A couple of months back, a friend sent me the link to the blog of some Swedish developer, Jonas Hietala. The message was both joking and mocking style of ‘look, I found your secret pseudonym!’ He named Jonas as my twin-brother, so much he reminds him of me.
When I read his blog here and there, I can confirm, we have very similar interests and likes.
Recently, he sent me this uses-article of Jonas. Asking me why don’t I have the same page in my blog.
Well, since we’re twin-brothers1, apparently, I need to have the same page in my blog!
Jonas isn’t aware of my existence (yet). We don’t know each other.
Possibly, we could be real-life friends… if I lived in Sweden. These days, I live in Lviv, Ukraine, where my wife and kids were born. I came here from Sweden, a few years before the ruzzian full-scale invasion. I’m trying to transfer my notes from different sources as a standalone blog, war.basil.
Hello, Jonas, if you’re reading this, come visit us when the ruzzian war is over!
Life in a warring country and studies in Ukrainian history makes me less of a Swede now, and more of a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist. With the strong desire to just nuke ruzzia and heal the world from that communistish cancer. I believe, at least since 2022 (not to say since 1932) every Ukrainian has every right to want that to happen.
Uses of Others#
I replied that I was considering this page for my blog, but decided to not go there, as the whole idea of /uses is too nerdish to me. To me, the nerdiest of the nerds (sometimes).
However, thinking about the matter, I realised I truly enjoy exploring other people’s workplaces.
I love doing that since the early childhood. When I visited a place of some friend, I coudn’t help but explore their room. Their cabinets, desks. I would casually open the cabinets doors, drawers, take books, toys, anything. I wasn’t even aware it is something people may not like. I don’t remember me being punished for doing this. And kids didn’t mind either.
So, possibly it’s too nerdish for… well, not us, nerds. For normies. Am I free to post whatever I want in my own blog? Sure thing, I am.
Hence, I decided I’m totally up to writing about the things that I use daily.
Holy cow! What a micro gap between suggestion and implementation. You are a machine for the text creation.
Oh, my! I’ve got a poet inside me!
Yeah, this post took me a morning to be completed. Why postpone?
Prefers#
Probably, writing about the matter years ago, or a decade ago, I would be excited to write about the modern tech the same way all the others do.
‘Yo, look at my fancy mechanical keyboard, bluetooth Haman Brandon stereo system and my MacBook Pro connected to a display in a fancy clam-shell mode.’
Was there, done that.
However, these days, I am different. The whole context all around me is different too. I can no longer treat a fancy new gadget or clean desktop as something that is too meaningful for me. Nor can I treat a fully-loaded MacBook Pro as something I cannot live without.
If I’d be excited about something, it’s more likely to be the lack of all these fancy things. Especially over the last 3 years (since Feb 24, 2022, to be precise). These 3 years, my working place could become just any computer in any given place.
And you know what, I truly believe all of you guys, all of you who write about these great tech (and not only that) things, do not mean ‘cannot live without it,’ but rather ‘I like this and that, and so that’s how I work.’
So, saying all that, I’d like to change focus from ‘uses’ to ‘prefers’.
Uses#
What I use these days doesn’t matter. It’s litereally anything. I do love tech, gadgets and all these things, so I have a lot of hardware lying around. I never sell my old tech. Probably, the main issue is I use the tech till it has some issues, and when it has issues, there’s no point in selling it. Unless you’re sure you’ll never use it.
- E.g. I have a failed GPU (fully-loaded max-specced) Macbook Pro from 2011. Not my fault, but the computer is unusable. Thanks, Apple. I can sell it for bananas, although I wanted to play with it. Install Arch Linux on it, use it as a server, still plenty of ways to utilise the hardware. (If you’re a Linux nerd too.)
- Or, I have an old Android smartphone that nobody needs these days. It rocks LineageOS and I use it to listen to some podcasts while at farm. The ‘podcasts’ is rather meant to be either YouTube interviews (those you never need videos for), or using my Monoolooog service with friends and workmates. Very infrequently some news-related content. The smartphone is just junk for anyone else, but it’s very valuable for me, in my own way.
I just love old tech. That’s why there’s a separate blog for that, visit Walter [the link to be updated upon deploy].
At farm, which also became my workshop, I played with many different computers. There, I realised that I need my main computer and my main laptop mostly never. Only for some heavy tasks. Most of which, if automated (which I long to be doing), can be handled by a single-core netbook from 2009 (15 years ago), literally.
- [Need to update the separate stories for that, as they’re too long for this one story.]
Better#
I have a huge amount of tech. MacBooks, four items now. Windows laptops, idk, five, including two netbooks. A (broken now) Chromebook. Apple’s iPads, lost count. Up to 10, if I’d count the ones I gave away for elderly folks. Most of them are in use though. Mine (I myself have three, all 3 sizes) not too in use, I try to find my use-cases for some of them. I mostly use iPad Pro 12.9 for all my iPad time.
I enjoy the tranquility of my iPad 3, though. It’s difficult to explain, it’s just more calm to me.
You, the reader, may expect me to talk about the fancy things you might be interesting in buying too, right? My point is, you can never buy the things that truly matter. You may achieve them, create them, build them yourself.
However, sure I can talk about the shiny stuff.
Best#
If I asked about what would I prefer to use for my everyday tasks, I’d rather choose the best possible option. If it’s me who buys my tech, I would probably consider not the shiniest and most expensive option these days, but something of a great value. These days, I’m very open to second-hand stuff, as it’s just much better ecologically.
One man’s trash, another man’s treasure.
So, let’s go!
Hardware#
- MacBook Pro. I use a maxxed out MacBook Pro with Retina display from 2015. It’s 16 GB of RAM, I think that’s the only thing worth mentioning. It’s still on Intel processor, which I’m okay with. It handles 90% of my tasks, if not all of them. It’s my backup computer for whatever happens. If there’s a war (this joke isn’t funny anymore, there is a war), it’s the first thing I’ll put in my backpack, in need of an urgent relocation.
- It lied packed in my emergency backpack for over half a year, by the way. Until we realised we’re not going anywhere any time soon.
- If there is some of my employers reading this, I don’t mind you buying me the latest and greates M-processor MacBook Pro. I would highly appreciate that. Although, for myself I truly see almost no difference between the two. I plan to upgrade only when I will need 64 GB of RAM on a laptop. Util then, I’m okay
- iPhone 12 mini, it’s the first modern mini iPhone after the original SE released in 2016, which is in my other pocket. I’m going to wear it till it falls apart in pieces, or this (fucking planned) software obsoletion kicks-in too harshly. I don’t know what would I do. Honeslty, I don’t mind having a huge phone these days. I won’t say the mini is what I would prefer, since I’m just avoiding consuming too much of a content from my phone. I don’t mind, really.
- More likely, I’d have some Pixel phone by that day. I’m just worried most of them had so much failed hardware-wise units, that it’s not truly a competitor to an iPhone. Rather a sub-par copy. But software-wise, it might be even better. At least for me.
- All my extended family on iPhones. It complicates things for me willing to switch to Android as my primary smartphone.
- I use Google Nexus 6P, I was lucky (or not) to have it not bootlooped on me.
- iPad Pro 12.9. Basically any model. I’m still rocking the original one, I have a full-body cover and pencil for it.
- And a keyboard, although I don’t use it any more and gave it away to a friend, so his dad would use his iPad Pro 12.9 as a laptop. As he never needs laptop.
- Apple Watch, if it’s not (too easily) breakable. If it is, I’d go with MiBand. Any version. I still have my MiBand 2 and 3 and 4 not broken. I have no idea what to do with them, they’re invincible. I guess they’ll survive a comet easily. Easily, the best smartwatch money can buy. I wear 3rd version now, waiting for it to finally break! I don’t want to break it on purpose, I’m just patiently waiting for it to break on its own, to understand its limits. Then, I afraid, I’m destined to wear MiBand 4 till
its deathdeath do us part. Then, I plan to buy another Apple Watch. Or Garmin. I don’t know. I’m longing to Apple Watch, if I’ll find it useful for my projects. Otherwise, Garmin it is. - Fully-loaded Hackintosh (Arch Linux Machine these days), with i7-4770, 32 GB of RAM, Radeon RX580 and 3 RAID-0 SSDs as root (will re-do to 6 when I’ll have some spare time, I’m super happy with the result, it’s blazing fast).
- Weeeeeeeeeeeeeetttthhhhh drumroll many, many displays. It’s 5 now. I’m thinking of occupying all the possible slots and go with 12. Yes, twelve displays. I don’t need twelve displays all the time, but I have my own scripts for disabling and manipulating them, so… I can focus within seconds. It’s just if I can go full-max, why not?
- But frankly, three displays is plenty most times. One 27" in the middle and two on the sides. Or four, two 27" with extra one down, laptop-like, and two on the sides, of any side. Depending on whether it’s an office (then I’d go 3-to-4 displays) or a workshop (then I’d go 12, just because I can).
Peripherals#
Keyboard, oh I have a long history of keyboards. I have (less than 10, I don’t remember) Apple Keyboards. Wired, wireless, old and new. The latest one is my favourite. The 2nd best is wired full-sized Apple Keyboard. I prefer a full-sized keyboard, unless it’s a laptop. I hate full-size keyboards in laptops, would prefer never using one, if possible.
I use an Apple Wired Keyboard, because it’s just stable, and I have many of them, four pieces. The best keyboard is the one you’re too familiar with.
My Mouse of choise is Razer Naga. I believe, it’s one of the first units. I bought it very long time ago to play MMORPG (WoW), which I never did, but I like the form and how good this mouse is. Nick gave me his Logitech MX Masters for Mac, and it’s worse then my mouse.
- I have Razer DeathAdder, which I like too. But it failed on me, the left key isn’t reliable anymore. And I like Razer Naga just more.
My primary display is Apple Cinema LED Display 27", which is a great display, and generally it was a reliable display for over a decade for me. It shows wear, and isn’t too reliable, so I guess I need to find him a replacement in a coming years. I haven’t found any.
- I have many (you know) other displays, most of them being Dell. And some Samsungs. Nothing to say good things about. They are okay. I won’t recommend any of them. Buy one if you can get it for a nice price, and it’s your secondary display.
My computer case is 1) Thermaltake Artctic, 2) Zalman [need to find model], and I almost bought the original MacPro case, but was too busy to persist on that quest.
- The fans are Noctua something. I would recommend.
- There are liquid cooling systems in some other computers, it’s fancy, but I won’t recommend it much.
My headphones of choice are Sennheiser [need to find model] and Bayerdynamics))) (that’s ))) the name of the brand), the latter being my computer sound system for over a decade.
- I mostly never use stereo speakers, but I have Harman Kardon HK195. They’re ugly and have a wonderful sound you’ll never exepect from such system. It’s Harman Kardon doing their magic.
- Ah, and I have some Harman Kardon speakers in my Apple Cinema too. They’re great.
- And they’re in this BMW i3 electric car too. I would recommend Harman Kardon.
My mics are old iPhones. iPhones 4S to 5S (to SE1) are just so very good at capturing sound. I would recommend. They go with a full-blown (slightly outdated) OS coming with the microphones, and a 4 inches touch-screens as well.
I think that’s it for hardware.
Software#
Operating Systems#
I use Arch Linux, btw.
- I use Arch Linux on all of my computers since 2019.
- I used Fedora as my main distro for a year, but switched to Arch back. I was mostly satisfied with the result, it’s just Arch is better for me.
Those are 4 of my MacBooks now. All of my Windows-laptops. Three of my desktops. I’m satisfied with this system. It (almost) never breaks on its own. When it does, usually it takes me minutes to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
- I have a strong dislike towards Windows. I prefer to never use it. However, I can use it. If I must.
- I like macOS, it’s great. I would recommend it to most people. I use Linux only because it suits my workflow more. It’s just much simpler, when you know it very well. Which I do.
- I love FreeBSD for its simplicity, yet it’s not on par with Linux and macOS in terms of a desktop operating system. They do acknowledge that, so I hope this to become much better over time.
Desktop Environments#
I use sway wm. It’s a tiling desktop manager. Stay with me, I’m explaining.
It’s a software that manages the desktop part of my computers. This is how it looks. (And works.) It’s a highly minimalistic system (visually). It has no icons on its desktop, it has no menus and almost no status bar. That’s how it looks.
That’s me updating the story, as I’ve remembered I hadn’t mentioned sway. Oh, hi.
Suites#
Design#
Having a huge background in design, I have a huge set of tools I worked with. I mostly wrote about it in its separate story.
In short, it’s a combination of macOS + the popular tools. These days, it’s Figma for vectors, Pixelmator Pro for rastrs and sometimes (if I must) Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects).
These days I’m trying to use open-source solutions like Krita (it’s good), Inkscape (UI-wise it’s very bad, compared to Figma; but it’s usable for some tasks) + svgo.
- I tried Gimp, but it’s absolutely the worst. Well, if you named your project that way, what would you expect?
- Seriously, guys. It’s some super-weird fetish for this weird acronyms non-acronyms in Linux world. I don’t share it.
- I tried Pinta, and it’s super good for very simple tasks, like cropping some image and resizing it. It’s super fast, clean, and works well with any image format I need for web-dev. Which is avif, webp, png, jpeg, and jpegxl.
I’m thinking of running Virtual Machines with macOS to run these couple of apps. Those are Adobe CS (works on Windows too) + Pixelmator Pro.
- You can do this legally, if you’re on an Apple computer. It’s weird, yet it’s doable. Sometimes I think I’ll give up and would just keep one MacBook Pro for design software. Also, I’m considering of buying a Mac Mini, which may become a home-server (one of many) later. So, it’s a solvable task for me.
Development#
These days, I use neovim, and it’s useful for me. I wrote about it just a month ago.
I use ranger as my file manager, and it’s tremendously good. I can tolerate it’s being so slow (it’s written in Python). I didn’t like yazi (maybe some day in the future, if it’s new shiny super-awesome development trail won’t just be abandoned). I quite like lf, but I have no resources to make it on-par with ranger, especially as it has some non-features I rely on.
Music
I use cmus and sometimes mpd to listen to (background) music.
- I think mpd is a better client-server implementation of how I see the playing of music.
- I still use cmus, mostly out of inertia. I’ve been using it for many years, after I switched from Amarok.
Long live Amarok.
I had a separate music server, meaning hardware. A separate tiny computer with its separate sound system, and while it worked wonders, I ditched it since we had our kids. I may return to that system later. I would highly recommend it to anyone, to have your special listening space.
- The last one I liked that I saw online was this one of Paweł Grzybek.
While I work, I listen to video games soundtracks (The Elder Srolls series, World of Warcraft, Heroes of Might and Magic, and alike). They help me concentrate. Those are the games I own, and played during my childhood times. All other types of music distract me. Video games soundtracks designed to not distract you, mostly. (Just remove all the *battle* tracks.)
- Sometimes I use Spotify. Since my account was created in the U.S., now I have some hurdles to make it work. I’m in no mood to create another account. Thank you guys, it’s so useful when you block me from my account based on my geo-location.
Management#
For management software, it’s mostly my iPad + iPhone + (any) smartwatch for notifications. It covers all of my tasks, most of them. Ideally, I’d prefer an iPad with some WSL or running full-blown Linux. Theoretically, when Asahi Linux project would mature, it may become my ideal laptop for all the managerial (and not only) tasks.
Theoretically, any other Android tablet and/or smartphone would do not worse. But I just had no chance to test it, as my iPad + iPhone combination was super-reliable.
If I need to manage emails, I use either the built-in Mail.app on macOS and Thunderbird on Linux.
Workplace#
My favourite workspace is a huge white ikea-style (but not ikea-made) desk with nothing on it. It has two-to-four displays on it, a bluetooth Logitech keyboard (or Apple Magic Keyboard) and a bluetooth MX Masters for Mac mouse. You can adjust its height with the programmable buttons. It has a nice pair of stereo speakers for sound. And an Aeron Miller chair.
It’s not my fantasies. It’s a real workplace. In the beginning of my career, about eighteen years before, I’d be surprised to hear this thing. Well, adjustable desks weren’t a thing, and all these fancy peripherals weren’t that accessible. And I was poor.
But these days, I think I outgrew even that. My best workplace is my workshop. It’ll take me some time to formulate my thoughts on that, but the folks with workshops, they’ll know. A workshop has its hidden magic. I’m super efficient in there, it’s a place I can focus. It’s a place I can work with materials. For me, it’s mostly wood and its products. Plus fabric, I’m a hobbyist fashionista. But I use it for organising things, not my body parts.
My current favourite workplace isn’t too fashionable. It’s an old wooden table, made out of an old wooden door someone threw away. I made a huge table out of it. It’s not the best table I had, but I made it myself, and the next one would just be much better. It’s a work-in-progress for me.
I have this minimalistic ikea table at home, yet it’s not my primary workplace. Oftentimes, when there are blackouts, I’m with my MacBook Pro on a sofa, on a mat, in a cafe, just somewhere. And my MacBook is my workplace.
When I’ll have a more peaceful time all around me, I’d delve into making my idyllic desk. More likely, it’ll be a huge wooden desk of 2 × 3 meters. I’m in the process of designing my own display mounts. But first, I need to understand how many of displays I want to mount. Would it be just 4 of them? Or all twelve?
I think, it’ll take me years to find out. Right now, I have five displays + two being not connected yet, as I have no place to put them on.
[to be continued]
which we are not, obviously! ↩︎