Blog · notes

Notes from the studio.

Occasional writing on building small, offline, privacy-first software - and the problems that turned into apps.

May 14, 2026 · 2 min read

Checking your PostHog analytics from your phone

PostHog is excellent in a browser and clumsy on a phone. Here is the case for a native PostHog mobile client you can glance at anywhere.

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May 11, 2026 · 2 min read

A private map of everywhere you have been

A travel tracker for the places you have been, that fills in a globe as you go and keeps your history entirely on your phone.

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May 7, 2026 · 2 min read

Turning your city into real-life quests

The hardest part of doing something fun is deciding what. Here is an app that hands you real-life adventures built from the places around you.

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May 4, 2026 · 2 min read

Setting goals you will actually remember

Most goals fade because the reason behind them fades. Here is a daily goal reminder app built around your "why."

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Apr 30, 2026 · 2 min read

Splitting trip expenses without the spreadsheet

One person always fronts the group trip. Here is how to split travel expenses and see who owes whom, from a single phone and fully offline.

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Apr 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Why I build small apps that do one thing

Feature lists sell apps and then slowly ruin them. The case for software that does one thing and gets out of your way.

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Apr 18, 2026 · 2 min read

Your data should stay on your phone

Privacy-first does not have to mean a settings maze. The simplest version is to never collect the data in the first place.

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Apr 16, 2026 · 2 min read

Why goals fade, and how to keep them

Most goals do not fail because you stopped caring. They fade because nothing keeps the reason in front of you. That is the whole problem Rizen solves.

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Apr 13, 2026 · 2 min read

The math of settling up

A week of group spending turns into a tangle of who-owes-whom. Ledgr reduces it to the fewest possible payments - here is what that means.

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Apr 10, 2026 · 2 min read

Making a tip tracker fit your job

A fine-dining server, a coffee barista, and a nightclub bartender do not track the same things. Custom positions and fields let one app fit all of them.

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Apr 7, 2026 · 2 min read

A passport that lives on your phone

Beyond the globe, Worldly keeps a dated passport of your visits with notes and photos - a private record of your life in travel.

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Apr 3, 2026 · 2 min read

Bring your own key, no backend

There is no HogWatch server, no proxy, and no account. Here is what "bring your own key" means for your data, and why it is the safer architecture.

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