Like all geeks, I love gushing about my setup.

One of my most frequent topics of conversation is discussing setups, especially productivity stacks. Here's all of the stuff I use.

Workstation

  • A Stupid Good PC

    Yeah, once I got the taste of having to deal with AI shenanigans I couldn’t help but cough up a stupid amount of money to Nvidia for the privilege of having stupid amounts of VRAM on one machine. Aptly named the "Bullshit Machine" (for its ability to do anything stupid), this PC is my workhorse; whenever I throw something stupid at it, like cracking password hashes or video rendering, it just works. Here’s a link to PCPartPicker, if you’re really that curious.

  • 16” MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 32GB RAM (2021)

    I have always been a Linux man myself, but Apple Silicon was too good of a deal to pass up. That and my rather sudden and surprising shift to all-Apple devices really did not help. This laptop’s amazing, though.

  • 2x LG 27GL850 4K Monitor

    It may not be a Pro Display XDR, but they really do get the job done. Admittedly they’re better than any monitor I’ve used before, so it’s good enough until I get super picky and spoiled later on. My third monitor always is my laptop screen; for some reason I just like it that way.

  • Keychron K8 Mechanical Keyboard

    A mechanical keyboard recommended to me by my friends. Feels good, it’s minimal, and it also has multi-Bluetooth connections so I can KVM switch to my Linux machine. It’s great!

  • Mode Loop TKL Keyboard

    I needed a separate keyboard at work, and I’m not gonna lie, The Mode keyboards may be pricy, but they look good and feel good. The Mode Loop with Obscura switches and foam is so quiet that I was shocked keyboards could be that quiet and that tactile at once.

  • Logitech MX Master 3S

    I had a gamer mouse for the longest time, but I have to admit that this mouse is just so quiet and ergonomic. It also still has about the amount of buttons I need on a mouse to go crazy on macros, even though I have an extra tool for that now.

  • Elgato Stream Deck 2

    This thing is so cool to have for various shortcuts. I have my soundboard on it when I’m gaming, various macros for arranging my workspace, and a lot more.

Development tools

  • Doom Emacs

    I am, indeed, that kind of programmer. I love the extensibility of Emacs, the Vim bindings of Doom, and Org-Mode is a blessing in disguise for any long-form writing I need to do. Academic papers, presentations, you name it; all of them start from an Org document. The only thing I don’t do in Emacs, surprisingly, is note-taking.

  • LazyVim

    Sometimes, the slowness of Emacs can get iffy for me. In those cases, I reach for LazyVim because with the right setup, it feels pretty much exactly like Emacs, barring Org-Mode. Most of the time, it’s either LazyVim or Doom Emacs. (I know, I’m a heretic.)

  • Visual Studio Code

    Whenever I need a new project quickly done, I reach for the familiar. VSCode auto-configures itself most of the time, so when I need a quick dive-in, I go with this. I switch to Emacs on more familiar projects.

  • Jetbrains Toolbox

    Every single piece of software from Jetbrains is awesome whenever you want to pull out the big guns, regardless of what you’re doing. When both Visual Studio Code and Emacs fail me (quite rare, mind you), Jetbrains’ software gets the job done.

Productivity

  • Raycast

    There’s no shortcut I use more often in the world than ⌘ + Space. I used to use a lot of Alfred, but Raycast has overtaken it slowly by sheer amount of cool extensions. Plus, it replaces a lot of other smaller apps for me in the Menu Bar. And, also, a quick ChatGPT from ⌘ + Space is very helpful sometimes, thanks to the Pro subscription.

  • Obsidian

    I know, I have Org-Mode right there. I do, however, need good cross-device support for my note-taking workflow, and while Craft was my tool of choice for a while, Obsidian has replaced by sheer amount of extensions that make documents look as pretty as Craft ever did. Worth it, and free!

  • SavvyCal

    It’s nice to avoid filling out LettuceMeets all the time. I do think there is a gap in the world of calendar scheduling for fitting calendars together that are not under the same organization, in the style of Outlook or Google Calendar. Someone should get on that.