My toolkit
Technology has transformed our lives. However, sometimes it overextend their reach into certain areas of my life. There I draw clear boundaries on what my use cases are where computers, phones and other general purpose devices can help me. These are listed below in the order of priority.
- Communication
- Services
- Documents
- Engineering
- Media
- Time Management
I have a phone and a backup along with a laptop and a tablet which acts as its back to achieve these use cases. Before using any of these though, I recommend everyone to setup a password manager. I use Bitwarden. Use an ad blocker as well. This will reduce distractions when browsing the internet. I recommend uBlock. Any system I create:
Must haves
I communicate with family and friends via text messages and calls. I prefer using Signal for messaging but also use Whatsapp. I also have an email attached to my domain and a separate email address which I fill in when I don’t want to provide my primary one. I believe that email is a better form of communication that instant messaging aas it respects the time of the correspondents. Many services in the modern world are also becoming more digital. Governmental agencies, banking, navigation or online only stores are also important services that I need to access.
Should haves
Managing documents is much easier with a digital device. Once digitized they are always available and can be backed up. I use a personal network attached storage (NAS) and iCloud for this. I also cannot live without the use of engineering tools that have made life much easier. These are tools for programming, hardware and mechanical design. If you want to learn something from scratch, I highly recommend Python, KiCAD and OpenSCAD respectively. I also use typesetting tools such as LaTeX or Typst to generate high quality PDFs to share with others. Ipe is also a great tool to augment the others for diagrams. I try to stay away from tools that could take my data hostage via proprietary formats or other forms of lock in. I use plain text via Markdown when possible. I prefer to use VS Code for programming or NeoVim for text documents. I also generate HTML using hugo to create websites such as this to store information that I share with others. I have digital music and images that I also store on iCloud and my NAS so that I can stream from it to many devices. I keep this locked behind a Tailnet to precent unauthorized access.
Could haves
I am not picky with reminders and a calendar. I use iCloud for now as I don’t mind loosing this information. I also store movies and TV shows on my NAS which allows me to consume and own my media collection. I occasionally game for which I use a Playstation 5.