Hey!I recently came across Leo Babauta's concept of “small comforts”—simple, healthy ways to recharge during difficult moments when you're physically exhausted or intellectually drained.A few principles that resonated with me: • Keep them small and occasional (don't overdo it). • Use them for recharging, not escaping from problems. • Let go of guilt—it's self-awareness, not weakness. • Be...
I've been noticing greenwashing everywhere lately and wrote about it here: https://olek.works/notes/greenwashing-everywhere/A few examples that stood out to me:Online grocery stores that proudly email receipts instead of printing them—but force you to buy new plastic/paper bags with every delivery instead of offering reusable crates for regular customers."100% recycled plastic" bottles that...
I wonder how many people would actually celebrate New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day, if they could choose whether they wanted to have a day off on New Year’s Day, or they could have it whenever they wanted.The same question goes for other public holidays, like Christmas, Passover, Independence Day, etc.
Hey!I built Arete (https://getarete.app) because I kept wanting to ask questions about random text I found online. A word I didn't know, a paragraph I wanted simplified, a quote I wanted fact-checked. Each time I'd copy it, open a new tab, paste it, and come back. It got tedious.Arete lets you select any text on any webpage and instantly send it somewhere useful. Translate it, explain it like...
Hey Everyone,
We started Difree (a distraction-free writer, working as a browser's extension) in mid-2021. It's been our side-project. All the time I have this impression, it's half-baked. I believe in it so much, that I haven't changed the version of my app to mature 1.0.0 :-) It's still in 0.9.x :-D
Initially, our goal was to create a fast, reliable, privacy-friendly and no-distraction writing app for us. We were the first users. It needed to satisfy us.
Meanwhile, we started collecting feedback from our users. We wanted to know what worked. People using Difree submitted many interesting ideas for our product. Here are some ideas: 1. monospaced fonts 2. dark theme 3. different font sizes 4. minimalistic view (WIP) 5. word counter (WIP)
We've been still working on Difree and it still gives us fun :-) Tell me what you think! We want to hear and learn more :-)
Happy writing, Olek
Based on the commit activity, it looks like the project is no longer being developed -> https://github.com/umami-software/umami/graphs/commit-activi...
Don't you think? Or maybe I'm wrong.
Hey Everyone,could you recommend a free, privacy friendly, alternative to Google Analytics, preferable in cloud?
PS I am making myself a minimalist writing tool, it's called Difree. Good luck :-)
Since June 2021 I have been co-developing my side project - Difree https://www.getdifree.com/ - a rich text editor to write on many things in a distraction free way.
When I asked myself a question, is my side project, the project:
where I don't care if it makes money or gets a lot of attention, but I am working on it regardless.
I mean,
1. I don't care about if it makes money or it gets a lot of attention.
2. But I would love people to find Difree and find it useful, as I do. That's it.
Does it mean, I want 'a lot of attention'? I don't know.
Right now with Difree I have been basically scratching my itch. We have been developing it, because I found I had a problem and there was no suitable solution for that.
In the past, I missed a tool, where I can write something longer and/or more meaningful, like a reply to an e-mail or a post on Reddit, in a simple manner without distractions.
Built-in editors in websites like Gmail, Reddit, or Slack leave much to be desired, eg.
1. Gmail's text editor is poorly designed. By default, I have to write an e-mail in a small window, in the bottom right corner of the website.
2. Slack's text editor is full of distractions. While writing I am usually being bombarded with incoming messages.
3. Reddit's text editor is... well, both :-)
My workaround was, I wrote the text aside in an external tool and then copy-paste it.
But I couldn't have found the right external tool, e.g.
1. Notepad sucked at formatting.
2. Evernote was slow to start and difficult to write.
3. MS Word is not free and cluttered.
4. Google Docs is overcomplicated for this purpose.
5. Google Keep is for taking short notes, not meaningful writing.
The only tool that partially worked for me was iA Writer. It looks neat, simple, and elegant. Writing is distraction-free. I used it quite often, but I missed two things. The ideal text editor for me should be handy and fast.
1. By handy, I mean I could work on many things.
2. By fast, I mean open in a second.
This was when the idea of a simple, fast, and distraction-free editor came to my mind. Using the proven framework for text editors like Quill and making it easily accessible as a browser's extension, seemed to be the fast lane.
The keynote for Difree is to build the text editor that is
1. distraction-free,
2. fast,
3. and handy
I guess, if it works for me, that's fine. I am sure, there will be people having the same problem as I had and find Difree useful.