My grandmother passed away, at aged 92, back on July 18. It wasn’t terribly surprising - she lived on her own till she was 90 but a series of falls and brief illnesses wore her down so that she then moved to independent living, then assisted living till finally transitioning to hospice. There wasn’t any specific cause of death, no pain at the time of her passing - it was “natural causes” or “old age”, which is something all of us can hope for ourselves and our loved ones. She lived a good life, with lots of family, and as she was my last grandparent, I’ll miss her a lot.
I’m 44 at the time of this post and beyond the sadness of her death, what has really hit home to me is that I’ve reached the point in my life where death will become more and more common. Any of us, no matter how old, can of course pass at any time. But when I stop to think about how my oldest uncle will be 81, my aunts are nearing 70 and both of my parents - thankfully both healthy and active - are also over 70 and nearing it.
It’s a strange feeling to think about how we view our family members as one way, only for time and reality to show that they aren’t. I still see my mom in my mind as she was 20, 30 years ago and the same for my dad. But in seeing and speaking with them, I of course realize they aren’t really like that - my mom’s had hip and knee replacements, my dad is a bit more forgetful.
It’s something that we all go through I guess if we are fortunate to live well into middle age and have family members who do the same, but no matter how old you are, the reality of mortality for ourselves and the ones we love will always hit hard.
A few weeks back, I saw some calls on Mastodon to cancel Micro.blog (the service I use to publish this) because they started allowing publishing on Twitter (it will never be X to me). This after a big hullabaloo over Proton and their CEO’s donations/support for a right-wing party in Europe. Wordpress is a dumpster fire of petty bickering and bizarre choices in leadership. And if you keep digging through the internet long enough, the list of people upset about the choices software developers or their companies CEOs make with their tools goes on and on, from both the left and the right, till I’m sure it would possible to find something wrong with every company, every developer, out there.
I’m tired ya’ll.
I’m tired of keeping my head on a swivel, jumping from one program/service to the other because of something some person said or did at that company. I do my best to make as ethical decisions I can with the tools and services I use but it’s tiring staying on that treadmill. Not from the constant outrage that bubbles up every day, but from the sheer effort required to switch from service to service. I switched to Proton about 2 years ago, over a multi-day process, moving all of my stuff and over 25 years of email to Proton. As a service, I’ve been happy with the reliability and quality of their products, which is what you should expect in any transaction right? I pay you for a product, you deliver said product and we go about our business. But the thought of going through that process again, of moving all of my stuff to Fastmail or something equivalent, because some random CEO said or did something or believes something I disagree with, is frankly exhausting.
The people calling for boycotts or switching, they don’t seem to consider the time needed to make those switches. Not everyone has hours of time to switch all of their stuff around, or have the luxury to spend time finding alternatives, or sometimes the technical skill required to do that. It’s an act of pure privilege to do that and expect others to follow you. And they forget that software can never be neutral because software is people.
People write it, people sell it or give it away and all of those people have thoughts and opinions that I agree or disagree with, that’s just living in an interconnected world. And for better or worse (likely worse, but that’s for another day), we live in a capitalistic world so we just have to work within that system to find what’s best for us. So that means tradeoffs and budgeting and accepting that nothing is ever perfect, will never agree fully with what we personally might think and feel and believe. You can do your best, but inherently that underlying understanding is always there, until something bubbles up and we have to pickup our pitchforks and torches again. And if we just follow the outrage cycle and jump ship to one place, whose to say that 3 months later THAT place won’t do something that we don’t agree with and then we have invest all of the time and effort all over again.
I’m not saying don’t have lines or deal breakers - we all do. I switched from Twitter to Mastodon four years ago because I saw where that was going, how it was already turning into a Nazi bar and that wasn’t something I wanted to support with my time or effort or money. That was a conscious and ethical decision. But Micro.blog allowing publishing to Twitter, something I will never do? That’s not a redline for me because for my $5 a month I get the convenience of just opening a tab, writing this post and hitting publish and not thinking about it again. I’m not willing to throw the baby out with the bath water because of one idea that the Micro.blog team had.
Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. Maybe it makes me lazy, or maybe I’ve fallen victim to vendor lock-in. But I don’t have the time to find alternatives or sit down and write my own system for publishing or find a different tool, so I’m willing to make that trade-off. Of course, these implicit agreements are always evolving, and maybe Micro.blog or Proton or some other company I use on my uses page will do something so egregious to me that I can’t take it anymore, and the time needed to switch will be worth it. But for now, I just accept that trade-off because I’d rather spend my limited free time frankly just doing something else than looking for alternatives.
Software is never neutral. It’s written by people, and it’s always evolving and changing and growing, just like the people who make it. Sometimes for good and sometimes for bad but always changing and always being the product of the people who made it. Lord knows we aren’t short on alternatives for just about anything out there. And if your own personal red line is crossed then you should certainly find alternatives, I’m never against that and have them myself. But I’ve been down the never-satisfied road of changing and switching and storming castle gates for too long now and let me tell you, it’s exhausting.
So as you read forums or posts or articles about why XYZ company/tool is bad, remember that software is never neutral, software is people, and people are complicated and you’re never ever going to be 100% satisfied. You might be happy with your choice of tool for now, but inevitably something will come up you don’t agree with.
Don’t fall into the trap of following the outrage. Set your own red lines and ignore the noise. You’ll be a lot happier that way.
I recently switched over from Spotify to Apple Music. There were a myriad of reasons, the biggest being financial - long story short, I was already paying for most of the Apple One services offered (but not Apple Music) so by dropping Spotify and switching to Apple Music, I’m basically saving about $5 a month.
I know there are better services out there that help support artists, like Tidal or Deezer and others (and Apple isn’t exactly great as well), but Spotify has also fully embraced AI which, if you read this blog, know that I am not a fan of, and their leadership has also made a number of politically motivated decisions that I am also strongly against. So stopping giving Spotify my money felt good.
What actually felt a lot better was basically resetting my music algorithm entirely. I had Spotify since 2012, in which time I had 2 kids and as most parents know, when your driving places with kids, they get to pick the music. I knew it was time for a change when my Spotify Wrapped named the Frozen soundtrack as my top artist 😛
By starting fresh with Apple Music, it’s really nice to just play what I like and start from there. It’s also, from a nerd standpoint, to figure out how their interface works, how they make suggestions and getting used to the (admittedly clunky) UI. I’m sure my music will get kid-influenced after a while of course, but at least now that my kids are older, it will be less Disney and maybe more along the lines of stuff that I like and they may learn to like too.
As an aside, I’m going to attempt to keep up with “Blaugust” and try to post a post every day in the month of August. This may be a challenge due to some other travel and personal committments but I always feel like I should blog more and at least make use of the Micro.blog subscription I’m already paying for. So look for some more posts in the coming weeks - at the very least more than what I post now.
I’ve updated my Uses page with a new RSS reader and Office Suite, Unread and Libre Office respectively.
I’m a firm believer in RSS as a way to discover new and interesting, tailored content, and in the constant firehose of information coming at us daily, especially try to keep up with world events, RSS is a calm and curated way to consume that (for more info on the many benefits of RSS, check out Molly White’s “Curate your own newspaper with RSS” post.
For years I’ve been bouncing between RSS readers but none have ever really stuck. I loved NetNewsWire for a long time but the syncing between devices never really worked right for me. Before that, I had used Reeder 4 (now “Reeder Classic") but the UI always felt too unintuitive and off to me (and while I never mind paying for good software, having to buy a license for Mac and iOS separately always stung a bit). And until a few months ago, I was using Lire, a pretty solid and dependable and enjoyable app that I was happy to pay for. Then I came across long time RSS app Unread and my world was changed.
It’s interface for mobile is all about swiping, but I found it to be very intuitive and almost instinctual to use. Swipe left to go back, swipe right for other actions. Simple as that. On Mac, it’s a more traditional setup of columns but can be tweaked to the way you want it to be and works just as well. It syncs with it’s own syncing service but can use all of the other services out there like Feedbin and iCloud and Feedburner, etc as well as offers all of the usual sharing and bookmarking options. Best of all, none of it’s killer features are locked behind a paywall - you can pay to get some other niceties like different app icons, more article actions for sharing and setting up shortcuts - but otherwise it’s a fully featured and well thought out RSS app. After using it for a few months, I was happy to kick over the $30 a year subscription to keep development going and think that I’ll be using Unread for a long time.
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As far as LibreOffice goes, I’ve been off of the Microsoft/Google cloud office suite for a few years now for personal use (sadly still have to use both for work). There are many many reasons not to trust either of these two with your important docs, but for me it really just boiled down to convenience. I don’t want to pay for a cloud subscription and I want an app on my computer that I can use offline and open without fear of it sending back a bunch of data to god knows where. And my office suite needs are pretty basic - occasionally writing out a doc to print out on my ancient printer, opening a spreadsheet or CSV file here or there, or just making a PDF from a doc file to send along. That’s basically it.
And for years I was happy with ONLYOFFICE and the tools that it provided, however basic they might be. But after an update a few months ago, the inevitable integration of AI bullshit into it was present (who wants to plug an AI into their word processor? Some people apparently) and that for me is a no go. I will go out of my way, and pay if needed, to avoid AI and general enshittification of any software, which of course MS and Google are cramming full of AI at every step. Libre Office was always one tool I considered but it’s clunky interface was confusing and a mess. Thankfully, after evaluating other options after the ONLYOFFICE AI betrayal, I found this post on how to customize LibreOffice to give it that MS Office look, without the MS bullshit and that sealed the deal for me. Best of all, it offers some pretty great options for making a PDF, compared to ONLYOFFICE just having “Save as PDF”. (The back story here is that my printer won’t network anymore so I have to load stuff onto a USB stick to print and it will really only print PDFs and is picky about those. I know, I need a new printer, but I don’t want to get into the mess of buying new ink because the printer decides I need to).
So far, I’ve been happy with LibreOffice and just hope that it avoids AI integration as well, though I feel like that is sadly inevitable in all software these days.
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Check out my Uses page for other stuff that I use on the regular!
I spend more time in the browser than anywhere else, building and styling sites. So I just want a browser that will help me, will be a usable tool that does what I ask of it (what we should ask of any tool really) and nothing more. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, so I made of list of common things I want in a browser.
I just want a browser that…
…is actively developed. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
…with a mobile version. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
…that doesn’t spy on me. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
…that doesn’t have AI. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
…that isn’t based on Chromium so the web continues to innovate. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
…with a robust community of extensions. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
…with usable dev tools. (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, Floorp, Zen, Orion, Dia, Atlas)
The search for the right browser continues…