House of Jacob

Welcome to the tenth edition of my Every Day Stack Updates.

I moved to Brighton, got a new job, and think I’m settling into my next era.

Off we go.

Removed from the stack

• Simmer: They were the meal delivery replacement for Tastily (RIP), but ultimately it just didn’t fill the same void for my eating preferences and child-like palate. One quirk of their offering is that if you didn’t lock in your meal choices by the cutoff time they would just randomly pick things to fill your order, even if you never ordered that meal or anything like it. I don’t know who thought sending me random food would work out but, surprise, I didn’t like it. I took a break from meal delivery services for a while and have since started a new trial (more in proving grounds).

• Sync: Used as my file backup and sharing replacement for SpiderOak One (RIP - Spideroak was a great product until they just decided to silently have it break and not fix it or communicate to clients why. I DO NOT recommend anything by this company). Sync was.. fine? Nothing special really but it worked well other than the file uploads being noticeably slow. Consolidating.

• Windows (mostly): With the new role I once again opted to daily drive a Macbook Pro and wow my enjoyment of professional software went up 1000%. No more battling the latest Windows update to disable the mountain of bloatware they decide to opt you in to, because you know, it’s good for you! For the very occasional use of Visual Studio I still have a VM that I can hop into, so I couldn’t quite get rid of it entirely. Like jQuery.

• ChatGPT 4: It’s not just you, or me, or everyone on X, it is getting worse.

• Xbox Series X: I had a bit of a de-Microsoft-ification theme going on in my life. They are getting too pushy and too invasive with their tracking for my liking. Most Game Pass games also seem to suck? I don’t know. In the last 2 years I’ve had it I must have actually played maybe 5 games and finished 2. Terrible hit rate.

• Steam Deck: Nothing bad to say about the Steam Deck, it’s brilliant! I’m very tempted to get the OLED revision. My main problem is basically every game I like is both on PC and Xbox, and we don’t live in a utopia where you can actually buy it once and play it everywhere.. So where do I buy it? Commit to the small screen portable life, or big screen sofa? I don’t know which will be better before I play, so I end up doing neither.

Added to the stack

• Proton Drive (referral link): In the past year they have added all the platform support and features I need from a file backup and sharing product, so it was an easy choice given that I now use literally everything they offer. Proton PLEAASE don’t get hacked. Or force a bunch of AI in where it doesn’t belong. kthxbye

• Ultrahuman Ring Air: Now that I’m back to wearing real watches rather than my Apple Watch, I had a health and sleep data void. I had a four-month break from the data, but the data is too alluring. I still wear my Apple Watch when I work out for music on the go, but the rest of the day I now wear the ring. I like it! The data seems decent, if not a bit lenient grading my fitness as fluctuating between “good” and “excellent” which I’m not quite sure of. “Good” maybe, “excellent” seems like a stretch. They are frequently adding features to the app and their data analysis and reports are miles ahead of the Apple Health black-hole of metrics.

Proving grounds

• Chefly (referral link): Trying a new meal delivery service. Early days so don’t know if I’ll stick around yet. More on this next time I guess, as my blog is now 1/3 a meal service review blog apparently 😂

• Claude via OpenRouter: Claude has been all the hype recently and I’ve found it pretty good so far. OpenRouter is also good in that you can create a “chat” with agents from multiple AI companies and have responses to the same prompt at the same time via one set of paid “credits”. I’ve been using it to send the same query to GPT 4 / 4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet and I can easily say for my use Claude has consistently been much better.

• PS5: Finally! It is late enough in the generation that there are a few exclusives in the queue so it is time to see what the other side is like. Also with no Xbox or Steam Deck or PC, it should make it an easier choice to try a game or not, rather than also but where.

That’s all for now, see you in three months, maybe.

Thanks for stopping by.