Thord D. Hedengren explores the intersaction between technology and culture, with a bit of life sprinkled on top.
App defaults, early 2026 Hello 2026, and hello Bored Horse readers. It's been a minute, hasn't it? Why not kick off the new year with some app defaults, as that's something other cool tech people are doing. Here are mine as of today, January 12th 2026. 📨 Mail Client: Fastmail apps on Mac and iPad/iPhone. 📮 Mail Server: Fastmail , although I still use both iCloud and Purelymail for various…
App defaults, late 2024 It's that time of year again, so here are my app defaults as of late last year. Because yeah, it's 2025 now. 📨 Mail Client: Mail on Mac and iPad, Edison on Android. 📮 Mail Server: iCloud and Purelyemail . 📝 Notes: Obsidian and Notes. ✅ To-Do: Reminders and Basecamp , but I'm playing with Obsidian for to-dos too. 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera app on whatever phone I'm…
Work mode does change things Work's back in full force, which has been interesting from a digital balance point of view. I know a lot of people who can't disconnect, have to check their emails and social media inboxes at all times, that sort of thing. I'm not one of them, these things don't stress me out like they used to. From a digital balance standpoint, going back to work from the summer…
Only three calls, really?! Hi! I've been continuing the Digital Balance challenge, and come to the realization that not many people call me. As in, call me from a normal, actual phone number. Not FaceTime or a voice call through Telegram or Signal, just a typical phone call. The setup I have for this challenge is that I'm forwarding my phone calls (and text messages, except iMessage obviously) to…
What is digital balance anyway? Hey there! 👋 It's been a minute since the last letter, hasn't it? I decided to take summer off to figure out what to do with Bored Horse, and my online presence overall. Then I heard about the Punkt Digital Balance Challenge, and I just had to do it, so here we are. → Read more about my partipation in the Punkt Digital Balance Challenge I'm focusing a lot on…
The Punkt Digital Balance Challenge 2024 I've written a lot about our reliance on tech, and the way social media apps are designed to be as addictive as possible. It should come as no surprise that I'm curious in the various alternatives. You might even remember my posts on various outlets on smartphones vs. dumbphones, as well as combinations with tablets to avoid smartphones in particular. Let's…
Sleep tracking cycle I’ve been tracking my sleep, on and off, for the last fifteen years. It started with a revelation: I thought I slept poorly but really didn’t, which changed my mood in the morning. It has felt useful ever since. To be fair, said revelation was probably enough, but my curiosity was piqued. Sleep tracking tools has come and gone. For a long time, I thought that Jawbone’s…
Minimizing I've been looking at all my personal stuff to try to minimize a bit. My brother did that the hardcore way, moving to Greece with what he could fit in a carry-on. He sold the rest, stored just about nothing, and that's that. It's a compromise, only owning what you can carry. I'm not willing to go that far, but looking through all the stuff I've got, I want to cut back. What I'll keep are…
A change of pace This is going to be a short one. After speaking to some friends, and looking at everything I have on my plate, as well as what I actually want to do, I’ve decided to switch some things up. It’s healthy to question the state of things at regular intervals, it’s all too easy just going about with whatever it is you’re doing. I’m going to switch things up with this letter. First,…
Opt-out is always wrong Selling user-generated content is the hottest thing in tech right now. It's a way for all those communities to cash in, now that ads aren't working. Companies acting like this is to be expected: If you're not paying for something, you're the product. So, when you upload a photo of your dog to Instagram, you're training Meta's AI. Makes sense. However, it gets muddy when…
AI is killing the blog (and then some) I love the internet. I love blogs. I even love to tinker with the software that makes it tick. But enough is enough. Machines are scraping our words and ideas, remixing them into models which are used to churn out generic content, polluting our online haven. It used to be just words, then audio, and now video has caught up. AI (a ridiculous buzzword) mush is…
My Name is Ronald by the Way Most of my published writing has been of the technical sort, such as the Smashing WordPress books, but I’ve had several short stories and flash fiction (that’s really short stories) published, too. My Name is Ronald by the Way was picked up by the sadly defunct fiction magazine, Fireside. It was published in February 2015, and edited by the excellent Brian J. White.…
The allure of nostalgia I bought a gaming rig late last year, to play Starfield properly. It’s a game I’ve been looking forward to since its announcement. As a fan of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls games, and Mass Effect , this felt like it could be a nice open world mix, in space. Total time spent with Starfield : 42 minutes. Time spent in Skyrim : Days and days and days. What happened? Nostalgia,…
The headset lockout I've been reading the Apple Vision Pro reviews with interest and trepidation. There's no doubt that it's a technical marvel, and there's no doubt either that it's very much a first generation product. Apple does those well, they iterate, and suddenly things are great. Case in point: Apple Watch, or the iPhone for that matter. Apple Vision Pro is surely no different. It's not…
The Glitch welcome to my blog code jam Glitch is a fun platform for building stuff. I've primarily used it to try out things over the years, but I know people doing serious things with it. There's a community there, and I'm sure it's wonderful. Glitch does code jams , which are themed, well, prompts to build things. The February prompt i Welcome to my blog , which is all about getting people to…
Trying out Micro.blog I’ve been meaning to try out Micro.blog for, well, years. The other day I decided to sign up and give it a go. Primarily, I’ll be using it to cross-post to Bluesky (which is now open for all, no invite needed) and Mastodon , but I’ve also have hopes that there’s a nice community going on there. On a side-note, I’d say Micro.blog would be a pretty good blogging platform for…
Text files are forever (possibly) I've written about the benefits of plain text plenty of times, so when I stumbled onto Steph Ango's essay File over app , it was a bit of preaching for the choir. Ango is, of course, known for the popular notes app (or whatever you want to call it), Obsidian.md. That made the essay even more interesting since it clearly states that readable text files are better…
Online handles Jim Nielsen, who has a nice blog, wrote about the origin of his online handles . It got me thinking about my online handles, which is a lot more boring than Jim’s journey, or the examples he states. I’m tdh where I can, tdhftw where I can’t, and tdh.me on Bluesky because they have this nifty domain name feature. All services here , if you’re curious. When I started out, I was…
Linkage overspill, January 2024 As mentioned in #61 , I've got a bunch of links that didn't fit. So, without further ado, here's the linkage overspill for January 2024, and then some. Let's get the Substack mess out of the way first. 💩 Platformer, which is hosted by Substack, reports that the company will remove the Nazi publications editor Casey Newton confronted them with, but won’t start an…
Was it a good year? Happy New Year! At least on this we can agree, I’m sure. It is a new year, and while the word ”happy” stands out a bit, it’s what I’m wishing you, so it’s technically correct. But what about the year that was? 2023 has been pulled into the alley and shot in the back of the head, and the gut feeling is good riddance , isn’t it? After all, we had wars (plural) raging, fascism and…
It ended up being Hey (I’m as surprised as you are) I have a weird relationship with the Basecamp guys, aka 37signals. On the one hand, they talk good shop, with buy apps once and challenging the status quo. On the other, it’s the utter nonsense sometimes spewing from the founders’s mouths and I have trouble dealing with it. Our clients don’t, however. In fact, even the most technically challenged…
2024 is the Year of the Blog I know, it might be wishful thinking, but there’s no doubt that we’re seeing a resurgence for blogging. It’s to be expected, given that the biggest hit to blogging was Twitter. The barrier of entry is much lower when you can shoot a couple of sentences and be done with it, which is why microblogging took off. It’s grown up, even though Twitter has degraded into a…
Cancelling the Economist was a horrible experience I’ve been searching for more traditional (well...) news outlets the past couple of months, and have ended up with a bunch of subscriptions. Some might actually stick, others won’t. The Economist is, unfortunately, one of the latter. I cancelled my subscription today, and won’t be subscribing again. The Economist is employing dark patterns to lure…
I bought a MacBook Air at the worst possible time, and it’s great The 13” MacBook Air hasn’t been updated in 528 days, in July 2022, and it has a big fat red don’t buy in the Macrumors excellent Buyer’s Guide . New ones, with the M3 chip, is likely early 2024 (my guess is mid-March). It makes sense to wait if you’re in the market. Last weekend, I bought a 13” MacBook Air (in Midnight, which is…
The ease of things When I had a commute to the office years ago, I often found myself reading on my iPhone. Nothing weird about that, the same was true for everyone else on the train. Noses down, peering at a small screen. That’s the normal state of things these days. I did the same, but I shouldn’t have. You see, there was always an iPad in my bag, easy to access, and yet almost never used, for…
Back using Matter again I’ve been giving Raindrop.io a go , and I’m afraid it didn’t stick. Not that it’s a bad service or anything, and the pricing is very reasonable, it’s just that it’s more of a bookmark manager than a read it later service. While I’m interested in both, it’s the latter that I truly need. Raindrop.io competes with GoodLinks, another great app (Apple ecosystem only, though) if…
The quest for the ultimate setup I, like so many others, is always tinkering with my setup. It can get smarter, faster, lighter, stronger, more versatile, better looking, more inspiring – the list goes on. The idea is that the perfect setup will make you more productive. It’ll make you a better writer, your designs will pop even more, any kind of editing you do will be oh so snappy. It’s bullshit,…
Substack alternatives With Substack sinking even deeper into the right-wing fascist pits ( see #58 ), I think it’s time to look for alternatives. It’s not a manner of judging anyone for using Substack, it’s indeed a powerful network, and growth is probably easier there than anywhere else for aspiring newsletter writers, but the company aren’t doing nice things. They’re empowering, and promoting,…
Giving Raindrop.io a go If you’ve been following my adventures looking for the perfect read-it-later app on Switch to iPad, you know I’ve touched on Raindrop.io before. Something just did hit home back then, it might’ve been early in development, I can’t recall exactly. I passed it, and went on to other things. The journey has been long. First there was Instapaper, then Pocket, then Instapaper…
An unscheduled break I've been ill just about all week. Monday was sort of fine, no planned work, with picking up the new car as the only thing on the agenda. I woke up with a racing heart on Tuesday, and while that's nothing new, I just felt something was off. So, I decided to take a couple of days off, and luckily, this coincided with a downperiod at Hedengren Agency (we're waiting for feedback…
Clutter I’ve been thinking a lot about clutter lately. The Considering today project is, in part, born out of these thoughts. I felt the need to focus my thinking, and to practice doing so each day, and thus, the project was born. You see, clutter isn’t just things overflowing on your desk, it’s in your mind, too. I’ve seen various coaches and know-it-alls describe clutter in a lot of ways, some…
Considering today season 1 wrapping soon Considering today , my side-project that sends you one thing to think about, or perhaps do, every weekday, wraps its first season soon. For some, season 1 is already over, for others, it’s not. The way it works is, when you sign up, you start to get one thing in your inbox every weekday, for fifty days. That’ll take about ten weeks, depending on which day…
It took a week to downgrade Proton Just a quick update to let you know that today, finally, I was able to downgrade my Proton account. You might recall I started the procedure on Wednesday last week , and it's Thursday the week after today. That's not really reasonable at all, if I was close to an account renewal date it'd be a real issue. Today, finally, I managed to move the final emails to…
I wish I could take over WP Tavern A lifetime ago, I was the editor of blogging news outlets the Blog Herald and Devlounge, among others. It was during the blog boom, when the big blog networks were known as Weblogs Inc., and Gawker. The Blog Herald covered the launch of the Huffington Post, saw the rise of Buzzfeed and the Daily Beast, we were that early. It wasn’t my site, I just took over when…
I tried an analog calendar A while back I needed to keep track of, well, things. I didn’t want to use my normal calendar, but the actual day mattered, and I didn’t want to rely on me remembering to actually update a text file. I could’ve solved this a ton of ways, but I happened to have a Field Notes calendar notebook nearby. So I figured, what the hell, and gave it a go. There’s something…
Downgrading Proton shouldn't be this hard Update: It took a week to downgrade Proton. Original post follows. I want my email secure, and I like Proton , but it wasn't for me. While their web interfaces are decent, I want to use native apps of my choosing, and that's not possible. You're stuck with Proton's apps, and they're not particularly good. The Mail Bridge app to make your email (and…
Notifications need a reboot I’ve had it with notifications. The idea is good: A service and/or app will tells you about important things. For example, food delivery app Foodora lets you know that your food is on its way, that it’s getting close, that it’s sitting outside your door. That’s good. Less good: Foodora pinging you daily about how you should treat yourself, order groceries, did you know…
Apple Music radio I listen to a lot of music. Although I prefer vinyl and the big setup I’ve got in the apartment (poor neighbors), I obviously stream a lot too. My music streaming service of choice is Apple Music, thanks to the sound quality, and the fact that they seem to pay artists more than Spotify. Also, it’s included in the Apple One subscription, so… When I stream music, I play whole…
App defaults, late 2023 Here’s a new thing doing the rounds in the blogosphere I so yearn to rejoin: App defaults. So, here are my default (or preferred) apps, as of late 2023. If nothing else is noted, it’s the same for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. No links for default apps. 📨 Mail Client: Mail. 📮 Mail Server: iCloud, Fastmail (but I’m still experimenting with things like Purelyemail and Zoho ). 📝…
Daring to age The new Rolling Stones album, Hackney Diamonds , got me thinking, perhaps not the way they intended. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice album with some catchy songs, but I couldn’t help but notice what’s not on there. Mick Jagger’s voice. It’s there obviously, wouldn’t be much of a Stones album if Keith Richards did the whole thing, but there’s a lot of his voice that’s not there. The…
Home spaces I’m not disciplined enough to be able to create anywhere. For example, I’ve written a lot over the years, but barring some technical editing, I’ve never been able to do any of it in my office. That’s not because the office isn’t a creative space – it most certainly is when it comes to digital art, design, and development – I just can’t do any writing at the same desk. Which is why I…
I barely use my phone anymore Whenever I see someone using a large phone, I get that twinge. Maybe I should get one of those? It’s a nice compromise, part phone and part tablet, almost. Phablets, remember those? The large flagship smartphones today are basically phablets. Foldable phones arguably are, even though the term is dead. I went with a big phone last year, the iPhone 14 Pro Max. It was a…
Back using Dropbox I’ve relied on iCloud for my file-syncing needs the past few years. It’s been good, snappy, and well integrated into the Apple ecosystem. But, as my needs grow, I’ve experienced slow sync, and sometimes having to force downloads on new Macs. At one point it seemed as if data had been lost, which wasn’t the case, but still scary. Shared folders were misbehaving as well, not…
I deleted X (Twitter) I must admit, it feels weird. Ever since Jaiku went the Google way (i.e., bought and bucketed), Twitter was the short-form social blogging format for me. Alas, while it was spiraling long before Elon Musk made kitchen sink jokes, the Tesla clown sure took it to town. It’s been a joke for quite some time, but while I wouldn’t condone anything, I did find that the algorithm…
A bunch of links I’m afraid I’ve had a week, I’m not quite well, and I haven’t gotten enough sleep. Poor me. Seriously though, my essay on home spaces that I’d planned for Sunday just isn’t ready yet. And, as you might know, it’s Monday too, so I wasn’t even able to get this your way on time. Sorry about that. There are some extra links to sweeten the deal, though. Expect a regular essay letter…
50 thoughts on 50 issues of the Bored Horse This issue marks the fiftieth I’ve sent under the Bored Horse flag! Unfortunately, Revue shutting down meant a few of those issues getting lost. I can probably restore them, and at some point I’ll add them to the archives for posterity. The Bored Horse isn’t the first, nor the only, newsletter I run. Despite this, I have some random thoughts on the…
On sleep I've been tracking my sleep since Jawbone UP was the techy hotness on your wrist. It lead to plenty of revelations, and has made my life better. I used to wake up in the morning with a heavy sigh. The feeling was, I hadn't slept enough, hadn't slept well, I wasn't rested, I wasn't ready for the day. It was a downward spiral, and not the best start to the day. My then girlfriend pointed…
If everyone creates, who consumes? Everyone's a creator these days. I made my feelings towards the word "creator" known in issue 48's essay . This isn't about that, though. It's about how everyone should start a Substack, have a Patreon, get subscribers on X, and generally make money on their online activity. I subscribe to, and pay for, more newsletters than I care to admit. I should cancel some…
Creator is a broken word If you've been hanging out on Twitter/X the past few years, there's an influx of the word "creator". It's used to describe people who, well, create things, mostly (or solely) digital. I see it every time I add a transmission to season 1 of Considering today (You're subscribing right? I'm a creator!) since that one runs on ConvertKit, who can't shut up about all those…
Writing on glass I'm an avid iPad user, and have been for a long time. There's much promise in it as a computing platform, so much that I ran a (presently defunct) newsletter and site called Switch to iPad . I use the iPad daily, for different things. One of those is note-taking, and that involves the Apple Pencil, and the much-hated feeling of writing on glass. It takes time getting used to, the…