So, you might notice something a bit changed around here. For the last several months, I’ve been using Ghost since April, and I’ve liked it. It is very robust, has lots of features, and is very easy to use and maintain. It is also very easy to write in.

But, there has been a bug in my ear almost since the beginning. I use HUGO on my main site for The Linux Cast, and I love it. It’s so easy to write in, since I can just pop into vim and then push the changes to GitLab. There’s no browser interaction at all. Just writing. I’m also much more comfortable in writing inside Vim for some reason. So, there has been a big part of me that has wanted to switch to HUGO on this blog since I switched to Ghost. I’ve even talked about how I should have just used HUGO to begin with.

Over on my blog for The Linux Cast, I recently wrote about AntennaPod, my new favorite way to listen to podcasts. Not only is it awesome, but it’s open-source. When I was done writing that post, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about my favorite podcasts.

I subscribe to about 150 podcasts, most of which (unsurprisingly) I do not have time to listen to. But, there are a few that I never fail to listen to when a new episode pops into my feed. These are those.

Many people have been writing about their blogging workflow, so I thought I’d add mine to the mix as well.

I’ll be honest, when I saw this trend, I didn’t think much of it. I mean, workflow? For blogging? Do we not all just sit down and write?

Turns out other people are much more organized than I am. That shouldn’t be such a surprise, given that I only play as an organized person. So, I truly thought about what I do when I decide to write a post for this blog or for The Linux Cast.

Over on The Linux Cast, I talk a lot about note-taking programs. It has become a bit of a meme, really. “Oh, there goes Matt again, talking about a note-taking app.”

For years, Google Keep was my note-taking app of choice. Well, not choice, but the one I used because it was easy, free, and simple enough. But, I don’t like being reliant on the Goog for things, so for literal years I’ve been looking for something different, which led me to making video after video after video of apps and workflows that I’ve tried.

Let’s be clear, my handwriting has always been messy. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Longstreth was so up in arms about my chicken scratch being unreadable, that she had a meeting with my mother. Needless to say, I spent the rest of that year learning how to make my writing a little neater.

I went to elementary school in the early 90s, middle school in the mid-late 90s and graduated from high school in 2004. You could say that I grew up during the technological revolution. When I started my education, my school had three computers (Apple II’s, I think) and they were already ancient and crusty. But man, did we have fun playing Oregon Trail on those things. When we weren’t taking turns. Again, there were only three of them.

You know, as a YouTuber, I get told countless things. One of the things that surprises many people is my age. People are shocked that I’m not like 25 years old. Maybe I act young. Or perhaps, I have a fat baby face. 🤣

But, I am, in fact, 40 years old. March 28, 1985.

I’ve talked about it before, back near my birthday, but it feels like when I was 39, I still felt young and with my whole life ahead of me. The minute I turned 40, it seemed like it was all downhill. I’m old now. I know that seems like hyperbole, but dammit if it’s not how I feel.

I’ve talked before on my YouTube channel all about how I enjoy changing the color scheme and wallpaper of my Linux set up, and how that keeps me feeling like my workspace is new and fresh. It somehow makes me more productive, as I don’t feel trapped in the same environment day in and day out.

The weird thing is, I do the same thing with phone cases and have for years. I have, as pictured above, many phone cases for my phone, and I switch at least once a day. Sometimes I switch several times a day, depending on my mood. I have favorites, that see the most rotation, but I do like to spread the love around.

A little while back, I discussed how hard it was to find a self-hosted, privacy respecting, comment system for your blog. In that post, I talked about how I had finally settled on Comentario. It was easy to set up, had many nice features, and worked really well.

The comments came flooding in.

And then two days ago, I went into the Comentario back end, and found that I couldn’t sign in. And then found out all the comments from the last three weeks are totally gone.

Another month gone. We’re damn near halfway through this year already. Time just moves too fast.

This was a mixed month for me if we’re being honest. A lot of tech problems. A few expensive things I didn’t anticipate. Many things that just didn’t go my way this month.

But I kept on tracking. I really do love doing this. No matter what is going on in my life, keeping track of what I’ve been doing in the digital realm helps me put things in perspective.

I’m a YouTuber.

It’s not something I expected to be. It’s not as if when I was growing up, I told people I wanted to grow up to be a video star. YouTube didn’t exist until I was 21 years old.

The funny thing is, even saying I’m a YouTuber now seems so effin’ odd. I don’t feel like a YouTuber. I don’t consider myself a successful YouTuber by any means. I have 65,000 subscribers. It’s a lot for me, but it’s no Mr. Beast. I’m extraordinarily lucky and happy with what success I have had, and even if I never get another subscriber, I always will be.