Who is this Atk fella?

I'm a technology enthusiast in my twenties. I enjoy any and all things computery - building computers, writing code, playing PC games, the whole shebang

Privacy is a huge part about the way I conduct myself online. Facebook (sorry, Meta), Google, Amazon, and the like possess a very real threat to everyone's privacy, seemingly without anyone caring. As such, I have been trying to migrate away from these data giants, ditching Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, Twitch, WhatsApp, Instagram, and so on as I go

Compulsively, as a hardware enthusiast, I'm forced to provide you with details about my current computer, so you can check out the parts list here. The GPU was bought towards the tail-end of the graphics card shortage, hence the outrageous price. It is what it is

A little while back, I decided to make my data hoarding & self-hosting interest official by building a home server. I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to movies, TV, music, and game installers, so having a (relative to my current PC) huge NAS is very exciting. Setting it up hasn't been an easy process though, and BTRFS can often leave me dazed and confused when I have to go back for some sysadmin work. That having been said, everything just works for every day usage and it's a joy to have. Anyway, obligatory parts list. It was designed with future upgrades in mind (RAM, more storage)

Firefox

I browse on Firefox. If you don't, you're not doing it right. For the love of god people, get off Chrome please

Great addons I use:

• Bitwarden - free, open source password manager
• uBlock Origin - a must-have for surviving the modern internet
• Multi-Account Containers - keep cookies for websites separate so you can't be tracked outside of a given group of sites (like Google ones for instance)
• User-Agent Switcher - to spoof the device you're browsing from
• Tabliss - free, open source aesthetic new tab page (like Momentum, but FOSS)
• Wikiwand - modernises Wikipedia

YouTube specific extensions:

• SponsorBlock - highly customisable way to cut out advertising and cruft from YouTube videos
• Return YouTube Dislike - because it never should have been removed in the first place
• Unhook - lets you remove certain elements of the YouTube UI to reduce distractions & annoyances

GNU + Linux

This is the year of the Linux desktop, I can feel it

I love the concept of Linux: an all-open ecosystem that allows unlimited customisation and flexibility to its users. However, for me, it's not the year of the Linux desktop yet. I tried: when I built my new PC at the start of 2023 I installed Arch Linux, and only Arch Linux, no dual-booting. The end result boiled down to death by a thousand papercuts, and no solutions without compromises. It was genuinely consuming any enjoyment of my free time trying to fix 'just one more problem' and then diving down the rabbit hole of reading and learning and hoping and trying and reverting and sighing.

What's changed since I last tried desktop Linux was that the 'conventionally hard' things to get running on Linux worked nearly immediately: Windows-only games run great on Steam and/or Bottles. The out of the box experience actually did just work. The problems more arose from the things you can take for granted on Windows: sleep/hibernate, wireless controller support, network drivers, desktop notifications, clipboard consistency, and desktop widgets. Please trust that in each and every case I scoured the Arch Wiki and DuckDuckGo, trying their suggestions and still getting no further to solving any of these.

Long story short, I moved back to Windows. I'll try again in 5+ years

SimpleLogin

SimpleLogin is a free and open source email obfuscater that hides your true email address from recipients, similar to how Privacy.com hides your card details from merchants. It allows you to setup aliases (like the one I have for the contact email address above) which will forward on the email to your real inbox so you have everything in one place but to merchants and other third parties everything is compartmentalised. This will tell you who's leaked your email address if it gets out, you can with a click disable an alias to send all of the emails sent there to the void

The real kicker to all this is there is a full guide on SimpleLogin's GitHub page to self-host everything yourself so you can use your own domain and access all the premium features for free. This is what I've done, it's a fun project that should only take an afternoon if you already have a domain name and a VPS (I use Vultr for mine). The maintenance of their docker images is definitely lacking, however the outdated version I'm running as a result of this still works great. Would recommend to anyone

Headphones

I currently just listen to music off of my phone or computer directly, no fancy DACs or amps. Predominantly, I listen to EDM, though over the years my tastes are slowly becoming more 'mainstream'

I'm currently using Tidal for music streaming as they sucked me in with a six month free trial, and now I have too many playlists to want to leave. I've tried Spotify and my overall conclusion is that there is no single good music streaming service app, you just have to pick the one that bugs you the least. For me, that's Tidal. I used to use SoundCloud for all my playlists, given it's free, and could be adblocked on browser and mobile (not sure if it's still a thing, it's been a good few years at this point)

I typically grow a playlist until it's at one hundred songs then start a new one, it's a nice round number that strikes a decent balance between not getting bored of the first songs you've added and having a long total running time. There is no particular organisation to most of my playlists in terms of genre

For earphones, I actually carry around the super-budget VE Monk Plus (AliExpress link). Despite the $5 price tag, I love the sound quality (how you know I'm not a 'proper' audiophile yet lol), they're impressively bassy for earphones, and they're comfortable for me - I actually have yet to find IEMs I find comfortable, so I'm on team earbuds for better and for worse. I did actually splurge at one point to try the iBasso IT01, but I just couldn't get them both comfortable and properly sealed

For headphones, I currently have the entry level Audio-Technica ATH-M50x, the Grado SR60es, and the Drop + THX Pandas

Audio Technica ATH-M50x

These are the headphones I have wired up to my computer with a Modmic Uni stuck on. Since I also have a speaker hooked up to the PC, this means these headphones are now exclusively used for playing games with voice comms. I have used them for music listening previously before I got my hands on the Grados and Pandas, however now they're just the super comfy go-to for several hour long gaming sessions. The comfort I think is in no small part thanks to the Brainwavz memory foam pads I purchased based on a recommendation I saw online for these headphones, they fit wonderfully and feel great against the head, less sweaty than my Pandas

Grado SR60e

The Grados were moreorless an impulse purchase under the influence of DankPods when I noticed they were largely out of stock online but there was a pair on eBay in great condition for a steal of a price. They have a very different sound to what I typically prefer and aren't that well suited to my genre of choice, but certain songs (like Avicii's Hey Brother) absolutely made the headphones sing (no better way to describe it) and justified the purchase in an instant. I'd strongly recommend these to anyone wanting to try open backs for the first time that listens to a lot of music with vocals. I also enjoy using them for watching movies when I'm alone as they do far better justice to the movie score than my speaker ever could

Strongly considering modding the cable to be one-sided and detachable though as while I like and am always amused by how bulky and thick the cable is, it's inconvenient to the point where, when moving around with the headphones on, the swinging of the wire while walking can actually move where the headphones sit on my head. Definitely a sit-down-and-listen type of headphone

Drop + THX Panda

I want to start off by saying I would not recommend these headphones for purchase. I have had extensive issues (as have numerous other people) with these headphones, and the replacement pair I received, while largely functional, had cosmetic damage out of the box. For those who play video games, these headphones feel akin to a full price game that's half-baked released into Early Access. For more details, you can read my review of the headphones on Drop's website here

However, putting the issues I've head with them aside, the headphones sound and look great. The battery life is impressive, I've never had to stop listening to charge them, and on the rare occasion when it is time to top them up, they charge super quickly. The sound is lovely and full and compared to the Grados certainly brings back a lot of the bass and such that I enjoy with my tastes in EDM. Honestly the headphones being wireless was the biggest selling point for me. It allows for music listening in so many scenarios, without having to be considerate of a wire to be tugged if you turn your head too far. I enjoy wearing the headphones for things like cooking and washing up where a wire would be cumbersome but I appreciate the company of having music playing. Given the current COVID situation I've not worn them out of the house a lot to have missed active noise cancelling, but I certainly don't feel like I'm not getting value out of them being wireless as a result of being at home even more than I am usually