I’ve started using HomeBox to track the parts inventory for the things I build. This is something I used to do (somewhat) in a spreadsheet but I didn’t do a good job of keeping it up-to-date, and it lacked some important information. While a spreadsheet works for some things, it might not work for everything. As the only person in my company I get to choose the tools I want to use and no one else has to deal with my choices!
I know that “Homebox is the inventory and organization system built for the Home User” but I’m more concerned about the components and parts I have for my small business than I am for my own personal stuff at home… though I can see the appeal for some people.
HomeBox is open source and installing it on TrueNAS was super simple. There are plenty of features I don’t need and I can mostly ignore them… and on the flipside it doesn’t seem to be lacking too many features I’d really want.
Anyway, I’ll give HomeBox a try and see if it makes things easier for me and my (previously poor) tracking of inventory.
In my continuing effort to get away from Google (and most large US-based tech companies in general) I found CryptPad. I should note that everyone uses software and web-based services differently, and for me specifically there is one spreadsheet I constantly use for my small business. I never really use the documents or presentations that Google Docs offer, and I almost never use Google Drive. Still, CryptPad does offer all of those things, so if you need them, they are there.
There’s a lot to love about CryptPad and people seem to like it. CryptPad is an end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite and there are all sorts of options for using it, and I’m pretty sure your data won’t be used to train AI models since, you know, your data is encrypted and not even viewable by the system admins.
I am using CryptPad.fr (specifically) right now, and I make a small donation every month for the space and resources I am using. I do not mind paying some small fee for what I get, and for helping support an alternative to Google.
Public Money = Public code? Funded by and for users? Yeah, more software like this, please!
But is it as good as Google Docs? Again, it depends on your needs and expectations and what you are willing to compromise on. At first I found it “not as good” as Google Docs, but after using it a bit more and just getting used to it, I really like it, and I’ve quit Google Docs, hopefully permanently.
Eventually I’d like to self-host CryptPad. Oh, I should mention this weirdness around OnlyOffice, because some code from OnlyOffice runs within CryptPad. See this Shady Moves post. I am not concerned about any shady stuff because it’s actually being discussed in the open with CryptPad developers. This is very different than the closed-source model where you never even know what shady shit might be happening.
Do I trust open source developers in France more than closed-source developers at Google or Microsoft? Hell Yes. I expect large US tech companies to cave under pressure from a compromised administration, and you should too.
In my quest for a web-based task manager I came across Focalboard. In the past I’ve used Asana, Monday, and Notion. This post is going to talk about Focalboard but also cover why I do not like the other platforms… (I’ve included some screenshots of Focalboard in case you like pictures.)
Asana is the first platform I used for managing my tasks. I used it at work in a team environment and it worked well. For my own personal projects (and small business projects) I was able to use it for free, since I was just a single user. I think I quit using it when it removed the feature that would email you reminders. This was probably 4 or 5 years ago.
I switched to Monday because I wanted an alternative to Asana and maybe they offered the email reminders thing or something else I thought Asana was lacking. I used it for a while, once again as a single user as I am the only employee at my (very) small company. I don’t remember why I left Monday but I switched to Notion… maybe 2 or 3 years ago?
There were things I really liked about Notion, but shortly after I started using it they added this AI feature in beta and forced all users to have it. I mean it was in the interface every time you wanted to type something. Once they rolled it out the only way you could opt-out or disable it was if you had a huge corporate account…
I should note that right now in 2025 all three of these fuckers (Asana, Monday, and Notion) promote AI AI AI all across their home page. “Work Smater with AI. Increase Productivity with AI!” and on and on. I do not fucking want AI. I want a simple task manager…
Focalboard is a simple task manager. It lacks a few things I would like, but I can self host it on my own server, so the data I put into it is only for me. It’s not being used to train AI, it’s not being used to pump up user numbers for some corporation. Here is the code. But wait… it’s still not good.
Focalboard seems to be (sort of) abandonware. As in, the code repo is no longer maintained, and they are looking for a new maintainer. People have volunteered but there’s been no action yet. And I do hope someone takes it over, because when I looked up Mattermost I see they do work for the US Air Force and Department of Defense. Sigh…
So yeah, those are my notes about Focalboard. I am using it for now, it is open source, and for me it is self hosted, and yes, it does not have a few features I would like, but the world is full of compromise.
Focalboard is “good enough” for me right now because I ran out of the motivation and energy to find an alternative. I would like something that is open source, I can host myself, has minimal clicking needed (as in, I can type things inline) and I would love to be able to subscribe to a calendar of due dates for tasks… notifications (email, etc.) would also be nice.
I don’t feel like I am asking for too much but I’ve yet to find something that does those things… Suggestions are welcome!
I started using BBEdit back in the 1990s and eventually moved to jEdit in the 2000s. Well, it’s 2020 now and since I tend to change text editors every ten years or so, I’m behind schedule! I’m pretty sure that in recent years I checked out Brackets, Sublime Text, and maybe even Atom, but I stuck with jEdit because I knew it, customized the heck out of it, and didn’t see a reason to switch.
For me, a text editor should be open source, run on macOS, Windows, and Linux, be extendable, customizable, and hackable, and… I should like using it. Life is too short to use a text editor you don’t like!
I’m working on a rather large project on GitHub right now, and I had to walk through the process of installing GitHub Desktop, and while I was jumping into the GitHub Desktop experience I figured I would also try out Atom since it integrates well with GitHub and GitHub Desktop.
When dealing with a new text editor it’s hard not to find faults. Part of it is that it’s new, and may do things differently than you are used to with your old text editor, or it may have missing features, or what appears to be missing features because it does things differently. It’s easy to take the stance of “What!? I can’t do X anymore!?” (Where X is some esoteric thing that you used to do.) It’s important to remember to take some time, investigate, dig in, and see what a new text editor offers.
There was a feature in jEdit that was really neat, but I think I used it maybe once or twice a year, and I could have achieved the same end result using another method. In Atom there’s a feature I’d never seen before, but once I understood it, it blew me away, and I was thankful it was there. I might not use it all the time, and yes, I could totally achieve the end result another way, but it’s nice to have new things.
I do miss macros and macro recording and playback in jEdit. Despite all the packages for Atom I’ve yet to find an equivalent. I have already written a really simple Atom package, so it’s good to know that’s an option if I can’t find some of the features I need. (Update: I did find some macro packages, just needed to be on a machine with dev tools to install them.)
Here are the packages I’ve added to my Atom install so far:
I’ve tried a few others, but haven’t added them to the lineup quite yet, but I’ll keep an eye out for new and useful packages. I’m also a fan of the command line integration and ability to customized the look of the editor by using CSS (though I wish there were more/better example files out there showing how to customized everything.)
So yeah, it’s safe to say at this point I’ll keep using Atom as my text editor, even though it will take some time to get used to the find & replace, and I’ve experienced a few crashes, supposedly can’t deal with large files, etc… I mean, the Command Palette is awesome. jEdit had a similar feature (I think?) but I never used it. I think one of the things I like about Atom (and I liked about jEdit) is that they were built by hackers for hackers. People who want to fiddle the bits and change things and make it their own.
The other important thing about a text editor is what you use it for. I will most likely not be using it as an IDE, though I may play around with integrating it into OpenSCAD or the Arduino IDE, I’m not doing large scale software development. I am mainly… working with text. Writing text, manipulating text, writing scripts, editing text files… stuff like that. It’s rare that I need autocomplete (in fact I disabled it) and some of the “coding” features just get in my way. YMMV depending on what you use a text editor for in your own work.
The folks over at Seeed Studio sent me a Seeeduino Nano to check out. I’ve used a lot of Arduino boards over the years, including plenty of cheap Arduino Nano clones. Most of the clones have worked fine but every now and then I’ve seen a bad one come through. The Seeeduino Nano is a nice quality board with a little extra to make it useful for beginners or people more interested in making things quickly/easily than they are soldering wires.
One interesting thing about the Seeeduino Nano is that it used USB-C to connect to your computer. While most of the Arduino UNO boards I’ve used still use USB type B, and lots of other boards use Mini-USB or Micro-USB, the Seeeduino required a USB-C cable. Luckily, I had one on hand. If you don’t already have a USB-C cable, you’ll need one for the Seeeduino Nano.
My favorite part about the packaging of the Seeeduino Nano is the warning on the back that says “Best to keep away from fire”, mainly because I’ve worked on multiple Arduino projects that specifically involved fire… But I digress… for most people keeping away from fire is probably a good idea.
Here’s the top view of the Seeeduino Nano next to a ELEGOO Nano board. You can see the difference in the USB connector and a few other features. One difference with the ELEGOO boards is that they come with the header pins included but not soldered in place. (Here I’ve soldered them to the board.) There are times when you don’t want header pins solder into place. My guess is that for the target market of the Seeeduino Nano, the pins already installed makes sense.
Another thing about the ELEGOO boards is that I can’t easily find them listed on the web site. Here’s a post about them, but in the past if I’ve purchased them I’ve found them on Amazon for a price close to the Seeeduino Nano, though I’ve only seen them as a 3-pack.
(Note in the photo above the boards are the same dimensions, the Seeeduino is just on an angle due to the extra connectors on the top.)
Since I had a project already done with a Nano in place (via my Anrduino Nano Breakout Board) I just swapped in the Seeeduino Nano, uploaded the code, and it worked great.
Where the Seeeduino Nano really shines is the capabilities it has with the Grove system from Seeed Studios. If you don’t want to solder, and also don’t want to stick a lot of wires and components into breadboards, the Grove system might be what you are looking for. Again, I see this is a match for those who are more interested in the code than the wiring of electronics, or for workshops where soldering might be a concern (with kids or those not able to solder for other reasons).
Above you’ll see the Seeeduino Nano plugged into the Grove Shield which has a Temperature & Humidity sensor attached. This takes seconds to connect versus soldering things or plugging things into a breadboard. When I taught basic Arduino classes I always told students to unplug their Arduino when they wired up the breadboard, and then to double-check the wiring for errors before plugging in the board again. The Grove plug-in system eliminates much of that guesswork. You can’t really plug things in backwards.
I grabbed the example code Seeed Studio provided and had a few issues. Nothing I couldn’t fix, and I did open an issue about it. In the end I grabbed Adafruit’s library for the DHT Sensor as well as the Adafruit Sensor library (which is required by the DHT library) and got things up and running. If you’re not interested in downloading zip files from Github you can also install these libraries right from the Arduino IDE.
Overall the Seeeduino Nano is a good quality Arduino board, and the Grove system makes it very easy to get up and running. In this specific test I did run into some trouble with their example code, but in most cases those issues are solvable, and there’s probably an alternative example or library out there that will do what you want or need.
Finally, here’s a short video of the game scoring system I mentioned above. The Seeeduino Nano is taking input from a number of pins (that will eventually be triggered by switches or buttons) to keep score, where each pin is a different point value, and then using the piezo speaker to play a sound for each point value as well as displaying the points on a small LED display.
