- 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.
- Doppler
- File-based music player.
- Ivory
- My Mastodon client of choice for macOS and iOS.
- Overcast
- My podcast player of choice.
- Reeder
- RSS feed organizer and reader. I’m doing a lot more RSS these days.
- Transit
- Helps me stay on top of bus schedules in San Francisco.
- 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.