Uses

I regularly get messages asking about which tools I use to work.

Nobody has asked me what I use. Ever. But here’s a list of my daily drivers and necessities anyways, mostly revolving around my Apple sheepy-ness. Inspired by many, many others. ❤️

🚘  Daily Drivers

• MacBook Pro (14-inch)
  • Apple M3 Pro (12‑core CPU, 18‑core GPU) 🏎️💨
  • 36 GB RAM
  • 1 TB SSD
  • Space Black 🖤
• iPhone 15 Pro
  • 512 GB in Natural Titanium
  • Anker MagGo Matte case (surprisingly nice!)
• iPad Pro 10.5”
  • 256 GB in Space Gray
  • Smart Keyboard & Apple Pencil
• Apple Watch Series 9 (Cellular + GPS)
  • Aluminum – Midnight
  • 41mm (I have incredibly small wrists.)
  • Usually with the Midnight Blue sport band, 🏳️‍🌈 Pride Edition woven nylon band, or employee 🏋️ Close Your Rings Challenge woven nylon band.

🧪  Homelab

• UniFi Dream Machine SE, plus:
  • Switch Enterprise 8 PoE
  • 2x U7 Pro access points
  • 2x Switch Flex Mini 2.5G
  • UCI modem (It’s Comcastic!™)
• Synology DiskStation DS224+
  • 2x recertified 16TB WD Ultrastar drives
  • Plex (installed as a package via syno.plexupdate for hardware encoding)
• 2x Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro mini PCs
  • Both are running Proxmox VE with various VMs and LXC containers spread between the two, including:
    • Home Assistant
    • Homebridge
    • Scrypted
    • Homepage
    • Gitea
    • Immich
    • Sonarr, Radarr, Bazarr, Prowlarr
    • qBittorrent (web client)
    • Tautulli
    • Traefik
    • Authelia
  • Full post with more details coming soon!

💾  Development

• iTerm 2
  • My various ZSH aliases and functions are in my .dotfiles repository.
  • Oh My ZSH
    • zsh-autosuggestions
    • zsh-syntax-highlighting
• Visual Studio Code
  • All of my settings.
  • Themes:
    • GitHub Dark theme
    • Material Icon theme
    • SF Mono font
  • Extensions:
    • EditorConfig
    • ESLint
    • GitHub Pull Requests
    • Import Cost
    • MDX
    • Prettier
    • Stylelint
• Homebrew
  • View my messy Brewfile dump with all of my installed packages.
• Xcode
• Docker Desktop
• Parallels Desktop Pro
  • Switched from VMware Fusion when Parallels beat them to the punch with M1 support.
• Sketch
• Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Still on the $20/month Student Plan, somehow. 🤫 Will need to re-evaulate once I’m kicked off; it’s hard to justify spending almost 3x that…
• Transmit
• Sequel Pro → TablePlus
• Robo 3T → TablePlus
• ImageOptim
• Sip
• Local for WordPress development.

🌎  Browsing

• Firefox 🦊
  • My default user.js settings.
  • Extensions:
    • 1Password
    • Dark Reader
    • React Developer Tools
    • OctoLinker
    • Privacy Badger
    • Raindrop.io
    • uBlock Origin

💻  macOS

• 1Password
• Little Snitch
• iStat Menus
• Backblaze (referral link)
• Raindrop.io
• MacUpdater
• AppCleaner
• GPG Suite
• VLC → IINA
• Transmission
• Amphetamine
• TG Pro
• Keka

📱  iOS

I have far too many apps to count, but here the essentials that have earned a spot on my home screen:

• 1Password (beta)
• Waze (beta)
• Pocket Casts
• Raindrop.io
• Plex (beta)
• Discord
• UniFi and WiFiman

☁️  Cloud

I’ve been making recent efforts to de-Google my life, with mixed results…

• Gmail → Fastmail (referral link) & Mail.app
• Google Drive → Dropbox → iCloud Drive
  • Read why.
• Google Docs → Microsoft Office (hey, it works 🤷)
• Google Photos → iCloud Photos and Immich
• Google Analytics → Fathom Analytics (referral link)
• Google Public DNS → Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 on my home network.
• GoDaddy → Google Domains → Cloudflare Registrar (and ISNIC for this domain, of course 🇮🇸)

Other geeky stuff:

• Vercel and Netlify for “serverless” sites.
• DigitalOcean (referral link) and Linode (referral link) for virtual Linux servers.
• DNSimple (referral link) and Cloudflare for domain DNS.
• Backblaze (referral link) for off-site Mac backups.
• Gitea as a self-hosted Git backup/mirror.
• Tailscale to access my home network and VPSes from anywhere.

🏠  Internet of Things Crap

• Philips Hue color bulbs, dimmer switches, etc.
• 2x ecobee3 lite
• 2x Sonos One (with Alexa turned off…hopefully? 🤫)
• 2x Apple TV 4K (2021)