Linkding

Linkding is a bookmarking tool. It has a UI similar to pinboard.in, can import bookmarks.html files, and has a decent API. It’s working very well. I’m particularly fond of the Linkding injector addon for Firefox, which injects Linkding search results into the sidebar of most popular search engines.

This one seems to be a keeper.

I briefly considered shaarli as an alternative. I didn’t like the UI as much, but it has a bigger list of third-party extensions than Linkding.

Wallabag

Wallabag is a self-hosted Pocket alternative. It also has a useful API, an iOS app, and a Firefox extension. I wasn’t too sure about this one going in, but once I got the Docker stuff and some reverse proxy weirdness sorted it worked quite well. It has a few more smarts than Pocket, and it provides Atom feeds of simplified articles you can use to create ebook digests via Calibre or just consume with your everyday RSS reader, given the formatting is cleaned up.

It also lets you share a public-facing version of a saved article, and its clipper extension seems to be able to see around a few paywalls if you’re saving from a subscription site.

I think this one is a keeper given I can automate the ebook exports: That essentially recreates the Pocket/Kobo integration.

calibre-web

calibre-web is a HTML5 front-end for Calibre libraries that allows you to edit metadata, organize your ebook collection into shelves and, most importantly to me, act as an online sync source for Kobo e-readers, allowing you to browse your collection and download to your Kobo, then keep your reading location in sync.

Some people live in calibre-web full-time, uploading ebooks and managing their metadata. I prefer to pair it with Calibre itself due to an ongoing content conversion project.

It’s definitely a keeper. I recovered a ton of books from another device and converted them to Kobo-friendly epubs. Better yet, when downloaded to a Kobo, calibre-web serves up kepubs, which are optimized for Kobos.

Calibre

Calibre is an ebook conversion/management tool, ordinarily used on the desktop. I found a Docker recipe that lets me run it on my Synology and access it via a web-based VNC tool. With a little fiddling, I added mountpoints that let me install downloaded extensions and import books from a bookdrop directory as I pull them down from their assorted vendor sites.

It works alongside calibre-web, allowing me to install books from assorted formats and export them to epub, where they’re almost instantly available from the calibre-web web interface or Kobo integration.

Even if sync didn’t work, you can access a content server that uses the OPDS protocol for browsing. So with a reverse proxy and authenticated user, you can get at your library from anywhere and side-load books to your reader.

I’m going to keep the Dockerized version.

Vikunja

Vikunja is a todo app that includes a traditional list view and a card view. It serves up CalDAV, so it could theoretically work with any CalDAV client, but its doesn’t work well with iOS Reminders. The responsive Web UI isn’t bad if you want to install it to your iPhone desktop.

I installed it and tried it for a day, but I am not sure about it. I’m a little uneasy about self-hosting my todos, and was hoping for some kind of native client.

Joplin

Joplin is an Evernote-esque app with a ton of cross-platform support that I couldn’t quite bring myself to trust in a self-hosted context. It’s a good tool and all, but I’d prefer to just have my notes in a plaintext, version-controlled setup.

MariusHosting

MariusHosting isn’t an app, it’s a site run by Marius Lixandru with a ton of recipes for Dockerizing common self-hosted apps on a Synology. It’s my first stop when I want to try something out. I was resistant to a lot of his earlier stuff because he had an idiosyncratic way of getting containers set up, but he has since begun to use Portainer for his recipes, which has simplified them a lot. If you find a Docker recipe that uses docker run, you can convert that to Docker Compose with composerize.

I have a Synology with Docker on it, plus a bunch of community packages for assorted things and it’s … fine. But people have been talking about this Pikapods thing so I gave it a spin with Calibre-Web as my test case. Right now I’m at the “got ping” stage with it: It is up, configured, and sees my library, and I just figured out how to make it put a missing cover on a book. I have not yet turned to getting my Kobo to talk to it, but omg I cannot wait to get my Kobo talking to it, because I think e-ink readers are both the best and worst technology I ever adopted, and I have a tool now that will allow me to make right the parts of that adoption that bother me the worst.

Stake whatever territory you want on the copyright front. I am an inconsistent hypocrite. In this particular use case, I am a hypocrite who happens to pay:

I supported my family for years with my writing. The person you read on these pages probably doesn’t seem like it. I am no longer a craftsman or a stylist. I am just this guy who still finds an outlet and a release in writing, but who does not really edit himself, and who understands that time-shifted 20 years give or take I might be the proprietor of the world’s least listened to podcast or most unwatched YouTube channel. Writing is just the way I tell eight or nine people a day what I’m into right now, and I deeply believe text you can skim is more considerate than forcing you to scrub through a bunch of recorded rambling and ill-conceived attempts to force you into a parasocial connection.

But I pay. I pay for newspapers, I pay for newsletters, and I buy every single book I read (that I’m not getting from the library). When my team found an open NFS mount full of O’Reilly books on an old Solaris box in the back of a DC, it was an easy decision to say “failing disk, mount it ro and serve notice that it is leaving us” because I was never so entrepreneurial or talented that I could afford the vanity of just giving my shit away: I had to sell it to someone if I didn’t want to go back to soldiering or doing secretary work to eat. You go fight Big Content, and I get it, but I will also pay.

So this isn’t me cackling and chortling because “fuck paying for books and now I don’t have to.” Looking over what’s in my new Pikapod, I’m pretty sure I’ve even paid twice for a big chunk of what’s in there.

I’m cackling and chortling because I’m free of doing business with an entity I wish I hadn’t. I don’t care about the law, I care about what’s right, and I bought every one of those books, so my duty to “right” is discharged.

Work

I bit off more than I can chew today. If anyone writes my biography, this is gonna be a weird exception to a largely prosaic and staid track record of “safety first, move with deliberation.”

But I bit off more than I can chew because I picked a dumb industry to work in, and I occasionally feel the need to thwart expectations and try out the whole “break glass” thing before retreating to my home position.

Just putting it on the record so you know who you’re recommending when you see me asking for help with references: Occasionally I’ll surprise you. It is not my intent to also terrify you.

braus

I realized after pulling it down to my second machine that I didn’t actually push my QoL changes to my braus fork. Fixed that.

Okay. Done. Time to get the Pikapod talking to my Kobo.