Author: Kapil Bulsara

Categories
Software Web

Why do I Recommend using Firefox? (2021)

I like to try different things when it comes to technology, but I do have a sweet spot for certain things. For example I like trying different operating systems and I use them according to my needs, but I will always have a sweet spot of Linux and specifically Ubuntu. Same goes for browsers. I have tried different browsers and over the years my primary browser has changed multiple times.

There was a time when I was primarily a Firefox user, and then Google Chrome, even Edge( the old edge) – most people do not give credit to Microsoft, but I thought it was a very good browser that brought things that other browsers did not have. I had short lived enthusiasm for Opera and Vivaldi and even Safari…LOL just kidding; Safari is the browser that you use to download other browsers. The last time I used Safari was more than 5 years ago, so things may have improved over the years, but the last time I used it, there was nothing likeable about that browser.

I had tried Brave browser before, but then stopped using it because of the company’s business model. Couple of months ago, I decided to give it a try again because Firefox was constantly a memory hog and Brave now includes a synchronization feature which is quite unique. You do not have to open an accounts or provide an email address. The synchronization happens only between Brave browsers or rather different user profiles on Brave browsers on different devices. I thought that was pretty cool and also Brave in my experience has been the most stable and the fastest browser on Windows, Linux and even on Android.

I switched (temporarily) to brave because I was getting frustrated with Firefox’s slow speed and memory usage. But after about two months of using Brave, I am moving back to Firefox because in my view pros clearly outweigh the cons. So here is why I am recommending Firefox in 2021:

Add-ons

There are plenty of add-ons and themes available on Firefox. You want a dark theme, sure. You want a Marvel superhero theme, yup, there is one. You want dark mode, there is an add-on for that. Ad blocker, Multi-account containers, YouTube downloaders, you name it and there is an add-on for it.

Privacy and Security

With Firefox, you can share as much or as little as you want to the developers and with websites that you visit. By default Firefox blocks third party tracking cookies, cryptomining scrips and social trackers. In addition, there are plenty of add-ons available to increase your privacy and security.

You can even set a master password to protect your local Firefox data such as bookmarks, history, password etc. This can be helpful if you share your computer with other people.

Firefox Monitor alerts you in case your email address has been a part of any online data breach.

Trust

I have been using Mozilla products for a very long time. For the majority of my adult life, I have used Thunderbird, even when Mozilla had announced that they were going to stop new development for it. Sure, I did use other email clients from time to time, like Apple Mail or Windows Mail. I am currently using mutt/neomutt – more on that in a later post.

I have used Firefox on and off for a very long time too.The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that I trust. Their products and services are focused on creating a good balance between privacy and functionality and user satisfaction.

I was using Google Chrome as my primary browser for several years until an update automatically logged me in to google services when signing in to the browser to sync my browsing data. That was the last time I used Chrome. Not to mention incognito mode was not really incognito. Now, I am aware of the concept of “I got nothing to hide”. But the point is not about having or not having anything to hide, the point is about trust. This point is something that I recently realized after reading about view points on privacy practices of tech giants when it comes to handling user data.

Brave browser is a very private and secure browser, but its business model essentially takes ad revenue from other ad networks and pushes its own ad network.(Things are a bit more complicated than that but this is the gist). There are some positives to its business model too, mainly that users can support individual content creators and websites. I will get into this in a later post.

Not based on Chromium

Firefox is one of the very few browsers available today that do not use the Chromium code base. There is nothing wrong with Chromium. In fact it is open source and it is a great open source software project that has pushed internet browsers into the ‘future’. However, if you want to use something other than Chromium, for whatever reason that you may have, the only truly viable option is Firefox.

Features for Power Users

Search

If you are a power user, Firefox has some truly powerful features built into its core. The browser has a default search engine just like every other browser, which you can of course change. However, you can also quickly switch between search engines on the fly directly from the address bar by selecting one of the search engines under “This time, search with:”

If that is not enough there are shortcuts for search engines. For example if you want to search with Google, just type @google ‘search phrase’, or @amazon ‘product name’ etc..

If you do not like the default shortcuts, you can even customize it with something like @g ‘search phrase’. If that is still not enough, you can even easily add websites like IMDB to search engine list.

keyboard only browsing

If reaching for your mouse to click on a link is beneath you, you can even do a quick search with ‘/’ and then hit enter when you reach your target link and Firefox will take you do that linked page.

and even more add-ons

Yes, I know that I have already talked about add-ons, but if you are not satisfied with the default features of Firefox, there are plenty of add-ons to increase your productivity.

wait… one more thing about add-ons

So far, I have been all for add-ons, but I in fact use very few add-ons. And a word of warning when it comes to add-ons is that you should be careful about what you install on your browser. Do your due diligence before adding any add-on.

So, this are the reasons why I wold recommend that you use, if not at least give Firefox a try. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Categories
Uncategorized

Canada Day 2021 – A day Difficult to Celebrate

I did not celebrate Canada Day this year. I did not wish anyone Happy Canada Day, I did not have a BBQ or go out for picnic. I have mixed emotions about this year’s July 1st. I just got a second shot of vaccine and although I do not feeling 100%, I can take comfort in knowing that I am doing my part to protect myself, my family and my community. The restrictions due to the pandemic are starting to easy, so I can be happy about that too. Canada has a great health care system, that is free and accessible to all; I can be thankful for that. Easy access to fast internet meant that everyone who had to work from home was able to for the past one year or so. I can be thankful for all of that and more.

I am trying to look for things to celebrate, and be thankful for to be a citizen of this country. But just like many Canadians who are mourning the tragedy that is in the history of this country, I too feel pain, embarrassment and shame. Unmarked graves of children who were part of the Indigenous residential school systems have been discovered in the hundreds, and it has brought to light the dark history of this nation.

From the 19th century until the 1990s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded schools in a campaign to forcibly assimilate them into Canadian society. Abuse was rife at the schools where thousands of children died of disease, neglect and other causes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/30/canada-first-nations-unmarked-graves-indigenous-residential-school-british-columbia

It is not only the death of individuals, but of future generations. The pain was not only caused to those individuals who lost their lives, but also to the families who had to endure their lose,and now after generations, the entire country morns.

No amount of social progress can ever replace or hide nor should it ever the dark history of this country. I was aware of the unjust treatment of the native population in the past, and the present neglect that the indigenous people of this country face, but this just shatters the very foundation of what makes a country great. Today when I look at my country’s flag, I find it difficult to see the beauty in its simplicity of white and red, and the iconic maple leaf. I cannot help but see the blood of innocent children in the red of this flag.

I cannot help but feel that the road that I drive one, the pavement that I walk on, the floor of my home that I stand on was built on the foundation of bones of the innocent.

Categories
Psychology

The Compass

In my previous post I talked about the 3 principles which I believe will change the way you live life, hopefully for the better. The 3 principles are:

  • Be responsible (for your experiences)
  • Be present (in the now)
  • Let go (of expectations and attachment)

But the question that one must ask is, if I responsible for my own experiences than how do I control this responsibility. If I am to focus on the present, what exactly am I to focus on? What do I let go?

Know Thyself

It is my belief that if you are to chose your primary goal in life, it must be only one thing; understanding your true nature, everything else secondary. Two simple words “Know Thyself”, yet truly living by it can do wonders and neglecting it can be lead to a world of pain and suffering.

You can try to make logical choices when it comes to the three principles, but the effort it requires is monumental if you do not fundamentally know who you really are.

Define Yourself

Knowing yourself is as much an endeavour of discovery as it is an effort of creation.

I would prefer to call this concept, “Define Yourself” rather than Know Thyself”, as we are culturally programmed to think that knowing something is a matter of discovering something that already exists, but more dangerously, whatever that thing that exists is immutable, unchangeable.

Knowing your natural characteristics or characteristics that you may have acquired over the course of your life through experiences is a great place to start. And that is it, ‘a start’. If there are things about yourself that you do not like, you can make effort towards changing them.

Conversely, if there are things that you do like about yourself, you can work towards enhancing those specific characteristics.

Knowing yourself is difficult enough, how do you you even go about defining yourself?

Values

Your values define you are you. Knowingly or unknowingly we are making decisions based on your values.

Ask yourself what do you value most in life? Ask yourself about your values in different aspects of you life. What do you think is good, what do you think is bad. What do you want more in life, what do you want less in life? Are there things that you stand for? Are there things that you stand against?

If you do not know your values, you can define them. This is a start to defining who you are as a person. I will give you my own example. About a year ago, I started asking myself these questions and one of the values that I decided that I will stand for is non-violence. This led me to adopting a vegan lifestyle. Another thing that I value in life is environment friendliness and sustainability.

These values help me make decisions in life. Of course it is not always easy, but it does help you steer towards your values more than away from them once you choose to define your values.

I have either sold or recycled old laptops by turning them into routers and servers. I started wet shaving with either straight razors or safety razor and soap, instead of using refillable cartridges.

My values do not make them any better or worse than yours, because that is the whole point of defining your values. They help you define who you are as an individual and help you make decision by acting as your compass.

Blueprint of Your Compass

There are many times that we get stuck on making decisions in life. It could be as simple as what to have for lunch or as pivotal as changing or choose a career path.

Priority

The more you know and define your value the easier it can get when it comes time to making importantly decisions in life. It is simply not enough to decide or discover your values, but you must also prioritise them. You may value a lot of things in life, but how important is each of those values? That is a key question that will help you make decisions in life.

But even after you have spent ample amount of time defining and prioritising your values, you may still feel stuck in making certain decisions in life. Ever wondered why?

The reason is conflicting values. This happens when you have two values that are opposite in nature. What do I mean by that?

Say one of you values is non-violence and because of that you decide to adopt a vegan lifestyle. However, your other value is variety in food. You value different cuisines, and like to try and experiment different dishes, flavours, textures and tastes etc… These two are fundamentally different. Sure you can think of creative ways of making vegan food taste great and believe me it does. However, if you want to try and eat exotic animals, you will suffer much anguish because two of your values are in conflict. What you end up doing will depend on the priority of each individual value.

What is worse when you have clash of the titans. This is when you have two values that are either opposites or simply not compatible and both are of equal priority.

Crafting Your Compass

As you can see it is important to evaluate your values and weed out conflicts prior to facing them in life altering situations. The easiest way to start is to check whether your values are contradicting each other. If they are you must decide on which values will have a higher priority and which ones will have a lower priority.

Of course, you do not need to eliminate your values, it is fair to give them different priorities, and yes, you have the right to choose them as you wish.

Once you have spent ample amount of time defining and prioritizing your values, you must visit them often, ideally at regular intervals to evaluate and make changes if and where necessary. Do not fall into the trap of rigidity.

The best way to maintain integrity with yourself and your values is it to write as much of this down as possible. This gives you something concrete to look it. It will almost feel like your values have been giving life.

You can then refer to what you have written to remind yourself about your values and also to give you the opportunity to reevaluate them and make necessary tweaks.

Using your Compass

I want to reiterate, these 3 principles have mentioned here and in my previous post together with the concept of the compass is a tool, a mental tool just like the technology that surround you like your phones, tables and computers, and the Internet, the cars that you drive, or refrigerators for cooling and so on.

We are so dependent on technology, and I do believe that such technology makes our life easier and in many ways helps us making decisions better. But no technology is worth a dime if you do not know how to use it.

Likewise, with your values as a compass you can navigate decision making, become responsible for your experiences, draw yourself into the present and focus on what is important to you, and find balance by detaching from unwarranted expectations.

Categories
Philosophy

These 3 Principles will Change The Way You Live

I am not a religious person. I am also not a spiritual person, and quite frankly, I never really understood what that meant (being spiritual). I admit to being philosophical. I love dwelling into philosophy, and thus, sometimes expression of my ideas encroach into the realm of religion or “spirituality”, because religion is mostly steeped in philosophy.

I do not claim to perfectly live by these principles, and I have had no sudden epiphanies about these. Each principle was revealed so to speak over time and contemplation. Somehow I knew for a very long time and we all do in some form or another. However, it is funny how the mind works; when we see or hear ideas that have always been floating around in our heads, we finally “see” or realize.

What I ask of you is to ponder upon these principles, and try to start applying them slowly and see how they change the way you live.

You are Responsible for Your Experiences

Whatever you have experienced, are experiencing or will ever experience is your responsibility. Your thoughts, your choices, your actions that were made by you, led you to experience each and every event that has happened in your life. The same will be true for anything and everything that you have not experienced.

I know that this becomes tricky when people start giving counter arguments like, “Oh what about that car accident?” Or “What about the hurricane that destroyed my home?” or some other negative or bad thing that they experienced.

Has anyone ever blamed anyone or anything for something good happened to them? When good things happen, it is always, you worked hard, or you are smart, or it is your abilities, or your luck made it happen. If you are not responsible for all the bad that happens to you then you are also not responsible for anything good that happens to you.

This principle is not about blaming the victim, but empowering them. Accepting that all your thoughts, actions, choices and decision led you to that specify point in time and space to experience that event, releases everything and anything that you do not have direct control over. Moreover, accepting and knowing that you are responsible for what you experience, you can choose what to experience next. You become the master of you destiny so to speak. You are in the driver seat; not your mother, father, friend, lover, boss, weather, stock market, or anything.

There is the physical aspect of an event, and then there is the after effect of that event. The event itself you may not have control over, however, how you experience that event is up to you. I will give you an example of what I mean by that.

There are two people at a concert. One person is annoyed that they did not get the seats that they wanted, that people are jumping around and blocking their view and it is too loud or not loud enough. This person will have a completely different experience then the other person who is filled with joy because they are at a concert of their favorite band, they do not care about where they are seated because they just wanted to be at that concert, and enjoying the fact that there are other people who love this band just as much as they do and they are enjoying the experience together.

These two people are in the same event in time and space, but their experiences of that event are drastically different.

So there are two distinctions of this principle. One is that your thoughts, actions and decisions bring you to an event in time and space. The event that occurs is something that may not have control over, because the chain of cause and effect was already set in motion. Second, although you may not have control over the actual event when it happens, what you experience because of that event is because of you.

Be Present

There is a theory that time is such that everything that has happened in the past, is happening now and will happen in the future is happening all at once. I am not going to get into that.

What I mean by being present is to have your focus on the present. Do not live in the past, do not live in the future; just be present.

This is very important in relationships. Every relationship has ups and down, there are arguments and there are differences. What most people tend to do is bring out the past. Because 20 years ago someone said something that offended you, you decided to get back at them by doing something else.

A lot of times, you keep dwelling on your past mistakes and because of fear of making the same mistake again, you fail to move forward in life. Or that feeling of, ‘oh things were so great. I was so good in basketball, or I wish I could go back to being young’ or something of that nature.

By being in the past and dwelling on what could have, should have, or would have been, you forget to live in the present. On the other side of the spectrum are futurist who keep living in the future. “When this happens, I will do that.”

Some might feel that if you do not look at the past, how will you learn the lessons of the past? For this I will remind you of the first principle, which is you are responsible for what your experience, and so it is important if you want to change your experiences in the future, you must learn from your past and then make changes so that you have a different experience in the future.

When watching a TV show, you watch a recap of what happened in the previous episodes and then you continue watching the show. Do you keep watching the previous episodes again and again without moving forward to the next episode?

Learning from your past is vital to have the optimal first principle, which is “You are responsible for your experiences”. But dwelling on the past is disservice to your experience.

Likewise, planning for the future, and setting goals is vital for your experience as well. If there is something that you would like to experience in life or also importantly not experience in life, you must plan and set goals for the future accordingly. But once that is done, your entire focus must be on the present.

Truly experiencing the present sets you free from the past and future and in my opinion of the ultimately way of living.

Let go

The third principle may seem like a direct contradiction to the first principle. Before that, what do I mean by “let go”?

Let go is the concept of letting go of expectation, of control, desire, hate, bad feelings and even good ones. It is a form of detached way of living. It should not confused with the idea of letting go of all your possession and relationships and duties and responsibilities so that you can go live in a forest, or high up in the mountains. I am very much against that way of “letting go”.

Let go has more to do with letting go of expectations. You are responsible for your experiences and thus you have a right to want to experience certain things in life and for that you must be present and work on those goals. However, you must not be attached to events that either fulfill those experiences or go contrary to desired experiences.

Letting go also applies to the other two principles. Sometimes, you may not be able to focus on the present. Sometimes an event forces you to focus on the past or the future. You must not become angry with yourself for losing focus on the present. You must not be attached to the outcome, do not expect that you will always be able to focus on the present, doing so will create anger and frustration, and this will then affect what you experience.

Likewise, after accepting that you are responsible for experiences, you must let go. Do not keep holding onto the thought because if you do, every little action, every little thought is going to force you evaluate whether or not it is going to start a chain of cause and effect which will ultimately lead you to have a good experience or a bad one.

Being attached to these principles must also be abandoned. These 3 principles must be kept as a reference, as a guide that you keep to remind yourself about what is important in life.

Letting go of expectation in work, business, sports, and especially relationships will bring a serene kind of balance which will be hard to experience without this principle. You have the right and ability to chose your experiences and work towards them, but you do not have the right or power over the faculties of other people and things, and therefore, the only solutions is to let go.

Categories
Technology

Apple WWDC21 : IOS 15

So, yes, I was wrong, very wrong about my predictions for Apple #WWDC21. But if there is any consolation, I was not as wrong as so many tech youtubers and reviewers and so called insiders. There were rumours about new hardware; new macbook pros, macbook air, mac minis, and new 27 inch iMacs, featuring new Apple’s silicon, dubbed as M1X or M2.

None of that came true. I was was not holding my breathe of new hardware, but I surely expected some news about running MacOS apps on the new M1 iPad Pro. But surprisingly, there was nothing. That is not to say that there was no big news. Of course, there were some very interesting things shows. And in retrospect, I think there was more than enough software news that new hardware announcement would not have worked at this even, after all this is a developer conference. However, majority of the announcements in the keynote was geared towards end users. But of course, since this was a developer focused even, all developer sessions came following the days after the main keynote.

Here are a few things that I am excited about.

IOS 15

Facetime

Spacial Audio

This is basically surround sound for voice chat. You will hear voices from the direction of their chat window of the person that is speaking. So if the person is on the right side of the screen, you will hear their voice coming from right.

Voice Isolation

This one I like in particular. What they showed was impressive, but how well it works in real life is to be seen. When facetiming, your voice will be isolated from all the background noise. This is a feature that supposedly can be turned on and off with a single button tap.

Portrait Mode

This is similar to how there is portrait mode on cameras on most phone. The background will be blurred to give attention to the person in the voice chat. I’m surprised this was missing from Facetime. I think teams and zoom already have a feature to blur the background. But now you have it on Facetime.

Facetime on Android and Windows! – (kind of).

You can now invite friends and family over to your facetime sessions with facetime links. This is obviously in response to zoom. So, although technically not on android or windows as a dedicated app(do not think that it will ever happen), android phone users and windows 10 PC users will be able to join facetime sessions from the browser. The fact that this is even happening is a big deal.

This is again in response to zoom, and I think Apple realizes how crucial video chats have become because of the pandemic.

Share Play

This again is in response to the pandemic. There was a need to have social interactions in the era of social distancing. It fills the void of movie time with friends.

Shareplay allows users to watch movies and listening to music together. Not only that, Apple has an API that developers can use to implement share play in their own apps. Facetime on android is a great update, but I think the tight integration of share play is going to let developers create some very interesting interactions with their apps. I am really looking forward to what developers do with this feature.

There was always the option of screen sharing and video conferencing while watching. But tight integration with apps and the operating system is brilliant.

Messages

Shared with you

Shared with you brings all your photos and links shared with you by friends on Messages to one place, so you can easily catch up or go back to your photos and links and continue the conversation. This again is a another social interaction enhancement. Because sometimes you may be too busy to watch, or read or view what your friends might have sent you, and when you do get the time, the messages that you are looking for are buried deep somewhere making it hard to find and continue the conversation.

Notifications – Focus and Do not Disturb

Focus is basically an enhanced version of ‘do not disturb’. This is not something new, but it has a few Apple-centric enhancements.

You can create profiles for work and home so that different priority is given to different apps accordingly.

Do no disturb also reminds people messaging you that you have your status as “Do not Disturb”. I can see this being helpful in professional settings and acquaintances. Most friends and family, probably will not respect this. (LOL)

If you are in the Apple ecosystem, your Focus and Do not Disturb status gets activate on all your devices when you activate on one device. This is what Apple is good at. And this is what Apple customers have come to expect. But, unlike Microsoft and Google, Apple as a complete ecosystem and that is how Apple can easily pull this off.

Live Text

Live Text – or what Android users will call “We already have that on Android – it’s called Google lens”. Live text converts any picture with text into actual text on your phone which you can then copy, change, search, and even perform actions like call a number.

Keys and IDs

How about turning your phone into keys for your phone and car? How about turn your phone into a passport or your ID, by storing you government ID on it?

When I hear about these things, all I can think about is the great iCloud hack the exposed very private photos of celebrities. Three words – No, Thank you!

But, I might sound like a hypocrite to some of my friends. Back when I was working on my first startup, I had a vision. At its core it was a social media platform, but my vision was much deeper. I remember talking about having bank account information on this app so you can buy and sell things, send people money. Not only that, using your social media id to identify yourself and then linking it to your government ID, to provide seamless transaction and access to places, whether it be private or government facilities, or accessing information about you through your university. My friends of course laughed it the whole idea. And yet, here we are 10 years later.

The point is not that I had thought of this before Apple, the point is ideas are a dime a dozen. It is not the idea but the execution that matters. Because I am sure many people have brilliant idea that were later turned into billion dollar companies by someone else.

Of course, my focus and values have changed over the past 10 years and I am more focused on privacy or rather the lack of.

Maps

Maps now has better graphics. I do not know what else to say. Google Maps is still king and I do not think that Apple or …er..Bing is going to dethrone this king.

Globe – google earth
transit ride – google maps has it
live tracking of your transit ride – again google maps has this
night mode – …okay, good, I guess.

But what I do like about the new update is that, Apple maps will alert you when your ride is near, or has arrived. I have not used Google maps in over a year, but I am sure Google will bring this to Android sooner or later.

Air Pods

Air pods may not be the greatest sounding ear buds, but it is hard to argue against the convenience factor that they have. Being an android user, I envy iPhone users and their instant pairing with air pods, the remove one pod to pause and the stylish white sticks on my ears…umm..actually cross that one out.

Air pods now have conversation boost acting as hearing aids in a noisy environment. The technology allows air pods to convert the voice of the person you are talking to into somewhat of a beam so the speakers voices gets enhanced while other noise gets reduced. It sounds cool, but I’ll believe it when i see it in real life.

So these are some of the highlights of IOS15. I do not have an iPhone. The last iPhone I used was iPhone 3G. I have been a long time Android user, but I do like progress in technology in general. In some ways Apple is only catching up with things like widgets, and in other ways, Apple is paving the way with privacy. I have been using a Note 8 for almost 4 years now and it is still going strong without any hiccups. But when it comes time for an upgrade, who knows, maybe I will jump ship to an iPhone.

This has been my take Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference 2021. What’s yours?

Categories
Technology

MacOS apps on iPad OS at WWDC21

For me personally, I love the idea of different operating systems converging into one which can then be used on a laptop, desktop, server, mobile device, watch, toaster, fridge, TV, car…or whatever.

So far, the only operating system that is able to do that is Linux. Linux is the de facto operating system for servers, and enjoys a enthusiast and pro level status on desktops and laptops, and sort of a fringe super enthusiast/tinkerer choice for mobile devices. But you are not here to read about Linux.

Apple to Allow Running MacOS Apps on iPad OS

I think apple is going to be releasing a toolkit that will allow developers to port their MacOS apps to iPad OS.

The biggest clue for that to happen is of course the new iPad Pro running the M1 chip which is the same chip that is on all new macs – the macbook air, macbook pro, mac mini and iMac.

iOS apps can already run on Macs now. And of course, there is nothing stopping Apple from doing things the other way. Will they actually do it? Not directly, but they will make it easier to developers to port their MacOS apps to iPad OS, as long as the iPad have an M chip.

Final Cut Pro on iPad Pro

Not only that, I think Apple will release a version of Final Cut Pro that will run on the new iPad Pro, to show case what can be done to improve the workflow with a combination of the iPad Pro and Mac.

Also, I think there will only be one license for Final Cut, so if you already own Final Cut Pro on your Mac, then you automatically get one for the iPad Pro for free.

Caveat to running MacOS apps in iPadOS

There will only be one caveat to running MacOS apps on iPadOS. It will only run on the iPad Pros that have the M chip. This is not only going to be this generation of iPads. I think this is going to be for all iPads going forward. There will iPads with A chips which will only run iPad OS apps and then iPad Pro with M chips which will allow for some MacOS apps to run on the iPad Pro, but only if the developer chooses to develop for it.

So this will be kind of like how iOS apps now run on Macs. There will difference is that Mac apps will not just suddenly start working on the new iPad Pro. Apple’s new development tool kit will make it easier for developers to port their apps to the iPad Pro.

I usually do not do these kind of things, but I think what Apple is doing is significant and slightly scary at the same time and I am very much looking forward to WWDC21.

Categories
Philosophy

Buy if for Life

A couple of years ago I was introduced to the idea of “Buy it For Life”, which means what it says. The idea is when you purchase something, one of the requirements that you must consider is longevity of the product that you are buying. You must buy something which will last you a very long time.

Why?

Saves Money

There a couple of reasons for this. Buying something that will last a very long time will in most cases saves you money, although, that sometimes means spending more now so that you can save in the long run.

Reduces Waste

When you purchase something that lasts a very long time, you end up purchasing less of that type of product ultimately reducing waste which generally is better for the environment.

Simpler

Another consequence of “Buy it for Life” philosophy is minimalism. Now minimalism is a whole philosophy of its own. But the the idea is that if you buy something that is going to last a very long time, you will probably own just one or hopefully at least fewer of that type of product.

The Criteria

Quality over Style

This mostly pertains to clothing and footwear. One of the downsides to living in Canada is having multiple types of clothing and footwear. There are 4 seasons that require about 3 to 4 types of clothing. You can get away with using the same jackets and shoes for spring and autumn. But you definitely need a dedicate winter jacket and some summer clothes.

For example, I use a high quality plain black parka jacket which works in work or business and casual settings. It is not fancy looking at all. It is just plain black with a black zipper and a black hood. It was the most expensive jacket that I had ever bought, but it has been 6 years and it is still going strong. I did start having issues last winter – the hood now keeps coming off. The buttons have gotten loose. However, the jacket has a life time warranty, so all I have to do is send it to the manufacture and they will repair at no cost.

Which brings me to my next criteria.

Right to Repair

This is a bit of a misnomer. Of course, you have a right to repair anything that you like; the key idea is that it should be easy to repair. As I have mentioned, my jacket has a life time warranty and the manufacturer will repair it free of charge – this is the kind of product you should consider buying.

When you buy something, you must take into account the time, effort and money it will take to repair the product in case it breaks or gets damaged.

When it comes to violating right to repair, the biggest culprits are electronics manufacturers, and especially laptop and cell phone manufacturers. I loved buying cell phones that had removable batteries. It increased the lifetime of the cell phone. I also miss the days when laptops were upgradable with faster RAM, or faster or bigger storage. It meant that consumers could increase the lifetime of the product. Nowadays companies are notorious at going out of their way to ensure that their products are not upgradable.

Multipurpose over Single Purpose

Buying products that can be used for multiple purposes or in multiple settings means you can get away with buying fewer items in general. I will give you the example of my black parka jacket. It can used in multiple settings, both casual and business.

The same goes for footwear. When purchasing shoes, instead of purchasing something that looks ‘cool’, but only works in certain situations, why not go for something that is of a higher quality, may look plain, but can be used in multiple situations.

For the Canadian climate, I prefer waterproof hiking shoes because I can use them in the winter when paired with warm winter socks that keep me dry when I step on snow, and keeps me dry in the fall or spring when it rains. I can wear them in the summer by pairing up with regular socks, when I am out and about, plus I can even go hiking with them – you know because they’re hiking shoes.

When it comes to sports shoes, I prefer cross trainers as they are built for a variety of workouts. Lets face it most of us, including myself are not high performance athletes and we do not need dedicate shoes for different types of shoes.

A common concern that people might have is – will owning generic multipurpose items not make me boring? Sure, if you have boring personality!… BURN.

But seriously, let your personality, your passions, your interests do the ‘talking’ for you. You are not the brand or style that you own.

Categories
Philosophy Uncategorized

Veganism

About a year ago, I decided to adopt a vegan lifestyle. I call it a vegan lifestyle, because I feel that there is some negativity associated with the word “vegan” or rather the phrase, “I am a vegan”.

It’s Lifestyle

Also, “I AM…” signifies a core identity, and that somehow that is the lens through which I see everything. I have come across the idea that being vegan is associated with someone who is uptight, inflexible, and unreasonable, and somehow every aspect of the person’s life and every decision is based on the idea of being vegan.

I am not like that and I do not want to be associated with such an attitude. I stopped consuming meat and eggs and anything that comes from an animal. I also stopped wearing leather belts and bought a single ‘vegan’ belt made of nylon. The fact that I have never really used it is a different matter; we have been living in very strange times. It has been a year since we have been locked in our homes in one way or another so I have not really had the chance to utilize this ‘vegan belt’.

Now, going back to why I say I have adopted a vegan life style rather than saying “I am a vegan” is again because of negative connotations associated with that phrase. It somehow gives the impression that I am right, and everyone who does not follow my way of living is WRONG. Sadly, I know vegans who do in fact behave in such a way. This really does not help the ‘vegan cause’ or the ‘vegan movement’, or whatever you want to call it.

I like a more flexible approach. To me living a vegan lifestyle is just that, a lifestyle. That is the way I choose to live my life and I do not want to be judged for living this way, neither do I want to judge others for not living this way. I do hope that more and more people join me, and ideally, I would rather have it that everyone adopted the vegan lifestyle. However, I know that it might not be a right for everyone, or rather not right just yet.

Think about the Environment

I decided to adopted a vegan lifestyle for moral and philosophical reasons. In simple terms, violence against animals was a big factor in my decision. However, there are other reasons to adopt a vegan lifestyle. There is a phrase that a lot of vegans(that I know of) say:

You cannot be an environmentalist and not be a vegan

I happen to agree with this idea. Animal agriculture is one of the leading factors in greenhouse gas emissions, which as you may know already, is one of the greatest threats to our environment.

Also, when people talk about the environment, it almost has a dissociated characteristic, as if it is something that is external and separate to an individual person. What affects the environment, affects us all. So if you care about the environment, if you are someone who believes in recycling, using electric cars, or at least fuel efficient cars, then you may want to consider adopting a vegan lifestyle.

Vegans – take the win!

And I am of the belief that every bit helps. You can be a weekend vegan, or have vegan Wednesdays, especially if you are someone who eats meat or eggs or milk 7 days a week. You can start by taking a couple of days off.

I know a lot of vegans, including some of my friends who would be appalled that I even suggested this. To them I would say, take the win, every small win counts.

Take this analogy. More people are buying electric cars, hybrid cars and fuel efficient cars. Not everyone is going to suddenly be driving electric cars over night. Likewise, not everyone is going to be turning vegan overnight. But a reduction in the consumption of meat, fish and dairy is a good start – take the win.

Drinking Milk is Weird

Not only is a vegan lifestyle good for the environment, it is also good for the body and the mind. A few thing that come to mind are fat, cholesterol, hormones, antibiotics.

Did you know that no other animal drinks milk that comes from a different species? Also, did you know that no other species drinks milk in adulthood? Humans are the only ones that do this very odd thing.

Choice

Anyway, I am not here to convince you to change your habits. All I am saying is this is the way I am choosing to live my life… and is that not a very important distinction. Choosing to live this way?

Whatever habit, whatever programing that you may have whether it is cultural, or family, or any other, you do have the mental faculty of choice. You can choose to behave a certain way. You can choose to not eat meat, or drink milk, or eat eggs. You do not have to make it permanent. You could occasionally choose not to do those things.

Categories
Software

mynotes – An opensource note taking app based on Vim

I am an avid note taker and I have used many note taking solutions over the years. I have used plain text files, word, wordperect, samsung notes, onenote, evernote, joplin and probably a few others which I don’t even remember anymore.

A lot of these had some kind of a flaw or something that did not quite work for my workflow. There was always a privacy issue to be considered. I always faced some kind of an issue. Sometimes the developers would decide to remove exporting features, the apps would crash and I would lose my notes, and on one occasion I upgraded my computer and I had lost the CD that was to be used to install the software, and there was no way to access my notes.

But the thing that made to decide to stop using any other solution other than my own was this: I had deleted my notes and deleted my evernote account some 3 or 4 years ago. I decided to try evernote again earlier this year and to my surprise my notes were still on the account! I may try other apps again, but I shall never ever use evernote again!

Requirements for my note taking app

Coming to the point of this blog post, I decided to build my own solution. I had some criteria that this new solution should meet:

  • privacy oriented
  • minimalist
  • easy to use
  • multi-platform
  • easy to export to other formats
  • long lasting – would not easily go obselete

Markdown file format

I decided to use text files in markdown format. Text files have existed since the dawn of computers and I dare to say, will never go obsolete. Markdown is a very simple markdown language that is minimalist, easy to learn and easy to read, uinlike something like XML or HTML.

Vim

At first I thought about building my own app, but then I decided to use existing editors like vscode, Vim, nano etc…Settling for Vim was an easy decision because Vim has a proven track record and it is one of the most customizable, universally available and stable editors out there. There is a learning curve involved, however, you can learn just enough to start using it in an hour and that would be all you will ever need to take notes, or you can spend years mastering different tricks and adding your own customization. It is this versatility that I love.

Notes and Notebooks

All notes are text files in markdown format and all notebooks are directories – done!

Synchronization and Portability

Most note taking apps have features that let you access and edit your notes over the web, on my phone, table, or computer. You can use cloud storage services like Onedrive, dropbox, google drive etc…

Or, if you hare concerned about privacy or want to own your data, you can use NextCloud. I will make another post on how to get started with NextCloud.

Get mynotes for free

mynotes is free and is opensource. You can download it from my github page. The install script is to be used on Linux, however, you can also use it on Windows 10 via WSL. You can download install a WSL based linux distro like Ubuntu from the Windows app store.

Installation and instructions are available in the README.md file and in this youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMRLsMpMklA

Categories
Software

Open Source Alternatives

There are open source alternatives to almost any software you can think about. Some are as good if not better than closed source with possible spyware baked in them.

* This is a constantly updating list*

Desktops and Laptops Operating system: Windows / MacOs X

  • Replacement: Ubuntu Desktop (https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop)
  • Ease of Use: 5/5
  • Security: 5/5
  • Features: 4/5 (it has all common basic features)
  • Privacy: 4/5 (took 1 off because if you’re logged in to facebook/gmail etc.. while surfing, it really defeats the purpose)
  • Ease of Adjustment: 4/5
  • Ease of Migration: 4/5

This choice is very easy. Although there are many Linux based desktop operating system, my favourite and the love of many Linux users is Ubuntu Desktop. I have been using Ubuntu on and off since its very first release, but now it is my daily driver because its not only a great operating system for developers and techies, it’s also great of casual internet surfers, emailers, and document writers.

I will go on to say that Ubuntu Desktop is better than Windows 10 and MacOsX. It’s fast, safe and secure, and better for privacy than its Apple and Microsoft counterparts, and it has an app store. Ubuntu Desktop also comes pre-installed with Firefox for Internet browsing, Thunderbird for your emails, Libre Office for your document writing/reading, spreadsheets, and slides.

You can even install apps like spotify, zoom, and steam for linux to get your game on. (Disclaimer: At the moment, there are limited games that are compatible, but the list is growing, take for example: Counter Strike, Dying Light, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Ark Survival Evovled, Celeste, Shadow of Tomb Raider, Borderlands 2, here is a full list https://store.steampowered.com/search/?filter=topsellers&os=linux)

Too afraid to commit to Ubuntu?

Are you afraid it’s going to take a lot of effort? No, problem, just download and use the live CD features to boot into Ubuntu desktop and try it out without actually installing it! That’s a sweet deal!

https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

Text Messaging : WhatsApp

  • Replacement: Signal (https://www.signal.org)
  • Ease of Use: 5/5
  • Features: 5/5
  • Security: 5/5
  • Privacy: 5/5
  • Ease of Adjustment: 4/5 (the app asks you for your pin from time to time to check if its really you, but this minor annoyance is worth it)
  • Ease of Migration: 2/5 (This really depends on how many of your friends are willing to jump ship, ask them to follow my blog or contact me if they need convincing)

Productivity: Microsoft Office and Google apps

  • Replacement: Libre Office (https://www.libreoffice.org/)
  • Ease of Use: 4/5
  • Features: 4/5
  • Privacy: 5/5
  • Ease of Adjustment: 5/5
  • Ease of Migration: 4/5 ( you can work with all Microsoft formats, but may lose some very specific formats, not a deal breaker)

Emailing: Outlook/Apple Mail

  • Replacement: Thunderbird (https://www.thunderbird.net/)
  • Ease of Use: 5/5
  • Features: 5/5
  • Privacy: 5/5
  • Ease of Adjustment: 5/5
  • Ease of Migration: 5/5

Internet Browser: Chrome, Edge, Safari

Firefox, I think everyone knows this one.

Cloud storage: Onedrive, Google drive, iCloud

  • Replacement: Nextcloud (https://nextcloud.com/)
  • Ease of Use: 5/5
  • Features: 4/5
  • Privacy: 5/5
  • Ease of Adjustment: 3/5
  • Ease of Migration: 2.5/5
  • ( depending your your method of installation, and migration process, things can be either relative easily or pain in the butt, but I can help you. I’ll write a dedicated post on my blog)

Note Taking: Onenote and Evernote

You can simply use web version of onenote and evernote and it works perfectly fine. But if you want a dedicated app, Joplin is unfortunately the only one that comes close. I currently use my solution, I hope to release it for public use once it becomes more polished.

  • Replacement: Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/)
  • Ease of Use: 4/5
  • Features: 3.5/5
  • Privacy: 5/5
  • Ease of Adjustment: 3/5
  • Ease of Migration: 2.5/5

Video Conferencing: Zoom

Replacement: Jitsi (https://jitsi.org/)

  • Ease of Use: 5/5
  • Features: 5/5
  • Privacy: 5/5
  • Ease of Adjustment: 5/5
  • Ease of Migration: 2.5/5 (Really depends on how many people you know want to jump ship to Jitsi)

Jitsi is more secure, free and open source. Also, if you know the technical know-how, you can even install it on your own server(it actually is not as difficult as it may sound)