Seafile is a secure, reliable, and performant file sync and share solution. I have been using it since about 2014, occasionally trying out other solutions, but keep returning to Seafile. It has a fairly large feature list and works on every major OS/mobile-device. Self-hosting it has been painless and performance is rock solid. This post describes one particular feature that is useful to me and is present ONLY in Seafile (to the best of my knowledge).

(I am not associated with Seafile in any way. Just a happy user.)

“If you already know some programming language/framework X, what are effective ways to rapidly learn a possibly similar new language/framework?” I found myself pondering this question recently. Wouldn’t it be nice to discover a system to learn something new that optimally exploits what you already know?

This site is built using the Hugo static site generator. Hugo is awesome. Its documentation is not. That is my personal opinion :) This post explains why I find the existing documentation so frustrating and how it could be improved.

Over the last few years, I have tried a number of productivity apps for todos and task management: Todoist, Trello, Things 3, Google Keep, Evernote, OneNote, Emacs org-mode, etc. but nothing stuck. The pattern is: In an initial burst of enthusiasm, I create a large-ish initial todo list by making a brain dump of tasks in a productivity app. The list then languishes. Rinse and repeat when I come across (yet) another promising app. Why does this happen?

This post explains a home-grown personal finance tool that aggregates transactions from various bank accounts and credit cards, auto-categorizes them, and presents information/analyses via a set of dashboards. All this is accomplished without sharing your banking credentials and financial transactions with a third party.

The pattern: How to remotely access a service that is bound to localhost and refuses to respond to requests not originating from localhost? The instance: If using Speedify CLI on a linux-based router with no GUI stack, how to nevertheless view the Speedify GUI in a web browser, from another device on the same network? This post documents some non-conventional hacks needed to get a working solution.

Home network schema

This series of posts describes the setup of a custom router for a home network. The router takes full advantage of multiple Internet connections, seamlessly manages Internet traffic when one of the connections drops or behaves poorly, and provides some additional functionality like firewalls, adblocking, VPN tunnels for specific clients, bandwidth shaping, network flow monitoring etc.

Home network schema

This series of posts describes how to set up a custom router from scratch for a home network. The router takes full advantage of multiple Internet connections, seamlessly manages Internet traffic when one of the connections drops or behaves poorly, and provides some additional functionality like firewalls, adblocking, VPN tunnels for specific clients, bandwidth shaping, network flow monitoring etc.

This post is a review of Relica Backup, the software I use and depend on to backup (and restore) all of my data across several computers. Relica seems to be relatively unknown on the interwebs; I have not yet come across any user reviews or articles that describe actual experience with the software. So this is my attempt to fix that. I am not associated with the Relica folks, just a satisfied user spreading the word about something I like 🙂

Recently, I have become aware of a burden of thoughts weighing down upon me. Intrusive, endless, unstoppable, uncontrollable, unwanted thoughts. If I desire to sit quietly for five minutes, without fruitless thoughts buzzing constantly in my mind… I can not! Sometimes, I become aware of a new thought arising.. in a parallel thought, I even realize that the newly arising thought is pointless and unproductive.. that I should not be entertaining it.. but that realization is impotent. I watch helplessly as the unwanted thought blooms and grips my mind for the next N minutes, until it is swapped out by another chain of thinking, often equally unwanted.