Tech faves of 2023

I like end of year lists, or at least honest end of year lists. A lot of sites make the “best of” lists, but they are really ads for affiliate links or regurgitated lists that are copypasta from other sites. I like end of year lists where people talk about what they actually used, even if it isn’t something that is new.

So, below is my list of tech stuff I discovered this year. Little on this list was newly created in 2023. Rather, it is a list of stuff I found in 2023 (AKA new to me) and liked.

I honestly want to know what you have used and enjoyed in 2023 for tech. It doesn’t have to be something brand new, either. What is something that is “new to you” and enjoyed in 2023?

Message me on Mastodon at @cinimodev@mstdn.social.

Hardware

This year I’ve gotten my hands on several new (to me) hardware and devices, but these are the one’s that I’ve used the most in the last 12 months.

A funny thing I noticed while writing this review is that you can use all three of these devices together for a pretty sweet Android-as-a-PC setup.

UPerfect X mini lapdock

I’ve mentioned a lot that I love Samsung Dex as a laptop replacement . Last year I carried a bluetooth keyboard along with a portable monitor for when I needed to use a larger screen.

This year I wanted to reduce my carry even further and finally pulled the trigger on a lapdock. I picked up the 10" UPerfect X Mini for about $200 and is easily my favorite gadget both for Dex mode and for working on projects around the house. Working with Dex is fantastic, even if the trackpad doesn’t have palm rejection. Typing is good enough, battery life is great, and the touchscreen is nice to have in conjunction with the touchpad.

However, I end up using it more around the house than as a lapdock. This year I worked on some Raspberry Pi projects and just connected them to the UPerfect lapdock. Problem with a headless server? Connect the lapdock. Running two machines and need to hop back and forth? Lapdock.

Recently I’ve been using it to setup Raspberry Pi OS on an ancient Microsoft Surface RT. Check back later for a separate post about that project.

Sabrent EC-HD28 dual bay docking station

I honestly don’t know why I never picked one of these up before. I spend a lot of time moving data around for my various projects and experiments. Having this dual bay docking station has made my life so much easier.

Because it is USB 3.0 I can boot from it with an SSD and not notice too much of a drop off in performance when doing tests or PC rescues. The dual bay means I can, say, boot Clonezilla and have it put the cloned image onto a different disk. I’ve even done some homelab/server tests and had it run 24/7 with two 3.5" drives connected with no issues. Believe it or not if you format a disk with FAT you can even connect this docking station to an Android device. I know cause I tried.

iKoolCore R1

My wife got the iKookCore R1 mini PC for my birthday this summer and I’ve loved working with this thing throughout the year. Here are the specs:

• CPU: Intel Celeron 5105 (Quad core/4 threads; 2.0GHz, boost 3.3GHz)
• RAM: 8GB
• Internal disk: 128GB M.2 NVMe (2242)
• 4x2.5Gbit/s Intel i226-V ethernet ports
• USB: 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1; 1 x USB-C 3.2 Gen1
• TF: 1 x TF Card Reader (support booting)

It is way faster than it has any business being for only using 5 watts at idle. I have been using it as a test bench for all kinds of things, including trying out several desktops. I currently have it mounted under my laptop stand and I don’t even notice it is there.

This thing has easily replaced any Raspberry Pi projects that come up. Every time I tried a RPI project earlier this year I realized I could just make a quick VM on this iKoolCore. Essentially I can run what is equivalent to 4 RPI’s with this one box and use about the same amount of power. Or I can setup a RPI project and give it much more compute.

PC apps

Obsidian

I switched my notes application to Obsidian in the Spring and haven’t looked back. It does bother me that it is not open source top to bottom. But the most important feature is that it just uses plain markdown files. I use Nextcloud to keep my notes synced across my PC’s and FolderSync on Android (which actually just connects with WebDAV).

I know there are other options out there like Logseq and Joplin. Obsidian just works and does it really, really well. Lots of people hop notes applications frequently and I used to be that way. Now I use Obsidian and that’s the end of that.

Distrobox

I finally tried Distrobox about mid-summer and I love it. I know its a darling for people who use immutable systems, which I do not. Yet, I find myself reaching for Distrobox constantly to install new apps or configure an environment and keep my base install clean.

And I know I’m barely using what Distrobox is capable of doing. For example, I recently used it to test building a desktop version of Briar Mailbox. I didn’t want to install both Android Studio and Java on my desktop for this one test. I could setup a VM, but too much work. Instead I quickly setup an Ubuntu distrobox container, installed Java and the Android Studio snap, and built the Briar app from source. Once I was done I just removed the container and it was if nothing happened.

Debian 12

2023 was when I finally left *buntu-based distros for my desktop and switched to Debian 12 stable. Nothing against Ubuntu, it just wasn’t for me any more. My ideal system is something that is a super-solid, slow moving base, with container-based applications. Debian 12 plus distrobox, flatpak, and Docker is perfect for that setup.

In addition to Debian 12 I have configured everything with XFCE, except on machine. XFCE fills the same spot being a stable, slow moving DE. However, for laptops I have switched all of them to OpenBox and use Crunchbang++. It is a simple desktop that uses very little resources and is perfect for single screen setups. Multi-monitors still needs a full desktop environment (in my opinion). But the OpenBox implementation on Crunchbang++ is great for low resource laptops.

Mobile apps

Looking through my apps I realized I haven’t changed anything in a long time. I don’t play games on my phone and I don’t use social media (other than occasional Mastodon usage). I made a post earlier this year of everything on my phone. This was the only app that was new to me this year.

Briar

Briar is a P2P messaging app that can work offline via LAN only or bluetooth. It is actually an interesting app that I almost never use because I’ll never be able to convince friends and family to switch. Its always been something I keep in my back pocket in case a scenario ever arises.

This year my two youngest kids started occasionally using mobile devices. They mostly play some hand-selected games, watch videos I load onto the devices for them, and take goofy pictures. I wanted to be able to message them while I was out of the house and Briar was perfect. Its P2P, so no account registration and won’t have a database of all our messages. The kids love it and will message me and each other. It makes me feel good because we don’t give up any privacy and I can participate in their silly world.

Homelab

Tailscale

I know it is cliche at this point to mention “homelab” and “Tailscale”, but it really has changed how I operate my servers. There are other mesh VPN providers and you can even self-host Tailscale infrastructure, but using as-is is so easy.

I started taking Tailscale more seriously when Comcast started messing with port forwarding on my modem and made it so my Wireguard port was no longer open and available. Now it doesn’t matter and I have never once had issues connecting. I even wrote about using Tailscale to route traffic through my LAN, connect to PiHole, and use it for local DNS lookups.

Tailscale subnet routing with Pihole is homelab perfection

Searx-NG

This is literally brand new to me as I setup my own Searx-NG metasearch engine about a week ago. Yet it has been working great since and I love the results I’m getting.

Modern search sucks pond water through a soggy paper straw. Running Searx-NG is less about privacy and more about having a better search experience and, you know, actually being able to find stuff.

Using the Tailscale setup above I can access Searx remotely as well.

Kiwix & creating zims

For a couple years I’ve been running a Kiwix instance at home with only Wikipedia and a couple other zims from their library. I’m a digital prepper and I like having my own copy of Wikipedia around just in case.

For 2023 I took my Kiwix setup more seriously by downloading more from the Kiwix library and creating my own zims using zimit. Now I am creating my own archives of full websites and hosting them on LAN for the times I want to go offline. Obviously I’m a prepper, so that is a factor as well.

Throughout the year I’ve been doing weekends where I go “offline”, which is to say I disconnect from the public internet, but still have access to my LAN. Some times I need to disconnect from news and socials. These offline weekends are nice because I do stuff around the house and work on projects without distractions. Creating my own zims means I can archive a full website and host on my LAN for reference during these offline weekends. An example is I archived one of my favorite recipe websites.

StirlingPDF

Hands down this is the best Docker container I found this year. My wife and I both use StirlingPDF constantly, including just yesterday when I needed to submit a form to the state for our business.

I wrote up more thoughts about this tool earlier in the year here:

Using StirlingPDF for homeschooling and owning a business

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