pawel orzech blog

My defaults

Last updated: **08/02/2024**

So because of Hemispheric Views 097, now people are posting their defaults, I guess it’s time for me too!

📨 Mail Client: Mail.app on both iOS and macOS, for work – Mimestream (Google accounts only)

📮 Mail Server: Fastmail / Google for work

📝 Notes: Obsidian, Tot and Day One

✅ To-Do: Akiflow and Things

📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera app

🟦 Photo Management: Lightroom

📆 Calendar: Calendar on iOS, Akiflow on Mac

📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud + Backblaze B2

📖 RSS: FreshRSS with Reeder

🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Contacts

🌐 Browser: Arc Browser for Mac and Arc Search for iOS

💬 Chat: Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp

🔖 Bookmarks: Browser

📑 Read It Later: Good Links

🤖 Mastodon: Ivory and IceCubes

📖 Blog: micro.blog and Day One

⌨️ Launcher: Raycast

📜 Word Processing: Obsidian

📈 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets

📊 Presentations: Google Slides

🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders

💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: YNAB

📰 News: RSS

🎵 Music: Spotify

🎤 Podcasts: Pocket Casts

🎮 Gaming: PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and Anbernic RG35XX

🔐 Password Management: 1Password

👨🏻‍💻 Terminal: WebSSH

Someone in our complex is renovating, so there are renovatio

Someone in our complex is renovating, so there are renovation sounds like clicking, bumping, and drilling. The old lady next door is not happy about it and is shouting and hitting the pipes to make them stop. Now we have two sources of loud sounds. Congrats, you played yourself.

NAS recovered. Not yet fully restored in terms of apps but i

NAS recovered. Not yet fully restored in terms of apps but it’s already working. I’m gonna slightly upgrade it though before doing anything else. From 8 to 16GB RAM, from 128GB SSD to 128+256 SSD and 2TB HDD. Slight upgrade.

I’m going to Bombay Bicycle Club show in a couple of weeks s

I’m going to Bombay Bicycle Club show in a couple of weeks so I’ve checked if they did publish an album I should listen to before I go (because I’m in love with their first two albums) and they did. And it’s great! Honestly. I have a feeling that it actually might become my fav album of theirs!

Kev Quirk on his blog did an analysis of subscriptions (and

Kev Quirk on his blog did an analysis of subscriptions (and before that, it was Manu Moreale) so I thought it would be a good exercise to do it too, so let’s go.

Let’s start with “necessities”:
– Apple One (with music, TV, and storage space + additional storage space) – 64.98 PLN ~~ $16.86 monthly
– Fastmail (for my wife and me) – 415 PLN ~~ $100 per year
– Allegro Smart (like Amazon Prime but for the Polish Amazon alternative) – 59.90 PLN ~~ $14.45 per year
– Amazon Prime – 50 PLN ~~ $12 per year
– 1Password – 312 PLN ~~ $75 per year
– Mobile phone with 45GB of a really good, 5G network – 35 PLN ~~ $8.5 per month
– iPad internet – 29 PLN ~~ $7 per month
– Adobe – 135 PLN ~~ $32.5 per month

Now let’s move on to entertainment:
– HBO – 20 PLN ~~ $4.85 per month (we got locked in at some introductory price and it’s still going strong)
– Apple Music & Apple TV – 0 because it’s already included in the Apple One subscription
– YouTube Premium – 46.99 PLN ~~ $11.30 per month

And finally, hobbies:
– micro.blog – 210 PLN ~~ $50 per year
– Hetzner VPS for forum.yeswas.pl and wspanialy.eu – 53 PLN ~~ $12.77 per month
– Backblaze B2 backup – 6 PLN ~~ $1.45 per month
– BunnyCDN – 4.15 PLN ~~ $1 per month
– Mailgun – 4.15 PLN ~~ $1 per month
– Telegram – 9.99 PLN ~~ $2.4 per month

So to sum it up, it’s about 470 PLN per month, which translates to about $115 per month. Could it be lower? Definitely, but we agreed that what we have here is low enough for us to keep it. Streaming services are obviously the first to be cut if needed, but for now, it’s okay.

We used to have subscriptions for Netflix (which was about 70 PLN ~~ $17) and Disney (289 PLN ~~ $70 per year), but we stopped paying for them because who actually has enough time to consume that amount of media? HBO and ATV+ are enough, and when they aren’t, we can always use our locally hosted Plex machine (which we do for content that’s unavailable otherwise!).

So, to continue this discussion – how about you? What is your monthly subscription payment?

Searching for search engine notes:

Searching for search engine notes:
– Qwant isn’t that great, it’s just a tad worse Bing,
– Kagi is great but no way in hell worth $10 per month,
– DuckDuckGo is just painfully bad for me and results most of the time suck

Here I am, Bing or Google, unfortunately.