Guestbook 📖

hey thanks for the camera setup post! Looks like my DLSR and the current ubuntu setup works so a very quick turn around time to order an adapter and look further into microscopy. I'll make sure to share my research , liking this self-hosted stuff! Simple stuff ftw , thanks!

Just discovered your website and I love the information you share with such generosity!

Hi! Thank you for your "Canon DSLR as a webcam" article. Saved my a few € because I now don't need a HDMI capture card.

Very sweet post about this style of making a guestbook. I will hopefully be adapting it to use as a sort of auction thing for charity!

Loved the post about the X220. I’ve never owned one but I’ve been using for almost a decade a MacBook Pro and many of the points you highlighted resonate with my experience.

Hey Max! Hope you're doing well. You helped me out a year ago to use your digital garden theme. I never finished that project but I picked it up again recently. At some point I'll have to figure out how to add a blog and some other fun features (maybe a dark/light mode toggle?).

love this theme, works great with obsidian. thank you!

I do a lot of writing and when I have a longer paper to write I hang out on the couch with my x220. I like the old fashioned keyboard over the new styled ones, although one big drawback is the lack of backlit keyboards which was the #1 reason for me buying a x230 when it came out. The thinklight simply isn't as good of a solution over backlit keys. Although I've been using this machine for a decade, it still looks almost new. Because of its modular design, I have the freedom to replace parts as the wear. I've replace the palm rest twist, costing around $10 each time. And I replaced the display for around $60 when some pixels died on the original and the front cover for about $15. My current primary machine is a Thinkpad T25, which I really like. All three surfaces are covered in soft touch rubber. But the compact size of the x220 just suits me better for use on my lap. I don't remember replacing the keyboard, but it looks so new that I must have at one point. These older thinkpad are built to be fixed and maintained for little money.

Hey Maxime, just stumbled across your site and loving it! I Appreciate your different projects, thoughtful writing, and overall tech philosophy :) Keep it up!

Found your X220 article, and completely agree. I too have a Retina MBP which I use for photography, but when it comes to my day job, which is programing, I think you're hard pressed to beat the X220. It's my daily driver for work, and the slower CPU actually helps me spot performance issues in my code earlier. I think that's part of the issue in the development community, we tend to have the top-of-the-line systems, which are amazing, but it doesn't help you optimize for performance. Throw OpenBSD on there, and enjoy coding nirvana.

I love my Thinkpad x220 too. Especially the keyboard. Why don't they make laptops with real keyboards nowadays? I code for a living, and I can't stand those Apple-inspired flat plastic keys with no travel that all laptops have. I can't be the only one.

Your digital garden is very nice, came here from Simply Jekyll. It's aesthetically very appealing and has also a more modern look-n-feel compared to Simply Jekyll. Can you also add a way to search within the posts as Simply Jekyll does? That would make it like completely perfect for me. Really love the theme, thank you for creating it.

Just wanted to say thank you for the Obsidian.md digital garden set up. Really simple and powerful, so thank you sir!

Very helpful!Thank you bro! :D

Googling "X220 still running" brought me here. Algorithms. You just gotta love 'em.

I was DuckDuckGo searching for clues as to why my Google Calendar on my Android phone was syncing with Etar Calendar which I set up to sync with NetCloud on a QNAP NAS when I came across this very well written blog. I try to minimise my online foot print to reduce the ability of the big players to profile me (no Facebook or Twitter accounts for example). Sometimes I feel like it is a losing battle. Reading this blog gives some encouragement that I can still digitalise calendar, contacts and other items for convenience and ease of access while still maintaining some privacy. I chose Joplin as my Notes system to potentially replace my long standing Evernote system. I have also found Signal to be a very good messenger app for video and short messages with family. Must have a look at your other blogs as the feedback indicates they are also a good source of knowledge and content. Best wishes

Just read your post about de-Googling your data. I did the same over the last few years, and I can totally endorse Bitwarden re: authenticator. I use it as a password manager and also for 2FA, never looked back.

Hi Maxime, Thank you for the wonderful template! The guide is very clear and easy to follow. It enables me to set up my own garden in a breeze!

Very neat xml solution... Using it as nested labels... Loved how it helps keep everything organized... Kudos, keep up the great work!

Hello! I love using Ulauncher. Thanks for the posts!

I love my X220 and use it everyday. I agree with everything you said. I particularly like the keyboard and the docking station that let's me use an external monitor and keyboard easily when I take it back and forth from work. Thanks!

Thank you for your amazing jekyll garden theme.

Hi! Yeah, those grandpas are great. Void Linux is rocking this one. :-) Great article, joy to read! Have a great day!

Hi Maxime! Your digital garden template is excellent, looking forward to cultivating my own over time at stvn.wiki — thanks for the guidance!

Check out GrapheneOS (for your de-googled phone), and Aegis for your 2FA. You won't be dissapointed

Great post about the X220! I bought one in 2015, upped the memory to 16gb, added an msata SSD, and still use it daily. The TN monitor isn't ideal but it's a rock solid laptop that does everything I need it to do.

Enjoyed your writeup about the grain dryer project. Greetings from the Netherlands!

Just wanted to say congrats and thanks!

A guestbook! Very nice. Dropping in to say that the digital garden template is fantastic!

thank you for this!

thanks for your Writing and also the open source code to your digital garden

Hey Maxime! Stumbled here while browsing for garden templates — love the site.

Thanks for the tutorial!

Still using X220 with Windows 10 20H2, hope windows 11 land on it, and I will use it til I die... Great machine, X220 could work for 50 year in service... IF ONLY LENOVO NOT DISCONTINUE THIS KIND OF GENERATION AND BUILT NEW BOARD FOR IT! I WILL DEFINITELY BUY IT!

Your Thinkpad x220 choice certainly resonates with me. I purchased mine second hand in Hong Kong in 2017. It was a corporate lease return that looked brand new. I swapped in an SSD and 2x8gb RAM. With the 9-cell battery, it's a terrific travel companion. With the ultrabase attached, it's a nice desktop replacement when connected to two old 1280x1024 monitors that had been discarded as electronics waste.

Hello! Love the article (s) good job!

digital garden from my obsidian notes on the RPG campaign im running, player facing could be very interresting! Thanks for sharing!

Nice!!

Thanks so much for this!

Inspiring writing, thanks!

Loved the idea of a guest book.

My son fell asleep, I was looking for inspiration on Twitter and now I’m here. Cheers!

Montreal + Thinkpad X220 (Debian Linux, XFCE, 2021. :-)

Just bought a Thinkpad x220. Now I am waiting for arrival. I will install Linux on it. These machienes are just amazing for it-work :) Your Post was very useful Warm greetings from Germany

Hi Max, I was distracted from work, in a deep rabbit hole, and ended up on a github with a list of 2nd brains. Scrolled through it, and saw a familiar family name :) . Love your digital garden prototype (and the ideas in it too). Then i saw you had a guestbook .. which is amazing too. The i saw everyone on the guestbook talking about your dumb-phone idea. I had a look - and i hope you were able to maintain a more mindful relation with your phone. I personally went through a lot of digital-minimalism through the years with my phone and devices.. and i find its not an easy balance to strike and maintain (..and adapt to changing circumstances) ! Thanks for all that.

Really appreciate the post on using filters to organize gmail notifications; the XML file is a huge time-saver. Thank you!!

Thanks very much for the insight. I have just bought a x230. It's still early days but so far so good. It's working like a dream.

I loved your post about turning your phone from a boring tool to a useful tool. I just removed all the apps I never used and all the games. Wish me luck :0

Hello, I like your post about X220. I also just buy 2nd hand with 128GB SSD and 8gb of ram, i7-2640m. I can get 3-4 hours of battery, I plan to optimize it further. I read many source online at prime, thinkpad X220 could work for 8 hours minimum with 44wh battery, and I hope it comes true, because I want to buy a new battery for it. Now I've 9 cell battery, but it seems it's not original (and hard to pass by, and not cheap), so I only got 3-4 hours I mention before, light browsing with FF on windows 10 20h2, writing word, etc. I dream this laptop for long time until I could get it.. In my country I need to pay installment (yeah, my monthly payment as uni lecturer is very low indeed), it cost me 252 USD and each month for 21 USD (it's a lot here, you could buy one month meal with that, with 1 full meal a day). I hope this machine could hold 10 years a head, as I still have lenovo netbook S10 on my uni lab, it still work good, just not for web browsing, but remote, code, run simple code, compile, hear music, it still work for 7 hours straight. I really amazed with well cared old laptop, that aging well. Thank you for sharing!

Lovely writeups. Didn't think I'd enjoy reading about making a grain dryer an IoT device half as much as I did. Thank you!

A guestbook, waaaat!? Thanks for the garden template, I'm just now getting acquainted with the concept and it's very exciting. Your template is looking like it'll turn out to be instrumental in helping me explore all this. Also, I'm looking forward to dig into the knowledge you're sharing here, seeing lots of interesting things!

Guestbook: Amazing Dumb Phone: Amazing You: Amazing

Thanks for making this and sharing !

Great Blog!

Still using my X220 with 16GB of RAM and 500 GB SSD. I get 5ghz wifi though by the with factory wireless card. I was just marveling at how this thing keeps going and going, switched over this morning to do some work from my brand new Dell desktop, and did a Google search for "still using my X220" and your post came out on top. Once we were trying to watch something with a bluetooth speaker and my daughter said, "It seems like your notebook is trusty." Well-said! You helped pin down some of the reasons for this. I think a big part of it is the user-serviceability and the connectivity.

Cool idea, thanks for sharing your digital garden with the world!

Great post about the Thinkpad X220. I bought an X220 Tablet for school a few months ago and it's been great. I've upgraded it with an SSD, 8GB of RAM, and new thermal paste. I can easily use it for all of my schoolwork, along with more intensive things like editing videos and using VMs. I made a blog post about my Thinkpad if you want to check it out: https://www.yeetpc.com/blog/entry.php

Maxime, your template is great, thanks for all the inspiration!

Hey Maxime, thanks a lot for your digital garden template, it's awesome!

Hello, thank you very much for the content, Maxime! Your digital garden template was just the one I have been looking for a long time, in Jekyll and having both support for wikilinks with spaces in them as well as graph visualization. I just really wanted to get that appreciation across to you. Thanks again!

This is Phil from 2021 in January typing from an i7 IPS x220 with a Samsung EVO 250GB 2.5" SATA SSD, a Broadcom 4253 Wifi AC 867Mbps + Bluetooth, and recently upgraded thermal paste. The display panel, bezel, palm wrest, and trackpad have all seen better days, but, this thing is a veritable workhorse that won't die! I have the ultrabase with the key, the external battery charger, and every battery aside from the 2-cell but I don't seem to be missing much there. Reading your blog made me feel happy. It's always nice to see other people doing the same sorts of things out there!

Good contents bro! Greetings from Indonesia

Keep up the awesome work! 👋 from a fellow Shopifolk

Now you ... you are a legend. I love freshreader and use it frequently to clean all the "oh shit I have to read that" tabs. You saved me quite some struggles and especially your philosophy of forgetting is something that I didn't know I need it so much. You're great.

So stoked to try out your digital garden template! Couldn't find a blogging platform that was going to fit what I was looking for, was a little trepidatious about jekyll from scratch, and yours looks super slick! Very happy I found ya

Keep it up!

Hi Maxime! Got here because I want to publish from Roam to an Andy-style site. Your theme, Roam-to-Git and How-to is the very best I've found so far. Thank you so much for this work!

Great Suggestions on smartphone usage, looking forward to implement :)

Interesting post on how to dumb down the 'smart'phone. I have started to take screenshots of my mobile usage as the screen time data on my iPhone doesn't allow a download of aggregated data! Completely agree on how shocking it is to realise how many app's poke themselves into our attention everyday.

Loved the ideas. Simple and surely effective. Going to implement them right away!

I enjoyed reading your post about the X220. Typing this message with my X201i right now... the X220 is at work!

Love your content. Keep it up!

Great post about the X220 - I bought 3 online last year, 1 for my parents and 1 as a spare.

You are reading this, so you are awesome! :D

Thank you for the content!

Testing out the guestbook for the first time. Say hello!