Tag: opensource

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Mapping Bike Rides (Part IV)

We’re back once again to talk about my goal of mapping all of my bike rides! This time we’re trying out wanderer (or wanderer.to) not to be confused with wandrer (or wandrer.earth).

We mentioned wandrer.earth back in Part II, in case you forgot. It works with the data from Strava.

wanderer.to is totally different! It’s decentralized and self-hosted which means no corporation is getting your data. It’s open source and privacy first. The copy I have running on my own server has only one account… mine! No one else can login and see my data. If that appeals to you, wanderer might fit the bill.

There are a few servers out there running wanderer and it could be a cool thing for a local community or a group of friends to run. There is a demo server anyone can log into and upload their GPX files to try it out. I did this before installing it via Docker. It also uses federation via ActivityPub so servers (instances) can talk to each other. Since I’ve only got my server I haven’t dug into this yet…

Whew! I should talk about what wanderer does! Just like the others you upload your GPX files and it creates maps using the data. The thing is, wanderer, like many of the other applications that are similar, is more about sharing trails, and recording trails.

(I say “trails” as in routes people share for others to ride. I don’t really do that… I just want to see my own rides. One thing wanderer does is look at your GPX files and try to filter out duplicates. Since I ride the same route to work every day it kept flagging duplicates, but I want those duplicates because they are my rides.)

wanderer is a self-hosted, open source, GPX loading-map making application that shows all of my rides, but it’s also sort of a weird fit for that. I mean, it totally works! And I don’t have to subscribe, or be limited to just the last 50 rides, so it’s a winner in many ways.

So yeah, I guess it’s Mission Accomplished for wanderer! It’s still in development, and I am not using it exactly as it’s meant to be used (which is fine) but this isn’t the end of my quest. It is pretty cool though, and I’m glad I’ve got an install to play with! It even forced me to write some new Python code to further clean up my GPX files.

The idea of wanderer is a good one! And a few people have created their own similar things. Nicolas Hoizey has one, though I cannot read it because it’s in French. (Source code is available!) But wait, there’s more French stuff I can’t read! There is David Larlet’s offering Source code is available!) So yeah, what is with these French people!?

These posts have been fun, but in the next one I’ll start to talk about my solution… yes, I do have one! :)

See Also:

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HomeBox for Parts Inventory

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.

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Hello CryptPad, Goodbye Google Docs!

CryptPad

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.

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Focalboard for Task Management

Focalboard

Focalboard

Note: It’s 2025-09-29 and it looks like Focalboard has lost all of my data. I will try to confirm this and then update this post and write a new one about the data loss.

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.)

Focalboard

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.

Focalboard

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?

Focalboard

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!

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Atom is my New Text Editor

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.