I stumbled upon a blog post by Kenneth Reitz on his personal blog via Bubbles. The essay, titled Self-Hosting Adventures, is well-advertised by its headline. While my personal set-up does not have much in common with his, I appreciated the walk-through and a distinction he makes between tools one uses and tools one relies upon. The use/rely upon distinction has many applications. For example, I will suggest that people looking for writing and note-taking apps should look for tools to use, not tools to rely upon. A good tool to use saves data in portable, standard formats that can be opened with many tools. In that way, one’s writing, notes, or the like will never be tied to one tool or service or another.