i’m writing some stuff about Target and i was thinking about a story Amy Schneider includes in her book about a shirt that says “messy bun / target run / gettin it done”. i was looking for a picture of the shirt and this was the first result…

a bald man standing in front of an american flag with his hands in the pockets of his camo pants wearing a black shirt that reads in white text "messy bun, target run, gettin it done"

Space Station

It’s usually around this time of year where I start to feel like I’m living alone on a space station. It’s cold and dark outside, I’m working from home so I can sometimes go days without leaving the house, and even when I do go outside I have to suit up like I’m going for an EVA. So I have space on the brain.

When I was a kid I was fascinated with space. When people asked what I wanted to do when I grew up I told them I wanted to be an aerospace engineer (I started out saying aeronautical but at some point someone told me that was outdated. I don’t even know f that’s true but I’ve held onto that “fact” since I was like nine years old).

Eventually I learned about things like the Challenger disaster and lived through the Columbia disaster. I decided at some point that I didn’t want to do something where if I fucked up people could die. So I played on the computer, modded maps in Halo 2, hung out with people from icodeviruses.net on IRC, Installed Linux on what was once family computer, and bought a copy of C++ for Dummies from the Half Price Books.

It led me to a lucrative career. Some still call me an engineer. And even after taking the one required ethics class I thought coding was basically harmless. It probably wasn’t until 2016 that my viewpoint really changed.

Now it is almost universally accepted that software and the Internet has caused the downfall of society or at least a lapse of social progress. We probably wouldn’t be in the situation we are in without Facebook and photoshop and cheap hosting.

But even if I had designed spaceships and airplanes I’d be working for Musk or Lockheed Martin.

What am I trying to say? Who knows. All I know is I don’t feel great. It is cold outside and I’m lonely and afraid.

“Uses This”

Have you considered adding a /uses/ page to your own site, answering the same questions?

Daniel of usesthis.com

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m a professional software engineer and once engineering manager. I work a day job but I’m also working with a good friend and former boss to bring screen.garden, a real-time collaboration tool for PKMs and the web, to life.

In my free time I sing with a local queer TTBB chorus, play table-top RPGs, watch Formula 1, and play video games.

What hardware do you use?

I work atop a sit-stand desk I bought when I first started working remotely in 2017. It stays in the “sit” position 99% of the time. For work I use whatever machine my employer provides. Right now that’s a 14in M3 MacBook Pro. Personally, I have an M1 MacBook Air which I love. A single thunderbolt cable runs from either of those machines to a CalDigit TS4 which connects it to power, ethernet, a USB hub, and my display.

I use just the one display, a GIGABYTE M32U, which is a 32 inch, 4k, 144Hz monitor. Whenever someone is talking about replacing their monitor I always bring up refresh rate. It’s one of those things that sounds like you wouldn’t notice but it actually makes looking at a screen for most of your day a lot more pleasant. I’ve sat a no-name-brand monitor light and a Logitech webcam atop it.

I have a collection of mechanical keyboards (ErgoDox EZ, Keyboardio Atreus, to name a couple) which all live in a drawer while I type away on my Glorious GMMK Pro with Glorious Panda tactile switches. I think Glorious’s branding is a bit “cringe” to say the least but they were the only custom keyboard option I could get same-day at the nearby Micro Center when I needed to replace my Pok3r following a coffee spill incident.

I talk to my coworkers and friends through a Blue Yeti mic that I bought when a former employer gave everyone a couple hundred dollars for work-from-home equipment in early 2020 (despite my having already worked from my home my entire tenure there).

At the edges of my desk are piles of scrunchies, a couple hair clips, my AirPods Pros, a pair of Sennheiser HD 600s, my iPhone 14 Pro Max (I always go “Max” or “Plus” for the extra battery life), an Aquaphor lip balm stick, some hand lotion, and a nice candle.

Away from my desk I have a collection of cameras but the one I use the most is my Leica M6 which I usually shoot with a Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4. I digitize my negatives with a beat-up Sony a6000, a cheap macro lens, and a Valoi easy35.

I have a couple Apple TV 4ks to stream content from the cloud and also the Plex Media Server running on a Synology NAS. I have a couple TVs in different rooms but the Xbox Series X stays connected to the 65 inch LG C1 OLED (once again which a high refresh rate).

Finally, currently sitting on my nightstand wrapped in some FiiO IEMs is a 5th iPod Classic (aka an iPod Video) whose hard disk I’ve replaced with a 512gb microSD card. It’s really incredible how well it still works.

And what software?

These days I’m macOS all-the-way. I’m fully integrated into the ecosystem and the ergonomics and reliability of development on the platform is unparalleled in my opinion. Obviously I use a ton of software so I’ll limit (mostly) to things I keep pinned to my dock (although most of the time I’m launching things from Alfred):

  • Firefox to browse the web
  • Fantastical to manage several calendar accounts. I could just use Calendar.app but there are few features (like travel time and automatic event merging) that keep me renewing my subscription.
  • Mail.app for emails…
  • Things 3 makes sure I get things done. I switched from an Android phone to an iPhone many years ago just so I could use Things while I was away from my computer.
  • Kitty to run all of my command line apps. I always work within a tmux session so my terminal emulator doesn’t really matter all that much (because I’m never using tabs or splits or whatever) but Kitty is quick and the alternative icon I use for it is really cute. I’m a vim user (neovim really) and have been since 2015. My neovim setup could be its own post…
  • Music – I switch between two libraries: 1. My local library which I sync with my iPod and 2. My iCloud, Apple Music backed library
  • Dash 6 (usually via Alfred) to quickly reference documentation. Elixir / Hex package docs support is incredible
  • Obsidian for personal, work, and TTRPG notes. I keep my plugins list slip with just Templater, DataView, Tasks, Periodic Notes, and of course screen.garden.
  • Readwise Reader as my read-later service

I have to shout-out Lightroom with Negative Lab Pro for converting scans/photos of film negatives.

What would be your dream setup?

I’ve obviously spoiled myself already so I’d keep most things the same but…

I’d love a thunderbolt KVM of some kind that would let me swap quickly between machines at the press of a button. I also feel like I’d benefit from a larger desk.

I think about replacing my webcam with the Sony a6000 and replacing that with a newer, higher resolution mirrorless camera.

I’m really hoping the ARM desktop / server market continues to become more accessible to the consumer market because the Synology NAS is looking a little worse-for-wear these days. I’ve thought about replacing it with a custom build x64 machine but the additional power consumption and heat keep me from doing it (I’m spoiled by these Apple ARM machines…).