I meant to post this on the first, but then forgot. Thankfully, other microbloggers posted their iterations of this genre.

Here’s my iPhone setup.

I only have one home screen. Merlin Mann convinced me on a podcast years ago to keep at least on row empty. I think he was talking about committments, but he said something to the effect that if we’re always operating at 80 or 90 percent, we won’t have anything left when the opportunity of a lifetime arrives. When Apple made it possible to keep the bottom row empty, I did it immediately. I suppose you could call it minimalism, but I learned the lesson elsewhere, from stoicism. (That’s what I get for double majoring in Ancient Greek and Latin. )

  • Fantastical runs as a widget so I can see the days events. I use Busycal on my Mac, like a barbarian. Don’t @ me.
  • Tunnelbear is my VPN. I got a discount on a multi-year plan a while ago and so I’m sticking with it until it expires—and then, who knows. I’ll stay or switch depending on what the market looks like when that happens. But if you’re not using a VPN on public wifi, you should really start.
  • Authy manages all my 2-factor identification with the exception of my university which uses Duo. Thus far, I have not found a way to get my university’s 2FA to run inside Authy. But I keep looking.
  • Vox will play FLAC files on your iPhone. When reviewing my 2021 practices, I was disappointed that I didn’t listen to as much music as I used to. So I unsubscribed from all but three podcasts, moved Overcast to the app library and recommitted. I can talk audiophile gear all day, but suffice it to say, this is overkill for the casual listener.
  • Glass is here because once I decided to delete Instagram, I wanted to commit to this before I decided if I want to keep it or not. I’m unsure if this will last for the year.
  • Gluon is a wonderful Microblog client and I love it.
  • Metatext runs Mastodon. Mastodon is weird, and I think I should quit it. But I’m sticking it out, for now, until I decide if it is worth it.
  • Lichess is a free chess club. I’m not very good, but I still love to play. Chess is honestly the only digital gaming I do.
  • Literal is another service that I’m unsure about. I like it’s layout better than Goodreads, but at times I wish it was more like Goodreads. Like Mastodon and Glass, I can’t form a bigger opinion until I give it more time.

In the dock is Drafts, YNAB, Omifocus, and Scanner Pro, These are the critical and crucial for my day-to-day. Nearly everything I write starts in Drafts. I send links there from Twitter or the web and tag them with what I want to do with them (email, Omnifocus, Microblog); I, er, draft, emails, manuscripts, and reading notes before processing them periodically through the week. YNAB is a budget and expense tracker that my wife and I use; while I’m aware of the kerfluffle over the price increase, I’m not bothered by it because there’s nothing else comparable right now. I’ve been an Omnifocus user for a very long time; you couldn’t pay me to leave them. I’m sure I could find a better app than Scanner Pro, but it’s very useful when I work on a white board while teaching or in my office and need a PDF of it before I erase. I occasionally scan other documents, but most of the tme it’s just this uni-purpose and good enough that I want fast access.

My iPad home screen is a hot mess.

A lot of similar items like Drats and Omnifocus. I have two text editors worth noting, Editorial and iA Writer. Both are good when I need something different than Drafts. iA is great for prose and has more or less replaced Editorial. YMMV. I need to consolidate the various files from both and make space for a dedicated code editor like Textastic so that I can work on R scripts when I’m away from my laptop but still want to get some writing done.

Here, it’s all in the dock and the widgets are helpful. But note that I have two calendar widgets. It’s just an experiment to see which format makes the most sense for my uses. I expect my iPad setup to look a lot different at the end of the year.

What else am I subscribed to?