Stuff and things I own and use!
No personal site is complete without a Uses page. Here's my collection in its raw glory.
Workstation
16-inch MacBook Pro (2023), M2 Pro, 16GB RAM
I've been a proud Mac user since 2011, starting with my Early-2011 15-inch MacBook Pro that I (my parents) bought for college. After graudating from college, I treated myself (with my own money this time!) to a new Mid-2015 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which lasted me 8 years, despite showing its age for most of the last 3. Last year I finally decided to upgrade to Apple Silicon, and I am extremely impressed so far. Hopefully this one will last me at least another 8 years...
LG 32UL500-W (32-inch, 4k) x2
To be honest, I didn't really put much thought into this decision, I just wanted to finally hop on the 4k train and found these on Amazon. They've worked fine for the ~2 years I've had them, despite some color issues. At some point if I find myself with some extra cash I might get some Apple displays, but it's been hard to justify the expense.
Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad
Until recently I thought that to be "legit" I needed a fancy clickety-clacking mechanical keyboard, but I never had an issue with the keyboard on my MacBook. I heard stirrings of positivity from people that used the wireless version, so I decided to take it for a spin. I find that I spend significantly less time and energy thinking about my keyboard (except when the battery dies). If you have a workspace that you sometimes connect to your MacBook, I highly recommend this keyboard.
Apple Magic Trackpad
Similarly to the keyboard, I've always loved the trackpad on MacBooks. When I got the keyboard, I decided to just get the trackpad too. I went from occasional wrist discomfort with the mouse I used to use, to exactly zero discomfort with the trackpad. The only minus is that it kinda sucks for gaming, so I still have a generic wired mouse that I use when needed.
UPLIFT Curved Corner Standing Desk
This is my luxury pick. I absolutely love this desk. I could probably use it in standing mode more often, but it's nice to have the option. The biggest plus is the sheer size of this desk. I have so much more room for the endless piles of mail that I never want to go through.
Development tools
Visual Studio Code
Like many other developers, around 2016 I put away my Visual Studio and IntelliJ, skeptically picked up this VS Code thing that everyone was going on about, fell in love, and never went back. Occasionally I run into issues, but it's still by far the smoothest development experience I've ever had, and it'll take a lot to get me to switch to something else.
Warp (sometimes)
For a long time I was a native macOS terminal user, then an iTerm2 user. I've gained a lot of comfort in the command line since my wide-eyed high school self first opened a terminal, but I've still always hated the general UX of it. I've been using Warp for a bit now, and it makes me hate the command line a bit less, which is actually some pretty glowing praise. There are a lot of features in Warp that I'm vaguely aware of but never use, and learning about them has been hovering somewhere pretty low on my list of priorities for a while, so maybe one day I'll get there. Having said all that, 95% of the time I just use the embedded terminal in VS Code because I can't be bothered to switch windows...
Obsidian
For years my "second brain" was always just ad hoc markdown files that I opened in projects which always ended up being deleted or forgotten. When I first heard of Obsidian, this seemed like the perfect place for this sort of thing, and it's fit the bill pretty well so far. Like Warp, I could probably learn how to use it more productively, but it's nice to have in the background when I need it.