What Gear and Software I Use for Work and Play

My opinionated take on gear

I like to separate work and play. Between 7am and dinner time I like to work for one or two short periods (no more than 90 minutes) at my desk in my home office. I do some research away from my home office and make notes in a few TODO lists.

Practical Use Cases

When I am writing or doing “light weight” coding in Google Colab or using Mosh/ssh to access a rented server, I use the following at my desk:

• 12” iPad Pro.

• A huge Apple Pro Display XDR (32-inch 6K Retina display).

• Apple wireless Mouse.

• Software: Blink Mosh/SSH shell to access server, Emacs, Tmux, language chains, IA Writer (edit markdown) and Working Copy git client. I try to avoid apps and usually use web versions of applications. Lockdown Mode for security. Platforms: Google Docs, OneDrive, GitHub, GCP, and Hetzner.

For long coding sessions I unplug my iPad Pro and substitute my MacBook Pro + Apple Pro Display XDR. Software: Emacs, language tools chains, etc. Note: I also have three Linux laptops that I spend a little time on, but that is more recreational.

Education and Entertainment Use Cases

Devices: 70% iPads, 30% iPhone.

I use too many services and platforms to list everything but here are my favorites:

Audio books: Libre.fm (no DRM and great prices), Audible, Libby, Google Play Books.

Reading: going to my library to check out books, Libby (eBooks and audio books from the library), Apple Books, Kindle, SubStack authors, and Google Play Books.

Streaming media (most used listed first): YouTube, Apple TV, Disney, Tubi, Max, Netflix, Prime, and Hulu.

Music: YouTube Music, Apple Music, Apple Classical Music.

Online Classes: anything from Andrew Ng, Coursera, and eDX.

Social Media and Other Wastes of Time:

Mastodon (link to my posts) is slowly becoming my preferred platform for writing short things about tech and my personal life.

X/Twitter (link to my posts) is my “morning tech news” since I follow many interesting people who post things I want to be aware of.

Hacker News and Reddit are other wastes of time that I enjoy.