using

I ran into the idea of a /USING page while visiting some personal blogs (as one should) found the idea compelling. So, this is mine, it is nowhere near completion, but I will update as I go.

OS

  • Fedora 42
  • iOS 18

Apps

My goal is to minimize my setups as much as possible, and therefore use as little apps as possible and if possible use Open-Source software. I have still a way to go, but I’m getting there.

Emacs

And yes, it happened again (I will post an update eventually) but the short version is, that I went through the Stupid Amount Of Time again, and am exactly where I left off, sometime last year. That is, I am happily doing everything that is possible to do - which to be honest is almost everything - in Emacs.

Which is to say:

  • Writing
  • Email
  • RSS
  • the occasional IRC
  • Browsing
  • and of course task-management and all things connected to that.

Obsidian

And yes... even though the above still is somewhat correct, I also had been moving things back to Obsidian. Why? Don't know. Sometimes it just feels better.

Maybe we can just agree that it's either/or at any given point in time. It's a Schrödinger's Cat kind of situation.

Musescore

I started out with Finale and after years of sticking with it I switched, after a very brief stint to Musecore, over to Sibelius for another couple of years. I liked it, but the app is so bloated, cumbersome to use, in many ways annoying (I have a long list, but spare you the rant) and slow, that I switched back to Musecore at the end of 2019 and haven’t looked back since. Another win for Open Source Software.

Browser

Depending on platform I usually use either Firefox or Safari. I try to stay away from Chromium based browsers if possible. That being said, I am typing this in my Ghost editor which I have installed as an app in Vivaldi.

RSS

Currently am using Miniflux for all my feed-reading needs, but since I am back on Emacs, Elfeed is my goto again.

Blog

It’s the usual story: After running the blog on Pixieblog, Wordpress (self- and non-self-hosted), Ghost, Scriptgram I ran the blog on Blot.im for a year and eventually planned on switching over to Hugo (already had spent some good time learning it, tweaking the theme and set up Emacs for publishing), then went back to WordPress after all and in the end went Micro.blog, before switching back and forth between Micro.Blog and Bearblog before eventually running my own first with orgmode and now again with Hugo.

aaaaaaannnnnd then I went over to Ghost! Of course I did. You can read about this here.

Bullet Journal

Despite, or maybe even because of, all the digital things, I found in the Bullet Journal-System a task-management system that works better for me than the digital systems I used in in the past.

Currently I’m using the Bullet Journal System with a few of my own tweaks (added a Weekly-Log plus a few more notifiers).

Notebook

I tend to switch around quite a bit and try different notebooks at all the time and in the end always come back to the Leuchtturm1917, Bullet Journal edition, which is what I am using now.

Pens

This had been a surprise and a revelation for me but right now the Uni Kuru Toga 0.5 pencil (!) continues to amaze me and is the pen I am currently using the most. I would have been able to save a lot of money, time and nerves if I would have figured this out, say, a few years ago.

Then again, without all the hassle in the past I wouldn't have found this in the first place.