(or, Running FL Studio on Linux)
I'm not sure exactly where I draw the line between software vendors I will and won't use, but I know it lies somewhere between "riddled with ads" and "actively facilitating a genocide". Unfortunately, that leaves me with a tough decision at the very bottom of my productivity stack, namely my operating system. The best things Windows has going for it are that (1) I'm already using it and (2) it supports FL Studio and every VST I've ever used. It's a foregone conclusion that I'll be giving up the first point, so it's time to see how far I can push the second point.

Jekyll has been my preferred static site generator for the last 8 years, starting with my old simfiles page. Static sites are awesome; they require virtually no maintenance and they load as fast as your Internet connection will allow. You'd think that speed would carry over to the development side, but Jekyll somehow manages to spend nearly 30 seconds building this tiny website from a cold start! According to the Internet, there are exactly two reasons why this might happen, and I've apparently discovered an elusive third reason. I want working on this site to be fun, and the long startup time was eating into that, so it was time to finally search for something new.

Back in June, I wrote "The software I want doesn't exist", lamenting the gap in open-source desktop software revealed by Notion. Well, I'm making it myself, and in doing so I've thought a lot harder about why I find platforms like Notion so frustrating. It goes deeper than UX, interoperability, and any conviction about "local vs. cloud" or similar debates. The problem lies within the very incentive structures that fund software into existence.

The first time I used Notion databases, I knew that they were the closest realization of my vision for the perfect personal data authoring tool. They're such an obvious incremental improvement over spreadsheets that I struggle to understand why nothing like them was available to consumers a decade ago. But, alas, Notion is funded by venture capital, the devil's mark that ensures their product will only get worse over time. The only way I'll resolve my grievances with this software is if I replace it. But... with what, exactly?