An open source alternative to Plex, perfect replacement for me and haven’t looked back once since

The best of all worlds in one device. May Gabe never die, or may Valve never change

My friend and savior in the best and direst of times. I know I’m married but if I hug my wife like that, it will absolutely crush bones :3

Cannabis has helped me through a lot over the years, and this is the best way I found to consume it without fucking anything in my body and with the best comfort and simplicity. german engineering ftw

My first guitar after the hands-me-down I did my first album with, and the one I experimented and played with for years. I’ve let it take dust to focus on the synth but I still aim to integrate it back into my music in future albums, do electro-rock stuff

My current RSS reader of choice, its simple but open source and free, has nice themes, cross platform, no notes. I think Reeder would still be my favorite if it wasn’t a subscription now, but it’s worth its price, I just don’t want more subscriptions

To automatically watch, download and organize my movies/shows/books I use the *Arrs apps (Sonarr/Radarr/etc.) which I heavily recommend. Plays nicely with Jellyfin too

Once I started to really get into birds more I started to see all the limits my previous camera that didn’t matter to shoot dusty old places but mattered now for crisp live subjects, so after some months this became my gift upgrade and what an upgrade 😀

I took me a really long times (and actual comments from people lamenting my process) to switch to a proper software made for music instead of a plain audio app, and it really helped me level up in my work.

I started in GarageBand (which is Logic Unpro more or less) then upgraded somewhere along when I started to need more power with the synth. It’s a really great and intuitive app and I recommend the free GarageBand often because it’s just an all around fun app to play around in and I have done so many times.

I love Laravel for the way it privileges dev UX and so it’s hard for me to separate from Forge and how easy it makes it to manage servers and deploy sites to it.

Trying this for analytics and really enjoying it. It works, the interface is simple, it’s plain numbers that can’t lie. It does miss some of the information Google can have but that’s information I’m not sure I want someone to collect anyway so this feels better.

My mood and activities tracker, it helps me log various things and how they impact my health and mood. I’ve been doing it for years and years now so the data is really great but so is the vendor lock-in 😅 But so far it’s still a cool app

The first passwords vault I used and I immediately started securing all my accounts through it. I really love the experience, especially now as it’s grown more powerful to include terminal tasks and be integrated everywhere. It’s still expensive and US though so I want to switch to something maybe even open source at some point but I haven’t even looked into it yet.

I looove this app, it’s Yoga, Pilates, meditation etc. all in one and with great customizability so you can get infinite tailored sessions that are always different but feel made for you, it’s really great. The meditation isn’t as deep as Headspace and such but it does breathing as well so I like that combo

I tried Duolingo for some time before but like many, came to the realization it was a game more than a learning tool. So when I wanted to learn German I saw an offer for Babbel and jumped on it and I really don’t regret it, I think it’s a fantastic language learning platform and while the depression has hit my streak I’m still eager to resume and reach B1 eventually

I didn’t intend to get locked into Apple Music, it just happened over my life. I spent years playing music directly in neat folders but one day I switched to iTunes and for someone who cares a lot about her music library and organising it, it instantly became my favorite way to do so.

At first it was only my music but of course two decades of streaming happened and now if I left I’d lose a huge part of my favorite music. I try to buy albums through Bandcamp occasionally to “lock them in” but ultimately it’s going to take a lot of work to switch off Apple Music to something I control and own, but it’s still my goal.

The best second brain I’ve tried, see my article on it. However the quality has degraded in recent years and I might jump ship to Obsidian when they ship databases properly

Which I've had a while but that still works well. I'm considering switching to something fairer but haven't found an option I like yet, maybe Fairphone

I don’t actually like Jetbrains all that much, they have such a eurojank vibe to them, but it’s still the best I’ve used in terms of refactoring power and intelligence. Just wish they would fucking DO ONE IDE FOR ALL LANGUAGES LIKE ITS NOT 2000 ANYMORE

Until I properly move to Linux

Maybe moving to Signal once enough of the people I need are there, as Telegram is still shady but it’s the best worst I can do

Firefox always and forever even if they err, and Zen instead of stock because I’m giving the Arc-trend a shot. Not sure about it yet

From my work

I wish Atom had won but I suppose in the end both would have ended in Microsoft’s hand. I should perhaps switch to something else compatible with the extensions

My first synthetizer and a great choice, I was really glad to have a full range of keys to also learn piano with. Not a lot of bells and whistles but I do all modelization on the computer directly so it’s enough for me

Still team Mozilla for email as well even if it doesn’t entirely satisfy me. It’s a software that feels old but in a way that is both good and bad. The UI is lackluster but it’s so open and full of useful settings and features like an RSS client, it’s also pretty fun

Trying a cheaper EU alternative, not 100% convinced but it works so far!

I dabbled in Unity for a year or so (which is how I picked up the little C# I know) but then the royalties controversies happened and it swore me off it forever. I jumped into Godot and immediately loved the simplicity and freedom of it, and you can’t beat open source in the long run so it’s been lovely to see it grow and gain ground

Like can be read in my AI usage page I’m very ambivalent about it all. Being at the intersection of artist and engineer I constantly alternate between love and hate, between hope and doom. I have to use these tools and they’re provided to me but I don’t have to like it always, so this is one such case. In addition to OpenCode I use Claude a lot, mainly because I despise OpenAI and Google a grade more than I despise Anthropic. All these companies are mishandling our future and societies in the end, so this is the known devil I picked.

An extremely cool little device that allows you to play guitar strings like a bow, with various effects. By now lots of bands popularized it including Opeth which I talk about on this site!

For years I only swore by fancy Terminal apps which pushed the boundary of what was possible. I tried quite a lot, but eventually fell in love with the simplicity of plain Terminal and zplug for bells and whistles. I’m sure I’ll change my mind again but I like not having to install extra things on clean reinstall 😃

Since I started having a lot of pains in my arms and hands, I looked for ways to ease it. This was one of my attempts, and while I want probably a better one at some point I believe ergonomic/vertical mouses are really better

I loved the simplicity of Dropbox back when it came out and it felt like a revolution almost. Unfortunately it’s suffered severely since from enshittification/entreprisification so it’s by now just yet another Notion x Office clone that barely still does right its original task. Hopeful to switch to something like Syncthing eventually.

The only other FTP client I ever used besides Filezilla, and one that never disappointed me. One of those apps from an older time that just work and never stop working.

When I finally switched off the native Gmail client to a real app I really fell in love with Spark. It had such a cool way to wrangle your inbox and make it palatable, make inbox zero fun and attainable. Unfortunately it didn’t escape the (AI) enshittification and slowly became an app that made it actually hard for me to find my mail, so I bailed

I enjoyed Digital Ocean for many years and to this day the qualms I have with them are mostly not being in the EU and having grown too big. But I still really like their product.

Another hands-me down but it lasted my all my life so far, although it’s starting to show its age in terms of resolution

For the second album I really wanted to bring strings and mix them with glitch/noise so I bought this electric violin that I loooved until I broke and I couldn't take it in the move :( rip

A loop pedal that allowed me to experiment wildly with my guitar and improvise entire tracks. It really unlocked something in me

My first real tablet which opened an entire world of digital painting to me, and allowed me to make my first comics and explore the medium. I haven’t drawn digitally in quite some time unfortunately but I would still like to try all the new things you can do now, especially with animation

The one, the only, the undethronable, free audio software. It still has a soft spot in my heart just because it’s one of those apps that seem to have been there forever, even if nowadays they’ve been bought by assholes I think or something

For a little while I tried to go all in on my Adobe suite and I was interested in the extra audio manipulation tools it offered. That’s why Out Through The Winter Throat contains so much glitch, noise and texture, because I experimented a lot with the power Audition gave in both enhancing the sound but also breaking it apart

You could have stayed the king but ended up ruins. Another victim of enshittification, it started great enough to make me switch off open source because of how sleek and easy the experience was. But it ended up mealpiecing every feature over time until the base experience became sad, and taking actions that directly went against its userbase. I switched to Jellyfin and never looked back.

This is one of those relics from an ancient time that would survive nuclear apocalypse. I first started using when my brother’s cool friend jailbroke my original Xbox and put XBMC on it to play DVDs. I grew fond of it and ended up installing it on my computer as well for when files became more important than disks, and I loved the freedom and customization it offered, it’s one of those pearls of open source that lets you do whatever like Foobar2000. I still ended up leaving it for Plex later on for the shine of convenience and sleekness, but of course eventually capitalism ended up making me regret that choice.

My first real instrument, which I always looked with envy taking dust in my brother’s old stuff. I experimented and learned so much with it

My first digital camera, a hands-me-down I explored my entire surroundings in detail with and that launched me on a path of butterflies I’ve never stopped capturing

I’ve used GA for about as many years as I’ve hated it. Not just because it’s a product that has constantly evolved to be more confusing and cryptic, but also as my hate for Google itself grew over time. It does a good job at tracking, but viewing the data can be so obtuse that I never felt really happy to see the numbers there, especially as my bot problems grew with time