage 2: Facebook. I had been on Facebook for many years (since high school), and it was how I kept in touch with most family, friends, high school and college classmates, and various people from other stages of my life. In fact, I had convinced myself on numerous occasions that I could not leave Facebook because of the sheer number of people I would no longer have an easy connection to. However, I decided that I was spending too much time on the platform, and so I began sending messages to a handful of people, requesting contact information to use once I closed my account. I also alerted family and close friends, but to make my decision easier and not feel pressure to stay, I did not broadcast to many people that I was leaving. A week before Thanksgiving, I closed and deleted my Facebook account.

That left Twitter. I kept Twitter initially because I was not spending as much time using the app/website, and I was occasionally using it for professional reasons (to follow Precision Planting dealers, other Ag companies, etc). However, in early Spring 2019 I decided that the few uses I had for it were not worth keeping a presence on the platform. And so, like Facebook and Instagram before it, I went into my Twitter account options, and shut it down.

And now, I’m a pariah, right? I’m still (somewhat) young, living life in 2019, and not existing on any of the traditional social media platforms. In some ways… yes, I am. There are both pros and cons to my decision. And I would do the same thing again if I had to choose, although I would probably go about it in a slightly different fashion.

I have distinctly more time on my hands. I was spending easily an hour or more a day idly scrolling through my various feeds, liking posts, keeping up with what my family and friends were up to, and keeping myself distracted from the real world. That’s not to say that social media isn’t real, but it’s often an idealized reality.

I also no longer try to create the perfect post for social media, in an attempt to see how many likes I can get, and to get that extra bit of validation from others. Don’t get me wrong: I still have those desires at times. But by limiting my ability to get easy social validation, I am forcing myself to learn to look to God, not those around me, for my self-worth.

I’ve also found that I am less distracted when I am spending time with people I care about. There are fewer things on my phone to send me notifications, and at this point most are work-related. The lack of constant interruptions makes it easier for me to spend time completely focused on who I’m with and what I’m doing.

There are often events that I don’t get invited to, because I’m not on social media. This is less of an issue now than it used to be, as people have slowly internalized that they need to contact me directly to invite me to things, but it still happens. And I’ve had to learn to be okay with it, which is hard for someone who deals with the fear of missing out (FOMO) frequently. It does mean, however, that the events I’m invited to are generally because the host is actually interested in me being there, and not because they invited a large portion of their friend list.

I also miss out on social gossip (which is probably both a positive and a negative). I have missed many people’s birthdays, because I forgot to find out when they were ahead of time, and I no longer get a notification. I also am not the first to know when relationship statuses change (single -> dating, dating -> engaged, dating -> single, etc). And I don’t always hear about major life changes either (pregnancy, moving to a new job, new state, etc). These are often small prices to pay, but they do affect me nonetheless.

What would I have done differently?

Plan my exit slightly better. There are a few people I wish I would have requested contact info from, which I no longer have the opportunity to do.
Write down birthdays and anniversaries. I would have added these as reminders to my calendar. It’s something small, but I enjoy receiving birthday wishes from others, and I would like the opportunity to do the same.

Final Thoughts

As stated earlier, if I could make the choice again, I would still get rid of social media. I have still continued to maintain my LinkedIn profile, for professional reasons, although I am becoming less and less convinced that it is necessary. Also, since getting rid of Twitter, I have created a Mastodon account (on the Fosstodon instance), which I occasionally use for keeping up with the FOSS community. It has proven to be much less distracting than traditional social media, and it’s also operated by a small community, not a large company, so I trust that they are not attempting to sell my data.

Leaving Android Behind

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 12:29:43 -0600

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?

First up, a bit of background: I used iPhones for a number of years, from sometime in the 2010-2011 timeframe (I don’t recall exactly when I switched from my trusty BlackBerry to an iPhone), until July of 2015. They worked fine, but I was never particularly happy with Apple’s iCloud services, and found myself using Google and its services (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, etc) much more frequently. And when Project Fi was announced, I was one of the first to sign up on the waiting list. As soon as I got my invite to join the beta (it was still Project Fi at that point), I ordered my Nexus 6, and plunged headlong into the world of Android phones.

For the next few years, I continued to use Project Fi (which became Google Fi a few years ago), and I also continued to use Android phones, as they worked best with the service. Also, the Google/Android integration was great, as much of my life revolved around Google services. I went from the Nexus 6 to the Nexus 5x, followed by the Pixel 1, Pixel 2 XL, and finally the Pixel 3 XL. All of the phones (minus the 5x) were great devices, and I had no complaints with their performance. I did have some annoyances dealing with messaging friends and family who still had iPhones, and occasionally I ran into situations where being on Android meant I didn’t have the app selection I would have had on iOS, but by and large the experience was pretty good. Which leads to the obvious question: why change? Why shift my life from the Android ecosystem back to iOS?

I’ve been debating whether I would stay with Android phones for about 2 years now. I occasionally read blog posts from others who have “de-Googled” their lives (such as “Why I’m Ditching Android” by Kev Quirk), and found their stories and opinions both intriguing and thought-provoking. I have also been getting more and more concerned about the sheer amount of information that Google has on me, as well the lack of privacy when using their tools, especially from a Google-branded phone. Don’t get me wrong: I really like some of the perks that come from all of the data Google has collected. But it is also unnerving, from a privacy standpoint. Two things had always kept me with Google phones though: perceived-superior services, and Google Fi (since using a non-Google phone on Google Fi is not a worthwhile endeavor in my opinion based on reviews, and Google Fi is a legitimately good cell phone service). But then, around the beginning of summer, I began in earnest looking at other options.

My first reason for looking at switching to iOS is perhaps not a particularly good reason, but it is one of the top reasons for my switch: iMessage. It simply works better than SMS/MMS, in my experience, especially better than SMS/MMS between Android and iPhone. I have been annoyed at photo and video quality when sent cross-platform for years, and recently it reached the breaking point. I wish that RCS or another SMS replacement were ready, but they simply aren’t. And I can’t convince friends and family to all switch to Telegram or some other platform when iMessage is installed on most of their phones by default, and it just works. And on top of that, it’s encrypted, out of the box.

My second reason is closely tied to the first: AirDrop. A few times a year, I have found myself in a situation where someone wants to share a large number of pictures with me, and AirDrop, once again, just works. Unless, of course, the person on the receiving end doesn’t use an iPhone, in which case there are no simple solutions for sharing files, other than using Google Drive. Google Drive, or Dropbox, or another similar service all work, but invariably the person I am trying to send to or receive from doesn’t use whichever service I happen to use. And in the moment, it’s not easy to convince them to sign up for a new service, download an app, and then send me files via the app.

The third reason is a bit more philosophical: I’m getting tired of Google’s ads, and Google’s lack of privacy. I know they are claiming that they are working on improving customer privacy, but the fact is, they are predominantly an advertising company. They make money by collecting and selling my data, and by showing me ads. The newer versions of their apps seem to be even worse about this than in years past, and that, combined with my other reasons for considering an iPhone, made it a pretty easy decision to leave. Apple devices do cost substantially more than Android phones in general, but from what I can tell it’s because Apple makes their money on me buying the device, not on the data they collect from me as I use their device. I did consider either running an Android alternative on a phone, or else using a Linux phone (such as the PinePhone), but while those options look interesting, none are in a state where I am willing to rely on them in my day to day life. Therefore, switching to an iPhone was the best option for me, as far as I could see. I will continue to watch the Android alternatives and the Linux-based mobile operating systems (especially Plasma Mobile), and perhaps at some point there will be a solid, FOSS option. I hope there will be.

So, in a few short days, my new iPhone will arrive. And honestly, I can hardly wait. I picked up one of the new iPhone 11 models that was announced earlier this month by Apple, and I will be moving from my Pixel 3 XL to the iPhone this Friday, if all goes as planned. I already switched from Google Fi to Verizon at the beginning of the month, intentionally making the change pre-platform switch, in case there were any hiccups (which there were, but nothing substantial). I love playing with new gadgets, and I plan to write another blog post in the coming weeks detailing my thoughts on iOS after years away from it, along with general impressions of the new phone, and if there are things I miss from my Android days. And yes, I’m sure I’ll take a few Slofies. I may even post one.

Abandoning Audible

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 12:30:58 -0600

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…

Let me begin by stating for the record that I was a fairly active Audible user. I’ve been a subscriber since August 2012, and a quick perusal of my purchase history shows that I was buying well over 12 books a year on the site. In both 2017 and 2018 I listened to 15 books on Audible, and while I don’t have good records from the years prior, it is safe to estimate that the trend continues. In fact, I’ve already completed 4 Audible books in 2019 alone. Clearly it is a beneficial service for me, right? So why would I consider cancelling my subscription?

#1: I don’t actually own the books I’m buying on Audible

This singular point has been bothering me for a number of years. The books that I purchase through Audible are protected by DRM, and therefore are not available for me to download and store on my own servers, or listen to without using Amazon’s apps and/or website. I don’t actually “own” any of the audiobooks I’ve purchased. It’s more like a per-book rental. I can listen to them as much as I want, but if Audible ever goes away, so do my purchases. This is the same problem I have with purchasing e-books, movies or music on services like iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon: you don’t actually own what you’ve bought. It’s not the same as purchasing a physical book, a CD, or a Blu-ray Disk. There is a part of me that prefers to actually own what I’m purchasing, if possible. There are, of course, ways to strip the DRM from an Audible book (which is illegal, and therefore not an option for me), and there are also stores that sell DRM-free audiobooks, but at a much higher premium (which I am unwilling to pay).

#2: I don’t get as much out of audiobooks as I do physical books

I’ve read articles commenting on the downsides of audiobooks, but until recently I ignored them. Some of the arguments I’ve seen are that you can’t take notes or mark passages that you really like, which always seemed bizarre to me: why would I mark up a perfectly good book? The book won’t look as nice if I write in it! But you know what? The authors of those articles had a point. Recently, I’ve started to read more physical books again, and when I come across something interesting, or a point I want to be able to easily find again, I mark it. Not only is it useful (I’ve already found myself thumbing through a book to find a section I underlined, which would have taken much more time had I left the book pristine), but why worry about keeping the book in perfect condition? I bought it. I own it. Why not use it to meet my needs?

#3: Audiobooks have limited re-readability (or re-listenability)

In some ways, this goes along with Reason #2. Audiobooks are great for listening to as entertainment, but sometimes I want to go back and re-read a passage. It’s VERY hard to go back and listen to a specific part of an audiobook. I’ve done it, but it’s not nearly as easy as walking to my bookshelf, grabbing the book, and quickly flipping to the section I want to re-read. There are ways to add bookmarks to an Audible audiobook, but even then, it’s not nearly as easy in my opinion.

#4: It’s too easy to multi-task with audiobooks

A lot of my recent reading has been devoted to the study of deep work (a term coined by Cal Newport, who also wrote a book by the same title), and minimizing the amount of time I spend idly and distractedly doing things in my life. In this, I noticed that listening to audiobooks was something that I almost always did while multi-tasking. I never just sat and listened to a book. Instead, I worked around the house, or drove (I used audiobooks a lot while traveling), or even sometimes began working on small tasks at my computer. I was never fully focused on what I was listening to, nor was I fully focused on what I was doing. This often meant that I only gleaned some of the information from the audiobook, or could recall only parts of the stories I was listening to. In direct contrast, reading a physical book requires concentration, and it is much harder to multi-task while reading. And by marking passages that stand out to me, and taking my time reading through the book, I tend to learn more.

So, where does all of that leave me? For now, I’ve opted not to renew my Audible subscription. I can still listen to the audiobooks I’ve purchased previously, if I choose. But for now, I am devoting my reading time primarily to physical books. I will definitely re-examine my choice the next time I take a longer trip, and may find that it makes sense to listen to audiobooks then. However, I have a large collection of audiobooks that I have not yet started, and I suspect I may find other things to fill my time and thoughts with as well.

2018 Year in Review

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 12:04:26 -0600

“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!

First up: Precision Planting’s 2018 Winter Conference! As I’ve mentioned before, every year in January we have a conference where we announce our newest products and upcoming concepts we’re working on. This year saw the release of two products that I’ve been actively involved in developing: the new 20|20 Display (release video below), and the mSet multi-hybrid system. After having worked on both projects for the past two years, it was extremely rewarding to finally release them into the marketplace! As an added bonus, my family came out to visit, and got to attend the conference as well.

Of course, just because the products were announced and released doesn’t mean that my work was done – far from it! I actually spent roughly the first four months of 2018 continuing to work towards a successful release for both products, and so there is not much else exciting that occurred for me during the winter.

And that brings us to Easter! Once again, my family came out to visit me, and we got to spend the Easter weekend together, including Good Friday and Easter Sunday services at the church I attend.

Halfway through April, I got a rather unique phone call that altered my plans for my life, though I would argue it was for the best! For the past 18 months or so I had been attending the Amplify impact group at Harvest, a small group for singles in their 20s-30s. There is a core leadership team made up of a couple of pastors and their wives, and also a handful of young men and women in Amplify. A number of the current leaders were getting married and moving on to other impact groups over the summer, and I was one of the candidates for joining the leadership team as their replacement. After some prayerful consideration and discussions with people I trust for perspective, I accepted, and began getting more active in Amplify. The first major activity I helped with after joining the leadership team was our Compassion Day 2018 project in early May.

In late May I returned to Ohio to visit with family, and took the opportunity to fly my drone. While Spring planting occurred fairly late everywhere this year, in Ohio it was extremely late (late-May to early-June), which is why the photos did not show many crops growing yet.

In late-May/early-June, I also took up cycling, after much pressure from coworkers. I spent a Friday morning and afternoon at Bushwhacker, a local bike shop, trying out various makes and models until I settled on a bike that I liked. I settled on a cyclocross style bike by Giant. Consequently, I spent most of June riding around the town I live in and the nearby countryside, and then decided on a whim to do a 22 mile ride with a friend on June 30th. The morning was very hot and muggy, and I was very sore afterwards (that was the longest ride I had done up to that point), but I’m glad I did it!

And that brings us to July! Of course, July means fireworks, and so this year I went with a group of friends to the larger local firework shows. It was definitely an experience, and while I absolutely enjoyed it, I very much did not enjoy the traffic afterwards. Thankfully I wasn’t the one driving!

Later in July was Vacation Bible School at the church I attend. In previous years I had meant to volunteer, but I always forgot until the week before, and then my schedule ended up filling up. This year, I blocked out the days ahead of time, and made sure that I was free! I helped out with the tech team during the opening and closing segments (which included some absolutely amazing worship), and then helped shoot extra video that was cut together for the recap video. While it was a very tiring week, it was also completely worth it, and I hope to volunteer again next year!

At end of July, I headed back to Ohio once again, this time for the annual Vollmer Family Reunion. It was great seeing extended family, catching up on what is going on in everyone’s lives, and just relaxing at the lake! This year saw a smaller attendance than in years past, but it was still a fun time! Before everyone left we took a group photo. My immediate family, first cousins, and aunt/uncle wore “Bob’s Bunch” t-shirts, in honor of our grandfather Bob, who passed away a few years ago. His two surviving brothers were seated in the second row, along with their wives.

August didn’t include too many events, though it did see me participating in two longer group bicycle rides. The first was the Triangle of Opportunity, a smaller ride that went from small town to small town in Tazewell County.

The second, longer ride (a week later) was No Baloney, a much larger group ride that once again tours all throughout Tazewell County (though not the same exact path, thankfully)! After the second ride, in the afternoon, I went on an “ice cream crawl” with a small group from Amplify. I’ll let you, dear reader, figure out what all that entailed!

To wrap up the summer, my family came out to visit me over Labor Day. It was, once again, a fun weekend spending time with family, and enjoying good food at local restaurants.

September through November saw a lot of time spent volunteering at church and spending time with friends (at movies, small parties, and larger group events). As a part of various groups, I attended my town’s annual fall festival, visited a local orchard (where I completed two corn mazes), attended a baseball game, had a going away party for a friend and a housewarming party for another, and carved some pumpkins (seen below)!

And that brings me to Thanksgiving! My family ended up celebrating Thanksgiving in South Carolina this year, due in part to the proximity to where my sister was currently externing, and also because I have extended family in that area. I drove down early in the week, and stayed with my aunt and uncle, helping to prepare food for the family while I was there. I also got to see my cousins and their families while in town, and went bowling with them on Black Friday. While it was a bit of a trip, I had a blast, and am glad that it worked out to spend time with everyone!

Around the same time, I made the final decision to leave most social media platforms, which is why they are no longer linked on my website. I had been considering the move for quite some time, partially because of privacy concerns, and partially because I was finding myself spending an excessive amount of time on social media, and I found that simply attempting to limit my time wasn’t working. And so, I pulled the plug. I kept Twitter for the time being, as it (thus far) has not been as addicting to me, but got rid of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Finally, on to December! For me, December involved taking a lot of vacation days (I had too many unused during the year), and also a number of Christmas events! First up: the Amplify Christmas Party. We wrapped up the year with Amplify with a nice group dinner, a trivia game, and a white elephant gift exchange. It was quite a fun time with friends!

The following weekend was Harvest’s Christmas service, which I helped with as part of the tech team. Our main Christmas service includes choirs (both young and old), and this year saw around 120 people on stage, if I recall correctly. You can see more pictures on the Harvest Bible Chapel Facebook page.

A few days later was the Precision Planting R&D Christmas party. Each year we get together as an R&D team (along with significant others, if they exist), and do something to celebrate Christmas. This year we had a nice evening meal, and a fun, competitive small group event afterwards.

Now, on to Christmas! This year was my first time hosting Christmas at my house, which meant decorating more than I normally do (since I’m generally traveling back home during the holidays). It worked out best for everyone to come to visit me this year, and so a few days before Christmas my family traveled out to my house. We spent the days leading up to Christmas doing some last minute shopping, cooking tasty food (and eating at some local restaurants as well), playing games, and enjoying spending time together. Our official Christmas dinner was actually on the 24th, as my sister had to fly out on Christmas Day. Everything worked well though, and while it felt different than most Christmases past due to the logistical change, I enjoyed it.

And that wraps up my look back at 2018! As usual, I’m sure that I’ve missed a few things here and there, but I think I hit most of the highlights of my year. Also, I did not mention it at any point earlier, but I have continued with the keto diet this year, and have lost some additional weight, bringing my total weight loss to ~95 lbs (current weight is around 193). And as I stated last year, I could have never predicted where this year would take me, and I look forward to seeing where God takes me in the year to come!

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Mycroft Mark 1

Sat, 12 May 2018 12:02:54 -0600

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.

Mycroft is an open source voice assistant, and the Mark 1 was the first hardware kit designed to run the Mycroft software. It consists of a Raspberry Pi 3, a speaker, a microphone, and a small LED display, all in a friendly white case. I chose not to back the project when it first came out since I was somewhat skeptical of the developers’ ability to deliver on their goals, but I continued to follow the project with interest.

Fast forward to early 2018, and the Mycroft team once again ran a Kickstarter campaign to finance a new hardware project. This time, the device was the Mycroft Mark II, and the system had matured to the point where I was comfortable backing it. I opted to back at the level where I would get both a Mark II when it comes out (est. December 2018), and a Mark 1 earlier in the year (est. April 2018).

All of that leads me to this week, when my Mycroft Mark 1 device finally arrived. Unfortunately, on the day that it showed up on my doorstep, I had to leave for a quick business trip, and so I didn’t have time to actually open anything until Saturday morning (today).

My first impressions are that, as expected, the Mark 1 is at best a reference device, good for developers and early adopters. That is, after all, what the Mark 1 was marketed as. It is nowhere near as polished as the Google Home, nor is it as useful to me currently. However, I don’t plan to let that stop me from continuing to use it. My current plans are to set it up in my home office, and tinker with various skills and integrations as they become available. One interesting integration already available is with Home Assistant, which is what I am currently using as the hub for all of my smart home gadgets. Also, if I have time over the summer, I may experiment with writing my own skills for Mycroft.

So, why spend time and money on a device that I knew from the start wouldn’t be as good as Google or Amazon’s offerings? Simple. While I am heavily invested in both the Google and Amazon ecosystems, I don’t actually like the idea of either one of those companies having microphones in every room of my house. I am continuing to use their products for now, since I am curious enough about new advances in the smart home and voice assistant spaces that I am willing to sacrifice some privacy. But, I want to foster competition in the marketplace, and the best option from a privacy standpoint is an opensource, self-hosted solution. Hopefully, given time and support, Mycroft will become that solution.

2017 Year in Review

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 11:32:40 -0600

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!

Every year, during the week of Martin Luther King Jr Day, Precision Planting hosts a Winter Conference where they announce their latest products, and also provide farmers with a lot of agronomic data from the past year’s test plots. Although I worked at Precision in 2016, it wasn’t until January 2017 that I attended a Winter Conference. I was not heavily involved this year, so I was able to attend the different sessions and just observe. Even though I have been around farming for most of my life, I always have more to learn, and there was a lot of new information I learned over the course of the week.

When February came around, it was time to travel to Georgia to do some testing for a project I was involved with at work. The weather had just dipped into the single digits in Illinois, so heading to a place where the highs were in the 60s sounded good to me. This also marked the first time that I a) traveled for work as a Precision Planting employee, and b) the first time that I ever flew in an airplane. As one would expect, I was much more nervous about it than I had reason to be, and the week went smoothly. I spent most of my time there either in the buddy seat of a tractor doing diagnostics, or else writing software (either in the tractor, in a gator, or in the back of a rental van, depending on the amount of concentration needed). The following picture was taken from the aforementioned buddy seat on my second day in Albany.

In late February, I got the news that my paternal grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. And a few days later, on February 21st, she went home to be with the Lord. While there were many tears, there was also joy in knowing that she is no longer suffering here on earth, and that she is in a better place. The funeral was held in early March near my hometown, and so I traveled back for the funeral and to visit family.

And that pretty much takes us to Spring. Working for an agricultural company, Spring is generally one of the busiest times of the year, and this year was no exception. From late-March through June my time was centered around field support, and included a few impromptu trips to debug issues. While not great for photo ops, it did keep me busy, and also gave me something out of the ordinary to work on. I can say without a doubt that there wasn’t a boring day at work during that time period. Although, to be fair, I have rarely had a “boring day at the office” since I started at Precision Planting. We’re not really that type of company!

The summer months were a bit less busy for me, and included a trip home to see family in early June and early August, and two visits from my family to see me, for July 4th and in mid-August for my birthday. My dad always marvels at the size of the crops that we grow in Central Illinois, and this year he had me take a picture of him on July 3rd with the corn across the street from my house. He enjoys sending it to friends back home and watching their reactions, I think.

Also during the summer, on a whim on July 7th, I decided to change my eating habits (I don’t recall exactly what triggered this – probably some article I was reading). And so, with less than a day’s planning, I started out on the ketogenic diet. I was 287 lbs at the time, and while I wasn’t having any particular issues, I was getting tired of the limitations that being overweight brings. I didn’t know if I would be able to stick with the diet, nor for how long I’d want to even if I could. Therefore, I did not take a “Before/After” photo, although at this point I really wish that I would have. I have stuck with the diet throughout the rest of the year, and as of today (December 31st), I’m weighing in at 232 lbs. I have a long ways to go before I get anywhere close to my target weight, but I am quite happy with how far I’ve come as well, and I fully intend to stick with the diet for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, at this point it has become more of a lifestyle than something I really need to put effort into.

The week of my birthday, I decided to splurge a little, and picked up a DJI Spark (a small drone that shoots 12 MP stills and 1080p video). So, while my family was in town, I grabbed some extra batteries and took my drone (and my family) to a local park to learn how to use it. It took me a while to learn to fly the drone properly, and so, unfortunately, I didn’t get much usable footage (or any particularly good photos) during that time. However, I did manage to take a family “dronie”. It turns out small drones are very good for taking family pictures!

August 21st, the Monday after my birthday, was the Solar Eclipse. I originally planned to work that day, but I ended up being given the day off. For those who don’t know, at that time Precision Planting was owned by Monsanto, which is headquartered in St. Louis. St. Louis was directly in the path of the solar eclipse, and so Monsanto chose to give all of their employees the day off. A number of my coworkers were driving down to a campground in Sparta, IL, to watch the eclipse, and so I decided to join them. Early Monday morning I met one of my coworkers, and we carpooled down to Sparta, about a 3 hour drive. We arrived a few hours before the eclipse started, and so I spent a while just chatting and waiting for the eclipse to occur. Below is a picture of the group of us that were there, taken with my DJI Spark.

Now, I’ve seen articles that give a much more accurate depiction of the “experience” of the eclipse than I can, so I will be intentionally brief. The solar eclipse was definitely a very interesting event to witness. The first thing we noticed was that shadows started to get very crisp, and lighting looked “off”. And then, gradually, it began to get darker, though you could see light on both horizons still. Almost as soon as it started, the eclipse ended, so we finished packing up, and began the trek back home (which took about an hour longer than normal due to all of the traffic).

As I mentioned above, in mid-August I picked up a DJI Spark. I played with it some over the next few months, but it wasn’t until October that I did anything substantial with it. My younger brother’s birthday is in late October, and every year I try to make it home to see him sometime around then. This year’s visit coincided with the fall soybean harvest on my family’s farm, and so while my dad and uncles harvested, I flew my drone. I got some cool pictures and videos, and in mid-November I sat down and edited them together into a video. This marked the first time since 2015 that I edited together a video, and since I’ve been using primarily Linux, I attempted the edit using Kdenlive. The results were okay, although I quickly came to the conclusion that if I’m going to do any more video production in the near future, I’m going to re-subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud and use Premiere Pro (which is what I was using before moving to Illinois).

I again traveled home to visit family at Thanksgiving, this time with another toy in tow. For a number of years I’ve really wanted to own a good camera for photography (all of my cameras are exclusively for video), and so I purchased a Panasonic GH5 the weekend before I left. That meant that most of my trip to visit family was spent playing with my camera and experimenting with different settings, when I wasn’t spending time with family (and occasionally even when I was). The picture below was taken with the GH5 on Thanksgiving, so that my mom had a nice family portrait to use on her Christmas cards. My other main focus while with family was setting up my dad with new computer. Well, a new-to-him computer. It was actually a Chuwi laptop that I had purchased to play with a few months prior, but found that I was not using it much. And so I took the computer with me, wiped it, and installed (you guessed it) Arch Linux, with the KDE Plasma 5 desktop, for him. The install went off pretty much without a hitch, and he’s been happily using it ever since. I also installed Arch Linux, this time with Mate as the desktop, on an old desktop computer he had in his office, so that he could experiment with using Linux for bookwork. That computer hasn’t been used very much yet, but he also hasn’t wiped it, so I’ll count it as a partial win.

And that brings us to December. For me, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas were very hectic this year. I had a number of projects at work that required my attention over this time, which led to longer hours than I originally planned on. December was also spent planning and purchasing Christmas presents for family members, and as usual, I probably went a bit overboard. However, I enjoy buying and giving gifts to others, so I’ll count it as a job well done. On December 23rd I headed back to my hometown for the holidays, and spent the next four days with family, celebrating Christ’s birth. While there, my sister and I took our parents out for their 31st anniversary to a local restaurant, which was also the last meal with the family before I headed back to my home.

And, that pretty much wraps up my year! As seems to always be the case, I could have never predicted where this year would take me, and I look forward to seeing where God takes me in the year to come!

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Edit #1 (2018-01-01): Added Solar Eclipse + photos + video (thanks Dave!)
Edit #2 (2018-11-15): Replace Instagram links w/photos

Change: The Only Constant

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 11:26:55 -0600

“Everything changes and nothing stands still.” Heraclitus of Ephesus

That quote could not be more accurate. Since the last time I wrote a blog post, I have gone through almost innumerable changes. I have changed jobs, moved to a new state, rented a house, and begun the process of finding a new church. You could safely say that pretty much every facet of my life has changed.

At the end of September, I accepted a new position as an Embedded Software Engineer with Precision Planting LLC. I summarily left my position as Lead Software Engineer at InSource Technologies, Inc, and moved from rural Northwest Ohio to Central Illinois. While not a drastic move, it was definitely a change of scenery, and is taking some getting used to.

Then, 2 weeks after I started my new job, it was announced that Precision Planting is being acquired by John Deere, in a deal they made with Monsanto and The Climate Corporation. More change, anyone?

So now, after a little less than a month in, I’m finally beginning to get used to my new schedule, new surroundings, new…everything. And while I’m not necessarily comfortable, I’m content. I know that God is working all things together for my good (Romans 8:28). His hand has been evident throughout the whole process. Everything has been perfectly timed, and I have not had any real concerns throughout the whole process. The few that I have had, turned out to be unfounded.

And finally, I can also, at long last, understand a quote that I’ve seen on one of my favorite blogger’s websites for years, but never fully understood. And you know what? It’s accurate. And it’s a perfect way to end this post.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Neale Donald Walsch

No Earthly Regrets

Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:25:28 -0600

“What is at the top of your bucket list?”

“What is one thing you want to accomplish before you die?”

While I’ve often heard others talking about their life’s goals, their bucket list, etc, I’ve apparently never given it much thought myself. This became very obvious today when I was in an interview for our company newsletter. I came up with something rather blasé, but it made me wonder: what are my life’s goals?

Now, I should start off by pointing out that I’m actually a very goal-oriented individual. I used to keep track of everything primarily by memory, but early this spring I switched to using Todoist (https://todoist.com) for my day-to-day tasks. Everything that I need to remember to accomplish at work, at church, and in my personal life goes on there. Sometimes, I am even a bit over-zealous (in my own opinion, at least). But all of those goals are short-term (within the next 3 months). I don’t plan much farther ahead, unless it’s a special event.

I also work on my hobbies (shooting/editing videos, video games, coding projects that aren’t work related), but I don’t often make specific goals with those. I think about it, but I never follow through. And I’m beginning to think that my approach is unhealthy.

I often explain away my lack of long-term goals as being content with where I’m at. Which is true, I look for the best in my current situations (though it’s not always easy), and I genuinely enjoy where I’m at, and what I’m doing. But I have to ask myself: am I becoming stagnant? Am I choosing not to try new things, not to dream and set goals, because I am afraid of failure? Afraid of how others will view me?

After some introspection, I believe that the answer to many of those questions is at least a partial affirmative. I can rattle off a very long list of opportunities I have not pursued, risks I have not taken, because I did not want to jeopardize my safety and comfort. Not necessarily physical safety, but more often emotional safety, or else the safety I feel from knowing everything that is going on around me.

Which leads me to the quote from Kris Vallotton that I posted above. I don’t want to have regrets while I’m here on earth. And I also don’t want to let any fears on my part keep me from achieving what I was put on this earth to do.

Do I have anything to add to my bucket list right now? No, I don’t. I’ve thought and prayed about it off and on since the interview, and I haven’t come up with anything. But I’ve also decided that I am not going to stay complacent. So, it looks like I will be adding another task (and eventually project) to Todoist…

Philippians 3:12-14 (MSG) I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

The Complexity of Vacation

Thu, 15 May 2014 11:23:59 -0600

Have you ever been in a place where you know you need to take time off work, but you just can’t bring yourself to, because you know that they need you to be there? Or you have a vacation day scheduled already, but you feel guilty about taking the time off? We’ve all been there at one time or another. And on this blustery Thursday in May, that’s the place where I find myself.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the sanctuary of Family Christian Center, listening to some jazz music from Andrew Allen, and taking some down time before the Secret Keeper Girl event here later this evening (which I took a planned vacation day for so I could help out). And trying to keep myself busy so I don’t focus on the tasks that I could be doing if I hadn’t taken the day off from work.

Anyone who has ever worked with me, be it in a volunteer situation, at work, or even just family and friends, will tell you that I am a perfectionist. Which, to some extent, is a good thing. The drive to perfection is often what keeps me going, and allows me to achieve the success that I have. However, it also causes me to constantly criticize my work (and others), feel guilty at taking any personal time away (even when I very much need it), and suffer from stress-induced headaches. All of which are problems, and are not what God created me to do and be.

Yesterday I had a lengthy chat with a good friend of mine from church on this very subject. As he is also a perfectionist, he has been in my situation, and can (and does) give superb advice when it comes to dealing with workplace stress. He immediately brought to my attention the fact that the issues I am having (which, last night, had me worked up to such an extent that I couldn’t focus properly on leading my team in the sound booth) are 90% self-induced. And that, even if taking a day off may mean more work later, that I need that time off to rejuvenate, so that I will be more effective when I return. Which is true, although it’s not easy to admit that I’m wrong. But that’s another topic.

Then, today during lunch with the SKG team, we were invited to join them in their devotions. The team devotion today was talking about gratitude, and something the leader said really caught me off guard. If you are not actively thinking about what you are grateful for, or are not thinking to thank God for things on a daily basis, you are living in a state of ungratefulness. Now, I thought I knew what ungratefulness looked like. We’ve all seen kids who are ungrateful, people who you do something nice for and they completely miss the point. But I never considered that not directly being grateful was being ungrateful. Oops.

At the end of the devotion, the leader asked us to thank God for something. And you know what? I had a very hard time thinking of anything to be thankful for! This coming from a young American, with a nice job, a loving family, wonderful and supportive friends, untold opportunities that many people wish they had, and a loving Father in Heaven who loves me, and sent His only Son to die for me. And I couldn’t think of anything to be thankful for!

I immediately put a few different things together at that point. For one, I am so wrapped up in the day to day stuff I’m working on that I have been completely missing the big picture. Secondly, I need to take a step back, and learn gratitude. Or rather, I need to re-learn how to show gratitude, to those around me, and to God. And third, as my friend pointed out, I need to learn how to let things go and relax. When I’m not at work, I shouldn’t still be focused on what I could or should be doing. It will be there for me when I get back. For today, I need to enjoy and be thankful for where I’m at, the people I get the honor of working with today, and my vacation day in general.

Welcome

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:22:35 -0600

First blog post of the New Year (and the first on this site)!

I’ve been meaning to develop a website for a while now, both to showcase the videos I have been producing, and to tie together the various forms of social media that I use. Having heard of Squarespace on the Sword and Laser Podcast, I decided to give it a try. And what better time than on a day when I’m stuck at home, due to a Level 3 Snow Emergency?

So, briefly, who am I, and what do I do?

I’m an Embedded Software Engineer by trade, with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Trine University (Angola, IN). I work for a company in Northwest Ohio, and greatly enjoy the work that I do, and the challenges that come my way. I have a chance to work with a number of engineers with much greater knowledge (and much more experience) that myself, so most days continue to be a learning experience. Which is fine with me, since I believe that learning is one of the core things an individual should do every day that they are alive.

In my free time, I volunteer at Family Christian Center in Defiance, Ohio. There, I am involved with the tech team, and also help to produce various videos for the church (most of which are for use in services). I was asked to help restart the video team in the summer of 2012, and ever since have been learning the basics of video production (I have no formal training video/audio production). Thanks to a number of websites, tutorials, videos, forums, and books, I am slowly improving and honing my skills, and am no longer quite as embarrassed by the results of my labor as I once was.

My intent for this website will be mostly related to videos that I produce, both for FCC and for fun. Occasionally other interests may make their way to these digital pages, but I will plan to keep them to a minimum.

And with that, welcome to my site! I hope you enjoy your stay, and stop back for future updates.

God Bless!

– Justin