The Setup

One of my favorite distractions is The Setup. I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve my day to day technology activities. It interests me to see the setups that other people use.

I doubt I’ll ever be interesting enough to be interviewed for The Setup, so I thought I’d interview myself in the same style!

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m a hacker, father, husband, manager, executive and gamer. I write a lot of code, run operations for Infinity Interactive, play some games (tabletop and video) and try to be a good husband and father.

What hardware are you using?

I’ve been an Apple convert for about 9 years. I bought a TiBook in a fit of lust and haven’t really looked back.

I work from home on a MacPro3,1, the dual quad-core 2.8GHz model. It has 8GB of RAM and an upgraded ATI Radeon HD 5770 that I got in 2010 to extend it’s life for gaming. I also crammed 3 1TB drives into it. Two of them are software RAID-1 for Time Machine) and the other is my root HD. There’s also an old 750GB drive that was one of the mirrored pair in my previous backup disks. It’s there from when I needed access to my old backups, as I started fresh.

I also have a 15” MacBookPro4,5 with the Hi-Res, Matte screen. It was my main work machine for a few months this year, but mostly I keep it for conferences and other times when I need to be mobile. I’m pretty sure that when I replace it, I’ll go with a Macbook Air.

For input and output devices I have two refurbished 24” Cinema Displays from 2008. I use a Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 that I try and replace once a year, since I wear the C, X, S and V keys off. Also because keyboards get really filthy. My Logitech Performance Mouse MX came on recommendation from a friend and I fell in love with it. I keep an Allsop Comfortbead Wrist Rest below it. I have a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers that replaced an older, massive Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1 rig that dominated my desk. The Bose setup doesn’t sound as good, but it’s considerably smaller and the little puck volume knob is wonderful. I use a Sennheiser PC 26 USB headset for Skype and when I need to keep it down I have a set of Sennheiser HD595 cans.

I have a great desk from Room & Board and the cables for all this stuff are half-hidden using sticky wire guides and zip-ties. I need to finish that project…

I use an Apple Battery Charger for my all my AA battery consuming things. I have a wall-mounted Samsung SmartTV with a MacMini3,1 and an XBox 360. I use the Mac Mini with a Slingbox Pro HD for watching soccer and the XBox for games and Netflix. My house is wired with Cat5E and I use Netgear GS605 Gigabit Switches all over the place with a punchpanel in the attic from MonoPrice.

And what software?

Terminal.app, first and foremost. I grew up on vim and I still use it every day, but I use Textmate for long documents or multi-file projects. I use Eclipse when programming Java and recently started learning my way around XCode. I’m really impressed by it. Just today I programmed in Java, Perl, Javascript, Shell and PHP so I tend to be flexible with editors. I use git exclusively and often use GitX (L) for commits to GitHub. I use Querious when chatting with MySQL.

I prefer Safari and use 1Password to manage the huge number of usernames and passwords I have. I’m still converting from using Keychain.app. I keep Firefox, Chrome and Opera around for testing and I use VMWare Fusion to run Windows 7 for IE testing. I do a lot of web design work, for which I use no special tools aside from the ones I mentioned above. Well, except for Adobe CS4, which I’ve yet to upgrade. I share things with friends and coworkers via Skitch. I use xScope for sampling colors, zooming in on errant pixels and other odds and ends.

For email I use Postbox, which is way better than Mail.app if you need any of it’s features. Lion’s new Mail.app comes close, but I needed per-Account settings that Mail.app gloms into global. I use Adium for IM, Limechat for IRC, and Twitter for Twitter. ICal managed my calendars, poorly. I read lots of RSS feeds using Reeder on the desktop, iPad and iPhone.

Being a consultant I have to track time. I use Time Tracker and it does the job. I’ve not found anything that was better enough to warrant switching.

I have a good sized iTunes library at nearly 13,000 tracks. I use CoverSutra to keep tabs on what’s playing.

Miscellaneous stuff: I use Evernote off and on. I do most of writing in Markdown using Textmate and Marked. I store some things on Dropbox. I manage projects with OmniPlan, write outlines with OmniOutliner and make diagrams with OmniGraffle. I use Xtorrent for any torrents that I need to slurp down.

What would be your dream setup?

Luckily, this is pretty much it. But if we’re dreaming I’d like Bose to add some LEDs to the volume knob on the Companion speakers and make the subwoofer something worth a shit. I’m eagerly awaiting Apple’s release of an updated Mac Pro, as I’ve held off on getting as SSD and adding more RAM so that buying another gratuitous machine will feel worthwhile. Anything that cuts the number of cords I have to route is always welcome. I’d like a replacement for Textmate that doesn’t crash and adds new features. I’ve tried BBEdit and various vim plugins, but I’m just too addicted to ⌘-t.