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Uses

Posted on Mar 29 2024

Table of Contents

This page lists the tools (both physical and otherwise) that I use to do my job as a software developer along with some thoughts on them.

While this page is likely to be out of date when you’re reading it, since I am usually trying a few small changes here and there at any given point to try and improve things, I try to update it regularly. You can follow those updates by looking at the history of the source code for this page specifically.

For other pages like this from other folks, check out this repository: https://github.com/wesbos/awesome-uses

I’ll go through a theoretical “day in the life” of myself working. Mostly to help me remember all the stuff involved, but also as a means of storytelling and being imformative. I normally don’t drop brand names, but since that’s kind of the point here, I will be doing a lot of name dropping. No links to products for simplicity, but everything listed here should be searchable. If not, let me know! I’ll try to link to anything free, though, such as software.

I’ll break stuff up by topic as things come up so you can skip things that are not interesting to you. There is also a Table of Contents at the top to help you navigate.

I also think that in general sharing this much information about yourself isn’t the best idea. However, since I’m confident the bots can’t know much more about me that they already do and this will really only mostly be useful to my fellow human beings, I think it’s worth sharing. I hope you discover some cool new stuff! Better yet, I hope you recommend me better stuff! I’m always wanting to try new tools and discover something new that’s good at something.

Regarding the configuration of my machines and the software referenced below, please refer to my Nix repo! It may also be useful to look through my old dotfiles repo.

Good morning!

I wake up when my kids do out of a Purple mattress. I slip on my PineTime wrist watch, grab my flashlight, Android smartphone and backpack, put on my prescription glasses, and usually make some tea.

Mattress: Purple King Size

Sleep is real important, so get a good mattress! Of course, “good” here is highly subjective, so you will want to do your own research. We usually have a kid or two join my wife and I in the mattress, so we went with a king size to account for this. Fantastic decision!

Smart Watch: PineTime

I love my PineTime! It serves as a good flashlight in the pitch black of a baby’s room and can tell the time. That alone is good enough. However, it can also vibrate when I get notifications on my phone if I want, which I do use on occasion. The price is also unbeatable at 25USD and the InfiniTime firmware keeps improving! I get about two weeks of battery with light use and bluetooth off. I get about 5 days if I’ve got notifications on full blast, but they recently improved the firmware and claim this may now be more than double!

Flashlight: Emisar DW4

I have a phone with a flashlight. And even my watch can be enough of a flashlight to navigate in pitch black, but I’ve taken to carrying an actual flashlight. Specifically, an Emisar DW4. It has a magnetic tailcap so it can attach near or directly to many work surfaces. It can get hilariously bright or dim enough to be suitable for use around sleeping family members in the dark.

And it has fun RGB LEDs that can flash, show you the battery level, and just look cool. It’s not a game-changer, but at times it is incredibly convenient to have on hand.

Smart Phone: ASUS Zenfone 10

I’ve enjoyed ASUS’s phones and have previously used the ROG Phone 5S. I bought this since it maintained most of the important features of the ROG Phone while being cheaper and my old ROG Phone started having bluetooth and phone call issues. To be fair, I bought the international Chinese version off ebay to try and save a buck.

The Zenfone 10 does everything I need. Lots of battery life, nice display for reading on, good speakers, blah blah blah. Phone’s get less interesting all the time and most of them are good enough these days.

I hope a real Linux phone comes around!

Android-Specific Software & Applications

Since I’m discussing my phone, I’ll go over phone-specific apps (and some common with my laptops/desktops) now in no particular order. I have no idea if any of these have iOS equivalents, but here ya go.