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, Zed and Cursor. (I have complicated feelings about the LLM… situation, but putting that aside for now.)
Editor theme is Flexoki, formerly GitHub Primer and Catppuccin—all of which have light and dark variants.
And while I use none of its agentic bullshit features, Warp’s Mac-native text input keeps me from turning to Ghostty or iTerm2.
Writing fonts
iA Writer Duo, MD IO and the inimitable Triplicate.
Honourable mentions: SF Mono and MonoLisa.
Input devices
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 finally broke it. 🥲
Bauhaus Clock by Atilla Taşkıran has since settled in nicely.
Gmail since + Notion Mail for now, but happy about neither. Notion Mail is exasperatingly unresponsive, 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
