April on The Field Blog

App defaults in my privacy-torn world

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:52:00 +0530

There is a version of me that uses Proton for everything. That version of me has made the clean break, pays the money for it, and sleeps a little better knowing his data is not being quietly turned into something useful for someone else.

That version of me does not yet fully exist.

What does exist: a ThinkPad running Bluefin, a Pixel 8A on Android 17 Beta, a Kobo e-reader and a family storage plan on Google that makes the math on leaving genuinely hard to argue with. The privacy case is airtight. The financial case keeps winning anyway.

My favourite comment on YouTube

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:54:00 +0530

Under Jonny Mozza’s video “You’re way more interesting than you think you are”, Jacob Motl wrote:

I’m a composer, visual artist, game developer, and writer, all of which encompass my career. My day job is frying chicken at a deli. Amongst the composers, I’m not the best composer but I may be the best at frying chicken. Amongst the deli workers, I’m not the best at frying chicken but I may be the best composer. Yet in each arena, I have plenty to learn from others.

Who is actually fighting climate change and who is throwing a tantrum in the corner

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:24:00 +0530

There is a map I keep returning to in my head. It is my mental picture of who is actually doing what about climate change, and who is busy dismantling the little that was built in the last few decades.

It is roughly this: Europe writes the rules. China makes the technology cheap enough for everyone to use. India and other developing nations adopt those technologies, adapt them, and build their own ambitions around them. And the United States, at least under both of Donald Trump’s terms, sits in the corner, arms crossed, rejecting the science, the treaties, the regulations, and occasionally the basic premise that there is a problem at all.

Poke around and find out (addendum)

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:29:00 +0530

The Nextcloud setup went well. That felt strange to write. I have been scared to do this for as many years as it has been since I first heard about Nextcloud.

A file server, calendar, contacts, notes, music server, tasks, RSS, podcasts, bookmarks, all running on the laptop, syncing to the phone over the home network. And over the internet through Tailscale when need be. The kind of thing that sounds like a weekend of breakage. It was a single fun day, and everything worked out at the end.

Poke around and find out

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:03:00 +0530

There is a particular kind of confidence that comes just before things go wrong. It is a confidence like that of someone eager to skip to the interesting part, without reading what comes before.

I tried installing Omarchy inside a Distrobox container. Seemed reasonable enough, or at least I had not done enough digging to know it was not. The installer reached outside the container and overwrote home directory configuration files, messing up my Bluefin install. The fun stuff layered on top by default, especially the dinosaurs in my terminal, was gone.

Love leaks slowly and fades away

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:20:00 +0530

Nobody tells you it can happen this quietly. No argument, no betrayal, no clean break to point at. Just a slow thinning, like the way a song you loved gets played one too many times and you stop noticing it.

You still do the things. You show up, you eat dinner together, and you ask how their day went. But the warmth that used to sit underneath the habit is now missing. The words are all still there. The feeling that made them worth saying is not.

The quiet Linux spread

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:31:00 +0530

I did not set out to convert anyone. I just helped a friend install Linux, the way you’d help someone move furniture. You are there, you do the thing, you go home.

Then his cousins wanted to see it. Then a friend of his asked questions. Then someone who had been about to buy a MacBook started doing the maths on giving their laptop a renewed life with Linux Mint instead (it is free, you save all the money!).