Tools (2025)

These are the tools I’m using as of January 2025:

AI Tools

My favorite LLM is by far Claude, which I use every day. I also use ChatGPT. For searching, Perplexity has replaced Google Search.

I’m not much into image or video generation using AI. (Or at least not yet.)

Mail

  • Mail provider. My mail provider for my main domain is Migadu. It is one of the few providers I know that charges for the space and bandwidth but not for the number of mailboxes.

  • Mail client. Apple Mail. I tried MailMate for a while, but although I like the power of a superior search, the UI feels awkward so I’m back to Apple Mail.

  • Spam filtering. At the end of 2023, I started receiving tons of spam every day, most around the US elections. Like 300+ emails every day. This still goes on even if the elections are over. (I don’t live in the US and I’m not American, so it’s a total waste of time for the spammers.)

    Neither Migadu spam filtering nor Apple Mail’s spam filtering are very good. Also, don’t want to code my own spam rules. I tried SpamSieve for a couple of weeks, and I recovered my inbox. Beware that SpamSieve is only client-side, but enough for my current needs.

Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations

I’m using Microsoft’s Office 365 suite. I don’t love Microsoft’s cluttered interface, but Microsoft apps are pretty solid, and their file format is the de-facto standard. Also, through the years I’ve become pretty proficient using Office, so that’s definitely a plus.

Photo editing, image editing, document scanning

I use Flying Meat’s Acorn for images, and Darktable as a Lightroom substitute for organizing and non-destructive photo editing. I use Microsoft Lens for converting documents to PDF.

On-line meetings

If I have to schedule a meeting and sending the invite is on me, I use Microsoft Teams because it works and it’s part of the Office 365 subscription. Besides that, I use Zoom or Google Meet on the free tier whenever I need.

File syncing and sharing

I’ve been a happy user of Dropbox for more than ten years, and I don’t have any complains. Dropbox is local-first, so I can access my files even if I’m offline. (Which doesn’t happen necessarily with OneDrive or Google Drive.)

Dropbox just works, keeps older versions of each file, and is totally transparent. Besides backup of photos, I don’t use any of their additional features.

Every file I create is under my Dropbox folder. I’ve even linked the hidden files and folders in my home directory, my Downloads folder, and my Desktop folder to Dropbox. Although it’s not my primary backup, I also

Note-taking and knowledge management

Obsidian. I’m obsessed with long-term conservation of my notes. So I use plain-text files for everything I can. Last year I left LogSeq—which I liked very much—when they announced they where moving from plain-text files to storing notes into a database.

I use Obsidian sync to make my content available on my tablet and phone.

I’m using Tiago Forte’s PARA method to organize all my work, with a mix of Zettelkasten for taking notes of books and articles.

Casual note-taking and shared lists

My wife and I use Simplenote for sharing notes and lists. I also use Apple Notes for taking short notes on-the-go, mainly because Apple Notes works with Siri, so I can create a note even if I’m driving. (I just wish Siri worked better.)

That said, I’ve been considering switching from Simplenote to Apple Notes. Since Automattic acquired Simplenote, there has been almost no improvement to the product. And from time to time it stops syncing shared lists, which is annoying because that’s the whole reason for using Simplenote for me.

Messaging

WhatsApp, not because I love Meta (I don’t ) but because besides people in the US, almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Of course, there are WhatsApp group for parents for each of my kids’ school year and for everything.

I use Apple Messages occasionally to send something to my kids. They don’t have cell phones, but Messages works fine on iPads.

I’ve got accounts on Telegram, Signal, Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, etc. but I rarely initiate a conversation there. Most of the chatting and groups I do is on WhatsApp.

Books

For reading non-fiction, I use Amazon’s Kindle app on my Mac. The app is horrible, but that’s the only way of reading Amazon books. For fiction, I use my faithful Kindle Paperwhite.

For a couple of years now, whenever I can, I buy books in DRM-free .epub format instead of buying them on Amazon’s page. I’m becoming distrustful of Amazon, especially now that they display a warning that you are not buying a digital book but only a license to the content, which terms they unilaterally can change if they want.

I use Calibre for managing my digital library. (That is, besides Kindle books.)

Feed (RSS) reader and read-it-later app

I’m using FeedBin both for subscribing to RSS feeds and as a read-later app.

I was using Omnivore but the app shut down in November 2024. Omnivore had a feature that I liked very much: it provided an email address that you could use to subscribe to newsletters, which you could read later in their app. This helped me declutter my mail inbox.

Since Omnivore closed, I created a mailbox under my domain for subscribing to newsletters. Everything that arrives to this mailbox gets automatically forwarded to FeedBin. In case you are wondering why I created the intermediate mailbox, it’s because resubscribing to every newsletter is a waste of time. If I change FeedBin for another app, I can just redirect the emails without resubscribing.

To do app

My favorite to-do app is Todoist. What I like about Todoist is that it’s unobtrusive, has a spartan interface, and automatically parses project and due dates from the task description. It also syncs across devices and platforms. (There are a lot of to-do apps in the market that fit this bill.)

Password management

(Seriously, you should be using a password manager.)

I use 1Password for password management. It offers shared vaults, which is great for the kids’ accounts or family services (i.e., Netflix, Disney+, etc.). When I sign up for a service, I use 1Password to generate and store 50+ character passwords.

You can also use it to store software licenses, and it can generate tokens for 2FA (2-factor authentication), which are a must if you want to keep your online life secure.

Some people feel nervous that 1Password vaults are stored in the cloud… but it’s a trade off I’m willing to make if I want to get syncing across devices in exchange.

Other [more geeky] tools

  • I started this blog in 2005. As of today, this site runs on Kirby. Before that, I’ve used Hugo, Pelican, Ristretto (which I wrote myself), PyBlosxom, and of course Wordpress, among others.

    I wrote the current template myself. No night version. Almost no javascript. Loads in less than 512kb. Currently uses TailwindCSS for styling.

  • I still connect to some channels on IRC. My favorite irc client is irssi, which is text-based and is great.

  • My terminal and coding font is NerdFont’s version of FiraCode Mono.

  • neovim with lazy vim, but also Cursor because of AI. tmux for session management, and Mosh because it keeps my ssh connections alive.

  • My language of choice these days is Python.

  • My distro of choice for running on servers/non-docker is Ubuntu. The reason is that I know most of its quirks, and I know how to configure a reasonably hardened environment. That said, I’m experimenting with FreeBSD this year.

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