Geek

I’ve mentioned many times that one of my rules about choosing programs and services to use in my “computing stack” is that the data has to be available across the board. I refuse to be locked into one ecosystem. If I type a document on my Mac, it has to be easily accessible from my iPad, my Linux machines, and any Windows computer I may have fired up at any given time.

There are two programs/services/needs I have struggled with for years when it comes to this interoperability: task management and my daily journaling habit.

I have maintained a daily journal (outside of this blog) for over a decade. Back in the days when I was all in on Apple I used Day One, which does exactly what it’s suppose to do. It lets me attach photos, I can write an entry in a freeform style or I can build templates and share my thoughts in an organized fashion at the end of the day. I love Day One but it was mostly confined to the Apple ecosystem. If I carried my Linux computer while traveling, I had to journal through the iOS app on my iPhone, which is OK but not a great experience.

I tried moving my journaling habits to Obsidian, but it required a little too much in the way of care and feeding to keep things working the way I like them to work. I kept going back to Day One.

Today I learned Day One is beta testing a web interface. And because I am a premium subscriber (which backs up all of my journal entries in an end-to-end encrypted space), I have access to this beta test. And so far it is wonderful.

Some folks may question using the proprietary Day One format instead of plain-text based Obsidian, but one of the things I like about Day One is that I can easily export my journal entries to plain text. And that’s a beautiful thing.

The other struggle has been around task management. I have kept an electronic to-do list for many years and recently have relied on the todo.txt plain text task management system. I used Dropbox to keep these text files synchronized across my devices. The issue I constantly run into is “version collisions”, for example, is the online version or the version on my iPhone the most up to date? I’ve run into situations where I’ve overwritten important tasks when trying to reconcile versions. This makes me not trust my todo management and then I start worrying that I’m going to forget something important.

OmniFocus is an amazing task management system that I enjoyed for years. The problem with OmniFocus is that it’s traditionally been an Apple based experience. Work requires that I use their standard issue Windows 10 computer. And I’ve been using my Linux machines as my daily drivers for a while now. Luckily, the OmniGroup offers a web interface to OmniFocus and the version currently in testing is pretty much on parity with what their applications offer. Like Day One, it’s easy to export to plain text files, and I can automate that practice so I always have an text-based backup.

Both of these web based solutions meet my “the data can’t be locked into one ecosystem” criteria.

I’m going to give these web based solutions a try for the month of March as part of my on-going “30 day personal growth” challenge I try to embark on every month.

On the plus side, using these subscription based web interfaces also will save me money, as both are cheaper per year than the former counterparts I was using. So, while I’m saving money with software subscription costs, I’m also able to use older Linux-based computers that can be repaired and upgraded to keep up with the times instead of forced obsolescence that we often see with Apple products.

Win win is always a great thing.

I was playing around with the webcam in my resurrected Lenovo ThinkPad T460s the other day. Here’s a selfie taken with this computer running Pop!_OS. I used the Cheese application.

The result has a slight “Lucille Ball in ‘Mame’” Vaseline on the camera lens haze to it.

Cross-posted from Facebook.

Hello family and friends. This is a free IT security consultation.

Please make sure you’re using a secure password and two-factor authentication (2FA) here on Facebook (actually everywhere). Today I’m receiving messages from folks saying they found photos of me on TikTok and the provided link goes to a scam website. For what it’s worth, I’m not on TikTok.

Your password should look something like this: B@c0n3ggs!zzXaYum!yuM with random characters mingled with something you can remember, or something completely random stored in a password manager like what’s built into both iPhone or Android or in an app like 1Password or Bitwarden. Two-factor authentication is when you either grab a code of an app on your phone or get a code sent to you. I’ve included a link describing 2FA. I use a free app called Authy.

It pains me to see the Internet continue to be such a potentially dangerous place with scams and leaks and lost data and impersonation and the like. The Internet was suppose to enrich our lives, not endanger it. Safe surfing!

What is 2FA/MFA?

It’s a quiet day here in the Desert Compound. My husband is watching football (his second game today), the dogs are sleeping near my feet, Truman is sleeping in his cat tree, and the rest of the family has gone on a movie date to see 3 1/2 hours of Avatar.

I’m enjoying the relative downtime.

I’ve been using this quiet time to clean up my computing experience a little bit. I’m always tweaking my setup here and there. I’m determined to not buy any new computers in 2023 and 15 days in I’m still holding to my word. I don’t need a new computer, of course, but once in a while I think about buying something to use at work as part of their “Bring Your Own Device” program. I have a cantankerous relationship with my work-issued, Windows 10-based laptop at best, but when all is said and done it gets the job done and that’s what’s important. I just need to take a focused approach at using the dang thing so I don’t get into my own head about buying another computer.

I’ve also been using the quiet time to engage in some of my hobbies. I’ve been watching flying videos, chatting with other pilots of aviation forums, and looking into some other flight opportunities in the area. The weather for the next 48 hours is rainy, cloudy, and cold, so I might as well engage in my aviator blood through other methods.

I’m also doing more research and planning for Storm Chasing Trip 2023 coming up later this spring. I’ve been looking at maps and the like, figuring out some key places I want to visit should I run into any downtime between storms.

And if that’s not enough, I’ve also been doing some research on my vintage point of sale systems hobby site. I found a video focused on John Lennon’s death and the impact on a local Tower Records back in 1980. It was quite interesting in itself, but I also noticed the Data Terminal Systems cash register featured in the video. It’s been over nearly four decades since these cash registers were in the mainstream, and they probably populate too many landfills, but I still hold out hope that someday I’ll find a unit I can clean up and restore for my own amusement.

Even though it’s the beginning of January and my 2023 storm chasing trip is scheduled for mid May, I’m already excited about the whole affair.

With Twitter going completely sideways since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, I’m remembering how dependent I was on the service last year when it came to seeing what other storm chasers were up to. There are plenty of other data sources to see where storm chasers are located. I belong to the Spotter’s Network and I track other sources through various apps, including RadarScope. But Twitter was incredibly convenient for incoming data. While my two remaining Twitter accounts remain dormant, I’ll probably fire up my aviation and storm chasing account when we get closer to traditional chase season, even if I just use it for monitoring and following. That is if Twitter is still around and people are actually using it. I keep hearing about tons of folks leaving the platform.

There’s always Facebook for this information as well, but with its kooky algorithms I’m left with a feed of a bit of storm chasing information, a bunch of ads trying to sell me shaving cream or beard balm, lovely pictures of friends’ cats, and then an ad for a politician I have no interest in.

Today’s popular Internet services are not really designed for those that need a focused data stream. And let’s face it, we all need a more focused data stream.

Today I learned how long distance dialing worked in 1951. I love these old videos. I find them much more enjoyable than the Chinese spyware known as TikTok.