Posts on Justin Vollmer

Weekly Notes 2024.07

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:30:00 -0600

A large portion of this week in the office was spent working through some interesting networking configuration to allow test devices at remote sites to securely access a cloud database… thankfully people much smarter than I were able to assist!
Precision Planting’s 20|20 Display was featured this week in a story on the Qt website, which included an interview with my coworker Dave. It’s a nice view into some of the products we work on, along with some of the technical decisions we’ve made over the years.
While working on a project in the office, I was reminded that, sometimes, slightly over-engineering is not a bad thing. I had forgotten that I built a safe-guard into a product’s software so that it wouldn’t install updates that didn’t explicitly include support for its hardware revision. While it was an annoyance this time, it also has saved many headaches in the past.
This weekend was spent ripping some new (to me) Jazz CDs to my Plex server. I’m really enjoying some of the new albums, and am currently listening to The Best of Miles Davis: The Capitol/Blue Note Years while writing this post.

Read Link to heading

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
- There are a number of useful courses here for developers, covering all of the tools that we use daily but that don’t get taught.
Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise
- Very interesting blog post by Cabel Sasser about a Dixieland jazz band that I’d never heard of before.
Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo
- I hope this is a net positive for Mozilla. I love using Firefox, and want it to thrive, and continue to grow in market share.
Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says

Listened To Link to heading

Accidental Tech Podcast: 574: Weird Forking Scenario
Clockwise: 541: Peripherereral Free
Connected: 489: The Birds Chirp in the Black Void
Darknet Dairies: 142: Axact
DTNS/Good Day Internet: Where Do You Draw the Line? - Editor’s Desk
DTNS/Good Day Internet: 4708 Extended: Don’t Pass on Passkeys
Getting Things Done: 246: Slice of GTD Life with Rene Lie
Issues, Etc.: 443: Dechurching in America, Part 2 - Michael Graham
Issues, Etc.: 472: The Presence of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the Sacrament - Dr. Jordan Cooper
It’s A Thing: 303: Tom fought in the Rumi Wars
It’s A Thing: 304: Men Are Welcome Until They Die
Late Night Linux: 268
Mac Power Users: 731: “Tears Rolled Down My Light Seal”
The Rebound: 482: Two Out of Three Hosts Say Yes
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 95: ‘I’m a Real-World Man’, with Adam Lisagor
Upgrade: 499: We Have All the Cushions
We’re Not Wrong: About Libertarian RFK Jr. and the Monoculture

Watched Link to heading

So You Think You Know Git - FOSDEM 2024

Weekly Notes 2024.06

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 12:30:00 -0600

Early this week I set up an old Lenovo ThinkCentre to run a headless install of Ubuntu, and started playing around with some projects I’ve heard of from others, but never used myself. First up: Pi-hole, a network-wide ad blocking option. It took a little while to get everything configured the way I wanted, and I’m still working through some odd behavior, but overall I like it. Most of my browsers already have some form of ad-blocking enabled, but this works even with devices I don’t have as many options on (phone, iPad, etc).
I’m still sticking with OmniFocus, and actually started using one of their slightly more advanced features, Mail Drop. I’ve used similar functionality on Todoist to auto-forward certain types of emails as tasks to my inbox, and I’m happy to now have the same workflow set up with OmniFocus.
I spent some time digging into Tailscale’s permissions management options, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to configure. I wanted to start limiting certain connections on my tailnet, instead of leaving settings wide-open, and within minutes I was able to set up a few simple rules that put things in a much better (and arguably more secure) state.
A few weeks ago I heard about LocalSend, an app that gives you an AirDrop-like experience between virtually any two machines, on the Linux Matters podcast, but didn’t have a reason to use it at the time. Fast-forward to this weekend, and I needed to transfer some large files between two machines on the same network, but didn’t have another mechanism set up. In almost no time at all, I was able to download the app on both machines, and send the files… it was one of the most “it just works” experiences I’ve had in a while. I highly recommend checking it out.

Read Link to heading

Listened To Link to heading

Accidental Tech Podcast: 573: Look at It Harder
Clockwise: 540: I Did Something Bad
Connected: 488: hot guy, incredible actor, hot dude
Cortex: 152: Apple Vision Pro: The Future is Here
Issues, Etc.: 363: Women’s Ordination, Empathy and Feminism - Dr. Joseph Rigney
Issues, Etc.: 393: Baptism and the Giving of the Holy Spirit - Pr. Mark Surburg
Late Night Linux: 266
Late Night Linux: 267
Linux Matters: Magazines Reloaded
Mac Power Users: 730: “Treat it as an Intern,” with Jeff Richardson
The Rebound: 481: You’re Doing A Great Job (Abridged)
Upgrade: 498: Leap the Uncanny Valley
We’re Not Wrong: About the Tucker/Putin Interview and the Arizona GOP

Weekly Notes 2024.05

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0600

News articles are continuing to be published regarding Precision Planting’s 2024 announcements. This post from AgriNews had a good overview, and (in my opinion) nicely combined comments from yours truly with those of Justin McMenamy, Vice President - Disruptive Products.
Friday was the release of Apple Vision Pro, so I’ve been watching and reading reviews of it all week. I’ve linked some of my favorites below in the Read and Watched sections. I’m not yet convinced to drop $3500 on it, but I’m also still considering it…
I’m still actively using OmniFocus 4, and did my first (abbreviated) weekly review with it today. While I still wish there was some more natural language processing built in, similar to Todoist, the overall experience is growing on me.
A project at work has me dusting off my Python skills (meager though they are), and also relearning how documents in MongoDB work. It also gave me an excuse to play with Python packages in Nix, which I’m still finding extremely useful for software development.

Read Link to heading

Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro

Listened To Link to heading

Accidental Tech Podcast: 572: Cryptofarts and Copyright Infringement
Clockwise: 539: You Folks Need Some Help
Connected: 487: Mr. Fake John Voorhees Goes to Europe
Focused: 196: Focus & The Reading Life, with Maryanne Wolf
Getting Things Done: 242: Slice of GTD Life with Richards and Spurgeon
Issues, Etc.: 293: Countering Technological Liturgies - Joshua Pauling
Issues, Etc.: 311: Responding to Roman Catholic Proof Texts: Protestants Deny the Real Presence - Dr. Steven Parks
Issues, Etc.: 332: Evangelical Cliches - Bryan Wolfmueller
It’s a Thing: 301: Little Treats Mission Creep
It’s a Thing: 302: Spray Candy Is My Roman Empire
Mac Power Users: 729: Don’t Hear What We Aren’t Saying
The Rebound: 480: You Like Developers? Name Three
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 394: ‘An Impossible Balcony’, With Matthew Panzarino
Upgrade: 497: The Poison Pill
We’re Not Wrong: About the Border and Gen Z’s Gender Split

Watched Link to heading

Weekly Notes 2024.04

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Overall, this week was relatively uneventful (outside of some stuff at work). I didn’t focus much on personal projects, except for…
Only a few weeks after claiming that I was sticking with Todoist for the foreseeable future for as my task manager, I once again got curious about OmniFocus, and ended up switching my entire task list over mid-week. Todoist has been implementing more team-based features recently, which I don’t need. And something about OmniFocus keeps drawing my attention… We’ll see how long it lasts.
On Saturday, I spent a substantial amount of time becoming familiar with the Nix package manager, which I am interested in using for reproducible builds of a project at work. The basic premise was easy to learn, though it took most of the day to get a fully functional solution.
Sunday so far has consisted of Divine Service in the morning, some cooking over lunch (which included prep for the week ahead), and some small amount of time focusing on a work project.

Read Link to heading

Using nix-shell to create and share reproducible embedded development environments

Listened To Link to heading

Accidental Tech Podcast: 571: Adding Some Carrot
Clockwise: 538: If I Lose It, I’ll Die
Connected: 486: Elden Widge
Getting Things Done: 242: Slice of GTD Life with Richards and Spurgeon
Late Night Linux: 265
Linux Matters: Fetch Is Going to Happen
Mac Power Users: 728: All About AppleCare
The Omni Show: How Kaitlin Salzke uses OmniFocus - Part 2
The Rebound: 479: $3500 Worth of FOMO
The Talk Show With John Gruber: 393: ‘An Asterisk on the Bento Box’, With Marco Arment
Upgrade: 496: 40th Anniversary of the Mac Draft
We’re Not Wrong: About the New Hampshire Primary (Live from Manchester)

Watched Link to heading

Reacher (2022), S2, E05-08

Weekly Notes 2024.03

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Even though it’s technically a holiday, I had work on Monday, preparing for our conference, and will instead use it as a floating holiday sometime later this year.
Tuesday through Friday of this week was Winter Conference 2024 for Precision Planting. The following links include coverage from various agriculture-focused outlets, a few of which quote yours truly, and I’ve thrown in a picture of one of the show stands as well:
Over the weekend I spent some time improving my Obsidian daily note setup, mostly adjusting the file location(s)
To automate some of the work, I used zmv, which was a new tool to me… it’s shockingly powerful

Read Link to heading

Author Clock
- I’m very tempted to either buy one of these, or set up a screen at my home showing off the web version 🤔
Long Live Webpages
What Even is a Webmention?
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (finished)

Listened To Link to heading

Accidental Tech Podcast: 570: The Local Mooching Situation
Clockwise: 537: All I Found Were Three Apple TV Remotes
Connected: 485: A Mobile Hamburger Menu Three Feet Wide
Cortex: 151: The Second Best Time is Now
Dot Social: Pivoting Out of the Attention Economoy, with medium’s Tony Stubblebine
Focused: 195: The Productivity Field Guide
Late Night Linux: 264
Mac Power Users: 727: The Productivity Field Guide
The Rebound: 478: Skizzy
Under the Radar: 285: Recreational Computing
Upgrade: 495: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
We’re Not Wrong: About the Iowa Caucus

Watched Link to heading

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023), S1, E10
Reacher (2022), S2, E01-04

Weekly Notes 2024.02

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 14:30:00 -0600

Early in the week, I spent a little time to make my Mastodon account discoverable by searching for this domain.
This week’s office time was primarily devoted to preparation for our annual Winter Conference.
On Thursday, I cleaned up the post structure on this website, which accidentally led to me spamming my RSS feed with old posts.
Friday morning I woke up to the sounds of my battery backups all going off at 3a, due to the loss of power in my neighborhood (really the first time this has happened since I moved here). Thankfully, the local power company was able to find the issue and restore power by about 5:30a, and so I was able to go about the rest of my day as planned.
This weekend, in my free time, I’ve been playing some of Tavern Master and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, both on PC via the Steam store.
- Tavern Master is a style of strategy game that I normally enjoy, though I’m currently finding it a bit tedious. We’ll see if I continue to play it or not…
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is an action game that is definitely outside of my normal gaming style, but it’s proving to be interesting so far. I expect that I’ll keep playing it occasionally.
This weekend also saw a cold snap to negative temperatures in the Midwest, along with some of the first real snow I’ve had to shovel this season. I’m happily staying indoors as much as I can.

Read Link to heading

Listened To Link to heading

Mac Power Users: 726: Journaling Update: Apple’s New App, Day One Updates & More
Focused: 194: I’d Like to Take a Mulligan
Upgrade: 494: Copyright Violation Machine
The Omni Show: How Kourosh Dini Uses OmniFocus - Part 2
Dot Social: Moderation and Migration for a Better Social Web, with Fediverse Leader Tim Chambers
Linux Matters: 20: Unfold Your Coding Potential
Late Night Linux: 263
Connected: 484: The Rickies (January 2024)
The Rebound: 477: Brrreeeeoooooouuuuuuuggghhh
Clockwise: 536: Spay and Neuter Your Pets
We’re Not Wrong: About the Secretary of Defense Going Missing and DEI
It’s a Thing: 299: Smut Rising
Accidental Tech Podcast: 569: Do Grasshoppers Have Tongues?

Watched Link to heading

January 13th: A Somber Day In Lithuania
xXx (2002)

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!

Enable Mastodon Discovery by Domain

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:15:00 -0600

While doing some reading on integrating Mastodon and Hugo this afternoon, I ran across a handy little project by Francesco Maida.

In the past, I’ve considered running my own Mastodon server, but that’s not yet an endeavor I’m ready to take on. However, being discoverable by anyone looking for me on Mastodon using my own domain? Thanks to this python script, that’s easy! Sweet!

For more information on how this all works, see either the README in the GitHub link above, or this blog post by Maarten Balliauw.

Weekly Notes 2024.01

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 12:30:00 -0600

I decided to try something a little different this year. I’ve seen other bloggers (for example, Jamie Tanna) implement a weekly review of sorts on their blogs, and thought it might strike an interesting balance between daily, monthly, and yearly posting, all of which I’ve tried at one point or another. I’ve also attempted weekly posts in the past, but often with some specific topic in mind. These notes will be simple recaps of my week.

New Year’s Day 🎆

Nice relaxing holiday on Monday (New Year’s Day)
I decided that migrating away from Todoist is a nonstarter currently, and so cleaned up and closed my OmniFocus account.
While in cleaning mode, I also did some general upkeep on my Obsidian vault.
Tuesday marked my return to the office.
Most of Tuesday through Friday was consumed by preparing for our annual Winter Conference at work.
Saturday was spent working on my 10 Year Anniversary post, followed by some research into comment platforms while I watched some TV and movies (below).
Sunday (today) started with Divine Service in the morning, followed by implementing giscus on my website.
After I’m done writing this, I have a small project to do for work, then it will be time to prepare for the week ahead.

Read Link to heading

2024: The Year of the Personal Website by Matthias Ott
Minimize Your Circus Factor by Mercedes Bernard
Defiant by Brandon Sanderson (finished)

Listened To Link to heading

The Talk Show with John Gruber: 392: ‘Halos and Harps’, with Casey Liss
Late Night Linux: 262
Upgrade: 493: Upgradies Hall of Fame
Darknet Diaries: 141: The Pig Butcher
Connected: 483: Send John Your Face
The Rebound: 476: Vision Pro No Show
We’re Not Wrong about The Epstein List and Texas Power
Accidental Tech Podcast: 568: The Year of Romance
It’s a Thing: 298: Let’s All go To The Bullpen
Clockwise: 535: It’s Even Embarrassing in Metric
Getting Things Done: 240: David Allen talks with Justin Hale
Dot Social: The State of Federation, with Mastodon’s Eugen Rochko

Watched Link to heading

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023), S1, E8-E9
Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (2022)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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!

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

Linux Kernel Security Demystified

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 18:30:00 -0500

Almost all bugs can be a “security” issue.

As both a Linux user and a software developer, I’ve followed the Linux Kernel development process and talks over the years. Recently, Greg Kroah-Hartman gave a talk on security at Kernel Recipes 2023 which I think is worth checking out. Most of the information is not new to me, but their approach to handling “security” bugs is somewhat novel in the industry, and I would argue is a good model to consider using across the board.

If you would prefer to browse the slides instead of (or in addition to) the video, check out Greg’s security-stuff slide deck.

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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.

Asus ZenBook 14: One Year Later

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 19:04:44 -0500

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.

First off, if I were making the decision again, is this the machine I would buy? Yes and no. I would probably pick up a similar model from Asus, but I would definitely not go with 16GB of RAM. There was a 32GB option that in retrospect I should have gone with, but by the time I came to that realization I was already weeks into using this laptop.

Overall, the ZenBook 14 is a form factor that I really like, with a great screen size that works well for traveling, on a desk, and as a literal “laptop”, and I’ve quite enjoyed owning it. The trackpad is decent, though not as great as my MacBook (but that’s hard to beat). The keyboard is an entirely different story though. I really like the keyboard… it’s perhaps the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used on a laptop, and I love almost everything about it. My only real complaint with the overall design is the slightly cheap/plastic feeling of the overall laptop chassis. All of my other/recent laptops have been primarily metal bodies, and so having a laptop that flexes is a bit off-putting, though it’s not yet caused me an issue.

Now when it comes to the battery life, as someone who uses an M1 MacBook as a primary driver, I’m a little spoiled. However, I still recall what “normal” laptops were/are like, and the ZenBook holds it’s own relatively well. I’ve reliably gotten 4-5 hours per charge when doing light work, or around 3-4 with some heavier workloads (though normally I’m near a charger for those as well). It’s not amazing, but I can’t complain too much.

As far as the software goes, Arch Linux with the KDE desktop environment has been nearly flawless. I think I’ve had one or two noticeable glitches, mostly when shutting down the computer if at all, and the user experience as been fantastic (as expected). I’ve slowly installed a few of the tools I use on a daily basis to the install so that even when traveling, I don’t need two machines on at a given time to access important information, respond to emails, or update my task list(s). Normally the night before I know I’ll be using the ZenBook, I start it up, run updates to make sure I’m caught up, and then I’m good to go.

The primary place where this laptop has failed me has mostly been due to a lack of planning on my part. A few of the codebases I compile for work are relatively large C++ and/or Qt-based projects, and the 16GB of RAM really hampers the compile times. I can still compile the projects, but it’s more of a case of starting a build and taking a coffee break, whereas on my desktops or MacBook I normally just have time to respond to some Slack messages (ie, on the order of single-digit minutes, normally sub-5). On this laptop… I don’t recall the last build time, but it was nowhere nearly that fast. It has worked great for embedded projects and/or smaller codebases though, which are a majority of the things I build.

Oddly enough, I realized as I’m typing this up that I’ve ended up using the laptop more just for personal projects and fun than I’ve used it for work. Since last August, my workload has changed semi-drastically, and I do much less software authoring than I once did (largely by choice). I end up working a lot more in schematic-capture tools and in email, both of which I tend to do on my Mac or at one of my desktops. I also am in substantially more meetings than I was a year ago, which I normally take my MacBook to as well, due to its all-day battery life and ability to sleep/wake effectively instantaneously, as well as the ability to run whatever meeting software is needed at the time. Arguably I could get that all done on the ZenBook as well, but as I only want to carry one machine with me to and from work, I tend to grab my Mac.

And, that’s a wrap! At this point, I have no immediate plans to upgrade the ZenBook to something with better specs. It has more or less worked for all of the reasons I initially chose it, and I expect I’ll keep it (and keep using it) for the next year or two at a least.

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!

My Search for the Perfect Note-Taking Solution

Fri, 09 Sep 2022 20:30:00 -0500

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 Link to heading

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.

I feel like I don’t have particularly complex requirements, at least conceptually. However, unless I’ve completely missed a solution somewhere (in which case, PLEASE let me know!), no single solution is capable of everything I want.

My (Ideal) Requirements Link to heading

Cross-platform support (can be native apps or Electron, I don’t care, as long as they are responsive), for desktop and mobile
Website access, for cases where I don’t want to sync my entire notes database to the machine
Reasonable backup options, preferably in a format that is readable by other tools if needed (such as Markdown)
Good export/share options (at least Markdown and PDF)
Inline image support
File attachment support, preferably with inline previews
OCR of images/files (for search ability)
Markdown support
Code block support with syntax highlighting
Offline access
Web clipper option
End to end encrypted

Options I’ve Tried Link to heading

Evernote Link to heading

There is really only one app that comes close to meeting most of those requirements: Evernote. But, it’s an app that I don’t enjoy using, has a whole host of privacy concerns, and as of late has some reliability issues. And I’ve used it off and on for nearly a decade (being somewhat pragmatic), but I really want a better solution. I’ve spent the last few weeks doing in depth testing, and still haven’t found anything that checks all of the boxes.

Bear Link to heading

Bear is by far my favorite note taking app in recent years. In fact, I’m using it to author this blog post, because it supports Markdown natively, and is legitimately an overall great experience. It’s free to use on a single device, or it can sync seamlessly across Apple devices using iCloud (with a Pro subscription, but that’s $15/year, which is totally worth it for good software).

But therein lies the problem: I don’t use only Apple devices. I’ve very seriously considered sacrificing using notes on every other platform because I enjoy using Bear so much, especially since the creators are working on a web version, along with improved search/OCR. With those two features, it would be almost a no-brainer for my purposes, lacking only in E2E encryption.

Joplin Link to heading

Joplin is a pretty close competitor to Bear in my rankings, and actually has some features already that Bear does not. However, it has two fatal flaws for me presently: no web app (and no plans to add one), and I don’t like it. I find the app clunky to use. I strongly prefer Markdown editors that include a live preview mode, which Bear and other apps have. Split-pane editing annoys me.

Obsidian Link to heading

Obsidian is also a semi-close competitor to Bear and Joplin, and has some things I like over Joplin, namely the editor options. It also has a better mobile client than Joplin, but falls flat when it comes to how enjoyable it is to use, and it also lacks a web client. Obsidian is really, really popular right now in the linked-notes community, and I understand most of the reasons, but to me it feels too much like an IDE. I don’t want to keep notes inside of a developer tool.

Standard Notes Link to heading

Standard Notes is actually the only option on this list that has both E2E encryption and a web app. Perfect, right?

Unfortunately, no. I highly dislike the app itself, it’s glitchy, lacks inline image support, exports Markdown files that are weirdly formatted, and in general feels like a tool that isn’t quite ready for production yet. Of all of the solutions I’ve looked at, outside of Bear, I think Standard Notes is most likely reach a stage where it would be a good option for me.

Notion Link to heading

I tried to love Notion. Really I did. Notion is very popular in the productivity community, but I just don’t get the database concepts its built upon. I end up spending all of my time trying to figure out how to store and arrange my data. Additionally, it lacks offline support, end to end encryption, and has very weird image/attachment support. It does actually have good Markdown support, as well as good export and backup options, but I can’t get past my issues with it.

NextCloud Notes Link to heading

NextCloud has support for Markdown notes, and on the desktop I could use QOwnNotes for a client. If I could get a good mobile app, this might be reasonable, but I very much dislike the entire user experience presently (outside of the cross-device syncing - that’s stellar). I spent very little time investigating this option.

TiddlyWiki Link to heading

I actually thought for a few moments that TiddlyWiki might do what I needed. I could sync my notes in a single file, work online or offline, and be reasonably sure my notes would be accessible for years to come. And in my time testing TiddlyWiki, I very quickly began to enjoy the design ideas the creator has. Unfortunately, inline images and attachments are virtually impossible in the single-file approach, so I somewhat quickly gave up on it as well.

Craft Link to heading

Craft is gorgeous. And I hate it. The UI is just not something I enjoy using - not when dealing with 100s of notes. I quit testing Craft within an hour.

Notesnook Link to heading

Notesnook looked interesting, but again, I couldn’t work with the UI. Note filing was unintuitive to me, and I very quickly gave up. Since it’s fairly young, it is on my list to check back in on though.

Nota Link to heading

Nota is the last option I ran across in my recent testing. It shows a lot of promise, as it borrows the Obsidian “just a collection of files” concept, but has a better UI, and is much more pleasing to use. However, it’s still in beta, has some weird behavior when adding attachments, and is Mac only, with no great mobile app recommendations. Because it can sync to any cloud storage, Nota would actually have a web view available (either through iCloud or NextCloud for me, I think).

Others Link to heading

And there are a whole host of other apps that I have looked at, but never actually tried: OneNote (I don’t want a Microsoft app, sorry, and I hate their UI too), Google Keep (doesn’t work for the number of notes I want, don’t like the UI), Apple Notes (pretty good, but again, not great for the number of notes I want), etc.

(Lack of) Conclusion Link to heading

And so right now, I’m writing this blog post in Bear. Earlier this week, I just finished exporting my notes for the umpteenth time from Evernote and importing them into Bear, but did not delete anything, because I’m afraid I’ll be back.

Is there a solution you know of that meets all of my requirements? If so, please let me know! I can be reached most easily via Matrix, or on Mastodon.

A New Linux Laptop...

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:07:11 -0500

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?

First of all, this wasn’t an impulse buy. I didn’t want to own another laptop, but it was the simplest option I could come up with. I realized that, as much as I absolutely adore my MacBook in many ways, there is one substantial area it falls flat in: embedded software development, which is kind of what I do for a living. A majority of my day for work is spent on a Linux desktop (either my personal machine when working remotely, or a machine my company supplied when in the office). Whether I am simply writing code, or debugging hardware or software (using tools like Wireshark, CAN analyzers, or logic analyzers), Linux has proven to be both the most reliable OS in the last 7+ years for me, and also the simplest most of the time to get working. Additionally, because some of the non-embedded software that I develop or use for work tends to require the latest compilers, being on a bleeding edge distro (in my case Arch Linux) is by far the easiest way to avoid frequent manual tool installation. And, simultaneously, Linux is able to support the very old embedded compilers required for a few of the projects I work on.

Secondly, now that I’m messing around with Linux on a laptop again, I’m finding that I am enjoying it. It’s not nearly as polished as macOS, of course. But Arch Linux + KDE is so far working much better than I expected, and the whole user experience has been very good so far. It took me about an hour to go from pulling the laptop out of the box to having a fully functional desktop environment up and running, and most of my tools installed. Since then, virtually everything has worked the way I expected. (For reference, I normally run XFCE, but in the past it has not been as pleasant on a laptop, hence my choice to try out KDE). And to top it all off, I’m actually doing this under Wayland instead of X11, which is something I thought would never happen.

So why couldn’t I make this all work on my Mac?

Some of the compilers I need to use are not M1 native. They work under Rosetta2, but feel (and are) incredibly slow. And because I’m stuck on an older version of the toolchain, there is no chance that this will improve in the near future.
CAN analysis, at least using the adapters we use at work, is not currently functional on the Mac. I could attempt to do some sort of passthru, but SocketCAN on Linux just works. It’s tools that I already know, and the barrier to entry is low.
I find network debugging on my Mac to be highly annoying (and I work with ethernet stacks as part of my job). Wireshark is available on a Mac, sure, but there have been times when I have been unable to get something that I know works fine on Linux (with virtually no effort) functional on a Mac. That may be because of a lack of knowledge on my part, but I’d rather be solving problems and developing new products, not troubleshooting/learning new things about my system.

And why did I buy myself a new laptop, vs requesting one through work? Mostly because, by acquiring it myself, I have more freedom to tweak the operating system and test things (for instance, gaming performance) that I would not feel comfortable doing with a company owned asset.

So what did I buy? I chose to pick up an Asus ZenBook 14, with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU with built-in Radeon Vega 7 Graphics, and 16G of RAM. I strongly considered upgrading the RAM, but most options with 32G of RAM cost distinctly more than I was interested in spending, and I don’t want this machine to function as a desktop replacement. Rather, I primarily want to use it when I’m working remotely (and not at home), and as an additional system that will probably normally sit on my benchtop at home, running various analyzers.

For additional details on this laptop and other hardware & software I use, see my Uses page.

Thoughts on Hugo after 21 Months

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 11:09:54 -0500

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).

However, I have noticed a few small side-effects to using an SSG over something like WordPress:

I don’t write posts nearly as often. I’ve never been one to post a lot on my website, but the small extra hurdle of writing in Markdown and pushing changes, triggering the rebuild, has caused me to resort to primarily updating my reading list and uses pages. Additionally, I basically only write posts when on my primary computer now (as opposed to whenever I have a web browser and an idea), as I prefer to work on posts locally before pushing them to my live site.
I don’t spend much time looking at, or improving, the design of my site. I used to, once a year or so, change up the theme I was using (when on SquareSpace/Wordpress), and in between I was often testing others in the background. Now I virtually never even get to the testing phase. That’s good in some respects, because it means I’m in general happy with the look of my site, but simultaneously it makes me a little sad that I don’t enjoy changing up themes in Hugo, and maybe finding something I like even better.

I haven’t reached the point where the side-effects are bothering me enough to cause me to begin evaluating other options, but I do see that day coming somewhere down the road. Ideally, I would like to find a platform that maintains what I like about Hugo (Markdown content, backed up to/stored in a Git repo, and very responsive), while also providing a web front end for management/content creation. I’ve looked into Grav a few times, among other options, but have yet to actually spin up an instance for testing.

If you’re reading this and have a recommendation I should consider, feel free to reach out to me, either via Matrix, or on Mastodon!

The Apple Store Time Machine

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 16:00:56 -0500

Michael Steeber:

The Apple Store Time Machine is a celebration of the places and products that have shaped our lives for more than twenty years. This interactive experience recreates memorable moments in Apple history with painstaking detail and historical accuracy.

I spent some time exploring the Time Machine Michael created this afternoon, and the level of detail is absolutely astonishing. I highly recommend downloading this and reliving some of Apple’s history.

🔗

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.

🔗

Brief Thoughts on the First Article of the Apostles' Creed

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 05:20:33 -0500

Author’s note: This post is a deviation from my standard posts which have historically been mostly technology-related. I have been a Christian for effectively my entire life, though I rarely talk about it in depth on my website. However, I like to use my website as a way to link others to my thoughts on various topics, and this post felt like one I both needed to write, and that I may want to share.

Over the past few days I’ve been reading, and digesting, the book A Simple Way to Pray by Martin Luther, as translated by Matthew C. Harrison. It’s a short and fairly simple book to read, at only 32 pages in length, but has caused me to pause and think a number of times. This morning I read through a portion on praying through the Apostles’ Creed, and the following thoughts on the First Article caught my attention.

First off, here is the First Article:

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

And now, Martin Luther’s commentary:

You are God’s creation, workmanship, creature, and work. In and by yourself, you are nothing. You know nothing and you cannot do anything. What were you 1000 years ago? Where were you 1000 years ago? … What you are, what you know, and what you are capable of, that is God’s creation. … And so before God you have absolutely nothing to boast about. For you were nothing at all. He is your Creator and in the blink of an eye can render you nothing again.

Wow. I mean, as a confessing Christian I would say that I fully agree with Luther’s commentary, and have known that probably my entire life. But is that how I act when I come before my Lord? Do I give thanks to Him as His creation? Or do I view Him as just a being who is perhaps greater than I, but ultimately on the same playing field? Do I come before Him in reverence, as creation to Creator? Do I worship Him as Lord of all?

Far too often I fear that I forget both my place in creation, and my position in regards to God. It is true that I am an adopted child of God, but I am also His creation, and not only pale in comparison to Him, but am nothing. It is only by His grace and mercy that I exist.

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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? Link to heading

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? Link to heading

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? Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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!

Removing Google Analytics

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 13:04:19 -0600

Now that I’ve migrated from WordPress to Hugo, it’s time for Stage 2 of my website redesign. I’ve been wanting to move away from Google Analytics for a while due to the invasive nature of the data they collect, but I’ve never taken the time to set up an alternative. I’ve looked into Matomo in the past, and while it looks promising, at this stage I’d rather not set up a server to host it myself, nor am I prepared to pay for their hosted option. So, after checking that off the list, what other alternatives are left?

While setting up my Hugo website, I noticed that the theme I’m currently using, Hugo-Coder, includes support for Google Analytics, Fathom Analytics, Plausible Analytics, and GoatCounter. Both Fathom Analytics and Plausible Analytics look amazing, and both are privacy-protecting, but neither have a free tier, only a free trial (unless I choose to self-host, which is again, not a priority for me at this time). At some point I may move to a paid service, but for now, I just want some generic stats about my website: which pages are visited the most, and some generics visitor numbers and stats (browser, etc). And so, hoping to find a simpler and less costly option, I moved on to GoatCounter.

Now let me be the first to say, GoatCounter’s website is not flashy when compared to the other two options, nor do they have especially beautiful graphs to display the collected data (see the preceding image). However, there are a couple of things in their favor: 1) they are very privacy respecting (see their FAQ page), and 2) they have a free tier for non-commercial uses, with up to 100k pageviews per month. At this point, I meet both of those qualifications. I guess it’s time to regiser for the service and try it out!

Signing up for GoatCounter is very simple, and only requires a few pieces of information (email, password, and the domain you intend to use it with). You are asked to verify your email address, and then you’re presented with a code, which needs added to your Hugo config. Once those changes are complete, all that’s left is to commit and push the config changes, and everything is set up.

So, what’s next? At this point, I just sit back and wait. I’ve done some simple testing, and it appears that the analytics are working as expected. Only time will tell how happy I am with this new solution, but for now it provides me general information without being overly heavy-handed, and without being too invasive to my visitor’s privacy.

Migrating from WordPress to Hugo

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 19:52:41 -0600

A little under 3 years ago I wrote a post entitled Site Redesign and Migration, where I unveiled a full redesign of my website after having moved it off of the Squarespace. Three years before that I started my website on Squarespace, after considering a host of other alternatives. And now, after many months of consideration, and after reading many blogs about why one should or shouldn’t use a Static Site Generator (ex: “Why I Don’t Use a Static Site Generator” by Kev Quirk), I’ve opted to migrate my website from WordPress to Hugo.

So, why am I making the change?

In some ways, Hugo is actually more complex than Wordpress. I can spin up a WordPress website on almost any hosting platform out there. I’ve been using Amazon LightSail, but I could have just as easily used DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, or WordPress.com.

Hugo is a Static Site Generator (SSG), which means that I design the website in Markdown, and then Hugo generates a static HTML website from that. It’s not as simple as WordPress, where I could simply go into the web interface, type up a post, hit “Publish”, and it appeared on my website. I have to open a Markdown editor on my computer, write the post, render it locally to ensure I’m happy with the content and design, then commit it to a Git repository. Once committed, my website has to be rebuilt and redeployed to the server.

But that last paragraph actually hit on one of the largest reasons for switching to Hugo: my website is a Git repository. Even if I choose to migrate from Hugo to some other SSG in the future, my posts are all already in Markdown format. As long as whatever I choose uses Markdown (which many SSGs do), I just have to rearrange the directory structure, and then publish. And even if I choose to return to a full CMS, there are some that support Markdown, so in many ways I’m future-proofing my content.

Another reason for leaving Wordpress is actually the requirements for running a full-blow Content Management System (CMS). I find as I grow older, I no longer am interested in keeping servers up to date to protect them from the latest vulnerabilities. And so, the fewer requirements my website has to operate, the better.

And finally, I simply don’t use most of the features of WordPress, nor do I care to at this time. I don’t currently enable comments on my posts. I’ve used analytics in the past, but that is possible on Hugo as well.

What all did this migration entail?

First of all, I actually manually went through every page and post on my existing website, and copied them into Markdown format on my computer, verifying that links worked correctly, pictures and videos inlined in a post looked right, and selecting where they would reside on my website. Most pages on my WordPress website were directly copied to top-level pages on my Hugo website, as were some of my blog posts. However, I chose to move a majority of the posts that I wrote for my 100 Days to Offload experiment into an Archives section, unless I felt that they would be useful to others in the future.

Next, I selected a theme that I liked the look of, and then tested the settings on my local computer. I also initialized a Git repository for all of the files I had created, and pushed the changes to GitHub. (I looked at using GitLab or another alternative, but for now the easiest way to deploy seemed to be with GitHub)

Finally, I spun up a new app on the DigitalOcean App Platform, tied both my Git repository and my domain name to the app, and published my website.

And so, thus begins the latest stage of the story of my website. Hopefully, I will continue using Hugo for many years to come. Although, if history is any indicator, in approximately three years I will be considering something else…

Edit 1: Due to the design of Hugo, my RSS feed now is located at https://www.justinvollmer.com/posts/index.xml. I will try to get a redirect working, but I am not confident that will occur.

For more information on deploying a Hugo website to the DigitalOcean App Platform, see this guide.

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.

Things That Work: Firefox

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 16:55:19 -0600

I’ve used a number of different browsers over the years. In fact, I’ve used more browsers than I realized, once I started compiling idea for this post.

When I first started using computers, my primary browser was Internet Explorer. I don’t recall exactly what year this was, but it was prior to the advent of Firefox and Chrome. And for years, that’s what I used. I vaguely recall using Netscape Navigator, actually, at one point, but I don’t think it ever stuck.

In the early to mid-2000s, I found out about Firefox, and switched to it as my primary browser. My reasoning, as I recall, was better support of web standards. At the time I was playing around with designing websites, and it just worked better.

Around 2005, I got my first Mac, which introduced me to Safari. I used it some, but I’ve always had weird issues with Safari, even to this day, and so it’s always a backup option, not my primary. I stuck with Firefox during that time (I think). Until…

The year I graduated from college was the year that Google Chrome came out, and I pretty quickly switched to using that full time. In fact, I would go on to use Chrome, or a Chrome-based browser, until about 3 years ago. I was heavy into the Google ecosystem, and overall I liked the performance.

Sometime during 2017 I gave Firefox another chance. I don’t recall exactly what made me try it, honestly. It may have been a podcast I was listening to. Or perhaps I was looking at ways to move away from the Google suite of products. In any case, slightly before Firefox 57 (Quantum), I switched back to Firefox, and haven’t really looked back since.

So why am I on Firefox? Is it the amazing performance? Not really. Firefox is good, but Chrome is often still faster. Is it the most beautiful browser? By no means. It’s good, but still not as good as Chrome, or one of the Chrome derivatives. My main reasons for using Firefox are two-fold: it’s a FOSS product (that actually works), and the extension ecosystem is amazing.

A few months ago I created a page on this site that listed all of the extensions I use, and why I use them. Of all of those, my absolute favorite is Multi-Account Containers. The ability to be logged into the same website with different accounts, and to keep history/tracking separate, has proven useful time and time again.

Anyhow. There’s a short trip down memory lane for me, and a very brief explanation of why I use Firefox.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 58/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Things That Work: Soundiiz

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 17:29:51 -0600

A few months ago, around the time that the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the Untied States, I began playing a weekly round of Name That Tune with my family. The premise is simple: I create a playlist with a variety of songs, and then the rest of the family attempts to guess, within the first 90 seconds of the song, the song’s title and artist.

Prior to the start of these games, I was primarily using Apple Music for all of my music-streaming needs. It wasn’t perfect, but in general everything I was looking for was present in that ecosystem. However, as I began to put playlists together for the NTT games, I quickly decided that I was going to need an alternative to improve the workflow. Apple Music doesn’t have a good web or Linux client, and I didn’t feel like using my old MacBook Pro for all of the work. Plus, I was getting fed up with Apple Music’s playlist system. I briefly looked at YouTube Music/Google Music, but quickly decided that was also not going to work, and so I switched to Spotify.

Now that I was relatively happy with the app and workflow, I began creating 1-2 playlists a week. However, I quickly found that keeping track of all of the songs that I had already used was painful. I had to either rely solely on memory, or switch between all of the previous playlists to check if a song had been used previously. There had to be a better solution. Ideally, I wanted a way to export CSV files from Spotify, compile them into a single LibreOffice spreadsheet, and then have an easy lookup table on my side monitor while I worked on playlists. Of course, that couldn’t have just been built into the Spotify UI. That would have been too easy. So, I began searching for a solution, assuming that I was not the first person to want to do this. And I was right…

Enter Soundiiz. Weird name, I know. I had actually ran across the service a few months prior, but completely forgot about it. Soundiiz advertises that they have the ability to sync playlists and favorites between platforms, and at the time, I didn’t need that functionality (I’ve since tested it out briefly, and I was underwhelmed by the performance). However, they also offer playlist export in, you guessed it… CSV! Which is exactly what I needed. And so, I signed up for an account, synced my Spotify playlists, and the rest is history.

Now, my procedure for creating NTT playlists is pretty simple. I first visit Soundiiz, and export the previous game’s playlist, which I then import into a master spreadsheet that contains all of the songs that I’ve previously used, along with the date used, artist, album, etc. It’s still a little time-intensive, but now I only ever have a single list to compare against, instead of switching between all of the previous playlists (currently at 12 and counting).

There are a host of other features that Soundiiz claims, though I’ve never actually tried any of the others out (other than what I discussed above). If you listen to a lot of music, or switch between multiple platforms, it’s worth quickly browsing through their feature list. I personally could see the playlist sync being useful in the future, especially if it becomes more robust.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 51/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Things That Work: Zowie FK1

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 17:16:25 -0600

Inspired by Things that work! by Cliff Brake.

As someone who spends a very large amount of time in front of a computer, over the years I have built up a list of a number of preferences. Today’s post is about the Zowie FK1+, which is my default mouse choice.

I first learned of the FK1+ (and other similar models from Zowie) in 2015 when I took my current position at work. I was looking for a mouse that was comfortable, worked with all operating systems, and gave me the option of different DPI settings in the mouse itself, instead of having to use software. Somehow, during the research, I ran across the FK1+, and I haven’t looked back. It is now in use both at work and at home.

So, why use the FK1+ (or, again, a similar model)? It’s ambidextrous. It’s comfortable, in my opinion at least, for extended use. The DPI settings are amazing. And the mouse holds up well. Also, it is available in different sizes for different hands, so you can choose whatever size is appropriate.

Bonus: Along with the FK1+, I always use a SteelSeries QcK Gaming Mousepad. I’ve tried using desks without a mousepad, and the experience just isn’t the same. Lack of a good mousepad makes the entire computer experience lousy. Again, years ago I found the SteelSeries line of mousepads, and ever since I’ve used them in one form or another. I vary the size or design based on use case, but you can find one of these under every mouse I use.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 41/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Windows 10 Updates

Fri, 22 May 2020 17:02:28 -0600

Every once in a while I fire up an older Windows 10 PC, mostly to play games. Unfortunately, because it doesn’t get used much, it normally needs to run updates. And I officially hate running updates on Windows machines.

At this point in my life, most of my work is done on Linux. I understand the operating system relatively well, and I generally understand what an update will do to my computer.

Windows updates are too opaque. I can read what Microsoft tells me about them. But I can only delay installation. I can’t choose to never update (and expect things to work right).

I’m currently attempting to get my system functional again, so that I can play a game with a friend. And at this point I’m a whole freaking 75 minutes into troubleshooting and updating…

Anyhow. Rant complete. For now.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 28/100). 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.

Moving a Git Submodule

Thu, 14 May 2020 16:49:25 -0600

A coworker asked me a question this evening about how to move a Git submodule to a sub-directory, and as it’s something I’ve had to look up multiple times in the past, I decided it would be good to post it here for easy lookup in the future.

How to move a Git submodule to a sub-directory Link to heading

Delete the submodule reference from .gitmodules (normally 3 lines)
Check .git/config for references to the submodule and remove them, if they exist
Run git rm --cached <submodule name> to remove the submodule reference from the repository
Remove the old submodule folder
Recreate your submodule reference with git submodule add <git repo url> <local path>

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 20/100). 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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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.

RSS For The Win!

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 13:39:36 -0600

I love reading. I have read ever since I can remember. Before I was around computers, I read physical books. When our family got a computer in the early 2000s I continued reading books, but also began reading news online.

Fast forward to the early 2010s. My reading habits had not changed much, although I added some digital books and magazines to my reading collection. But then, I discovered blogs.

Blogs were amazing! It was a way for me to get inside the minds of other people, and get their perspectives on life. I read all sorts of things: personal blogs, self-help, productivity, tech, you name it. But I quickly found a problem: it can be very painful to keep up with multiple blogs on multiple websites. If only there was a way to collect all of that to a single location for me to read…

The RSS Aggregator Link to heading

Enter Google Reader! Perhaps a year or so before it would be sent to the graveyard, I somehow found out about Google Reader (an RSS aggregator), and quickly became a fan. It was a little clunky at times, but I was able to use it to aggregate everything in one location. I quickly added all of the blogs I followed to the site, and then just kept adding more as I found new topics I wanted to follow.

Of course, as I alluded to earlier, Google Reader was eventually killed off. In 2013, Google announced that it would be shuttering the program, and so I began looking for another RSS feed aggregator. I quickly found Feedly, imported all of my feeds, and life was good!

Fast forward to early 2019. Feedly was still working well, but I occasionally get the urge to move to using self-hosted solutions, and so I decided to look for ways to host my own RSS aggregator. I found a number of options that looked intriguing, but I really wanted one that was both FOSS, and would integrate with Nextcloud (a self-hosted cloud alternative), since I was already hosting an instance on a DigitalOcean droplet for personal use. And that was when I found Nextcloud News.

My Current Setup Link to heading

Nextcloud News was amazingly simple to setup. As with most apps on Nextcloud, it can simply be installed via the Nextcloud App Store. You also need to enable a cron job or use an updater to queue the background tasks, but the guides on how to do that are very easy as well. And so, I had my own self-hosted feed aggregator! Great!

Next up: find a mobile app, as I do a large amount of my blog reading from my phone. At the time, I was using Android, and so I tried the Nextcloud News app. It worked, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. But I stuck with it for a few months, until I ultimately switched from Android to an iPhone back in September 2019.

One of my first tasks after switching to iOS was finding a good RSS reader. I tried multiple over the course of a few months, but finally settled on Fiery Feeds. Unfortunately, it is closed source, but looks amazing, and so far has worked very well for me!

And that’s my setup! It has worked well for months now, and as you may have guessed, I am now using it to actively follow all of the #100DaysToOffload blogs! Huge thanks to Amolith for putting a single mega-RSS feed together!

Finally, for those of you who are interested in following my blog using a similar setup, you can find my RSS feed here.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 6/100). 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: KDE Konsole and tmux

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 12:33:28 -0600

I ran into an interesting issue this morning after running system updates on my main desktop computer (running Arch Linux with the KDE Plasma desktop). For some reason, although I don’t think any behavior was intentionally changed by the developers (and I’m not blaming anyone), Konsole (a KDE terminal app) started intercepting the CTRL+B key combo that is used by tmux. It turns out that this is a standard “Add Bookmark” shortcut in the Plasma desktop environment.

My solution was a bit of a hack, but works for now: I went to System Settings – Shortcuts – Standard Shortcuts, and disabled the “Add Bookmark” shortcut entirely, as I don’t really use it. Problem solved! Now, back to software development…

Micro-Update: Happy Easter!

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

Micro-Update: Recommended Firefox Extensions

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:35:54 -0600

I realized this morning that I frequently give recommendations to friends and family on apps and tools to use, books and blogs to read, podcasts to listen to, etc. And so, instead of constantly pulling up my notes and then sending a list individually to each person, I decided to begin creating pages here on my website briefly listing my recommendations, and why I recommend them.

The first (and only) page so far is my recommendations for Firefox Extensions. However, I expect to add more in short order, at which time I’ll add a blog post announcing them as well. My goal is to keep these pages updated and current, as I personally hate it when I come across recommendations that I think sound useful, and then find out that they are years out of date.

Enjoy!

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 Link to heading

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? Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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) Link to heading

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 Link to heading

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.

Reflections on a Year With Linux

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 12:01:37 -0600

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

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

Also, during 2017 I switched from using Chrome to primarily using Mozilla’s Firefox as my web browser, across all platforms. While I sometimes have qualms about how the Mozilla Foundation operates, Firefox does everything I need, and provides a nice user experience with some cross-platform syncing, which is important for me. I also use Thunderbird on my ZenBook for a desktop email client when I want one, although I typically rely on web mail (I’m still a heavy Gmail user for both work and home).

I said that I use Linux as my daily driver “for the most part”. So where do I not use Linux? Unfortunately, there are a few places where I still rely on Mac OS X and Windows 10, sometimes much to my annoyance.

Mac OS X still works best for me when it comes to photo/video editing (I prefer Adobe’s Premiere Pro and Lightroom Classic), and also when I’m working on notes in Evernote, and tasks in Todoist. While the latter two have web clients, the Mac desktop clients are much easier to use, and I can get my work done quicker there than in the web interface. I have explored using Kdenlive for video editing, but Premiere Pro still feels like the better option for me at this point. Also, yes, there are options like Darktable for photo editing, but since I am already purchasing the Adobe Creative Cloud for the time being, I decided to continue using Lightroom, which I was already familiar with.

Windows 10 gets used for certain development applications at work (where there are often no Linux alternatives), and gaming (primarily Blizzard games). I have investigated using some Windows tools under Wine, but since it is not an option for every tool that I need, I will continue running Windows 10 on one machine at home, and one at work.

In the fall of 2017 I also deployed a server running Linux at my house (ZoneMinder + Emby), and a Raspberry Pi (Home Assistant). The server is currently running Ubuntu 16.04, since that was the easiest way to get started with ZoneMinder (Emby was an afterthought since I already had the server set up). At some point I may move that machine to Arch, or else another server distro, but since it is working for now I have no reason to change it. The Raspberry Pi is running a custom build specifically for Home Assistant (based on ResinOS + Docker), and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, since it is completely dedicated to being my smart home hub.

So, what changes do I have planned for 2018? In no particular order:

Set up a Raspberry Pi with Kodi: I’ve read about Kodi a number of times, but I have never tried it out. The barrier to entry is pretty low, so this seems like a good project for a long weekend sometime this year.
Install Gentoo: I have a coworker that uses primarily Gentoo, and I have never done a Gentoo install. I know it will take some time, but it seems like it might be a good experience for me.
Set up a system with ZFS: I have read quite a bit about ZFS, and was originally going to use it on my server this past Fall. However, I ultimately did an EXT4 RAID-6 array, so ZFS got pushed to a later date.
Set up a FreeBSD system: This may go along with my ZFS experimentation. Earlier this year I actually did a FreeBSD install on one of my laptops, but I had enough issues with it that I re-installed Linux, and put of FreeBSD for another time. I’d like to purchase a small desktop system to use for BSD experimentation.

That pretty much wraps up my experience and current thoughts about Linux after a year of using it full time. At this point I do not foresee any reason for me to not use Linux primarily, although I also do not see a path forward to it being my only operating system. Hopefully, throughout 2018, I will be able to move some additional tasks to Linux, and also get a chance to work on some of the projects listed above.

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

Site Redesign and Migration

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 11:31:15 -0600

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

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

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

And… that’s it for now. Enjoy!

Three Weeks Into the Linux Experiment

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:29:29 -0600

Note: This is part 2 of my series on switching to Linux. To see my first blog post, click here.

In “The Long Road to Linux”, published in late November, I wrote a post stating that I was attempting to switch to using Linux full time as my operating system of choice. And so, after spending slightly over three weeks running Linux on my main laptop, I figured it was time to post an update on how things are going.

Thus far, everything has been going smoothly. I have used Linux at work long enough to know that there are often a few bumps in the road, and was therefore prepared to have some hurdles in using it daily, but my experiment with running Arch Linux on my Asus Zenbook has been one of my nicest user experiences in recent memory. That is not to say that there haven’t been some small issues. But nothing has been a showstopper, and I continue to use my Zenbook day in and day out.

So, what issues have I ran into? The first annoyance I had once my computer was set up was some tearing when watching full-screen video, and also when scrolling through websites in Chrome. After a bit of research on the Arch wiki, it turned out that there were a few simple settings I could tweak in the video driver .conf file. I made the changes, and after a reboot I have had no further problems with my graphics card. Easy fix.

The next problem I tackled was finding a replacement for Airmail. I’ve followed the Linux community long enough to know about most of the major email clients, and so I tried out almost all of the big-name applications: Nylas N1, Geary, Wmail, Evolution, and Thunderbird. Geary and Evolution were very quickly checked off the list. Neither felt comfortable to use in my opinion, and were lacking some features I was interested in. Next, I checked out N1. It looked nice, but I had no interest in having my email going through servers other than Google’s (which I’m not actually 100% comfortable with either, but I am living with for the time being). And though they have a self-hosted option, I was not ready to put that much work into my email. Which left me with Wmail and Thunderbird. Wmail is nice, but it is effectively just a wrapper for Gmail. And Thunderbird feels old and clunky, but it will get the job done, and will let me have a combined inbox (something I am very keen on having). After a few hours of testing, it was settled: I’m using Thunderbird for my email client.

The last major issue I have run into is using Evernote under Linux, or else replacing it entirely. I have tried a couple of the alternatives to Evernote, but so far, nothing has really impressed me. The tools were functional, but not nearly as handy as Evernote. And so, I have once again decided to punt on finding a replacement, and continue using Evernote. This does mean that I must use my Mac for the occasional document-scanning or database-backup task, but it is normally limited to around once per week.

As you would expect, there were some important decisions I made when I switched to Linux that have affected my experience so far (desktop of choice, web browser, etc), as well as some specific config settings that I have used to improve the performance of my ZenBook. But, that’s another post for another time!

The Long Road to Linux

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 11:28:33 -0600

In October of 2015, I transitioned to using Linux as my primary OS at work. At the time I was using Ubuntu 14.04, as it was the suggested distribution for compiling and testing one of the main software products my employer creates, and it was (for the most part) compatible with all of the other various toolchains that I needed to use as an Embedded Software Engineer. I got along with it for the most part, and continued to use Mac OS X and Windows 8 in my personal life.

Fast forward to this past April, and I decided to purchase a used computer similar to the desktop I have at work for my own personal use. When it arrived, I opted to install Arch Linux (a distro I had tinkered with a few years ago), and began using it a few times a week to determine whether switching to Arch as my main distro at work was a viable option. I decided it was, and so in mid-May I began running Arch professionally as well.

This brings us to last Saturday, November 19, 2016. I had been considering moving from using a 3-year-old MacBook Pro as my daily driver to using Linux full time. And so, to that end, I purchased an Asus ZenBook UX330, with the intention of installing Arch on it. The ZenBook arrived on Monday afternoon, and my experiment began. Could I use a light-weight laptop running Arch as my go-to computer for everything except gaming (which I use a dedicated Windows rig for)? I spent 3-4 hours on Monday setting up the OS, and then had to stop for the night so I could be prepared to leave for my parents’ house at 6a on Tuesday.

I spent all of Tuesday morning traveling, and after meeting with a friend for lunch, and spending time with family in the early afternoon, I met my first challenge in my new Arch-filled life: how to sign on to my parents’ WiFi network with my chosen network setup: systemd-networkd. Thankfully, I had already connected to one WiFi network with my ZenBook (my own home network), and so between what I remembered and the Arch wiki, I was soon up and running.

The rest of the day was uneventful, until I got to the hotel I was staying at in the evening. I had not connected to a WiFi network yet that used no password, but linked your device via a room/name-based sign-on. Thankfully, every room as an ethernet port, and so I opted to avoid WiFi for the time being and simply use my trusty Anker USB3/Ethernet adapter to set up a wired connection. I was quickly on the hotel’s network, and the day went back to being uneventful.

And that brings me to today! Nothing eventful has happened today, other than I ran across a fun tool that I will probably do a brief blog post on at a later date. I am still using a wired connection for internet access, mostly because until this evening I have not had enough down time that I have wanted to experiment with things.

I intend to make this a multi-part blog post, detailing steps that I have to take as I move from using my MacBook Pro as my daily driver to replacing it with Linux and opensource tools. I know that I will be looking for a mail client to replace Airmail, and also potentially a note-taking tool to replace Evernote. Alternately, I may need to look for a way to use Evernote efficiently under Linux. I currently scan a large number of physical documents into Evernote for easy access when I am traveling, and for an easy digital filing system, and I suspect that my current workflow will not translate well to Linux

But, that’s an adventure for another day. And so, here’s wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!

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