What I Use

This page is inspired by Wes Bos’ uses.tech. It’s not an exhaustive list of every piece of hardware/software I use ever, but at least anything that I use daily/weekly.

MacBook Air 13" M4:

A relatively recent purchase, it’s been nice having something smaller that doesn’t add a load more weight to my bag when I travel.

Previously I really missed having a larger screen to work with when I was staying in hotels/travelling from place to place frequently, but the more I travelled (always with a chonky 15" Dell work laptop that I can’t leave behind) the more I realised that I was:

a) not enjoying lugging two laptops with a combined weight of somewhere between 4.5 - 5kg – especially when I’ve got hand luggage only and I’m usually flying back/forth at the start and end of each week b) usually working late (on the Dell) so the MacBook Pro 16" was essentially dead weight c) was only really ever doing one thing at a time (e.g. tinkering with the mainframe at home, writing something) which meant the large 16" screen wasn’t so necessary

When I’m home, it’s docked to a 27" Dell 4K monitor anyway, so it only took ~14 years to come full circle and be back on MacBook Airs like in my undergraduate years.

I’m not particularly impressed with macOS 26 Tahoe, so I’m sitting it out and staying on Sequoia until Apple fixes the mess that is Liquid Glass, or Sequoia stops receiving security updates. For now I’m hopeful that macOS 27 goes a fair way to remedying some of the issues that Tahoe had, and it looks promising so far.

Presently, Apple still allows you to use macOS entirely without needing to log into iCloud or create any kind of account. So long as that remains true, I’ll probably stick with macOS until I no longer can.

Google Pixel 9:

Currently I’m in the process of moving back to GrapheneOS as I’m thoroughly fed up of everything having AI in it, and realistically all I do with my phone is catch up on my RSS feeds, check my email, calendar, and reminders, and chat using Signal. All of which can be done without having to touch sandboxed Google Play services. A side effect of having multi-day battery life doesn’t hurt either.

Kindle (11th Gen):

I spend a lot of my time reading, and although I’m very much not a fan of Amazon’s general monopoly, it’s somewhat offset by paying ~£9.50 a month and being able to choose from a wide selection. Buying every single book a month would become quite costly rather quickly.

Eventually I’ll look to self-hosting some kind of solution, but for now I’m happy enough to live with it and make do.

Things that live in the cupboard

HP Elitedesk G3 - 1TB SSD/32GB RAM: Used for running an IBM Z/OS mainframe

Synology DS920+: Used for regular backups and self-hosting related things

Peripherals

Logitech MX Vertical:

A colleague at a previous company turned me onto these, and after 5 minutes I was sold - immediately buying one on my way home from work that day. This one lives on my desk at home and I’ve had it nearly 5 years. When it finally dies, I’ll buy another of the exact same, or consider something like a trackball if I’m feeling fancy. No notes, excellent mouse.

Logitech MX Keys Mini:

Purchased after I wanted something mechanical keyboard-esque without the clacking and thunking of an actual mechanical keyboard. It also has the added bonus of not pissing off my colleagues in the office or drowning myself out whilst talking and typing when in meetings. Again, no notes.

Software

The highlights…

Bitwarden - for passwords. 40 USD per year for a family vault is a steal. Depending on how things go with Bitwarden’s recent changes by their VC overlords, I may be searching for an alternative.

Firefox - as a standard browser. Would be good if they could focus on delivering consistent updates rather than meandering between random AI things, but I digress.

Microsoft Edge - for when something doesn’t work properly in Firefox + for a PWA of Microsoft To Do because the actual application is only distributed via the App Store.

Microsoft Teams - unfortunately still a requirement every now and then. Opened maybe once or twice a year, usually around conference time.

NetNewsWire - a great RSS open source RSS reader. Spend far too much time in it than I should.

Obsidian - for all notes/training/blog posts. Basically 70% of all writing I do happens here.

Petrichor - a simple native macOS offline music player. Particularly useful as I’ve gradually been getting through ripping old CDs or buying from Bandcamp et al.

Proton Drive/Mail/VPN - for storage/mail/vpn on all devices.

Scrivener - the other 30% of all writing happens here. This could be really long articles/whitepapers I’ve got in the works, or fiction.

Signal - for 95% of all messaging/calls.

Standard Notes - for now, my go to for straight forward note taking. Currently evaluating Joplin also as it offers shared notes which would be useful.

Sublime Text - For fiddling with my own site/any development.

Mocha TN3270 - for connecting to the mainframe in my kitchen…

Tailscale - used for accessing all homelab related things when I’m out of the house.

Tuta Mail - for other email (secondary to Proton). By the end of the year it’s likely I’ll have consolidated everything to Proton.