Coming off my three posts about my attempt at using Obsidian, I thought it would be fun to actually write about what I am using.
Laptop: HP Pro-book running Linux Debian XFCE. I can’t stand using Windows day to day so I knew Linux was the only way to go on this laptop. Even for little things like updating my website using Git, Windows is just so much harder. Now part of that might just be that I am more comfortable in a Mac/Linux environment for such things but Powershell and other Windows tools just never clicked for me. I used to be an avid Windows user (those who have followed me for years would know this, hell I had Windows Phones and the original SurfaceRT), but paths since then have led me here. When choosing a distro I started with Arch which I do like due to how customizable it is, then played with Mint which I always keep around, and ended on Debian. I like how Debian is conservative with updates and and keeps things very stable, even if that means some items are a generation or two behind. XFCE is just a great low overhead environment which does what I need without the extras.
Phone: iPhone 13 Mini, yes that is right. I love this phone and have held on to it year after year since Apple gave up on the perfect sized device. Now this fall will probably end that run, but that does not mean I have to be happy about it.
Email/Calendar: I am using Fastmail as the back end service for my personal e-mail. I have been a customer for years, and while I have dabbled with gmail I always end up right back with Fastmail. It is connected to my personal domain (darrencohen.me), and uses standards like iMap/CalDAV/CardDav which gives me options on how to connect. To access my mail and calendars, on my laptop I mainly use the web interface but I also have Thunderbird setup as a desktop app. Both work great. On my phone I use the Fastmail app for e-mail though I sync it to the Apple Mail app as well, but use Apple’s built in Calendar for most calendar tasks.
Task Management: I use Todoist as it does it’s one job really well and works great cross platform. Thanks to their CLI, I can quickly add any task from the terminal on Linux with a few keystrokes and on iOS they make adding tasks quick and easy. My favorite feature is the language parsing.
Notes: All my notes are kept in plain text (markdown to be exact) synced to a Dropbox folder called “Notes”. On my laptop I use VIM (or NVIM) and on my phone I use a combination of Drafts to start my notes and 1Writer or Textastic to view and edit my notes. Best part of the setup is I never worry about an app going away as text will live forever.
Website: The domain is registered at Hover , it’s built on the Hugo framework, the code is hosted on Github , and the Git repository is linked to a worker on Cloudflare which makes this place viewable to “all” of you!
Other Things: I use Apple Music to stream my music, Overcast to listen to podcasts, Inoreader is my RSS hosting service, Instapaper is my read later app, and Rainrop is my favorite bookmark syncing tool.