Applications

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A laptop displaying colorful Excel charts and tables sits on a wooden desk next to a red coffee mug and reading glasses in a bright office setting.
This Excel feature makes beginners look like experts

You don’t need coding skills to improve spreadsheets—Excel's conditional formatting handles it with simple rules.

A screenshot of the Perplexity Comet browser side-by-side with the Google Chrome Browser with Google Search open on the Windows 11 Desktop.
I tried replacing Google Search with Perplexity Comet. There was a clear winner

I used Perplexity Comet instead of Google for a week. It made some searches easier, but not enough to keep me using it.

By 
Laptop screen showing a blank Excel workbook.
I stopped using the LET function—and my Excel sheets are better for it

Replacing LET formulas with helper columns made my Excel workbooks easier to audit, adapt, and troubleshoot.

Docker Compose file for Audiobookshelf open in the Portainer stack editor.
Docker Compose made my homelab 10 times easier to manage—here’s why

Docker Compose makes moving my homelab between systems trivial

A laptop computer displaying a blank Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with the expanded Find and Replace options window open on the screen.
You're not using Excel's search properly—and it's costing you time

Searching in Excel becomes far faster when you combine wildcards, filter boxes, advanced "find" settings, and text functions.

Jellyfin media server logo on a computer monitor
These 5 open-source apps do everything your paid subscriptions do, but better

I ditched paid apps for these 5 self-hosted alternatives and saved thousands

An Excel spreadsheet featuring active slicer panels and filtered data rows displayed on an ASUS Vivobook laptop screen.
Excel has a better way to filter data—but most people ignore it

Swapping traditional Excel filters for slicers creates a cleaner, more interactive workflow for dashboards, reports, and shared spreadsheets.

Satellite with a Wi-Fi symbol below it orbiting over Earth.
5 open-source projects that quietly hold together the world's internet

Often thankless, always needed. These are the projects that make the internet work as well as it does.

Laptop screen showing a task tracking Excel spreadsheet.
I ditched Notion for Excel, and my workflow stopped fighting me

Moving from Notion to Excel streamlined my tasks with tables, filters, and reliable offline access without constant maintenance.

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A mini PC with the Plex logo.
Proxmox solves Plex's biggest backup problem, but most people don't know it

Your Plex backups are protecting the wrong thing and Proxmox fixes the part that actually matters.

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Laptop showing a personal budget in Excel.
6 simple Excel automations you can do in under 5 minutes

Stop doing more than you have to in Excel—built-in tools can automate repetitive tasks instantly.

Laptop screen showing the Excel ribbon.
Excel's ribbon is a trap: Here's what beginners should focus on instead

Mastering a few high-impact tools like formatting and tables is the best way to get started in Excel.

Laptop screen displaying an Excel budget spreadsheet alongside a digital timer set for one hour.
4 useful Excel projects beginners can finish in under an hour

Learn how to use tables, formulas, data validation, and formatting to solve everyday organization problems quickly.

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Laptop screen with Excel's Insert tab open and the cursor hovering over the Table button.
This three-second Excel habit will make your spreadsheets run like clockwork

Most spreadsheet problems come from static cell ranges—Excel tables replace them with dynamic, self-managing data structures.

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Laptop screen showing the Excel ribbon.
4 game-changing Excel tools you won't find on the ribbon

Excel hides powerful reporting, formatting, auditing, and selection tools outside the ribbon.

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High angle view of the homelab NAS stack and mini PCs.
These 3 homelab apps are so good that I don't mind paying for them

There are times when paying for something you self-host makes sense.

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Davinci Resolve playing on a monitor
DaVinci Resolve is the Adobe Lightroom replacement I didn't know I needed

I ditched Lightroom for DaVinci Resolve, and the node-based workflow isn't going to stop me from coming back.

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A homelab shelf with a Ugreen NAS, mini PCs, a network switch, and rack servers.
I built a 100TB homelab, then realized the cloud was better for these 3 things

Why my homelab couldn't compete with the cloud (even with unlimited storage)

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Laptop showing an Excel table.
Named ranges in Excel are fine—but tables are what you should be using instead

Static range definitions require manual upkeep, while tables maintain structure, formulas, and formatting without lifting a finger.

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The Excel mobile app on Android.
5 ways your phone's Excel app is secretly better than the desktop version

Despite its reputation, Excel mobile speeds up data entry, captures tables through the camera, and streamlines touch-based editing.

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