It's been a hot minute since I've used Linux as my daily driver, unless the SteamDeck default install counts. Last year or maybe the year before I wiped an old Macbook and tossed Ubuntu on it to make it useful again. I'm not great at the whole planet friendly behavior, or at least not perfectly consistent, but trying to get the most out of my tech before I decommission it for good is a thing I enjoy quite a bit. The tinkering of getting stuff to work again is fun to me. I'm gearing up to do that same Mac to Linux setup with an older Macbook Air too since it is no longer getting OS updates. As I was adding that to my to-do list it occurred to me that I don't have any good reason to keep using Windows as my daily driver on my desktop PC. So here I am, now typing this from a dual boot installation of Ubuntu on that machine. It feels good to be back on Linux again. Things just work, it has just the tools I need, and I can boot into Windows when I need something I can only do from there (ex: set my iCue CPU LED screen images because I simply couldn't help myself when I built this thing).
Similarly, I've been experimenting with moving off of single points of failure setups with some of my tech stack. My password manager and 2FA currently all happen in the same system/account as each other. I have some idea of how I'm going to split those out but it might take a bit of tinkering to get to the exact setup I want. I'm also de-clouding some of my file creation/management process. I've been a heavy user of online doc editing and it's great for convenience but I'd prefer to get back to using the Libre Office suite and backing up files as needed instead. Maybe this is somewhat inspired by the analog adventures I've been going on as of late but I like the idea of operating offline by default and invoking cloud solutions when they're actually needed instead. There might be some irony in writing a blog post about this particular item instead of writing it in an offline journal.
In playing with tech, I've also started applying stickers to my tech belongings and I have to say it is super fun to customize things again. I don't know that I ever consciously decided to stop doing this but I certainly have struggled in the past to actually use my favorite stickers. I'm trying to view this a different way now, instead of worrying about never getting to use that sticker again I am opening up the opportunity for other awesome stickers to enter my life and for me to enjoy them once I need a new one for whatever reason. This is also in support of that desire for serendipitous chance to add whimsy to life again. And I'm appreciative of having an excuse to look for more stickers (and support more artists!) the next time I'm at a gaming convention.
I am planning to jailbreak my old e-reader soon to see what that experience is like. In general I'm just getting back into making my tech very usable and functional for what I need instead of being locked into systems that simply expect me to pay more for services that continue to get worse. I think that acquiring and modding a 3DS earlier this year was probably the tipping point back into a lot of this tech tinkering. It unlocked an entire era of gaming that I missed out on and I'm just realizing how much more invested I am in my tech when I put in that kind of effort to get something customized to be exactly what I want. I used to do this stuff all the time in high school and college, because I quite frankly just didn't have the funds to do anything otherwise. I had to make due with what I had and I developed a lot of great tech skills out of that necessity.
Of note as well is this blog and the website associated to it. This has been a foray back into a bit of web dev for me and honestly just a neat creative tech outlet. I've been working in a tech role that hasn't been that great for me for awhile. Thankfully I'm stepping away from that soon but all of these little projects are helping reignite my enjoyment of this space again. (And my enjoyment of the Internet again.) I'm hoping that will continue and that I can find a role that I can thrive in again, or at least not dread as much.