Tag: indie

• It's Lonely Here

  I pride myself on not having analytics here. If you're reading this, then I have no idea. The only way I know if people are reading my blog is either if my cloudflare quota fills up, if people contact me, or view the Contact page (the form provider in my contact page does have analytics that can't be turned off).

  I tell myself that I shouldn't care about if people read what I write, because that is not the point. I use this platform not necesarrily to improve my writing, but more to refine my opinions. I have found (civil) arguments help me find my own opinions, and writing arguments — captial to dot, not just as a vauge feeling, also helps me refine my opinions.

  Every morning, I look through bearblogs discover, and I see posts with tens of upvotes. I feel like I'm a part of a community, but every now and then I remember that I am not on bear. I'm on my own little page.

  I sometimes share blogposts that I think someone might like to read (i.e very few of them). I don't want to spend too much effort though, I won't stay here forever. Whenever my ISP allows, I'll hop onto selfhosting instead. That will bring a new domain, new RSS feed, etc.

  If you're reading this, good for you. Send me an email, just say hello. Or don't, not like I would know if you didn't...

  14-01-2026

• I am also a real human

  Most of the time I write posts here, I'm either trying to refine my own thoughts by trying to explain them, or I share ideas that I think "me three years ago" would need to hear. Most of the things I write tend to be detached from myself, and often is quite abstract.

  Most of the time I read blogposts and such on the web, I tend to forgot that a real person actually spent the time writing it. Obviously someone has had the thoughs I'm reading on screen, but I get some dissonence whenever I realize that a real person, sat behind their keyboard, maybe in their bedroom, wrote the words. Like IRL, meat-to-keyboard writing.

  I guess I could try to remind you that I'm also a real human. Currently writing this post at work, waiting for some deploys to complete. Afterwards I'm going to go home, eat dinner, shower — just like you.

  09-01-2026

• I Will Not Participate in the Rat Race

  Warning, this ended up as mostly me rambling...

  What is the purpose of life anyway?

  If you've taken part in online discussions, particularly tech related forums, you've probably noticed that it's expected that if you want a fulfilling life — you need to become rich.

  Here is how to become a millionare by investing

  How my startup earned millions

  super-ai.dev raised 50 million in VC funding

  Being a worker means being a sheep, real life is enjoyed by entrepenours. Grinding the 996 is worth it, because why would you want to be sitting at home if you don't have a shitton of money.

  Create a start-up, blitzscale it, raise investor money and sell it before it collapses — repeat.

  Let's roll it back

  Let me be abstract, what is the purpose of "work"? Why are you going to the same place, doing the same thing, the same hours, day after day? Because it's efficient.

  I like to see it as a scale from 0 - 100, where 0 is you do absolutely everything yourself. You are a literal caveman in the woods — building a shack with sticks and rocks. By 100, the only thing you do is the job you specialize in. Someone else built your home, grew your food, drove you to work, cut the food on your plate, wiped your ass. Most of us fall somewhere in between, we like to cook our own meals, however with ingridients that someone else provided, we like to program using compilers someone else has made. Some of us like to DIY, other people call handymen and craftspeople. That's fine, that is how modern society is structured.

  Grug

  Imagine a tribe, where everyone fends for themselves, they're all at 0 on the scale. Everyone spends all their time to achieve their baseline life quality. However, one person decides to specialize, let's call him Grug.

  Grug decides to focus on producing more firewood, which he trades with his other tribespeople in exchange for food and shelter. Not having to worry as much about food and shelter frees up time to produce more firewood, and having more time allows Grug to become more experienced and work more efficiently. This tribe of 16 people, who used to spend an hour a day collecting firewood, is now supplied buy Grug, who can provide everyone with firewood in just 12 hours. Grug in exchange is provided the resources to achieve his normal baseline life quality, and now has 4 hours that he can use for what he wants.

  Perhaps he will use this time to find a better rock for his axe, allowing him to work even more efficiently. Perhaps he will spend this time collecting resources to get a bigger shack. Perhaps he will even just relax, and you know — enjoy life.

  Grug has moved up the scale, and has more time to enjoy life, or enjoy a better quality of life.

  Kevin

  Now imagine Kevin, he works in Nos Langeles for a tech startup. He works twelve hours a day, six days a week, and he earns bank. Unlike Grug, Kevin doesn't cook his own food, he is able to pay a chef to cook it for him. Kevin doesn't drive to work, he pays for a chauffeur so he can clock in some extra hours on the ride to work. Kevin doesn't watch movies, he pays someone else to do that and tell him Kevin if he enjoyed the movie or not. Kevin doesn't wipe his own ass..

  You probably understand where I'm going with this. The short abstract of this is that.

  • The more you specialize, the more you can achieve — and the more you can buy.
  • However, the more you specialize, the less you live.

  There is a point of diminshing returns on specialization.

  • I am currently writing this from a warm building, built by an expert. In return, I'm willing to specialize in something myself (personally, software development)
  • You may want to hire a handyman to build a fence, personally I would like to do that myself. However, that is subjective and you have a choice.
  • Neither of us want's to work so much that we can afford a mansion, which we can't live in because we are to busy working.

  Please refer to this completely real graph with real values First you gain free time and quality of life, however eventually your free time plateous, but quality of life keeps increasing. The further you go however, the less free time you have. You may have everything you could dream of, but you don't have time live it.

  Take a moment to reflect on yourself, your friends and people you know — where they end up on this scale.

  That friend that works part time and lives in a small apartment. While they don't spend a lot of time at work, they instead have to spend time cooking their own food with raw ingridents. They have to hand wash their dishes, because they can't afford a dishwasher.

  That relative that always drives expensive cars, but never shows up to get-togethers. That old neighbour that is always home, but is always fixing something.

  I don't want to be rich

  I'm not going to found my own AI start-up. I'm not going to invest in the orphan crushing machine. I'm not going to work weekends to buy a new car.

  I'm going to work my 7,5 hours a day, 5 times a week. I'm going to take the bus, so I can spend less time driving. I'm going to live in my house out in the country, where I can thrive.

  When I have payed of my mortage, I will probably work 80% instead, I don't want the money,

  I'm content. I'm happy.

  02-01-2026

• Why I Left BearBlog

  Sigh

  This is a hard post to write, because it's pure bait. I'm just to cheap to pay for the 6$ a month. That's it. If you have the cash and want to support the indie web, go ahead and blog there, Herman seems like a great guy.

  If you want to blog, but you're as cheap as me, check out this post of mine

  30-12-2025

• On Consumerism

  I have started to become dissolusioned with buying new stuff, not just because trying to buy stuff is mostly avoiding scams, but because it doesnt make my life better.

  I'm not talking about buying e-waste, but actual "life improving" tools and utiliies. The main problem is that you get used to it, and you just raise the bar on what is normal.

  An example

  When I was a child, playing Minecraft with my classmates and wasting time on whatever flash game I could find, my older sister got me a cheap headset. Some cheapo plastic headset they use in call-centers, for maybe 15€.

  However, I was exctatic. I remember reading the "Optimized for Skype" tagline and thinking "Wow". I was very satified with it, and kept it until it eventually broke after a couple of years.

  If I were to use them today, I would probably just avoid using my computer all together. Why? Because I have increased my standard. What was a huge upgrade before, is something that I would need to endure today.

  Today, I have entry level studio headphones, and a seperate desktop microphone. I remember when I initially got them (the headphones that is), and was blown away by how much nicer everything sounded — compared to my previous (more expensive!) gaming headset.

  I've been keeping my eyes on getting a set of more midrange studio headphones. My friend has a set of open back headphones, which sound excellent, and I've often joked that if he were to die for whatever reason, they'd probably dissapear for unknown reasons.

  More seriously though, I've been thinking of buying my own pair, or perhaps even a model higher. It's not a huge amount of money (~200€ range), but I'm starting to get the feeling that it will just increase my standard even more. After just a couple of weeks I wont be any happier. It will be just the same as it is with my current set.

  This applies to most aspects of my life. When I was a teenager, I would gladly drink the same percolated, slightly burned and microwaved coffee that my mother drank. Today I a wide array of coffee makers and knowledge to use them. The coffee I make is a lot better now than what I drank as a teenager. Does that make me happier? I was content with that coffee back then, it's just my standard that is higher today.

  On consuming

  I have always looked down on people buying e-waste, or just waste in general. I had a friend in my late teens, let's call him Billy, who had quite permissive parents, and generally lacked self restraint when it came to burning money.

  I remember being over at Billy's place, and being overwhelmed with the amount of stuff he had. For example, Billy had an electric gutiar with an amplifier, a dj table, a huge union jack on the wall (neither of us are british), a elgato streamdeck, etc, etc.

  I don't doubt that he made an earnest attempt to use these things, however it was quite evident that they very quickly became dust collectors. Once in a blue moon, he'd pickup his guitar, try to play some famous song, get frustrated at the lack of progress and put it back in his closset.

  I started to look down on this behaviour. I quickly learned how easily things become dust collectors, and generally avoided buying stuff that I new would eventually end up like that.

  This was my view on consumerism. Mindless consumption of what just ends up as waste. Unlike me and my fellow intelectuals who understood that buying quality is superiour to buying quantity

  On consuming quality

  I have this other friend, let's call him Jimmy. He is basically the mirror image of Billy. While Billy had a permissive and lenient upbrining, Jimmy had rough and tumoltious one.

  Jimmy, today a young adult with a disposable income, only buys things that he actually uses. He is the friend with the open back studio headphones. However, it with him I've found the second fallacy.

  Jimmy has bought an expensive OLED gaming monitor for 1200€ (it's down to 700€ now, ouch), and recently upgraded to a RTX5080 (from a RTX4070). Jimmy justifies this as he does spend a lot of his time gaming, of course he should invest in it. Unlike Billy, he actually uses all of his equipment.

  He often encourages me to buy the same stuff, giving recommendations on what is good value at the moment. I can't disagree that his setup is more impressive and immersive than mine. Being able to walk around in the pitch dark, with it actually being pitch dark is amazing, especially at 200+fps.

  The thing is just... I'm content with my current setup. Sure, getting more FPS in my weekly gaming sessions would be nice, but it wouldn't take long for that to become the standard again.

  I did admittedly recently ugrade my setup, though in my defence my previous setup was getting old, and my new is 3,5 times faster. I will also probably get a new GPU soon, not because I think it will make me happier, but because my current one is starting to become actively detrimental.

  Where does that leave us?

  I don't really know. I'm just a 20-something year old, I don't have the answers to life and happiness. I guess simply beig aware of these two falacies are a good start.

  1. Don't buy something just because you want it, make sure that you actually will use it enough to warrant it.
  2. Don't upgrade something unless what you currently use is actively problematic. If you are content with what you have, then you will also eventually be just content with what you upgrade to.

  I don't however want this to sound like a push towards asceticism. Some things will make your life better, and you should buy them. I know I keep harping on about studio headphones, but they really made music listening more enjoyable.

  Among audiophiles, it seems to be called "critical listening", so my current theory is that you should buy things that:

  1. You will use
  2. Will improve something you are less than content with
  3. Or open a new avenue for doing something new (practice a hobby, consume media in some other way)

  Go ahead and get yourself that new OLED TV if you want to enjoy movies in a more critical sense, though avoid it if you're just going to binge Friends untill you fall asleep.

  Head to the local market and buy some meaningful handmade crafts. Don't just buy whatever mass produced art get's recommended in your feed.

  Buy that fermenting vessel if you want to get started home brewing. A simple 50€ bucket + starter kit will do, upgrade first when that is not enough.

  Fix your problems, but not pre-emptively. If you don't have any problems, try finding new ones instead.

  15-12-2025

• Why the fuck do I have FOMO for this?

  To start with, I'm quite a fan of paradox games (as in the company, not the concept), with thousands of hours among their games. Recently they released Europa Universalis V, and while skeptical before release it seems to have gotten good ratings and it seems to be relatively stable. I feel like I need to buy it now until it's too late.

  But like, why?

  If you don't know paradox that well, they tend to release roughly yearly DLCs for their games. This can cause the cost for the "Full game" to bloat into the hundreds, (though I want to note that you still have access to the base game, you don't lose access to content just because they release more content as a dlc. However that discussion is for another post). Long story short, EU V is currently in it's worst state, and most expensive as it will ever be. For every year that goes, there will be free updates for every paid dlc, plus better and better sales. Why do I feel like I need it now? It's not like I have the time nor money at the moment anyway.

  I'm going to (try to) do the reasonable thing and wait. Wait for work to calm done, wait for my wallet to recover from christmas (plus some other recent one time purchases), and wait for EU V to get better. Sure, it's probably quite good now, but it's only going to get better.

  Let's see how long I can hold on to this...

  08-12-2025

• I am done waiting

  Response to Waiting for... nothing?

  Waiting for life to start

  I relate quite a bit to the referenced post. After I got my first full time job, when my studies where winding down, I started asking my self the question "What now?". I got a chunk of cash each month and was still living at my parents — it felt like something was supposed to happen.

  Eventually I met a girl that and we moved together so now I had a use for my monthly paycheck, but it still felt like I was waiting for the real life to start. We eventually moved to another, larger and nicer apartment, quite liberating but still felt like I was waiting for life to start.

  Then I found a house for sale in the area where I grew up, for a very reasonable price (it's out in the middle of nowhere), and eventually I signed the papers. Now as a house owner it feels like I'm no longer waiting.

  I can now invest into my home, where I will spend most (maybe all?) of my adult life. I can buy furniture that fits the aesthetics without worrying about how it will look in my next home. I was able to join the local volunteer fire department, since I knew I wasn't going anywhere.

  I guess that is what I was waiting for, being able to live like I grew up. Being able to pick a random direction and head out into the woods to ponder. Living a quiet life in a small community, just like I did when I was younger.

  "What about me?"

  I guess this was just my personal goal, so what does this mean for you. This means that you should take some time to ponder what you want your life to be. Do you want to return to a similar living as it was in your childhood? Do you want to forge a new life in a new place? Do you want to live like your idols (parents, influencers, that old guy down the street).

  When you have started to get a grasp of what you want, pursue it. Keep your eyes open for opportunity. Half the part of success is being ready for luck (the other half being just luck).

  There is a difference between just waiting, and being prepared.

  03-12-2025

• Our little net

  I often yearn for the old web — or atleast what it looks like in my rose-tinted glasses. Back when people uploaded things not for fame or fortune, but simply out of a desire to be heard — a time before AI-generated slop, when everything was made by hand.

  The slow net

  There are many ways people try to recreate the spirit of the early web. One popular approach is aesthetic: white, bare HTML pages scattered with grainy bitmap images. Another is structural: curated rings of sites, deliberately disconnected from the corporate web. The fediverse, meanwhile, attempts to rebuild the large-scale web — but in the hands of users, not shareholders — removing profit as the primary incentive.

  But what I personally crave is the slow net — away from endless scrolling and the constant grasping for my attention. I feel like a resource to be mined: my attention, my opinions, my money. Even many small blogs are trying to sell me something, turning every post into a vehicle for profit.

  I want to hear the thoughts of people in all walks of life. I want to see art made by those trying to express something true. I want to play the amateur developer’s janky games. I want to relive the stories born from role-plays. I want people to create — not for clout, clicks, or cash — but simply because they have something to say.

  How to solve this

  I don't know. There isn't a lack of people expressing themselves, the problem is discovering them. But how do we solve this? Search engines prioritize sites that are SEOmaxxing, aka. the corporate web. There are some services that promise the small web, but I dislike that they are curated by a central entity, often to fit a vibe. There are also some search engines that prioritize the small web, but in my experience they easily get flooded with barren slop.

  The only way I see is that we, the people who express ourselves link to each other. If you have a site that you think fits here, then let me know! Send me a mail at bigboismith at proton.me. And if you have something that fits on one of my other pages, still let me know. If you found this post (or any of my other pages) interesting then please link to it from your page!

  In practice, I believe we should avoid embedding links in the middle of posts — except for cases like disambiguating terms or acronyms. Instead, let’s follow Wikipedia’s model: end each page with a “Further Reading” section, listing relevant or deeper-dive articles.

  As I continue to discover the net, I'm going to share pages that I find thoughtful or interesting in a Further Reading at the bottom of each page (of course assuming I have found something relevant to said page), and you should too.

  Further Reading

  • How to Be Patient in an Impatient World A great and thoughtful post about how the instant satisfaction of our modern world impacts us. It inspired my search for the old net.
  • nownownow The concept of having a single "now" page with your current situation/mindset, fitting neatly between about and contact pages.
  • Resurrect the old web A similar post on how to revive the old web
  26-09-2025

• Sharing is Caring

  For most people, sharing is easy. Whenever I need to do service on my car, I know multiple garages where I'm welcome to just show up as long as no one else got there first. Most of the people I know are welcome to grab apples from my apple trees if they need.

  But when it comes to IT, its a lot harder. I have a little raspberry pi that runs some dockers, servers and such. I could absolutely share it, allowing other people to host their own docker images for fun little hobby projects. It uses only a couple of watts anyway. The question is just, for whom?

  Most of the people I know in real life are either not interested in IT, or already have their own setup with everything they need. They are just like me, sitting upon unused resources that could easily be shared.

  So who actually needs these resources then? Well, when I was a youngling I would have been very grateful to have access to a server to host my ugly websites, perhaps a Minecraft server, maybe some central server for some programming experiments. But I'm not a youngling anymore.

  So if I could somehow share my resources with other young people who want to tinker with a server then that would be great. However, I don't really hang with pre/young teens, believe it or not. And allowing access to my server to anyone on the open internet is a very, very bad idea.

  So, how do we solve this? How do we handle discovery and vetting, without allowing bad actors. I don't know. Basically, how could thirteen year old me both find a host and prove that I didn't have any bad intentions to its owner? I would honestly like to know - because solving this would both make it easier and more welcoming to start tinkering with IT, and also make self-hosting more rewarding.

  (Yes I know there are multiple services with free tiers that offer hosting, but since they are for profit they are destined to be enshittified, hobbyist self-hosters are the only reliable, charitable option that won't necessarily get enshittified).

  If you have a good solution, or if it already exists, let me know. Make a blog post or just mail me at bigboismith at proton dot me.

  For example, I am running out of hard drive space, but I don't have any more space in my case for another drive. I would be grateful if I could of-load some archival >200GB to some over underused NAS.

  26-09-2025

• Concise is good

  In school, we were taught to write long — because kids need to learn how to explain things clearly, even to someone who doesn’t care about the topic.

  But it seems some people never outgrew this. They think stuffing their opinions into multiple paragraphs — with headers, footnotes, and “just in case” context — makes their ideas seem smarter or more accessible.

  Remember that I (and most other people on the net) have a short attention span, and if I am greeted by a long wall of text I'll probably click off. Being able to express meaningful ideas concisely is a quality of its own :)

  Further Reading

  • you are an absolute loser if you use AI to write your blog post A concise post about using AI for blogging, with a leading story, background, argument and conclusion in just four paragraph and 225 words!
  23-09-2025