2026 Mid-Year Update

Published on by Spencer Cloud.

It's been a while. We're all busy. Here's an update.

Unsubscribing

I stopped using WP Offload Media for the few sites I have left on WordPress. Even just $40 / year wasn't worth the cost for sites that receive 10 or 20 visitors per month.

My yearly charge for Zoho Mail came close to renewing. With the benefit of time and research this year, I switched to Proton. They provide a better user experience, and they supposedly protect your privacy better, but I'm not without my concerns. I subscribed to the monthly plan so that if and when I move email hosts again, it won't be such a big deal. Also, moving the entirely of my email archive intimidates me less now that I've done it twice within a year.

I "unsubscribed" from the Chase Sapphire Reserve card since they raised their fee to an absurd $795 / year. They "added value" to the membership, but you need to devote a part-time job's worth of time and attention to what amounts to coupon clipping to make it valuable. Living in New York and traveling like I do, I could actually get value from this, but I don't like the adversarial nature of it all, and want to spend my time doing other things, so I downgraded when the time came.

And finally, I unsubscribed from TurboTax. As usual, I waited until April 15th to start my taxes. When I opened TurboTax, I was not surprised to see their fee rise again.[1] Maybe I'm not giving it the full nuance and respect that this deserves, but for 99% of people, TurboTax is a glorified calculator app and should not cost what it costs.

I researched some alternatives and discovered FreeTaxUSA. Not only were they superior in every way, but much cheaper. As their name implies, it's "free", at least for federal taxes. State taxes cost, but only $16 per state. Don't be complacent. If a company is ripping you off and charging more money for the same or worse service year over year, switch! You'd be surprised at how easy it is.[2]

De-Googling with US Mobile

I knew I would someday leave Google Fi, but I did it much sooner than expected. In shutting down my Google Workspace account, I couldn't easily transfer Fi to my personal Google account. It would have involved shutting down the Fi account, having my friends re-invite me to their group account, and rejoining as a new user. It doesn't sound super complicated, but it's Google, so who knows what could have gone wrong with their track record of support? I didn't feel like risking this with my phone service.

I discovered this Cell Phone Plan Comparison Chart a while ago and kept in my back pocket[3] for when I might switch. I doubted that I would find a plan that competes with Google Fi on international coverage, but with some filter magic, I found that US Mobile offers more-or-less the same service at a much cheaper cost.

US Mobile's service situation is a little weird to grasp, as they use the big 3 mobile providers' networks as their backbone. You need to choose either AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile but through US Mobile. Once you join, you can switch at any time for a small fee, or sometimes for free. Also, they don't call the services by their actual name. Instead:

I chose Light Speed / T-Mobile since, according to forums, it has a slight advantage in big cities, but actual service among these companies is interchangeable in most of the country 99% of the time.

Internationally, you need to consult their list of countries covered by which plan and switch before you go. It's more work than with Google Fi, but it's worth it to me.

US Mobile may not be the best company out there, but I have more flexibility now than with Google, and, having paid for a year in advance,[4] I won't see any surprise fees on a monthly bill.

Travel

Miami / Spirit Eulogy

In January I visited Miami for a long weekend. This coincided with the big snow storm that covered the entirety of the US except for the tip of Florida. It was another trip where I stayed in an RV next to the house. If you have a house with a yard, somewhat of a budget, and like to host, you should get an RV just for this, even if you don't camp. If your city shoots itself in the foot and doesn't allow ADUs, this could be a way around it.[5]

This was the last time I flew Spirit. I always avoided them unless they were at least $100 cheaper than the next non-Frontier ticket. Flying Spirit often meant spending more anyway, like buying more on food at the airport without even a snack on the plane, or spending more for a taxi with their weird terminal locations and flight times.

Despite this, I miss Spirit and want them back. It was a good fallback option when other airlines were too expensive, and we benefit from more competition in this space, not less.

It might turn into a cooperative, customer-owned airline. I doubt that will succeed, but I like the ambition.

And finally, Spirit tested my onebagging skills more than anyone else. On this final trip, I packed less than ever despite including 2 laptops, and my bag still qualified as a personal item.

Denver

As usual, I visited family in Colorado. I now have a nephew and my niece is remembering who I am. Also, my parents built a pool.

I attended the Outside Days Festival with some friends from college. We saw Death Cab for Cutie, The Flaming Lips, Tash Sultana, and Cage the Elephant in the span of 3 days. The downside to attending these festivals is that I don't know what to do with all the tote bags. If you know an enthusiastic tote bag collector, get me in touch.

Actual Travel?

I haven't visited anywhere truly unfamiliar since December's roadtrip through the south. For me, this is a long time without visiting somewhere new and different, and that roadtrip wasn't even international. I'm not complaining as travel is a privilege and that fact isn't lost on me. I'm just saying that not going on an international trip for more than a year is unusual for me.

Maybe I'll finally see Japan. Maybe I'll visit Central Asia before tourism overwhelms the region. Or maybe I'll go see the next total solar eclipse in... less than a month, but probably not. These eclipses really sneak up on you.

Self-Hosting

I set up Immich way earlier than I expected. Because of me, my family's 2TB iCloud storage filled up with 50% of it being just my photos and videos. Instead of paying Apple more and graduating to the next tier of storage,[6] I prioritized Immich on my project list and began moving the largest videos over first.

Apple makes it so easy to upload to iCloud and so hard to transfer away. I hate how they don't actually show you what's happening behind the scenes in the name of "user experience". They say that "it just works," except this has rarely been true in the last 5 to 7-ish years. Photos pretends like iCloud downloads are instant and they refuse to show progress bars almost anywhere. Also, you have no real control over what is downloaded and what stays downloaded. It makes transferring your photos away from their servers painful.

If you want to search by media storage size, filter by date, or do anything more than search by the faces of your pets and loved ones,[7] you're out of luck.[8] Your media isn't really yours when you use iCloud.

However, they make it entirely frictionless to upgrade to the next iCloud storage tier.

I haven't fully transferred over yet, but Immich already provides a much better interface. If and when the day comes where I want to leave Immich, that's also much easier. My media will exist entirely on a physical hard drive that I own (backed up with a 3-2-1 system), and no one can access my media except for me (assuming I've set up all my security correctly...).

This is delaying some other self-hosting projects, but I'm not mad. I'm excited to fully use Immich once this is 100% set up.

I'm making these self-hosted projects available to me outside of my home network, so I'm building my own cloud. Is this nominative determinism?

Tech Projects

Inflation Calculator

I published my Inflation Calculator. It's meant to be simple, mobile-friendly, and fast. Built with vanilla HTML and minimal JavaScript.

Right now, the data only goes up to December 2025, the month I launched it... I could update this each month, but instead of self-inflicted torture, I'd rather figure out a set-and-forget auto-update process when inspiration strikes.

Vid2Gif

I also published a Video-to-Gif converter.

Similar to the inflation calculator, I built this as simply as possible, this time with Svelte instead of vanilla HTML and JavaScript. I wanted to try it out, and it was a success.

It uses ffmpeg.wasm as the conversion library, which means the whole process happens locally, i.e. when you use this, you are not uploading your video anywhere. The only "upload" is to your own browser, so this is entirely private. The fact that my server doesn't strain itself in handling the upload, conversion, and returning for download is a bonus.

You can test this by loading the page, turning off your Internet connection, and going through the conversion process and seeing that it still works.[9]

Docker

I Dockerized / containerized my web server setup. This means that if my server goes down and I'm not home to fix the issue, it's simple to get things up-and-running on a separate server somewhere else.

The Docker config currently has Nginx (web server), Inadyn (ensuring URLs point to the server if and when my Internet Service Provider changes my home IP), and Immich (self-hosted images and videos). It did have Hitch (encrypted traffic / SSL certificate unwrapping) and Varnish (webpage caching), which I removed for Immich troubleshooting, which ended up being unnecessary, and now my websites run a little slower, so I'll likely add them back soon.

YouTube

Despite de-Googling, I posted some impersonal content to YouTube. Assuming I continue, it will mostly be driving time lapses or time lapse[10] videos of landing at different airports, and the occasional "walking around some tourist destination", which is an entire genre. As soon as this stresses me out or feels like an obligation, I'll stop.

Others

I started some other projects, though I've put them on the backburner while I finish up with Immich.

Apartment

My knife strip fell off the wall again after attaching it with so much industrial 3M tape. I bought a different knife block with a base that takes up valuable counter space. This is the end of this saga. I don't want to talk about it.

Keeping with a modern, yet subtle art deco home decor approach, I replace my wall lamps with some sconces.[11] These lamps...

Philips Hue lights being turned on and off and dimmed with a portable smart button

...are now replaced with...

Lamps replaced with art deco-style Tiffany glass sconces, mirror replaced with map of the world

...these Tiffany glass sconces.

I moved the mirror to a place that works better, and I'll fix the wires.

I bought multiple rugs for surprisingly fair costs on rugsusa.com.

Living area rug, slightly underneath the couch

Bathroom rug, blue on top of tile

I printed some of my favorite pictures that I've taken and framed them using my mom's bevel cutter from her scrapbooking days.

Framed pictures in a variety of frames, stacked and leaning against a freezer

I'll hang them soon, but I'm procrastinating because I hate my walls.

Social Life & NYC

I've swing danced more consistently in 2026 than any year since 2014. I'm attending actual classes again to upskill rather than going to socials to just practice everything I already know. In other words, I'm taking advantage of the fact that I live in New York, which is easy to forget.

This also means attending plays, like

I also joined the Internations group. A roommate's friend suggested that I join in 2022, shortly before I left the city for a year and a half. I technically joined by creating an account on the site, but never attended an event until February of this year. Everyone there is generally friendly, and I enjoy everyone's international stories of where they're from and how they ended up here.

Sportsball

I attended watch parties for both of the Knicks' last games and victories. On June 10th at halftime, they were losing by a historic[12] margin, and we joked that this was how the movie would play out:

Lose all hope for a win by halftime, then the coach or whoever makes a rousing speech in the locker room. The inspired team then plays much better and quickly closes the lead, but not until the clock has almost run out. The game winning point is a literal buzzer beater.

As far as we're concerned, we manifested this win for the Knicks.

And of course, there is also the World Cup. It's an exciting summer in New York sports-wise, even for someone who barely pays attention most of the time.

Right now[13] you don't need to look up scores to know who won a match in New York / New Jersey. Just look at the positive or defeated energy of whoever is wearing which jersey.

Capitalism

To fill the empty void in my soul, I sometimes buy products. Every once in a while I like what I bought.

I bought some Shokz™ OpenRun™ Bone Conduction™ Open-Ear™ Headphones™. I may write more in-depth about them later, but the verdict is that they're great, but they're also terrible.

I got a trombone stand to proudly display the trombone I don't play anymore alongside a metronome I never use.[14]

And I bought a safety razor. I've been curious about "safety razor culture", which is a thing that exists. It shaves closer and more smoothly than a cartridge razor. Apparently people like taking these for travel, where they remove the blades and only take the razor part of it then buy cheap blades at the destination.

Shorter Posts

I initially wrote about twice as much content for this post. If I kept it as it was, I would likely publish this in 2028. I separated the longer sections into drafts to maybe publish on their own later as more specific topics.

I feel like I'm jinxing myself by even writing this, so I'll end it here.

  1. I can't get the free version since I need to do taxes for my LLC, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who can get the free version are tricked into paying from all the dark patterns on the site. Fuck Intuit. ↩︎

  2. On the topic of taxes, I got the biggest refund I've ever gotten in my life, mostly due to 2025 being my first full year of homeownership. Our tax system is so unfairly biased towards homeownership, and we need Georgism yesterday. Also, people need to learn about Georgism. ↩︎

  3. saved in a note in Obsidian ↩︎

  4. This year in advance costs less than 3 months of Google Fi. ↩︎

  5. not legal advice ↩︎

  6. to then likely upgrade again in about a year... ↩︎

  7. Technically speaking, this is so backwards from what is easy versus what is hard to implement. ↩︎

  8. Unless you want to use a sketchy, 3rd-party application and let them access your photos... ↩︎

  9. You could also observe through the network panel in the browser if you're more technically inclined. ↩︎

  10. More accurately, these are hyperlapses if the camera is moving. ↩︎

  11. The word sconce is too close to the word scone, and I've accidentally called them scones more than once. ↩︎

  12. We all need to stop pretending that "an historic" is correct. In modern English, historic is pronounced starting with a consontant "h". ↩︎

  13. I wrote this sentence a few weeks before publication. ↩︎

  14. I plan on playing again soon, but I need to make an appointment with a trombone repair shop to get the whole thing cleaned and the slide straightened. ↩︎