App Faults

· Michael Dingler

It’s the change of years, and with the coming of a new last digit, people take note of their favorite (or forced-upon) applications they use. I thought I’ll use this opportunity to point out the things I don’t like, to see if I can improve upon those. 

Consider it either a sign of being a negative ninny, or a vestigial form of 2025 resolutions.

“Normal” Desktop Apps #

I’m not talking about work, where things might change depending on the customer (some only allow you to use a few programs, some force Microsoft on you etc.). Programming for personal side-projects or just education is also worth a different post.

This year I changed from Fastmail to iCloud, as I was already paying for the latter. One of my biggest faults was that I didn’t migrate my email archive properly.
iCloud also doesn’t allow you to subscribe to secondary email accounts, and forwarding from those often runs into various spam filters. So I’m using Thunderbird for those, and it’s been quite pleasurable.
TODOs: Consolidate archive. Consider moving to Thunderbird completely.

Here’s my current crux, my note-taking skills are seriously lacking at the moment. I had this covered a lot better in the past, especially when it was way more important for work.
Having said that, nvAlt with SimpleNote sync works remarkably well. I even occasionally use AlephNotes on my work laptop to access the same data from Windows. It’s more about having a better structure here than bike shedding applications. Now I really like the very simple Notational Velocity style with a filterable list of notes and simple text notes (don’t even need markdown). But I feel that for something more ordered, I’d need something like folders – or a Zettelkasten topic node – or maybe a good set of tags?

TODOs: Look up a good tagging scheme. If that fails, move to something only slightly more complex. Emacs org-mode is out, but its HOWM or Deft might suffice.

I’m kinda-sorta okay with this, at least for the way I take photos now.
But I have been looking at doing a few more photos, and especially doing that in an intentionally bad way. If I use some old digicam for that (I’ve got two of those), then I definitely want to organise and especially host it better.

TODOs: Get more Smart Media Cards for the really old digicam. Look at tools like Immich for hosting. Or in the spirit of old-fashioned digicams, hack something together (static, preferably).

It’s okay enough. My current TODO/GTD is bad enough that I wouldn’t benefit from either a better application or better integration. This might change accordingly if I get something more complex set up here.

Right now, I don’t share a lot here, so both tools are mostly for transferring documents. This was done way better before, but I switched computers too often in the last few years.

TODOs: Get SyncThing working again. Build a NAS w/ Tailscale.

My stuff is divided amongst way too many systems (see file storage above). A better backup strategy is direly needed.

TODOs: Improve on the Hetzner backup, dedicated backup drives for NAS

I moved from WeLoveRss to NetNewsWire this year (or late last year), and I’m a bit so-so about it. I don’t really need to access RSS from anywhere, I even deleted the iPhone app so I’m not prone to check for new posts too much. But if I ever get more into Linux this year, this will prove difficult. And I kinda miss the simplicity of WeLoveRSS.

TODOs: Try getting back to WeLoveRss or build my own version.

Good enough.

Firefox on the older systems, Safari on the new one, Chrome for dev stuff or when something doesn’t work otherwise.
Will remain that way, but the distribution could change.

Some family members and friends just have WhatsApp, and I use Discord for some RPG-related chats. 
I don’t really have the passion to “convert” people to Signal, so it will probably stay this way. I might even add XMPP if an odd personal project comes into fruition.

I used to pay for pinboard, but I’m not sore sure whether it’s worth its money right now. Raindrop is quite good. I don’t use the reading list apps as much as I should.

TODOs: Look into integrating notes, bookmarks and read-it-later a bit more. A bookmark web app is on my list for relatively short CRUD apps for learning new languages and frameworks, so something might come out of this within the year.

At work I have to use a modern Word, and it’s a total 💩-show. For quick whip-it-up-itude, I tend to go to Pages. Easy to integrate and crop images, decent styling. I sometimes use an older version of the SoftMaker word processor for easy stuff, especially when I’m on older machines or Linux. And I have a licensed copy of Word 97 for its outline mode.
More complex documents get finished in Affinity Publisher, or made with LaTeX templates that get their main content converted from markdown with Pandoc.

TODOs: Try the offline version of Typst to replace LaTeX for some purposes, especially more “formulaic” RPG documents with lots of tables, asides and other layout elements.

PlanMaker is another component of the SoftMaker office, and barely 70 megs big. It’s sufficient for most casual uses, although even my limited Excel skills run into some inconsistencies sometimes. But most complex spreadsheet stuff is thrown at me at work, where I got a whole different set of apps, including Excel itself.
I use Google Sheets for a shared expense list.

TODOs: Very low priority: Experiment with console/DOS spreadsheets.

This really is my personal app list, for work I use whatever I have to (Slides if I get a Mac laptop for a customer, PowerPoint otherwise). Won’t change, no “fault” here, besides the very existence of presentations.

I don’t have a family and a supermarket right next door, so I rarely get long list. If my partner needs a certain set of ingredients, I get a WhatsApp message. Very occasionally I put my lists in a delete-after-shopping nvAlt note. No need to change this, although a different note-taking setup might have a side-effect here.

No big needs here. Our shared expenses list is sufficient, and I occasionally make quick notes about finances on paper, spreadsheets or text documents.

TODOs: I plan on getting my long-term finances improved in 2025, so there might be something here. I would assume I’ll just look at Emacs modes here.

Currently no subscriptions (I used to have Le Monde Diplomatique and the London Review of Books in recent years, and Zeit or Spiegel in the before-times). I feel guilty for bypassing paywalls some times, but not often enough on the same newspaper site that I’m willing to pay their current fees. And especially in the German newspaper, the quality is really going down (Especially annoyed at all the petty bourgeoisie content). Tech news come in from RSS, Mastodon or lobste.rs. 

TODOs: Do something for my guilt by getting some low-level subscription or support. Maybe.

I don’t subscribe to any music streaming sites, if I get something interesting I look at bandcamp or YouTube if it’s not available there. If I like something, I try to buy (preferably used) CDs or bandcamp downloads.

TODOs: Centralise music library, rip CDs that aren’t yet. Use my iPod more, use the Tangara once it arrives a lot.

Germany has a well-funded public TV stations, and most of them also provide some streaming content. Our household also has Netflix and Amazon, and I do have to admit that we use it quite a lot (on an older “smart” TV).
When watching videos myself, I try to avoid the browser and stream directly with a video player, both the Iina app on Macs and mpv on BSD/Linux support this. I also get RSS feeds from YouTube channels via sfeed and download them to played with the same players.

TODOs: Make it so that the RSS entries are downloaded automatically to a NAS (right now I don’t want to do it with all of them, as my poor desktop system has a way too small SSD). Watch less Netflix & Prime. Read more books.

I’ve tried a few apps, but they weren’t worth the additional space on either desktop or iPhone. Each January, I try to avoid all streamed video and audio sites, so I use the abysmal ARD Audiothek website/app to just listen to publicly funded German podcasts as a palate cleanser (a lot of those are on my regular yearly subscription list, too).

TODOs: Listen to fewer podcasts, read more books.

Keepass has worked for years and has clients for all platforms. I mostly cut & paste manually, if I ever want to avoid storing the data also in the browsers, I’d need more plugins here. I know I probably should, but it’s too tedious.

Phone Apps #

Let’s keep it very simple: I want to use my phone less. All of the apps are a “fault”. Listen to music with dedicated players, carry a camera.

I mostly use the default Apple apps, SimpleNote for synced notes, Tofu or whatever I have to for authorization, and way too many apps for car sharing, public transport and travel needs.

last updated: