Uses

Here are most of the computing tools that I use for work, play, and everything in between. Thanks to Tom MacWright for a model to follow.

I tend to buy refurbished instead of new and to wait a bit after release to let the dust settle on new products. Both of my main computers and both of my displays were bought this way. I’m usually a version behind on Apple operating systems (currently: Sequoia).

Last updated on August 4, 2026.

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• Computers: In the past year, I’ve made moves to spend a lot more time on Linux instead of just the Mac as my main development & work platform, and as a result I’ve been using more computers on a regular basis in general. It’s a little ridiculous, but everything seems to have its place.

  • Apple Mac mini M4 Pro (24GB RAM) running macOS

    Main desk development machine when working on hardware or other sprawling projects or wanting a lot of screen real estate.

  • Apple MacBook Pro M1 Pro 14" (16GB RAM) dual-booting macOS & Asahi Linux

    Main on-the-go machine for all-around tasks.

  • Dell Latitude 5430 14" (16GB RAM) running Linux Mint

    Using this more and more for all-around non-Swift programming and at my electronics workbench. My only real complaint is the keyboard is… fine.

  • Apple Mac mini M1 (16GB RAM) running Asahi Linux

    Main homelab server running a number of traditional and Docker services as well as a desktop environment for Linux at my desk.

  • Apple MacBook Air 11" (8GB RAM) running Linux Mint

    Lightweight machine for writing, reading, and light programming, often when lying down.

• Keyboard: I finally settled on a desktop mechanical keyboard after about a year of experimentation. I discovered that I didn’t want full-size, couldn’t do a 75% layout and needed 80%/TKL, couldn’t type at length anymore on regular-profile keycaps, and found my bliss with clicky blue switches. So now I’ve got a Keychron K1 Pro low-profile with blue switches, as well as an earlier-purchased K5 Pro full-size waiting in the wings. The process was overwhelming, tedious, and expensive, but I’m happy with the eventual result.

• Mouse: Logitech M550 L wireless mouse. Recently switched from a basic wired M100. It’s pretty pedestrian but it gets the job done. More importantly, it’s large enough for my hand. I bind a click of the mouse wheel to switch between my two desktop monitors instantly.

• Headphones: Apple AirPods 3. Just perfect. Amazing product.

• Monitors: Philips PHL 329P1 (32") and Dell U2720Q (27"). I’m a pretty recent convert to the two monitor club and… I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier. I first used AeroSpace to manage virtual desktops and monitors for a long while, then switched to a more Niri-like window manager called OmniWM which was great and all, but was on a real frenzy of development, both human and LLM, and was a little hard to keep up with and not have to mess with some broken thing every week. Just a bit ago I switched to a more streamlined and stable fork of it, Nehir, and am appreciating just using software again. 😅

• KVM Switch: I use a TESmart HDC202-P23 to juggle my two Mac minis at my desk. It allows me to put one or both computers on one or both monitors in various combinations. It wasn’t cheap, but it’s got a great feature set.

• Phone: I’ve used an iPhone since The Beginning™, typically the smallest available (currently a 13 mini) but in the past year acquired a Unihertz Jelly Star Android phone which is even smaller! 😍 I’m new to Android and not developing for it yet, but trying to switch my user-land life over.

• Editor: Visual Studio Code with Vim bindings. I’ve made it very lightweight and the plugin ecosystem is fantastic for embedded development tooling like hardware flashing and debugging. I’m trying to use Neovim more but don’t like it as much (yet) for opening a whole project with many files and navigating between them.

• Shell: Bash since 1995 or so. I’m experimenting with more modern shells including Elvish and schemesh for some higher-level features but they aren’t sticking just yet.

• Browser: Apple Safari on all the Apple stuff since 2003, and Firefox in the past year on all devices.

• Reading: Lots of browser tabs, mostly driven by NetNewsWire since 2002, but I put PDFs on my iPad with the excellent PDF Viewer for longer-form reading. I save stuff for posterity (including fetched copies) and for my public links with Pinboard, though I’m currently exploring Micro.blog for this. I’ve also started using NewsFlash on Linux, and as a result, host a FreshRSS instance to do cross-platform syncing.

• Organizing: I’ve recently moved to TickTick to get syncing across all Apple, Linux, and Android platforms. I like it a lot! Especially the Pomodoro timer. I left OmniFocus after decades since they weren’t cross-platform enough. I like Muse for thinking (Apple only, alas), and I’m fully in the swing of using Obsidian (with about 200 pages right now) for fleshing things out and for remembering.

• 3D Printing: Lulzbot Mini 2 bought in 2018. My first and only (to date) 3D printer. It’s solid and does a huge variety of filaments.

• 2D Printing: Lexmark E240 B&W laser. Bought overstock new in box for $50 in 2006 and still works great. I go to a print shop for the occasional project that needs color.

• Website: Hugo and rsync.

• Hosting: Pair Networks since 2001.

• Email: Also on Pair since 2001 and read with Apple Mail or Thunderbird.

• Glue tools: Software that I like that gives me superpowers or ties workflows together. Some of my favorites are Nehir, SketchyBar, Hammerspoon, LaunchBar, SwiftBar, Moom, Tailscale, and Syncthing.