I thought I would run down all the changes to my personal tech stack this year so that next year I can look back and see what stuck and what I ditched.

Hardware Changes

NAS to Mac Mini

I’d been using a QNAP NAS for about 5 years, mostly for backups and some media storage. It worked fine for me but it was always a bit of a chore to keep updated, and I often worred about the security behind QNAP’s software. It was also hard to use for testing things out that I didn’t want to run on my laptop. I decided to ditch the QNAP and moved over to an M1 Mac Mini. I ended up gifting the NAS to my brother.

It’s been a mostly positive experience. I am way more comfortable with Macs, so this opened the door to test out some self hosting software I’d been looking at.

Apple Watch

I upgraded from an Apple Watch Series 4 to a Series 7 this year. Much larger screen and better battery life. With it running longer, I started wearing it to bed to track sleep. I can’t say that I’ve learned a lot from Apple’s sleep tracking software, but I do prefer the gentle vibrations on my wrist over an alarm sound.

Apple Homepod

We had a Homepod Mini for about a year, acting mostly as home hub and Siri for running our smart home stuff. I wanted a nicer speaker in the living room, so we added the new Homepod. It’s a decent home speaker for us, no complaints here. The sound is good, not great.

Dewalt Multi-Tool

I had a Dremel multi-tool 100 years ago and loved it. Now that I’m remodeling our new home, it was time for new tools. This simple beast made quick work of nails, drywall and more. I keep looking for things to cut with it because it’s so fun to use.

Stuff I did not upgrade

  • Phone: I am still using an iPhone 11 Pro and see no reason to upgrade right now. The battery life is getting a little worse but it has yet to become a problem.
  • Laptop: Still happily using my 14” M1 Macbook Pro. Most people ask me how I can work on such a small screen. I have a 16” M1 Macbook Pro for work and it feels stupidly large. This works for me.
  • Tablet: iPad Air 3 is still my daily driver for reading and basic web browsing. This is the one device I keep thinking about upgrading, mostly because the new iPads just look so slick. I have no real need to update it though.

Software Changes

Homebridge

I set up Homebridge early this year so that I could get our Ring doorbell and Google Nest thermostat working through Apple Home. We added a few Wyze cameras this year and those also got pulled into Homebridge. I am super happy with this solution. I’m not thrilled about having Amazon and Google smart products, but with Homebridge I have them playing nicely with everything else.

FreshRSS

I had been paying for Feedbin and was totally happy with it as a service. But as often happens when a subscription renewal comes around, I started looking at alternatives. Getting FreshRSS set up was a breeze in Docker on the Mini. I added in a Cloudflare tunnel so that I’d have my feeds available anywhere. It does exactly what feedbin did for me at $0 cost.

Arc Browser

I jumped into Arc early this year to see what the fuss was about. I’ve been using it as my daily work browser ever since. It’s a refreshing take on browsers, and for work, it suits me very well. I still use Safari as my personal browser though.

Omnivore

I had been using Notion as a Read it Later tool for some time. It works well, but the browser extension has no way to add tags, which meant most of my saves were untagged. Omnivore has a beautiful save extension, and the app allows me to pull in newsletters as well. Enjoying this a lot, I hope the teams behind this keep up the good work.

Tailscale

Added this recently to more easily access my Mac Mini when not on the local network. Now that my brother has the QNAP, I added Tailscale to that so that I can help troubleshoot any issues he runs into for him. This app is just amazing. It really does feel just like magic.

Mimestream

My job uses Google products, including Gmail. I cannot stand the Gmail interface, so Mimestream fits the bill. It works very well with Gmail accounts, I was happy to pay for the subscription once they left beta.

Software I still use

  • Text Editor: Sublime Text is still my go-to editor (and I’m writing this in it now).
  • Password management: 1Password is still our family password manager. I have been thinking a lot about migrating to Apple’s built-in password management lately, as 1Password has been frustratingly slow on all my devices. I’ve been using this longer than most apps, at least 10 years now. That’s a hard habit to break.
  • Email App: Apple Mail is my default email app, though I have an active Fastmail account that handles the actual email. Their app is quite good, I just never got into the habit of using it.
  • Calendar: Apple Calendar for personal, Google for work. It’s a calendar, it works.
  • Tasks: Apple Reminders
  • RSS Reader: Reeder is still my default RSS feed reader. Hoping they add Omnivore as a share option for the Mac app. I currently have to open pages in Safari before I can save to Omnivore on the laptop.
  • Backups: ArqBackup is still running daily encrypted backups to Backblase for me.
  • Backups: Backblaze B2 is still my go-to cloud backup. It’s stupid cheap and just works.
  • Backups/Sync: SyncThing runs on my laptop and Mac Mini, keeping everything on the laptop synced to the Mini that I want backups of. Arq then takes all that and sends it to Backblaze.
  • Notes: Notion is still my work note system. It’s somewhat overkill at this stage but I’ve tweaked it to fit my workflows and the thought of finding a replacement is just a bit much right now.
  • Journal: DayOne
  • Social Media Apps: Currently using IceCubes for Mastodon. It works and isn’t ugly.
  • VPN: Mullvad is running on all my devices. Super happy with this VPN and their stance on privacy is the best in the business. I do have to disable it from time to time as some sites have issues or block VPNs.
  • Ad Blocking: Still happliy paying for NextDNS. This also runs on all my devices. I so rarely see ads these days that it’s weird when I have to disable it for a site.
  • Launcher: Still fairly happy with Raycast. I was a happy paying customer of Alfred for many years, and may end up going back to it.
  • Utilities: Amphetamine is what I use to keep the laptop and my Mac Mini from falling asleep.

Site Changes

This could technically fall under software but since I mess around with this site more often than the software I run on the laptop, it warrants it’s own section.

Statamic to Jekyll

I migrated from Statamic to Jekyll this year and have been very happy with it so far. It’s simplified my site management and basically gets out of my way. I loved Statamic, but it just got too cumbersome to keep updated, and I spent more time messing with it than writing.

Stuff I did not change

  • Hosting: Still using Netlify as my web host. Flat file + free hosting FTW.