A rundown of privacy tools that work well with Apple's technology ecosystem.

Apple-centric digital privacy tools

Safari not syncing history, tabs or its landing page? Here's a fix.

Fixing Safari iCloud syncing

I've implemented a few simple custom hooks for data that wrap SWR to efficiently retrieve and display what I'm currently reading and listening to.

Simple data fetching with custom React hooks and SWR

So you want to migrate over to Fastmail for your email — here's how you can go about doing so as seamlessly as possible.

Migrating to Fastmail

Messages.app on macOS began crashing in a loop and here's how I fixed it (and lost data I wasn't attached to).

Apple Messages: a tale of woe OR how to fix sync, a crash loop and accept data loss

I'm still plugging away with my reading habit and my streak is now at 772 days.

2022 reading list

Lately I've been leaning into automating the cleanup of email I receive in Gmail using a combination of Inbox-era categories that the application still exposes via search and Google Apps Script.

Automating email cleanup in Gmail

Last week my Apple Music collection, in as far as I can tell, become corrupted or otherwise unmanageable. This isn't the first issue I've had with the service nor is it the most severe.

Apple Music: a tale of woe

As a developer, a version control system is a critical part of your toolkit, no matter the size of the project or team you may find yourself working on.

A brief intro to git

This is a helpful, albeit basic, guide to online privacy tools. In addition to the tools cited, I would recommend the following.

Digital privacy tools

I've been working on making reading a habit again for the past few years (my streak in books is currently 383 days).

2021 reading list

I was recently setting up a new, always-on machine that I do occasional dev work. This dev work typically consists of routine maintenance and, a requirement of that, is sshing into and running software updates on manually managed servers (yes, manually managed).

.ssh directory permissions

If you're using git on Ubuntu, the version distributed via apt may not be the newest version of git (I use git to deploy changes on all of the sites I manage).

Updating to the latest version of git on Ubuntu

I use mod_pagespeed on this server to help speed up asset delivery and force optimization best practices across all of the sites I host.

Clearing mod_pagespeed cache

I use a responsive grid system for this site (and a number of other projects) that's generated by pulling in Thoughtbot's Neat framework.

Generating a responsive CSS grid using Neat

I've started using a command line tool called mackup to back up and sync many of my dot files and application settings on OS X.

Syncing OSX app preferences and dot files

A few weeks ago I switched from Fever. to Feedbin. I had been using Fever on a shared hosting account and, over    the long term, was proving to be slower than I had expected it to be.

Automatic Feedbin subscription backups

I recently began a process of re-evaluating the web services I use, the companies that provide them and an evaluation of where I store important data.

Latest

Apple-centric digital privacy tools

Fixing Safari iCloud syncing

Simple data fetching with custom React hooks and SWR

Migrating to Fastmail

Apple Messages: a tale of woe OR how to fix sync, a crash loop and accept data loss