Things I Use

#Tech

Apple M2 MacBook Air from 2022: 24 GB of RAM, 2 TB of disk space. I love this computer. It takes the crown from my previous favorite: an 11" MacBook Air from 2012, a machine I still have and refuse to give away. It’s fast, powerful, and light, with a great display and peripherals.
Apple Studio Display: I was on the fence about a Cinema Display for a long time. I ordered and canceled three times. Ultimately I gave in, and I’m quite happy with it. It’s mounted on a VESA arm attached to my desktop.

Neovim: I’ve been a vim user since the early ’00s when I discovered Linux. Nowadays, if I’m writing a lot of code, it’s often in my second favorite editor, but I still find myself in vim quite often. I recently set up Neovim’s language server support and it’s honstly a game changer.
Visual Studio Code: I discovered VSCode a couple years ago. Honestly the number one thing that makes it usable for me is a really solid Vim emulation. It has a ton of nice features too that make it a great well-rounded development package.
Xcode: I spend a large portion of my engineering time in Xcode because of my work at Apple, and the basic fact that I’m a software developer who chooses Apple platforms. It has come a long way in the last few years. It also has a solid Vim emulation, and its autocomplete features are indispensible when you’re working with an API surface as vast as Apple’s.
Fork: A GUI client for git. I think Fork has totally changed how I use git. I still use the command line for many things, but working through diffs, staging changes, and even rebasing is so much easier in a GUI.

Terminal.app: macOS’s built in terminal emulator is solid. The only thing I miss from it now and then is “true color” support, and that’s only when I try to install a new color theme in Neovim and everything goes haywire.
Zsh: I’ve been using Zsh since before it was cool. My shell config is full of bespoke tweaks, including a prompt theme I’m rather proud of.

Digital Ocean: DO has hosted my VPS for a number of years. I moved there from Linode because I wanted to run FreeBSD on my server.
FreeBSD: My server OS of choice. It’s secure, simple, and resilient, and I appreciate the less-encumbered BSD license.
FastMail: I’ve used FastMail for years now as my email host. Their annual fees are quite modest and they have a great feature set including a Sieve email filter editor, and Masked Email for genearating ad hoc email addresses. I’ve never had a problem with uptime, and the few times I’ve contacted support, they’ve been helpful.
Hugo: This whole website is built with Hugo.

Logic Pro: Apple’s DAW is full of features and plugins (far more than I could ever use) and it’s hard to beat the corporate discount, much as I also love Ableton.
Shure SM7B: The SM7 is an iconic mic, and has been the go-to for voice actors, podcasters, and musicians for 50 years. The excellent podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz did a great deep dive episode on its history and place in the audio industry. I have one on my desk at home, and it makes me sound great on work video calls, and the occasional audio recording.
Moog Matriarch: I’m a bit of a Moog fangirl, and this might be my favorite of their synths. It’s just hard to beat the sound of a Moog.
Kawaii CA-65: I’ve been playing piano since I was seven years old. A digital piano is perfect for the small apartments I’ve called home. This one has a fantastic realistic action and it sounds great.

Baratza Encore: It’s affordable and does a pretty good job.
Kalita Wave: The Kalita is probably the easist single serve pour over dripper I’ve used.
Chemex: If I’m making coffee for more than just me, the Chemex is the biggest pour over vessel I have. Makes yummy coffee too.

Nintendo Switch: Most of my gaming happens here. I play a lot of Mario Kart online with friends, and I’m a big fan of both of the major Legend of Zelda titles that have come out for it: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
PlayStation 5: I also have a PS5. I’ve played a ton of Horizon: Zero Dawn and the new Final Fantasy 7 games.
Analogue Pocket: When I want to play my stock of Game Boy games, this thing is great.