I love reading about the tools people use, but I also try not to fetishise gear. It’s a tough balance, but I think I’ve found it! At least in this moment. Over time, I’ve learned what works for me. I’ve designed my setup to be light, portable, and joyful.

For context: I use these to write, design, make lil’ websites, edit photos, and draw. The things below make it all fun to do.

The desk

• Desky standing desk, 100cm
  • They’re the only local company making standing desks at this size, and it’s rock solid. I work standing most of the time; it helps diffuse any energy that I’ve learned gets pent up when sitting down.

Desk lovelies

• Ikea Ranarp work lamp
  • There’s just something about a nice lamp late at night that gives me a mellow, buzzing energy. A tad large, but more than worth the space.
• Lego flower bouquet
  • The loveliest use of Lego there could ever be. I can’t imagine them topping this.
• A drawing my daughter made
  • Best thing in here. She even switches it up now and then, like a subscription! I’m grateful for it, every time. Maybe me and my wife should add something of ours, too.

I may not always be at this desk, but when I am, I’m in the zone. I want to work here more than anyplace else.

Hardware

• M2 Macbook Air, Jupiter
  • Almost perfectly invisible. The wallpaper is a frame from The Red Turtle. Lovely film.
• iPad Mini (2024), Saturn
  • For reading, games, editing photos, and drawing. Sometimes a second screen. The most sincere form of the iPad.
• iPhone 15 Pro, Mercury
  • My camera, chosen specifically because it’s the last one with the 3× tele lens. I get far more mileage out of ~80mm than ~120mm. It’s a phone too, I guess.

What a time we’re living in. This is so much computer within reach. Until we can directly translate thought into digital output, I’m good.

Accessories

• Nexstand K2
  • I find I don’t make use of monitors too well; I can’t stand the eye travel. I need the one thing I’m doing to be fully visually graspable. Virtual desktops serve me better than screen real estate.
• Nuphy Air60 v2
  • A 60% layout keyboard with arrow keys has long been an unreasonable dream of mine, and Nuphy made it real. I got it with Brown switches, but am curious about the Wisterias. I never thought I’d be switch-curious, but typefeel and sonic texture are a big deal if you’re on a keyboard this much. I also got the Twilight keycaps, which I feel should have been the default for this colour.
• Logitech MX Anywhere 3
  • A delight. Flicking the mouse wheel to free-fall scroll still makes me go whoosh every time, and stopping the wheel with your finger has a satisfying inertia. It’s practically a fidget toy. More hardware should be like this.

These peripherals feel like the stars aligning; like a latch inside me ker-chunked into place. The tactility they add to these everyday actions reassures me. Now onto what the hardware enables.

Software

Tools for making

• Obsidian
  • It seemed very complex, but when I realised I could just disable all the extras, I switched. All my text output is here; from notes to longform writing. Also a to-do file for when I can’t do something right away. I find that’s about the absolute extent of “task management” that works for me. Any more and I procrastinate.
• Figma
  • I’ve avoided Adobe so hard throughout my life. One reason I learned front-end dev was to skip Photoshop. I’m glad the buyout didn’t happen. But anyways, yeah, Figma! Figma is good.
• VS Codium
  • It’s an open-source version of VS Code. I switched mainly to get rid of the AI stuff. Ever reliable.
• Github Desktop
  • I’m the type of person who really needs to have a UI for git. Lets my brain wrap around it better.
• Photomator
  • My main photo editor. It works right off the camera roll, and has every editing feature I need…which isn’t a lot, to be fair. I rather hate editing. I enjoy taking photos far more than tweaking them.
• Procreate and Procreate Dreams
  • The de facto iPad drawing app. They deserve all the success they have. I can’t think of a way I disagree with how these apps work.

The best thing about each of these is they disappear when I’m into it. It’s a dance: you learn the thing, and it gives you enough space to do what you want to do with it.

Inputs

Inputs! Your outputs come from them, and so they are also tools.

• Safari
  • My main browser; the others I just test with. Reading list and iCloud tabs get heavy use. I don’t really need much else out of a browser.
• Reeder Classic
  • RSS forever, baby. No social media for me. It’s blogs, webcomics, and newsletters all the way down.
• Instapaper
  • Me and Instapaper go way back since its release, which is…17 years, as of this writing! Damn. Nearly everything I read on the web gets funnelled into Instapaper. Must be why I love Lyon so much.
• Apple Books
  • So much of my reading has been online, and so my digital library is pretty sparse. I’ve been experimenting with reading more PDFs over epubs—it helps retain more of the book’s design. I’ve also recently found that I read more when it’s a physical book. Plus, going to the real library is nice.

I also keep an inspo library, which is just a folder on my iCloud. Any image I resonate with gets plucked like a wildflower and stashed within. I wish Finder had some sort of masonry view. That’s about all I’m yearning for software-wise I think.

Utilities

• Soulver
  • Being able to write text while thinking about numbers was a paradigm shift for me. Indispensable.
• BetterTouchTool
  • Lets you add custom keyboard shortcuts or mouse/trackpad gestures to apps. Does window management too! Very powerful. If I were to list all I do with it, we might be here a while. I need it for a Mac to feel like it’s mine.

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So yeah! That’s mostly it. Writing all this, I realise that I’m very happy with my setup right now. I’ve stayed up nights just from the pleasure of being at my desk. I guess I do fetishise gear—in a healthy way! I hope? I’m happy at least. This is plenty.