Uses
Updated July 5, 2025. I switched from Chrome to Firefox, and from iTerm to Ghostty.
- Computer: MacBook Air M2. With 24gb RAM, it's an odd combination – a beefy turbocharger on a Honda Civic. But it's a great computer, one of the best I've ever owned.
- Mouse: Humanscale Pro Click. It's a collaboration between Razer, which usually makes good hardware, and Humanscale, which lends the less flashy aesthetic. Only drawback is the USB-mini charging.
- Keyboard: Keychron K7. I've tried the weird keyboards but I still type fastest on the Mac layout. This is one of the few keyboards that's almost exactly the Mac layout - the "Command" key is in the right place.
- Headphones: Sony WH1000XM4. The noise-cancelling is fantastic. These just work - I wish they had the Apple chip that lets them quick-pair, but besides that, A+.
- Microphone: Elgato Wave 3. This, with the boom, is convenient and reliable. Big upgrade from the Blue Yeti I used previously.
- Monitor: The 24" LG UltraFine. Monitors are almost universally bad, but this one is fine, just expensive.
- Headphones for recording: Moondrop Quarks. I tried more expensive in-ear-monitors. Then tried less expensive ones and they were better. Finally, I tried these extremely cheap ones, and they were best of all. $13. They're perfect. Solidly built, lightweight, great sound quality, what more can you ask for.
- Editor: neovim with LazyVim. I can't quit it.
- Browser: Firefox. With vimium for keyboard navigation that I use 25% of the time.
- Terminal: Ghostty. It's missing a scroll bar and search, but otherwise super fast and nice.
- Reading: Feedbin for RSS, Instapaper for reading it later, Calibre for managing eBooks and Kindle syncing.
- Email: Fastmail (referral link). I love it. The UI, the company's style, the calendar interface, the integration with 1Password.
- Hosting: Netlify. This site uses Netlify, and it's pretty good.
Stuff I carry around every day
- A Hawbuck wallet. I still use cash, so no aluminum thingy or phone add-on in place of a wallet. It's not made of animals, lightweight, lasts a long time, not that expensive, a perfect wallet.
- Spurcycle carabiner. I have the older aluminum one that was cheaper. They only sell the titanium version now, but that's good too. Very secure and convenient, and has a bottle opener which is really effective and one of the most unintuitive devices I've ever found: zero people have used it correctly on the first try.
- A Garmin Forerunner 945. It's an expensive fancy running watch that I got for half off because I fell, got scraped up, and completely broke my last running watch. Those Brooklyn sidewalks are uneven. The watch's battery lasts a long time, it doesn't distract me, I don't have my phone notifications piped into it, I love it.
I have an old interview on usesthis, but this is more recently updated. Getting on usesthis was one of those highlights: the cool people are on that site. I'm also, somehow, on that site.
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