Digital tools
Same as I like reading about other people's toolchains, I thought it might be useful for others to outline some of the tools I'm currently using.
Hardware
MacBook Pro 15 2016
My daily driver for almost six years — still holding on to it. It has the typical flaws of this generation of MacBook (useless Touchbar and some keys are partly stuck). All in all, though, it's a reliable workhorse with a large & beautiful display.
iPhone 11 Pro Max
Mainly bought this for the camera and its battery life. Besides the iPhone 4, this is my favorite iPhone generation out of the ones I've owned so far — it packs great improvements compared to its predecessors and still holds up well compared to newer iPhone models. I've written a post on how I've configured iOS here.
AIAIAI TMA-2
I used to rock BeoPlay H4s until they fell apart. Sadly, they're not produced anymore, with Bang & Olufsen focussing completely on wireless headphones now. For me, with wireless headphones, the costs (having to charge and pair/configure them for my different devices) outweigh the benefits. Hence, I was looking for long-lasting, high-quality, minimalist, wired headphones. TMA-2s have been around for a while now and they fit that bill perfectly. Plus, they're completely modular, meaning I can exchange or upgrade individual components should they break.
Kobo Libra
Great display, compact and lightweight — just what I was looking for in an eReader. What made me go for the Libra over a Kindle was the option to flash KoReader onto it. And the physical page-turn buttons. I'm honestly amazed that not every eReader has those — especially on a small device, you'll easily turn thousands of pages in a month if you're a regular reader. Hence, it'd make sense to optimize for making this a comfortable interaction.
Onyx Boox Note Air2
A leaner, meaner reMarkable tablet. Runs Android and has excellent pre-installed apps for opening all kinds of different text files (.djvu, .pdf, .epub, just to name a few. And the hardware is really good, too.
Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pis are cheap, silent and powerful. I use them to self-host some of my personal infrastructure, for example, my self-hosted news setup or my Time Machine server.
Code
Visual Studio Code
Tried a couple of editors, but the customizability and breadth of extensions made me stick with VSCode and not look back. I use the Hyper Term Dark color theme, MonoLisa editor font and amVim for VIM-like keybindings.
Hyper Terminal
No, it's not "blazingly fast", nor is it written in Rust. But it's darn beautiful: out of the box, its line spacing, padding and the contrast-heavy color palette make working within zsh a joy.
Volta
Helps me keep NodeJS versions on my machine in order.
Docker
I use Docker to cross-compile Rust applications for deployment onto my Raspberry Pi. And to pack up NodeJS applications for deployment.
Emoji Log
Sets me up with a few aliases to commit & push with fewer keystrokes and easier to parse commit messages.
Design
Figma
The tool of choice for most UI/UX designers — with good reason. Figma democratized screen design and while doing so, pushed the boundaries of what web apps are expected to do.
Productivity
Todoist
Excellent keyboard-driven navigation. Handles almost every imaginable productivity system you can throw at it with its support for Kanban boards, lists, sections, projects, priorities, tags and so much more. Plus, its date parsing is second to none and there are clients for almost every major platform. What's more, a plethora of integrations and an API help me integrate Todist into almost any workflow.
Obsidian
I prefer raw Markdown over proprietary text formats and editors like Elicit or Notion. Obsidian allows me to write Markdown files and is super extensible via its plugins. It also has core plugins that help me stay on the keyboard while writing, like its command palette plugin. With the Minimal Theme plus the Linter and Hider plugins, you'll get a no-nonsense writing experience that's as focused as can be.
Raycast
I used to use Alfred as my Spotlight replacement of choice but switched to Raycast last year for the higher quality of plugins, its more macOS-native feel and the higher pace of development. The features I use most often are its clipboard history and the Unicode symbol search extension.
Rectangle
I like the window snap gestures that Windows introduced. This app lets me have them on macOS. I can rearrange windows via global keyboard shortcuts, easily splitting the screen between two different applications. One of those invisible helpers that I easily use a dozen times per day.