Uses
Look, none of this page matters. Use what works for you. But, hey, I’m not immune to overindulgent nerdery.
Plaintext
I write short-form prose in Drafts, long-form in iA Writer. Coding is split between BBEdit and Visual Studio Code. (At work, Cursor takes VSC’s place, but have complicated feelings about the whole LLM… situation.)
Honourable mention: Zed, but its global search is deal-breakingly slow.
My editor themes jump between Flexoki, GitHub Primer and Catppuccin—all of which have both light and dark variants.
And while I use almost none of its agentic bullshit features, Warp’s Mac-native text input keeps me from turning to iTerm2 or Ghostty.
Writing fonts
iA Writer Duo, MD IO and the inimitable Triplicate.
Honourable mentions: SF Mono and MonoLisa.
Input devices
I type on a white Mode Eighty (with Silent Alpacas—lubed and filmed—on a POM plate capped with SLK Dessau in white), flanked by a Logi Lift and Magic Trackpad.
Most of my cursor manipulation, though, is via a Wacom Intuos.
And, purely for Touch ID, I’ve stuck a Magic Keyboard to the underside of my desk.
Workstation
Base M4 Mac Mini. Previously: 13″ MacBooks Pro (2019 and late 2013), VAIO VPCF135FG, Toshiba Satellite M50.
Retina display, around 220 ppi, with good DCI-P3 coverage. This leaves few options without “XDR” in their name.
Plus a pair of AKG K240 MKIIs (12 years strong!)—or just AirPods, non-pro.
Screen saver (yes, really)
Robert Padbury’s Padbury Clock saved my screens(?) for a good eleven-ish years, but macOS Sequoia seems to have finally broken it. 🥲
Bauhaus Clock by Atilla Taşkıran has since settled in nicely.
Gmail since + Notion Mail for now, but happy about neither. Notion Mail isn’t responsive enough, and *gestures broadly at Google*. (Fastmail, perhaps?)
Previously, in descending order of satisfaction: Mailbox, Mimestream, Inbox by Gmail, Gmail as a web app, Sparrow, Spark, Outlook for iOS, Apple Mail, Airmail, Canary Mail, Polymail, Edison Mail.
Writing instruments
TWSBI Eco filled with Ink of the Witch, or Platinum Preppy with Kiwa-guro, when I can get away with a fountain pen. (Japanese EF, always.)
Otherwise, Studio Neat Mark One with an Ohto Flash Dry cartridge.
Various papers, often reused scrap. Honourable mentions: Kokuyo, Clairefontaine, Rhodia.
Quickfire
- Music
- Apple Music (the app, not the service)
- Shell
- Bash
