Hardware

Desktop

Of course, I no more have a classic desktop PC. Nowadays, the term refers more to the laptop on the table and I’ve had many of those. In 2023, I replaced my old but well-configured Acer with an ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, as I mainly use it to edit photos and it was built for that purpose.

Home Server

I have a MINISFORUM GK41 Mini PC at home as a control centre for streaming, backups and various other automation tasks. Big WD hard drives are connected to the 4 USB 3.0 ports and mirror each other.

Tablet

A slim tablet is essential for handling photos or writing texts while on the go. In the past, I struggled with the incompatibilities of Android-based devices such as the Lenovo Yoga or the Asus Nexus, but now I no longer have a problem with the Microsoft Surface Pro X.

Mobile

My first mobile phone was a Nokia, of course, and with the transition to smartphones, HTC and several Sony Xperia with Android were my home for many years, until I switched to Google Pixel products due to the annoying update issue. My current one is a Pixel 9a.

Photo

My first piece of own technology was a camera build in the former GDR called Praktika TL-5000. Roll film, click, snap. When my expectations rose a little, I became a convinced Nikonian with a Nikon F-301 and still am today. I have not yet been able to part with the 35mm format, now APS-C, either. This is probably also due to my impressive collection of lenses for this sensor format. At the moment I mainly use a Nikon D-500 with the perfect everyday lens Tamron 18-400mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD. For the more distant subjects, I have the Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 … my stovepipe. And a lot of boxes of accessories…

Online

Mail

I don’t remember when I wrote my first mail, but for a long time I was a web.de customer because I was fed up with fiddling with mail clients and since the release of Gmail in 2004 this has been my central communication service of personal use and since 2024 completely Johnny-Decimal-structured. Since 2025, I have been establishing a second European base with Proton Mail.

Cloud Storage

No longer having to handle floppy discs, CDs or USB sticks was a blessing with the industry pioneer Dropbox from 2007 and the people there did this well for a long time until they could no longer stand out from the mee-too products because of crude ideas and increasingly poor software and lost me to Microsoft. OneDrive is doing a lot of things well from a user’s point of view and so today this is my central file platform on which I store everything I need on more than one machine (again in a Johnny Decimal structure).

Photo Sharing

Taking photos and not showing them to anyone is a waste of time. I publish my public photos according to the POSSE principle first here on kiko.io and then syndicate them on Vernissage, Flickr and Pixelfed. I share private photos individually or in albums via Google Photos, where my smartphone snapshots also end up automatically.

News

On an Android smartphone from Google, their algorithm-based Google News is just a swipe away. A little closer to my real interests are the topics I subscribe to in Flipboard. For everything else, I have Feedly, where I mainly read private blogs of a technical nature.

With the completion of the blogroll on kiko.io in 2024, which not only lists my favorite blogs, but also reads and displays the last available post from the configured feed, it has become a habit for me to read the latest posts from these bloggers first thing in the morning. My own blogroll reader, so to speak.

Social media

Apart from Instagram, I’ve completely left the Walled Gardens and moved into the Fediverse. For Mastodon I use their native Web UI or Elk.

Software

Developing

I spent many years of my time as a Windows developer with Access and in the IDE Visual Studio, but I only use the latter occasionally now, because when I develop something, it’s usually in a Web context and Visual Studio Code is unbeatable for me there.

Essential VSCode extensions for me are currently: Front Matter CMS, Live Preview, Auto Complete Tag, Git History, GitHub Actions, Hexo Utils, Local History, Live Server, Markdown All in One, Project Manager and to feel comfortable Ra Light and the Material Icon Theme.

Notes

Until recently, my note management was more like creative chaos. With the discovery of the file-based Obsidian and the introduction of my Johnny Decimal structure, this is a passé. My Vault lives on OneDrive and is therefore available to me everywhere.

The most important plugins for Obsidian for me are: Auto Card Link, Kanban, Commander, Folder Note, MetaBind, Plugin Update Tracker, Waypoint, Note Folder Autorename and of course Templater.

Browser

There is hardly any other piece of software that has changed the world as much as the browser. Starting with Netscape Navigator, then IE and various iterations of Firefox, I eventually landed with the industry leader Google Chrome. For a bit more privacy, I use more often Vivaldi. Maybe it will be my default browser in the future.

The most important extensions for Chrome for me are: Checker Plus for Gmail, Copy Link, JSON Viewer, Pushbullet, 2FAS and the Web Essentials.

File Management

For me, there is no better sync tool than SyncBack Pro, which is actually intended for backups, but becomes a powerful automation tool via the “When, Changes” feature. Dozens of profiles are running on my home server, especially in connection with OneDrive.

It’s a mystery to me why none of the big cloud storage companies have their eye on the smartphone. OneSync fills this gap for OneDrive on Android.

In times of more or less automated web deployments, an FTP client is rarely necessary, but when I do, I have always relied on FileZilla.

A smartphone is also just a computer and you have to handle files from time to time. On Android, Solid Explorer is the first choice.

Image Editing

I’ve been using Lightroom since I got into digital photography, now as a subscription under the new name Lightroom Classic and with Photoshop, which I don’t actually need. My catalogue, which manages around 83,000 photos (812 GB), is now almost 1 GB in size and is regularly backed up via SyncBack Pro to one of the external hard drives on my home server and from there automatically to a second one.

Particularly under unfavourable lighting conditions, the camera setting “ISO Auto” produces a lot of image noise and grain and Lightroom’s solution to this is suboptimal, which is why the Topaz Photo AI plugin is used here.

You can use the export function to get photos out of Lightroom, but it’s easier and more convenient with the jf Collection Publisher plugin.

When I’m not working with my own photos, I use the Windows classic Paint.NET to manipulate images of any kind.

I don’t post any uncompressed images on the web. The two applications PNGGauntlet and JPEGmini are, in my opinion, the best and most convenient for the respective image format.

For many years Cropper was my solution for creating screenshots under Windows. Unfortunately, the project is not being continued and I am slowly replacing it with Greenshot.

Security

Since the beginning of time, I have been storing my numerous passwords in a KeePass vault synchronised with all my machines via cloud storage.

For anything longer than a password, I have former TrueCrypt and now VeraCrypt containers, which are also constantly synchronised and backed up.

I am more and more replacing the relevant 2-factor tools from Google and Microsoft on Android with the open source solution 2FAS Auth.

System Tools

To feel comfortable on a Windows system, I need a few indispensable little helpers. First and foremost the Sysinternals Suite, from which I mainly use Autoruns and ProcessExplorer.

The current Windows File Explorer can already do a lot. I teach it the rest with the FileMenu Tools.

Nothing is more annoying than drive letters changing when external devices are only sporadically connected. USB Drive Letter Manager ensures consistency here.

Craftsmen (and these are IT people) need a well-stocked toolbox, especially for their operating system. The Microsoft PowerToys should not be missing, because we are also one thing: lazy.

What started as a garage project is now included in the PowerToys, but I still use the original: Mouse Without Borders. Several computers in the network next to each other and I only need one mouse and keyboard.

Other Tools

My native language is German, but I made a conscious decision to write my blog in English in order to remain in practice and to have a wider audience. However, I have always felt that my vocabulary was limited and so today I use DeepL to help me and then adapt the results of this translator to suit my linguistic perception.

A picture is worth a thousand words and some visualisations are the most effective way of explaining something. My tool of choice for this purpose is draw.io.

The only format in which you can send documents by e-mail is PDF and PDF24 is a real magic box for creating this format.

Building mail functionality into a software program is something quite normal and necessary, but how do you test this locally in a reasonable way? With Papercut SMTP, the Desktop Email Helper.

Communication

It’s sometimes really difficult to communicate with friends without WhatsApp, but it was a conscious decision for me and I’m gradually moving more people to Signal or (much less common now) Threema.

Streaming

In this time without data mediums, people are streaming for all they’re worth. You can gain some independence from the major players with your own home solution, for example with Jellyfin.

Listening to music without the internet and therefore streaming means first copying/synchronising the files to the smartphone and then playing them in a suitable player. In my case, this is the BlackPlayer.