I’ve decided to move my wife and me from iCloud mail with custom domain over to Fastmail. Both are pretty secure, but Fastmail does better in the privacy department overall, plus it has a whole bunch of other benefits. I think that’s worth $96/year.

If you’re a mnml user and you’ve tried adding the new PageFind action to a search page, but got nothing, well, it’s because some of mnml’s existing search styles conflict. I’ll work on fixing this soon. Sorry if this has tripped anyone up.

App Defaults 2025

It’s that time of year where I and others look back at the macOS tools that made us productive over the last 52 weeks.

I stayed relatively consistent this time around with the biggest change being my task management solution.

Category App
Mail Client Apple Mail
Mail Server iCloud Mail with custom domains
Notes Obsidian (with sync)
To-Do OmniFocus 1
Photo Shooting Apple Camera
Photo Management Apple Photos
Photo Editing Pixelmator Pro
Calendar Apple Calendar
Cloud File Storage iCloud & OneDrive
RSS NetNewsWire (iCloud sync)
Contacts Apple Contacts
Browser Chrome 2
Chat Apple Messages
Bookmarks Raindrop.io 3
Read It Later Raindrop.io 4
Word Processing MS Word / BBEdit
Spreadsheets MS Excel
Presentations MS Powerpoint
Shopping Lists Obsidian (with sync)
Budgeting & Personal Finance MS Excel/Bank Mobile App
News NetNewsWire (iCloud sync)
Music Apple Music
Podcasts Overcast
Mastodon Mona
Password Management 1Password
Code Editor BBEdit / VS Code
App Launcher Raycast

  1. I’ve returned to my first love productivity app on the Mac. ↩︎

  2. Yes, I know… Evil. It’s still the best browser for web development work. I am, however, giving Safari another try for personal browsing. ↩︎

  3. I’ve built up a pretty impressive list of links with this web app. ↩︎

  4. Ditto on things to read later that I may never get to… ↩︎

After eating more than just a little bad over the Thanksgiving holiday, I somehow managed to weigh in at the exact same number this morning as last Wednesday. How I managed to pull that one off I’ll never know. I’ll just take the win on this one…

I’m considering running a FreshRSS server instead of iCloud sync for RSS feeds. The options are spinning up a Pika Pod, or a low-power VPS on Hetzner. Two questions: Do you have experience with Pika Pods? And do you, or have you, run your own FreshRSS instance? What are your thoughts if so?

Another perfect SoCal Thanksgiving day.

A sandy beach stretches out towards a distant pier extending over the ocean, with a few people relaxing near the water under a partly cloudy sky.

Today is the first day in 30 years, apart from the one year we didn’t host, that I will not cook a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. This year it’s just my wife, youngest son and me for the holiday. Instead, we’ll just do a single breast. The rest of my famous side dishes are still on the menu though…

If you’ve been waiting to buy that Micro.blog t-shirt, or any other Cotton Bureau merch, now is the time to do it. CB is waiving shipping (international 50% off) when you use discount code THANKYOU25 at checkout. Hurry though. This offer expires Monday, 12/1.

I love the process of setting up a new workstation from scratch as I slowly figure out which apps I rely on for my day to day workflows.

I had check-ins with two different doctors today who both pronounced me in fantastic shape. It’s only been five months since my heart surgery, but I can barely remember it now. I think clouding memories like that is the mind’s way of healing from the trauma.

There is someone, or some bot out of Singapore that’s hitting URLs on my site from a very old index (we’re talking 10 years ago) nearly every day. I wish there was a way to block this behavior on Micro.blog.

My wife and I are heading to Houston, TX for a nephew’s wedding. I’m more excited about going to a blues club tonight than anything else. It’ll be great to see what the scene is like there as opposed to the west coast “LBZ”.

With the recent update to NetNewsWire, I thought I might move my RSS feed syncing from BazQux to iCloud. So far it’s been impressively responsive and always seems to be up to date when browsing feeds on my four different devices. That’s $30 saved a year.

Walmart+ Membership is Half Off

Save 50 percent on a Walmart Plus membership until December 2nd | The Verge

If you have a mountain of holiday shopping to tackle over the next few weeks, Walmart is offering a great deal on Walmart Plus. New subscribers can snag an annual Walmart Plus membership for half off through December 2nd.

We’ve had a Walmart+ membership for just a little under a year and saved more than $270 so far. I’ve been able to find just about anything I would have on that other big site named for the river. All in all, I’d say it’s been worth the cost.

Disclaimer: I am a VIZIO employee, which is now owned by Walmart. I do not get a discount on Walmart+ membership as a perk. My wife and I still agree it’s worth what it costs us.

I’ve begun reading the next installment in the Bosch universe: Trunk Music by Michael Connelly 📚. I think I remember this episode from the Amazon series. We’ll see how well they align.

A Fancy Knitted Sock

Introducing iPhone Pocket: a beautiful way to wear and carry iPhone - Apple

iPhone Pocket is a limited-edition release. The short strap design is available in lemon, mandarin, purple, pink, peacock, sapphire, cinnamon, and black; the long strap design is available in sapphire, cinnamon, and black. iPhone Pocket in the short strap design retails at $149.95 (U.S.), and the long strap design at $229.95 (U.S.).

I understand limited-edition accessories and all, but seriously, $150 to $230 for a fancy knitted sock with a name attached to it?

Hmm… I don’t think so.

One of the many paradoxes of San Francisco: Homeless drug addicts curled up on sidewalks while tech bros whiz by them in autonomous Waymo ride service cars…

Finished: The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly 📚 This one had a lot of twists… I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now to wait for the next installment to become available.

As a reference for future me, I learned of a great font resource for nerds watching YouTube last night: www.nerdfonts.com

mnml v2.8.0 Released

It took a while to wrap things up, buy I’m happy to finally share that a new version of mnml has been published for Micro.blog users that adds some cool features.

HTML Image Classes

You now have better control over your html images using style classes, for example: <img class="align-left" src="image.jpg" />.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out the mnml style guide page for more details and code examples you can copy right from the page.

Copy Code Blocks

Speaking of copying code right from the page, this release also includes a setting you can enable to add a “Copy” button to your code blocks, letting readers easily copy a block of code to their clipboard for their own use.

Again, a picture is worth a thousand words, so try copying this code block for yourself:

<img class="full-width" src="https://mnml.micro.blog/uploads/2025/pexels-simonmigaj-748898.jpg" alt="Three towering rock formations rise prominently amidst a landscape of rolling hills and a partly cloudy sky.">

Pretty cool, right?

This feature can be enabled with the “Enable copy button for code blocks” option in the mnml plugin settings page.

Thanks…

Thanks to everyone who has supported mnml’s development over the last year. It wouldn’t have been possible without you.