Below are some things I use on the regular, along with some notes, listed in no particular order. I’ve tried to roughly categorize them and link out when appropriate.
Hardware
- 2020 13″ Macbook Air (M1): Finally a great refresh from Apple. 13″ Retina, great keyboard, runs Xcode smoothly, incredible battery life. Love it.
- iPhone 12 Pro: Upgraded this year to a good one. It’s a little big, but otherwise no gripes. Does exactly what I need it to.
- Apple Watch Series 3: Surprisingly, still using this thing. Got one half off due to a promotion with T-Mobile. My wife really wanted one, so I picked one up as well. Like it a lot more than I thought I would. Most useful for Fantastical, Now Playing, Drafts, Things, and Activity.
- Bose QuietComfort 35s: The true mark of technorati. A bit expensive, but they are by far the best-in-class noise-cancelling wireless headphones. For travel, for zone work, they’re amazing.
- Airpods: These for on-the-go listening.
- iPad Pro: I recently broke mine somehow, but absolutely love this thing. Used it for most things other than programming or designing.
- Collection of random cords & chargers: I’m always carrying a number of cords (USB-C to X, USB to Lightning, etc) and random power chargers.
Desktop Software
- Brave: Upgraded from Google Chrome, the necessary evil.
- Slack: Do you even tech?
- Linear: Use this for planning/tracking at Bunches.
- Fantastical: Pretty good, but gets a bit busy over time. It’s also a bit hard to manage invites…at least to me. Great for cross-time zone and Zoom call meetings.
- Notion: Evernote-killer. I have a space for Bunches and my personal stuff. Permanent brain dump and things like important-to-remember numbers, etc.
- Things: The best to-do tracker out there for me. Simple, lightweight, but robust enough to get the job done. Omnifocus is pretty great too, but a bit too complex for what I need. Todoist isn’t as seamless as I’d like.
- Drafts: One of the reasons I can’t leave the iOS ecosystem. Also love the desktop app. My go to mind dump, for sure. Items from here usually end up in either Things, Notion, or published.
- Sublime Text 3: Text editor of choice. I don’t believe it’s better or anything like that, but I do know it better. I’ve had my settings & extensions fairly static for years now and don’t plan on changing them anytime soon.
- Spotify: I’m a music nerd. I’ve a few public playlists. A few private ones. One that we bump in the office at Bunches. Check ’em out.
- Pocket Casts: Podcast listener of choice. Love the web-mobile sync.
- Excalidraw: Use this on web and via Electron. It’s fantastic, and lines up well with how I design (low-fidelity mocks, then move into hi-fi with code). Allows me to put pen to proverbial paper quicker than any other application out there.
- Figma: Design client of choice for Bunches.
- Spark: Email client of choice right now. Still miss Astro, but Spark is pretty good. Readdle makes great software. I use Outlook on iOS.
- iTerm 2: Terminal of choice, alongside zsh and the aforementioned dotfiles. I have it mapped to my Caps Lock key for easy access.
- Alfred 3: Productivity workhorse. I hate using a mouse or trackpad, and between this, Keyboard Maestro, and the built-in app shortcuts I have set for apps like Things, I rarely have to do so.
iPhone
The home screen should be pretty straightforward, but a couple of things:
- Home Row: Google Calendar app. Outlook for email. Things is my life. Holds my to-dos, along with things like a grocery list, a list of splurge items, and travel spots.
- Home Folder: This is where the apps that run my house live: ADT, Google Home, Google WiFi, WeMo, etc.
Other
- Maker Knife.
- Pilot G2-07 Pen / Sharpies
- Field Notes
- Baron Fig
- Comp Notebooks
- Action Method Notebook
- Various Fountain Pens
- Various Fountain Inks