Mike Bell

It’s been a few months since my last update as per usual! I try not to blog for the sake of it so I wait until I have a few things of value to update on.

After using the Kobo Clara Colour for a few days here are my initial impressions. I’ve come from a fairly old Kindle so this has been really interesting. This isn’t a proper review just my thoughts on the new device and how I use it.

When I was a kid me and my brother read a lot, we devoured books so much so my mum had to keep taking us to the library to get more. Eventually when we got a bit older we started buying our own books and both our rooms became full of Terry Pratchett, JRR Tolkein and other amazing authors. I love reading it transports me to a better place.

A list of my default hardware and software for 2025, taken from here and expanded on. Hope you enjoy! 📨 Mail Service: Gmail Fastmail 📮 Mail Client: Gmail Fastmail 📝 Notes: Joplin ✅ To-Do: Google Calendar & Vikunja 📆 Calendar: Google Calendar Fastmail, Etar 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Google Contacts Fastmail 📖 RSS Service: Hugo 🗞️ RSS Client: FreshRSS ⌨️ Launcher: None ☁️ Cloud storage: Gdrive & Synology Nas 🌅 Photo library: Google Photos & Immich 🌐 Web Browser: Firefox & Librefox Firefox 💬 Chat: WhatsApp & Signal 🔖 Bookmarks: None 📑 Read Later: Wallabag 📚 Reading: Kindle Paperwhite 📜 Word Processing: Google Docs & Libreoffice 📈 Spreadsheets: Google Docs & Libreoffice 📊 Presentations: Google Docs & Libreoffice 🛒 Shopping Lists: Mealie 💰 Personal Finance: None 🎵 Music: Navidrome/symfonium/feishin 🎤 Podcasts: AntennaPod 🔐 Password Management: 1Password 🤦‍♂️ Social Media: Mastodon 🌤️ Weather: Weather&Radar 🔎 Search: Google & DuckDuckGo 🧮 Code Editor: VSCode & nvim & VSCodium 🖥️ Distros: Win 11, OSX, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, CachyOS (I use Arch btw) 📱Phone: Google Pixel 7 Pro 💻 Laptop: Lenovo X1 Carbon 5th Gen MacBook Air 📜 Document Management: Paperless ngx 💾 Remote servers: 1 💾 Home servers: 3 3.5 📱Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab 9

Happy new year homelabbers! I’m cheating a bit and rolling some of the work I got done in December 2025 into this update. I want to say my homelab is pretty boring now it just works which is awesome, only minor tinkering is required these days so I’ve decided to focus on observability for a bit. Knowing when and what things have gone wrong was sorely missing so I’ve finally gotten round to sorting a lot of that out which I’ll detail in a section below.