Experimenting with Immich

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.

Mercury Weather

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.

Use a Custom Domain Name

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.

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Asus ZenBook 14: One Year Later

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post on a new laptop I had recently acquired to use for embedded development. At the time I was preparing to travel for work, and wanted a machine that would be able to handle my normal workload, even if it was a bit slower than my desktop(s). I’ve used it on and off since then, and decided to write up a quick follow-up post to detail some of my thoughts.

My Search for the Perfect Note-Taking Solution

Warning: I have no conclusions in this blog post. These are just my somewhat-rambling thoughts on a topic that I spend way too much time thinking about.

Introduction

I have a love/hate relationship with note-taking apps. I’ve been trying out different solutions for over a decade at this point, but have yet to ever feel perfectly at home with any system I’ve tried, which leaves me constantly looking for improvements instead of just settling in and using my system.

A New Linux Laptop...

I told myself this day would never come. There was no reason for me to own a Linux laptop. My M1 MacBook Pro was the perfect mobile computing option: fast, nearly-infinite battery life, and extremely capable. Linux laptops always need babied, and never seem to work when you need them to. My MacBook was always functional whenever I needed it…

…And I’m writing this post from a laptop running Linux that I’ve now owned for a little over 24 hours. Why?

Thoughts on Hugo after 21 Months

A little over 21 months ago, I finally scratched the itch that I’d had off and on for years to migrate my website to a static site generator (SSG). I wrote about migrating from Wordpress to Hugo when I made the change, and overall, I’ve been pretty happy with the results. My website and blog feel more responsive than they have in years, everything has been very reliable, and I know that all of my content is safely stored in a version control system I trust (Git), and in a format that is relatively portable (Markdown).