free

David and Goliath 

Home Streaming

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If you’re like most people today, you don’t really buy physical movies anymore. You have half a dozen streaming services and watch what’s available. You might keep a DVD player for that pile of old disks you bought years ago or a Blu-ray player for the new releases you can’t stream yet, but you mostly rely on some Big Tech company’s services to get what you want.… Read more
Durability 

The Power of Plain Text

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 I see technology as a tool; as a means to an end. That end will vary, but seeing technology as a means and a tool invariably leads to some philosophical conclusions. What’s Plain Text? The words on the screen you’re reading right now are plain text. You can check it for yourself if you’d like by inspecting the source code of the page.… Read more
Note-Taking 

TiddlyWiki – The World’s Strangest Digital Notebook

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I hate the name “Tiddlywiki”, and that’s my biggest criticism of the software going by that name, so I’ll be calling it TW for the rest of this post. TW is a digital notebook, but it’s not like anything you’re used to. Like most of the software I’ll review, it’s also free. When you head over to the official website and download a copy you might be surprised to find that you end up with an HTML page in your downloads directory.… Read more
Office 

LibreOffice – A (Very Brief) Review

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If you use Microsoft office or the Google document equivalents, one of the easiest ways to pull Big Tech claws out of your digital life is to switch over to LibreOffice. If you’ve ever used OpenOffice, you’ll be right at home. LibreOffice was developed as the successor to OpenOffice almost a decade ago. It’s compatible with all of the file formats in Microsoft Office, so your documents should load and save interchangeably between either of the office suites.… Read more