¡Gabz!

A while ago, I posted about my read-it-later and bookmark struggles. Well, today, I am at it again, ish.

Alt + S, is the new thing.

For the past month or so I have been bouncing between Omnivore and Instapaper. For whatever reason Omnivore doesn’t click for me and Instapaper, although is my favorite, visually, it’s another subscription. And subscriptions are something I am trying to be more mindful of these days.

Well, enter GoodLinks! I had forgotten I owned this app and that I somewhat liked it. So I am giving it another go. I installed Chrome’s extension of the app and saving things to it is super-easy, Alt + S and done! I was able to import all my bookmarks/articles from Instapaper at least and I cleaned pretty much all my Omnivore stuff.

So far so good.

Now, what about long-term preservation?

I can save everything I want but eventually one of those links may or will break. This makes me think of services like Pinboard or even Micro.blogs bookmarks, that they save a permanent copy of the page or something like that. But then again, why have a permanent record of something I might never ever come back to?

The only reason I am probably not all into MB’s Bookmark service is because there’s no easy way to add bookmarks to it, outside of MB itself, that I know of.

Because there is always fun to be had at the BU (Blogging-Universe), following Otávio and Maique, here is my SpringBoard

– What is the first app you open in the morning?

– It is usually either Carrot or Weather.app, depending on which one I am using that week, or whichever podcast-radio-show app I may be using at the time just to see what my options are for the morning commute.

– What is an app you can’t live without?

– Drafts, Camera.app, Darkroom , and Mimi Uploader

– Is there a game app you play during breaks or in your free time?

– I always have at least 4 games installed, and ever rarely play any of them. That said, I recently downloaded a game called subpar pool That I do play every once in a while.

– What’s an underrated app that you think deserves more recognition?

– Sequel, I have used almost every movie, video game, and book tracking apps out there, and neither clicked with me nor made me use it as much as Sequel.

– What is the most recent app you’ve downloaded, and why?

– Strongify, because yesterday the lifetime subscription option was free, and I think will be using it heavily in the coming year.

– What is the most unique or unconventional app you use?

– I would say the Nintendo Switch Parental Control app, I mean is for parental control settings on any of your household Nintendo Switch consoles, which we have four. However I only have mine registered in the app and I use it solely for my gaming reports at the end of the month, that’s it.

– What is the most fun or entertaining app you’ve discovered recently?

– This one is going to sound perhaps horrible but, Threads… No comments!

– Which app helps you stay connected with friends and family the most?

– Sadly, Instagram

– Which app do you use to relax or unwind after a busy day?

– For this one, it would be either Audible, whichever podcast app, or even the Music app.

– What’s the phone you currently have?

– An iPhone 14 Pro.

– Do you prefer light mode or dark mode?

– I am probably more on the light mode side, most of the time, but there are times when dark mode is mandatory.

– What can you tell us about the wallpaper you’re using? – I change my wallpapers like I change undies, especially the lock screen one. The Home Screen one, however, has remained unchanged for a few weeks which is baffling to me.

What’s SpringBoard?

I need to consolidate my shit better!

Like many of us, I browse the wild lands of what we know as the World Wide Web and stumble upon nice links that prompt you to a nice personal website, in some cases, but you don’t have the time to read them. So what do you do? Well, what do I do? I skeem a bit and save it for, wait for it… Read-it-Later!

So far so Good right?

Well here is the thing. What happens when you have too many Read-it-Later buckets. Like sometimes I am just scrolling through my mastodon and find something I like and I star it. Or I am going through my RSS, usually on Feedbin’s web app, and I skeem, realize I may have no time, I press the “S” key (to star it and go into my favorites) again, to Read-It-Later. Or I just opened a link someone shared and with Instapaper’s Web extension, I added it to it. Oh! and let us not even mention Micro.Blog’s bookmark nifty system!

So as you can tell I have many buckets with stuff for later, then I can’t remember where I put what, and because I am lazy I rather not bother to look around so I never read anything. I need to have one way, one singular bucket, even if it means getting out of the current system, app, or site where I found the thing in the first place.

One bucket to rule them all.

I remember back, I don’t know 10 years ago? When I first started using Drafts. At the time it was a simple quick note-taking app, with not a whole lot of features and easy and straightforward to use. Fast forward to 2023 and oh my god, I can’t even keep up with everything it does nowadays. I still use it to this day regardless, but just to a level in which I am comfortable with, and my needs.

I am, in some way, having the same feelings about services like my beloved Micro.blog. For the longest time, it was just open a page sheet in your text editor of choice, type away, and publish. Now it has evolved in such a way, with plugins, other services, fediverse integration, and many other amazing things that at times I feel like falling behind. Of course, the nerd in me wants to partake in everything but I feel like by the time I wrap my head around how to implement or do some, 3 other things pop up.

That said, this is not a bad thing at all! In fact, let’s keep evolving the things we love and enjoy using.

I think is just me recognizing my “limitations” and laziness, in some way.

Until what point I keep partaking or just let things evolve past my level of concern.

Given the increasing prices of services and goods, I’ll be putting my unprofessional personal blog behind a paywall, furthermore, I will be having a weekly members-only newsletter that tells you what are you doing wrong with your technology. Also, I’ll be putting out a 15-minute micro cast, not a minute more but maybe many minutes less about my own not humble opinions.

Please like and subscribe.

Ever since HEY came out, I was very intrigued by it and it became this new thing that all the cool kids were raving about, for better or for worse, and of course, the FOMO. But because of the price tag, I resisted as much as I could, until I caved and fell in love with it. And it was the simple “gimmicks” that made it different and made email a lot more funner, as my kids would say. And by gimmicks, I mean features like Imbox, the Paper Trail, The Feed, Set Aside, and Bubble Up, all of the things that made my email much cleaner, and easier to manage. Just see what I wanted to see.

Before it renewed the first time around, I canceled my membership just to find myself missing it a few months after, missing its gimmicks. At that point, I tried using Fastmail, as I read that you could basically recreate the same “gimmicks” on it. However, for whatever reason, Fastmail did not click for me, as Marley would say, I wasn’t feeling it. I endured just regular email for a while until a few months ago, and I signed up for it again.

Now in the past few days, I have been debating again. Do I really need it, for the way I do email? I could probably just go by without it and delete things I don’t want as they come in, and manage it all manually.

Manage it all manually…

That sounds like another thing to stress about, don’t it?

Guess I’ve just blogged myself into keeping it [😅].

Alright, by now almost everyone should be aware of the new kid in the block, well, apparently, it isn’t that new. I am talking about Kagi Search, the privacy-oriented search engine service.

>Kagi is a high quality, 100% privacy-respecting search engine with results augmented by non-commercial indexes and personalized searches.

Sounds cool, huh?

I will be honest, I don’t know how much I care. I mean, yes I should care about privacy and give the least amount of personal data to services like Google and others, but, at this point, how much does it really matter, I often wonder. But, that’s neither here nor there.

I signed up for it a couple of weeks ago. It was mentioned in a super-secret iMessage chat I hang out at. I reached my 100 search limit a few days ago, and yesterday I decided to give them my money and upgraded to the 300 searches tier.

So far I like it, I feel like the results I get are “true to type” as we say in my world. Not ads-generated results bullshit. I like their “Small Web” feature, it’s kinda like Stumble Upon, and it’s a cool way to explore and find other blogs. Oh! and the mascot, I like the cute doggie they have on their page.

I am sure there’s more to it than search, a cute-looking dog, and blog discovery, but that is it for now.

What makes it better than something like DuckDuckGo? Honestly, I don’t know, I rarely ever used it 😅. But as someone who tries to stay away from Google services as much as possible, I don’t even have a Gmail account, I guess is worth checking it out.