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I’m taking each day as it comes. Enjoy the rare luxury of not needing to be anywhere or do anything in particular, and just pottering about the house and seeing what happens.

My idea of a great weekend.

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I have some changes to do to my Rails application that I use to publish posts and upload images to my blog, so I am having to write manual posts at the moment, but it shouldn’t take me long to get this application updated to work with GitLab.

I still have another account to move from Sourcehut to GitLab, but I can take my time with that one.

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I’m still trying to assess whether I am in breach of this with the two paid accounts I have at Sourcehut. The change to the terms is minimal, but I am not entirely convinced that I am breaking the terms and conditions of their service. With these two accounts, I have used LLM tools to generate code that, for the most part, I have amended before committing it.

I also have a repo for a web application I used to publish the content for this blog, which calls on an external LLM to generate alt text for images.

But better to be safe than sorry, so I think I will end up moving these accounts elsewhere. GitHub is out, so I am looking at GitLab again and perhaps Codefloe, which has the benefit of being hosted in Europe, but is only supported by donations. Self-hosting isn’t an option for me. I don’t have the time to maintain my own forge.

A shame that I am making this move, because I like the Sourcehut product. It’s minimalist and does everything I need it to.

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Grandpa and grandson together on the course for Pros’ Day at the golf club today. The weather wasn’t great, but good banter and good golf kept us all going.

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So what do I go and do? Install Vim again. This time, it’s the Vim Classic version. A fork of Vim 8.x, maintained without the use of generative AI tools.

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As I evaluated several desktop apps to manage these databases, I was disappointed to find that many require a monthly subscription.

The subscription model makes sense for server-dependent software. The server is part of how the product works and is often a key component. The product might use the server to sync information between devices or to process information in the background. The subscription model covers the ongoing costs of running and maintaining the servers on which the product depends.

Why a subscription model for a desktop app though? In most cases, the desktop app runs on your own hardware. In the case of a PostgreSQL client, it can open databases that exist on my laptop or even on another remote server, but the product itself doesn’t need a server to do this.

The justification is revenue predictability. One-time purchases tend to spike at launch and taper off, making it hard to forecast earnings or plan for the future. A subscription smooths that out.

I get why developers go down this route. Predictable revenue is easier to build a business around than the feast-and-famine cycle of one-off sales. But predictability is a benefit to the developer, not a justification rooted in the product itself. A $20/month subscription for a desktop app will cost $240 a year, every year, for software whose core functionality was largely complete on day one.

There’s a better model from back in the day before subscriptions. A one-time purchase with an optional paid upgrade for major versions, the approach taken by apps like Postico and TablePlus, gives the developer ongoing revenue tied to actual new work and gives the consumer a cost that reflects what they’re actually getting. If the subscription model is justified by ongoing server costs or continuous development, fine. But if it’s just a pricing decision dressed up as a product decision, it’s not a product that I think I will give my money too.

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I thought it would be good to run Obsidian on my phone as well as my laptop, so I set up Obsidian Sync, got the remote vault working with my local vault, and set it up on my phone. I must admit, it was tricky to get my local vault up and running with it, but that wasn’t the reason why I cancelled it.

After a few days of use, I found I didn’t like using my phone to interact with Obsidian. I preferred a bigger screen, and so, I found myself reaching for my laptop more during this time. The sync feature wasn’t the problem. Trying out Obsidian Sync solved a different question. Which device do I want to use? The answer was obvious: the laptop, almost every time.

It was from this point that the divide between phone and laptop was clear.

My laptop is for head-down work. Coding, writing, researching. Anything that requires me to spend more than a few minutes on a single task. Anything like that and I use the laptop. There are two benefits to this.

The first is that the laptop is a dedicated workhorse. There are very few social media applications on it, so notifications are infrequent.

The second is that I no longer require as many app subscriptions. Many subscriptions are based on the premise that they can sync your information between devices. With just one device, that cost disappears. And given that just about everything is a subscription these days, that’s not a bad thing.

For everything else I do, and there’s not much left thankfully, there’s my phone.

I use it mostly for messaging family and friends as well as for golf club-related comms. I use it to arrange teams matches, organise competitions for the club’s junior section and organise other junior events.

I do use social media on my phone as well, but I keep my interaction light there. Reddit is still a good source for many things. I’m more of a lurker on Instagram. I prefer to share most of my photos on my blog rather than on Instagram. Then there’s BlueSky and Mastodon for news.

There’s one exception to the laptop rule. I have iA Writer installed on my phone and my laptop. Why? Just for when the need arises for putting some words down and I’m away from my laptop. For everything else, though, the divide between them is clear: each has its own dedicated use.

It’s taken me until I am almost 50 years old to get to this point and recognise that each device has its purpose. It’s taken a while to get here, but at least I have arrived. Better late than never.

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• Is there a better way of doing this?
• Are there better tools than the ones I am currently using?
• Will I be better off with these new tools?

What follows is a process that leads me right back to the very beginning. I view it as a curse, and it is in a never-ending loop.

Here’s how it works.

I am wondering if the processes that I am using are working for me. This usually happens between tasks when I think something isn’t quite right. I might have dropped the ball on something, or I haven’t checked in on some code I’ve been writing for a few days. Simply put, I have lost my place. It’s at this point that I start to wonder if there are better tools or apps I could be using.

A few days go by as a gremlin sits in the back of my brain, rewiring my thoughts in favour of how a shiny new tool would solve my woes. After a week, I start to look at different apps and products that will get the job done better. After a couple of weeks, I sign up for one or two apps I may or may not have used before and start trying them out alongside my existing processes. After another week, I conclude that these apps are not going to work for me and delete their accounts.

I then go back to my original tools and find the fault is actually me, not what I am using.

A few weeks later, and the whole process starts again.

So what gives? Why do I put myself through the cycle of doubt and time-wasting?

Reading back what I just wrote at the start of this post, it’s clear that even the slightest break in the routine of progress has me questioning what I use and how I use it. And to be honest, that break in routine is usually me procrastinating or external factors breaking my planned time on something.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this cycle, and it was probably more of a thing back in the day, when we had a new todo app or task manager released every month, and everyone wanted to use the latest and greatest app, but didn’t really know why.

Over the past five years, I can count on both hands the number of times I have tried Todoist and Basecamp in vain attempts to find that golden feature I have missed. I know full well it’s not there, but clicking about through the apps is probably the one highlight from this cycle.

It’s taken me many cycles to get to where I am with the tools I use for web development and writing, too. Many subscriptions to different products and apps, and what has this many years of digital wandering taught me?

It’s the analogue tools that keep sticking. The notebook, the pens, the index cards. Despite all the technological advancements, and with the age of artificial intelligence and LLMs marking a major change in the world, I still fall back on my trusty notebooks. I think for me, they’re more robust than digital tools; they have an offline mode and, finally, they’re a damn sight more interesting to look at than a screen.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use several tools and apps to support my web development, where a notebook can’t be used. I use issue-tracking software to manage a backlog of features and bugs. I use LLMs to act as pairing buddies when working on features. I have digital tools that have their place, and analogue tools that have theirs.

I think I’ve finally found the balance between the two, and I should accept that this works.

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Despite a rocky start on the first three holes, Drew found his groove on the back nine and finished second in the net scores. These events are a great opportunity for him to learn more about his golf game and play many courses across the west of Scotland and the central belt. Back at it tomorrow for another SGF event at Whitecraigs Golf Course, which is thankfully, just down the road.

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