I’ve been chasing the perfect productivity setup for longer than I care to admit. The signs are all there: a Downloads folder cluttered with productivity apps, browser bookmarks organised by system acronyms, and that familiar feeling of starting fresh with yet another note-taking tool, convinced that this time will be different. My digital graveyard is extensive. NotePlan, Microsoft OneNote, Apple Notes, Google Keep, Notion, Airtable, Logseq, Google Docs, Obsidian, Simple Notes — I’ve installed them all, configured them meticulously, and abandoned them with the same predictable rhythm. Read more...

Six months ago, I wrote about my privacy reboot — a gradual shift toward tools that take both privacy and security seriously. It was never about perfection or digital purity, but about intentionality. About understanding which tools serve me, rather than the other way around. Here’s how it’s actually gone. The Wins Ente continues to impress. The family photo migration is complete, and the service has been rock solid. The facial recognition quirks I mentioned on Android have largely sorted themselves out, and the peace of mind knowing our family memories aren’t feeding Google’s advertising machine feels worth the subscription cost. Read more...

We’ve all seen them: those productivity YouTubers with perfectly lit home offices explaining how they maintain “deep work” for 12+ hours a day. They sit there, looking impossibly serene, selling us a vision of superhuman concentration that I’ve come to believe is complete nonsense. I used to buy into this. I’d feel like a failure when my brain checked out after three solid hours of work. I’d push myself to match these claimed productivity marathons, only to end up exhausted and wondering what was wrong with me. Read more...

We like to believe we’re in control. That privacy is something we can protect if we just check the right boxes, read the fine print, toggle the right settings. But that belief is crumbling. In 2025, privacy isn’t something we manage — it’s something we quietly surrender, one tap, click, and scroll at a time. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much I rely on Google. Not in an abstract way, but in a daily, tangible, everything-I-do-is-somehow-Google-enabled kind of way. Read more...

Tucked away in a parenting book I read nearly two decades ago — title and author long lost to time — was a metaphor that lodged itself in my brain and never left. “Life is a balance, or rather, a juggle of balls. Some are glass. Some are plastic." The idea is simple but enduring: drop a plastic ball, and it bounces. Drop a glass one, and it shatters. The trick — the real tightrope act — is knowing which is which. Read more...

Is there some magic in writing every day for 100 days? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not quite the right question. A better one might be: What would I hope to get out of writing every day for 100 days? For starters, I’d get better at clarity — saying what I mean without losing the thread halfway through. I’d build speed: less dithering, more straight-from-brain-to-fingers. And maybe, just maybe, I’d find a rhythm. Read more...

Six Month Update Curious how this privacy reboot actually worked out? I wrote a detailed follow-up after six months of living with these changes — covering what worked, what didn't, and the pragmatic compromises along the way. Read the Six Month Check-In → The line between privacy and security isn’t always clear — and in tech, it’s often treated like they’re the same thing. But they’re not. Even the broader question of when to trust digital services with our data has become increasingly complex. Read more...

I have, for a long time, been looking for a better alternative to Google Photos. Although Google Photos does exactly what I want, and isn’t that expensive, I do often consider the fact that all of my photos are in Google’s hands. I did move to Synology Photos a few years ago. The move itself was straight forward enough, but the user experience leaves quite a lot to be desired. Read more...

It is the time of year again where I decide to update my local computer configuration, as well as any remote linux server(s) that I am maintaining. I really appreciate having a familiar prompt and alias setup whenever I login to any of my servers/workstations. As per usual, I cannot remember which specific packages and plugins I use; so I’ve am using this post for future me to discover how I actually configured my environments. Read more...

When running a powershell script, I often find I need to run the script in an elevated prompt. The nature of my job is that often these scripts will be run by people that don’t really know what Powershell is. I have found it quite useful to first create a bash script that the user executes, which in turn calls the actual Powershell script as an elevated user. To keep this handy, I’m posting it here for future me. Read more...