I heard word through the grape vine (post on TidBITS TALK) that Backblaze no longer supported backing up of cloud storage accounts on your Mac. Regardless if those files are saved locally on your Mac (as in, not online only). The files, are downloaded and reside on your Mac, but because they’re in a cloud connected account (Dropbox, etc.), Backblaze updated their software to no longer back these up. I looked into this and sure as a bear shits in the woods - my Dropbox files are no where to be found.

Dropbox is, more or less, where I store my files. If the backup software that I trust to backup those files, silently is no longer backing up those files… then excuse my language, but what in the actual fuck?

Now… how do I get these files from my Mac to something else as a backup? I wrote a script that copies those files to my NAS, then my NAS syncs them to Backblaze’s B2 service, which is similar to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

If anyone is curious, I’ll post about the script… but needless to say, the fact that Backblaze did not call this out to their customers and left it to be found in release notes for version 9.2.2.878 (which fine, thank you for calling it out there)… If I knew more about AWS, I would have moved my data there. I’m this close to buying a separate NAS and copying my files to that off-site instead as it would serve the same purpose. Before I do that, I remembered that Derek Sivers posted about how he handles backing up his data. You can rent a 5 TB storage box from Hetzner for $13/mo…. which is less than half of the cost of B2’s object storage for the same amount of data. Currently, I’m at about ~2 TB with B2, so things make sense where they are… but I will be reviewing things in not too long to see if growth is taking this into something that makes more sense with Hetzner.

The irony is not lost on me that I stopped using Backblaze computer backup and now using Backblaze B2 service. I’ve been using the B2 service with a connection to my NAS for years and have had no issues. My understanding of the B2 service is that you pay for what you store and they store it, period.

Thankfully, nothing that is on my NAS or in B2 are the only copied of the data. I do my best to practice the 3-2-1 backup rule which largely states to maintain the following:

• 3 copies of your data
• 2 different types of media
• at least 1 copy of your data is off-site

I have my data on my Mac, on my NAS, in iCloud/Dropbox, and on B2.

A Love Letter to nvALT

I have been a big fan of Brett Terpstra’s fork of Notational Velocity, nvALT for quite some time… If you are on macOS and a user of plain text files, it was the bees’ knees. I have thought about it for years ever since it was no longer really maintained for one reason or another (nvUltra was the acclaimed successor but never officially came out).

Excuse my language, but I fucking loved nvALT. It was by far the best app for what I was looking for:

• open a folder of text/markdown files
• have a list of all my files
• search for a file, if it wasn’t found - hit return to create it.

I have been thinking about what an app would look like if I were able to recreate nvALT for iOS, using “modern” technologies on iPhone. The closest I had to that was nvNotes of probably a decade ago.

I couldn’t find much online any more about nvNotes, but did find this post on Tools and Toys. There was another app that was similar to nvNotes, and that’s Notesy. I didn’t hear about it until today when I was researching about this… but it looks similar.

The Rock

2020 came and Obsidian hit the ground hard. I tried it. I have tried Obsidian more times than I care to admit. It’s good on the desktop, it can definitely be on the fiddly side – which is probably more something to be said about me more than the software… but more importantly, it never stuck for me on iPhone… where do I do a lot of note taking. In Obsidian’s defense, it has gotten significantly better since version 1.11…

There is one thing that I could never shake: the only way to sync files to iPhone while using the “native” Obsidian app is the first party sync service: Obsidian Sync. This wouldn’t be an issue for me if I didn’t already have my files in Dropbox and an established workflow tied to Dropbox. Sure, could I figure out a way to rearchitect workflow and what not to adjust to this… sure. That seems like fixing the wrong problem. There are “community” plugins for other services, there’s even one for Dropbox… but I felt that they were all a bit too far on the janky side to rely on. The fact that there is a first party service that you pay for compared to a community plugin that could stop working on the next app update… something just felt janky.

Introducing

So, with Claude Code, over the last couple of weeks (maybe an hour or a day or so), I built Notebox. It’s primary reason for being is to easily interact with my plain text files in Dropbox. You could use Notebox without Dropbox, it works with local files too… but that’s only a byproduct of initial testing before I worked on the Dropbox Sync. Now, I have a purpose built notes app that does what I want (syncs a folder of plain text files with Dropbox). Much like Craig Mod has built the accounting software he’s always craved.

Given that it’s my app, I was able to do things that I couldn’t realistically ask of another app… like while editing a note, you can add a picture (Library or Camera), it’ll add the photo to /attachments, create a “sidecar” file (image.md) and embed the ![[image.md]] in your note. This sounds complicated and you may ask why would I do this? A few reasons:

• it’s difficult to search for photos, so the sidecar gives you the ability to search for a description that you previously set or tags of the photo
• easily embed the image and see the description

This is what that feature looks like:

Now for the “why not X app”

Folks out there that may be asking about other software that I could have used…

Why not use DEVONthink?

This is what I used most recently and I’ve used it for a long time (6 years, maybe longer). I happened to get to it after their recent updates to iPhone which made the app more usable on mobile. I primarily used the app on iPhone and iPad for quite a long time (I didn’t have a laptop) and it synced to a DEVONthink database from my Mac mini.

Why did I stop using it? It’s a proprietary database under the hood. While the files themselves are not modified when they’re imported, they have to be exported to maintain their folder hierarchy. This doesn’t jive with me and has been something I worried about, database corruption, for years.

Why not use FSnotes?

It only supports iCloud.

Why not use Obsidian?

It only supports Obsidian Sync.

Why not use Joplin?

It puts notes into a database that I have to export if I ever wanted to leave (see also DEVONthink).

Why not use Bear?

Only supports iCloud Sync (which you have to pay for) and stores your data in a database that you have to export from.

Why not use Notes?

iCloud Sync, SQLite database, and no.

Release

Will I ever release this? Unlikely, but if I do, it’d probably be because it was easier to put it on the App Store than it is to rebuild the app to my iPhone on a weekly basis.

If I ever release it, I’ll add a link to it on this post.

So… I set out to fix that.

Now, all of the pictures in my notes have an associated “metadata” file alongside it. It’s the same file name, but with the extension of .md instead of .jpg.

All of the metadata files embed the image and have a description of the image.

I can now embed the metadata file, instead of the image, and I can see the image and the description. Furthermore, the metadata file shows up in my searches based on the description.

This is one of those things that is probably helpful for a total of one person (that person being me), but this is great. I’m going to expand this to other things:

• metadata about a project
• metadata about a PDF
• etc.

I don’t know why, but this brings me joy.

Since August 2020, I’ve been bookmarking moments in podcasts that resonate with me… think things like: quotes, ideas, recommendations, anything worth remembering. Here’s what that data looks like after 5+ years.

The Numbers

Top Podcasts by Volume

These are the shows I keep coming back to:

Episodes That Really Resonated

These episodes had me hitting the bookmark button the most:

Bookmarking Activity Over Time

2025 was my most active year—nearly 250 bookmarks. The dip in 2022 is interesting; I’m not sure what happened there.

Guests I Keep Coming Back To

Some people just consistently deliver value across multiple podcasts:

Naval Ravikant (8 episodes)

• Joe Rogan #1309
• Tim Ferriss #473 & #788
• The Knowledge Project #18 & #171
• Modern Wisdom #922
• Arjun Khemani Podcast
• The Beginning of Infinity

Elon Musk (7 episodes)

• Joe Rogan #2281 & #2404
• Lex Fridman #400
• Katie Miller Podcast
• Y Combinator
• Moonshots with Peter Diamandis
• People by WTF

Tiago Forte (7 episodes)

• Modern Wisdom #501
• North Star Podcast (3 episodes)
• The Productivity Show
• How I Think
• Building A Second Brain

Tony Robbins (5 episodes), Ryan Holiday (5 episodes), Alex Hormozi (5 episodes)

Highest Engagement Shows

These podcasts have the highest average bookmarks per episode (minimum 3 episodes):

Fun Facts

• First bookmark: August 23, 2020
• Most bookmarks in one day: 10 on August 6, 2025
• One-off listens: 54 podcasts where I only noted one episode
• Most active month: March 2024 (38 bookmarks)

The Takeaway

This is basically Spotify Wrapped, but for what actually made me think rather than just what I listened to. The bookmark is the signal—it means something was worth capturing.

Looking at this data, I clearly gravitate toward:

• Productivity and GTD content (Do By Friday, Back to Work, Getting Things Done)
• Long-form interview shows (Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Diary of a CEO)
• A handful of guests who consistently deliver (Naval, Tiago Forte, Ryan Holiday)

The episodes with the most bookmarks aren’t necessarily from my most-listened shows. David Senra’s episode on Daniel Ek got 9 bookmarks from just 2 total episodes I’ve noted from that podcast. Quality over quantity.

Generated from my folder of “Podcast Notes” markdown files that I’ve been accumulating over the last 5+ years that totaled 581 podcast note files.

1. When did you start using plain text?
2. Why did you start using plain text?
3. What do you use plain text for?
4. What keeps you using plain text?
5. Do you use any markup or formatting languages? If so, which ones and why?
6. What are your favourite plain text tools or applications?
7. Is there one tool you can’t do without?
8. Is there anything you can’t do with plain text?

1. When did you start using plain text?

Somewhere in 2013 it looks like, based on file creation dates in my /Notes/ folder.

2. Why did you start using plain text?

Ease of access from multiple devices. At the time, I was using an iPhone, Windows, and Mac.

3. What do you use plain text for?

I use plain text for just about everything I write: notes (daily, projects), logs, place checkin.

4. What keeps you using plain text?

• I can find what I’m looking for
• Speed
• Ease of automation
• Can use many tools as a “view” into my files

5. Do you use any markup or formatting languages? If so, which ones and why?

Markdown, simple/readable. My blog is on GitHub Pages now and uses Markdown.

6. What are your favorite plain text tools or applications?

1Writer on iOS TextEdit on macOS Notepad on Windows

I’m toying with Obsidian here and there as another view to my notes, but I ultimately want to have my notes be accessible without a lot of extra data that’s just for aesthetics.

7. Is there one tool you can’t do without?

Nope, if anything stopped working… I’d find another tool on the platform. Right now, I’m using the system tools on desktop operating systems and using 1Writer on mobile. There are other apps available, but this is where I am now. The tools get out of the way.

8. Is there anything you can’t do with plain text?

Not for what I do with my day-to-day, I mean sure… there’s a time and place for photos, videos, graphics, etc., but I add those items to the folders along with my notes.

I read this and hadn’t implemented it until it happened to me.

Apple sent the iOS 26 update to my phone. Now I have the red badge on my settings app. I have no interest in updating to iOS 26 right now.

So, yeah… I did the same as Mike here: I created a Shortcut to launch Settings to replace the Settings app, because it has a permanent red badge. These are the times we live in. Ridiculous.

I finally took the 10 seconds and created a macro with Keyboard Maestro to type out the characters on the clipboard.

I then went back to the form, hit the macro, and tada!

If you want to do this too:

Big dick energy wasn’t just a good idea it was fucking mandatory.

There’s something to be said about this… when a man does something that is down right stupid/idiotic, but he does it and is revered by it. It doesn’t always happen that way, but welcome to big dick energy.

Skateboard, some money, and an Abba-Zaba bar.

That bar!! So good. Welcome to years of my childhood. I’d leave in the morning with a bus pass, a skateboard, and maybe a few dollars. I’d find myself stopping by a liquor store during the day for a break, grabbing an Abba-Zaba bar and a drink, and then getting back to the day.

Slow dopamine hits…

• salad vs. cheetos
• Books vs. Twitter

Said another way:

• whole foods vs. heavily processed foods
• reading vs. doom scrolling

Life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about how you respond to what happens to you.

Ding ding!

I wondered if the G3 Flex and G5 Flex shared the same mounting hardware. Turns out, they do! I tested the pole mount and the ceiling mount, both of which were a no fuss swap.

1. remove the old camera from the mount
2. unplug Ethernet on old camera
3. plug in Ethernet on new camera
4. install the new camera to the mount

Similar idea for G4 Flex going to G6 Flex. I have this mounted on the included wall mount and it worked like a charm. The U6 Flex is considerably deeper, but thankfully that wasn’t a concern in this install.

Adopted and streaming like nothing happened, albeit we now have better quality to all the upgraded cameras.

Kudos to the design folks for not changing the mounting hardware, when they definitely could have.

Am I the only one that uses dates like this? Should I use a CRM? I want to have my contacts database that goes to all of my devices. I want to have a calendar that has all of the dates for my contacts. Seems like it’d be a win.

Here’s where I got in ~1 hour with ChatGPT.