On my home server I have, till now, Hubzilla and WordPress. Hubzilla is a good all-round piece of software that does various things, though not perfectly: it is an activity-hub connected social network, a place to store photo albums and files; a content management system for blogs, and a place where you can make static websites.

There are idealistic, practical and economic considerations regarding home hosting. On a practical level, the experience has been much smoother than I anticipated. The system has stayed up most of the time, despite occasional power cuts. There haven’t been so many issues at all. I’m using an old laptop for the purpose, connected to my modem-router. There are still one or two things I have to figure out, but that’s only because I’ve been lazy.

On an idealistic level, I love the idea of being in control of my own server.

Economically, it’s probably cheaper, after the small fee I pay for a permanent IP, and the electricity used, than hosting the site on a server. There were no hardware costs since I’m using an old laptop, which would otherwise just lie in the cupboard.

There is still a question whether the effort has been worth it. Regarding blogging and social networking, it depends a lot on the usage case. Although it is occasionally nice for me to see all the product of 20 years of writing together in one place, actually I could achieve the same by writing off line, on my computer, and then uploading it somewhere – anywhere – perhaps various places – not necessarily a personal website. That’s true because there are no commercial or reputational considerations involved. That would not be true for everyone.

Regarding social media, also there, there are few advantages to be found in hosting your own network. It is easier to become known and discover others by using a commercial network or a popular federated instance. If what you are posting is mainly short posts and links to your own writing, and the service is free, then there is no real need to host it at home.

What would make sense, perhaps, would be to host your own email system. That would be great, if it were not so technically challenging to host email, and if were not so difficult to self-host email without being blacklisted by the big companies who today host email.

It does not make sense to use a home server for a file server, because the main advantage of backing up your files in the cloud is that they are not being stored at home. If the house is burgled or burns down, it’s better that the files are stored elsewhere. It still makes sense to rent a cloud server for that; it is simply better that it isn’t at home. I pay a little money to Disroot in order to store my files on their server.

It would be a good idea to use a home server for storing a photo and video collection. Photos and video take up a lot of space, which is sometimes costly, so a good case can be made for creating a photo gallery on your own server. But that too could be hosted somewhere in the cloud.

My son has given me a new computer; one which he purchased himself for coding a couple of years ago. It’s Thinkpad T470P, which comes with a good 7th generation i7-7000HQ processor, 32GB of RAM and an SSD. So it’s the most powerful computer I’ve had. It has one flaw, which prevents him from just selling it on eBay, which is that if the computer is jolted, it turns off. This isn’t a problem if work is being done on a stable surface, but I could imagine that it might be a problem if working on one’s lap or on an airplane. It’s possible to move it around the house in an ‘on’ state, usually, but there’s always the chance that it could turn off. Anyway, that’s not a serious impediment for the way I use a computer. What is more questionable is that the computer comes with Windows 10 Pro, and I don’t want to remove it in case he needs the computer back at some time.

It’s been years since I worked under Windows. I don’t mind getting back up to speed with it, since I occasionally need to help people with their computers. So I will continue using it for a while. Afterwards, I might just go back to working with AntiX, MX or even Puppy Linux from a pen drive, as I’ve done quite often previously. In terms of software, there is one advantage for my work, in that Windows works natively with Google Drive file stream. My experience with the 3rd party equivalents (of the earlier form of Google Drive sync) have not been good, and on one occasion, disastrous. With regard to the other software that I use, I have really no difficulties. Almost all the programs that I use in Linux exist under Windows: Waterfox, Libreoffice, Gimp, Cherrytree, Xnview, Clementine, Bluefish, Atom, Filezilla, Keepass, Scribus, Inkscape, VLC, Telegram desktop, Tor, Calibr, Transmission. I’ve also now installed Ubuntu under Windows, so that I can use command line utilities. I haven’t checked yet regarding Audacity sound editor or the possibilities regarding movie editing, but I remember that Windows’ own possibilities for the latter were adequate for my needs.

Anyway, it’s a joy to be working on a more powerful machine again finally, as my 7 year old computers, with their slow processors and limited RAM were becoming annoying for some things. I also love the Thinkpad keyboard, which on this model is also back-lit, so I hope to get some nice work done on this thing. The battery lasts for several hours, which is also very nice.

One interesting thing that I have discovered is that Linux is more flexible regarding keyboard language input.  On a Windows US keyboard it’s a bit difficult to obtain a € sign or a £ sign without a numerical keyboard.  What I’ve decided to do is to work under the UK keyboard.  Five keys are switched, but these are mostly obscure, and I can remember the equivalents.  The main switch is regarding the @ and ” symbols.  It’s a weird position for the double inverted comma/quotation mark.  Brits tend to use this less than Americans, but I see that nowadays, they are tending to use double quotes in the same situations as Americans.  The Guardian style guide , like the BBC, Telegraph and Reuters style guides, calls for the use of double quotes for main quotes, with the use of single inverted commas preserved only for internal quotes (or apostrophes).  Both British and US journals use single quotes in headlines and titles, but double quotes in the articles themselves.  If this is true it would probably make sense to move the ” sign back into the QWERTY line.  Anyway, I think I can work with it.

I was just reading a review of the Logitech G710+ mechanical gaming keyboard. I was given this as a gift some time ago by my son when he bought for himself a still more expensive keyboard. In general I’m quite happy with the keyboard, though I can’t say that the typing experience is amazingly better than my other keyboards. I think I might agree with one reviewer who said the keys are just a shade too close together. Perhaps keyboards should be tailor made for the user, based on expert evaluation.

I also have a cheap Rapoo bluetooth keyboard, for example, which I bought once in India for usage with an Android tablet, but which can be used for any of my devices. In some ways this keyboard feels a little bit easier to use, despite its small size. The only trouble with bluetooth is that it is not 100% dependable. I keep the Rapoo next to the Logitech. For night use, when my spouse is sleeping, the Rapoo is a bit quieter than the Logitech, though then there is the disadvantage that the keys are not lit.

The keys, are if anything, a little more generously sized on the Rapoo, though the keyboard itself is so much smaller. There is no number pad on the Rapoo. Since I never use those number keys, it is an advantage for me that the number pad is absent: the wrist is closer to the mouse or trackball.

By and large, I think my typing experience on the Rapoo is better than that of the Logitech. An irony, since the Rapoo is so much smaller and cheaper.

Fortunately, on account of my desk setup, I can shove the G710+ to the back whenever I feel like using the Rapoo. And whenever the Rapoo decides it isn’t going to work, or I feel like I would like to use the G710+, it’s available as usual.

Recently I bought a Logitech M570 trackball, even though I have a good Logitech mouse. I’ve actually always liked trackballs, just as I’ve always hated trackpads. With a trackball, the hand does not need to travel around the desk, which I think is easier, and the actual surface under the pointing device is unimportant. Our glass topped coffee tables, for example, are fine. There’s also an advantage if one is using a laptop on a portable knee tray, for example, or an airline’s tray, in that less room is necessary. The only thing is that it is more important that a trackball be well designed and engineered than for a mouse. Logitech’s M570 fills that bill, and has been tested by many users. My history with trackpads is that these too must be well-engineered, and I have never been able to afford the high end laptops such as Apple products, that presumably are equipped with better trackpads. I possess a Logitech keyboard – trackpad combo which is the most horrible device that I ever purchased from Logitech. I use it for our media pc, but even for that comparatively light use, it is ill-suited.

Noticing that my Dell laptop was becoming misshapen, I remembered what happened recently to an old cell phone.  This was the same.  I extracted the useless swollen battery and saved my laptop.  Now it works just as well, as long as it is plugged in.

Computerworld has an article about the success of Chromebooks this year: “Chromebooks’ success punches Microsoft in the gut” and Dave Winer has written his response in a blog post Microsoft and netbooks, in which he rues Microsoft’s failure to capitalize properly on Netbooks. As a result of its missteps, i.e., not understanding the need for cheap computing solutions, not creating a malware free environment, etc., Google was able to step in with Chromebooks and Apple with tablets. As Winer says, “We all lost here. Because the new netbooks, from Google and Apple, are closed systems, where the netbooks were wide open. I could access my file server from my netbook. I could put any software on it, or take it off, same with music and movies. Apple and Google are running gulags, the netbooks were Woodstock.”

The advent of dumbed-down, closed systems increases the momentum towards simplification of the computers that people use at work, or for other things than checking email and social media. The trend is towards computers as home appliances that run apps available in App stores.

This only reminds me of the time, not so many years ago, when nerds bemoaned the transition from text-based to graphical user interfaces. Other than Linux users, no one ever needed to see a command line again.

Every move forward makes computers easier to work with but takes us further into a technocracy where only a minority are truly in control and the rest are consumers of ready-made goods. If we can’t find a size that properly fits, we’ll accept the nearest approximation.