Hey, howdy, hallo,
Every so often, I run into an issue with my setup. Whether that’s my mobile setup, self-hosted setup, or Yellowball. Nine times out of ten, it’s because I did things the complicated way.
And why did I usually do things the complicated way? Because complicated is easy.
Have you ever been doing something, and you just get a "feeling" that something is off? Maybe you’re following a tutorial, coding some app, or doing some maintenance on your house. Maybe it’s just me (I don’t think it is), but when I get that feeling I stop what I’m doing and ask myself:
"Is this going to be a problem for future Josh?"
If the answer is yes, I re-evaluate what I’m doing.
I have a NAS (Network Attached Storage) that I use to store all my data and data for apps I self-host. Over the past decade I’ve gone through various file sync solutions. I originally started with Owncloud, then moved to Nextcloud. It worked well, but it has a lot of moving parts. That’s when I found Seafile. It was simpler than Nextcloud and worked well. It has a couple of quirks, like how it stores files on the backend. To oversimplify things, it uses block-based storage which means you can’t just browse the files on the server where they are synced to. This is a pretty big downside in my opinion, but it’s what enables it to be so fast with syncing large amounts of files.
Besides that quirk, I still liked it. But then it came time to upgrade to the next major release. I started the upgrade, and things got involved quick. They were migrating some backend services from one thing to another, changing configs etc. It was going to take me a few hours to make sure everything went smoothly.
Partway through I paused, took a step back and thought "Is this going to be a problem for future Josh?". The answer was yes, so I decided I needed to do something different.
Long story short, I created an encrypted container and I set up a scheduled job to sync it to a network share on my NAS. This completely cut out any third party software, and I don’t need to worry about a service running and client connecting. Just a simple scheduled task that copies all my files from A to B.
It was easy to look at guides online, start setting up syncing software, and getting it to work. It’s fun to play with new software and feel that pride when everything starts to work. But how much complexity did you just add to your life?
I feel like I’m rambling at this point, but the moral of the story is - Evaluate everything, and see how you can simplify. Make things easier for your future self, you’ll be glad you did.
I’ve never been upset that I kept something simple from the beginning, instead of complicated.
I hope you had a great September, and I’ll see you in October!
-Josh
A fun memory game that reminds me of the physical card one from when I was a kid.
New Season will start this Monday (October 6th, 2025)!
🎧 Margaret Hamilton — From stacks of code taller than she was to a Medal of Freedom decades later, Hamilton’s story is one of intellect, innovation, and true engineering brilliance.
🎧 Ken Thompson — Long before Linux, there was Unix — and Ken Thompson was at the center of it. The quiet legacy of a developer who shaped how computers, code, and operating systems work today.
🖥️ CalyxOS Is No Longer Safe to Use — TL;DW switch to GrapheneOS
🖥️ You’re no longer allowed to forget — "Everything we do now lasts forever. Not because we want to remember it, but because we’re no longer allowed to forget."
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