Theme

Uses

The apps and other things I use most often

At home, I’m using a Jarvis Standing Desk with a Bamboo top and a Jarvis Dual Monitor Arm. I have an 27” Apple Studio Display and a 27” Dell UltraSharp U2723QE 4K monitor hooked up to a M4 Max Mac Studio with 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD through a CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock. I enjoy music through my Audioengine A2-HD speakers, and talk to people through my Audio-Technica ATR2100x microphone mounted on an InnoGear Boom Arm. I write on a Keychron K10 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard and click on a Logitech MX Master 3S mouse on top of the Ugmonk Leather Mousepad XL (sadly no longer made as far as I can tell). I also have a 15-key Elgato Stream Deck for automations.

Behind the Mac Studio, I have several external hard drives of varying sizes (for Time Machine, Plex, and additional manual backups) plugged into the CalDigit TS4. I also have a Pioneer Slim External Blu Ray Drive that I use for opening CDs, DVDs, and Blu Ray discs. I keep a Work/Play II notebook and a Panobook with a Mark One pen on hand for jotting down ideas and sketching concepts. I like to capture what needs to get done using Analog cards from Ugmonk. And I have an OLED Steam Deck for occasionally playing games that aren’t supported on Mac.

Other hardware

  • On the go and around the house, I alternate between a midnight blue M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and a 512MB 13" M4 iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil.
  • I have a 256GB Natural Titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max.
  • I use a pair of AirPods Pro 2 that travel with me almost everywhere outside the house.

Software

My main creative tools

  • Figma

    This has become my top tool for UI design, prototyping, and design collaboration. It’s the first design tool where properly sharing a design system feels possible and well-supported.

  • Nova

    Nova (from Panic) recently replaced my long-time development tool of choice (Coda, also from Panic). Panic sweats the details, and it shows throughout the app.

  • Obsidian

    After abandoning Ulysses and Bear, Obsidian is my current app for collecting notes, long-form writing, and jotting things down. I use Drafts for writing drafts and shorter pieces, though I need to dig in and learn more about all the extra things it can do.

Other creative tools

  • Sketch

    Sketch is still my preferred app for vector illustration and icon design, particularly for personal projects. I still prefer some aspects of how it organizes layers for creating more detailed art.

  • xScope

    xScope is like a handy Swiss Army knife for design, with tools for measuring, checking colors, looking at pixels up close, manipulating text, and even mirroring my screen to my iOS devices.

  • ImageOptim

    ImageOptim is how I compress every single image I post on the web anywhere. It’s super fast and easy — just drag and drop the images onto it and it compresses them.

  • GIPHY Capture

    GIPHY Capture is my preferred tool for recording simple screen interactions and animations, or just making funny gifs from videos. (I’m still trying to figure out what tool to replace Photoshop for editing gifs.)

  • Affinity Photo

    Affinity Photo is what I'm currently experimenting with as a Photoshop replacement since I cancelled my Adobe Creative Cloud account.

Productivity tools

  • Alfred

    Alfred opens my apps, finds my files, and runs quick calculations. It can do so much more, and one of these days I’m going to dive into the advanced features.

  • 1Password

    1Password stores nearly all of my passwords and a bunch of other sensitive data. I’ve started using it as my two-factor authentication tool of choice as well.

  • Fantastical

    Fantastical is a much better interface to my calendar than either the built-in Mac calendar OR Outlook. I also use this on my iPhone and iPad. Flexibits (the makers of Fantastical) also make a great app for managing and viewing contacts called Cardhop that’s quite lovely and nice, too.

  • Rocket

    Rocket is a better way to find and paste emoji than the built-in keyboard tool that has to be enabled from your system preferences. It works similarly to the emoji completion in Slack where you type a colon and the emoji name.

  • Mic Drop

    Mic Drop is the latest addition to my useful little tools. It's a handy way to mute and unmute my mic no matter what app I'm using.

On the web

  • Craft CMS is my CMS of choice for several sites including this one and UXcellence. I love how well it works for various kinds of content and how easy it is to build templates for it. I’d love to build more sites using Craft.
  • Digital Ocean hosts all of my sites. I have a couple different droplets hosting a whole bunch of different sites for myself, my wife, and various side projects.
  • Hover is my domain registrar of choice. They include privacy by default and have reasonable prices without a scammy checkout process.