tools

Last updated August 14, 2025.

digital tools

I want my digital tools to be open-source, independent (no investors), and portable with a universal protocol. As much as possible, I aim to divest from g00gle, amaz0n, m3ta, and other enshitified corporations. There are so many lovely indie alternatives that better align with my values, and deserve support.

my website and email:

I use Ghost, hosted by Magic Pages. I use PorkBun for my domain names, and Tally for my contact forms and surveys. For email service, I use my personal domain on Migadu which can be added to basically any email app.

• Ghost is a SquareSpace/Substack/Patreon/Everything alternative. I use it to build my website, send newsletters, and keep my subscriber list. It also lets people subscribe from any RSS feeder, or any of their favorite social web client (Bluesky, Mastodon, WordPress etc!), so your posts are in their normal feed! Freedom!
• Magic Pages hosts my Ghost website and newsletter, as an alternative to GhostPro. I chose it because of my particular subscriber count and intermittent newsletter frequency.
• PorkBun is a stellar and cheap domain manager.
• Tally gives me a free secure contact form on my website, negating the usual spam from just listing your email address. Also great for forms and quizzes.
• Migadu was the best alternative I found for getting my email away from g00gle; you can have infinite sub email addresses based on your own personal domain. It's fantastic and affordable. Setting up the DNS with pork bun was straightforward.

My Note System

I am in the midst of switching almost 2000 notes from Apple Notes to Obsidian. Cry for me. I like how customizable it is, how notes can be linked into maps, and of course, I do not like being locked in to Apple's system, and appreciate that Obsidian has a universal protocol for exporting to whatever I want; making it easier if I ever want to switch my system again.

Book Design Software

This is one area I am unhappy with, and am seeking to divest from as soon as my 2nd cookbook is published. I am unfortunately locked in to the Adobe ecosystem, and find their business to be highly predatory and proprietary. I learned design in Adobe, and used Indesign and Illustrator for the first cookbook, and in order for the second cookbook to properly match (and ease in my not having to redo everything for the second), I am using them again. After this, future indie published works by me will be created using open source, non-predatory, software.

physical tools

[let me come back to this later]