/uses

Page last updated 2022-11-06 — History

Seeing and reading about other people's setups is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's the sort of meta-work that can feel like a productive investment to find juuust the right font and then I'll do the work.

We spend so much time in front of our screens, we might as well make ourselves comfortable. And so, here are some of the things I use.

Work

• I work from an office in our house in Aalborg, Denmark. I grew up here, was away for 10 years. Came back and bought a house after having kid number 2 (of 3!) It's the perfect size town to grow up in.

• My main machine is a 2021 Macbook Pro 14" M1 MAX. If I'm at my desk, and I most likely am, it is in clamshell mode, stuck in a vertical stand, connected to a Thunderbolt dock that's connected to a DisplayPort switch. I just need to put in one cable and everything is connected and running at a glorious 144hz refresh rate. By the press of a button, the signal switches between my Mac and PC.

  • (Only problem with The One Cable solution, is that one TB4/USB-C port hasn't enough bandwidth for all this and my webcam. So the camera connects with its own cable.)

• My monitor is an LG 27" UltraGear 27GN950-B. I wanted a monitor (and only 1) that had both a high refresh rate and a high resolution for general use. I'm very satisfied with this one even though it's not "Retina"-level pixel density at 4K/27" (meaning if you squint and make an effort you can tell individual pixels apart). It's good enough. The IPS panel has beautiful colors and it's amazing to game on 27 inches at 100+ fps.

  Being a true "gaming" monitor, it looks like something out of a spaceship. An absolutely horrendous looking stand and an RGB (unicorn vomit) carroussel on the back. So, to hide that a bit and because it looks nice, I've mounted it to my desk on a Amazon Basics monitor arm.

Desk

• My desk is a White IKEA Bekant. It's a motorised standing desk and I do actually use it standing sometimes. It has a pretty neat basket of sorts for cable management underneath. I'm a bit tired of the white color and rounded corners though so I'm casually looking for something else.

• I sit in a Herman Miller Aeron chair. It's good but it better be with that price tag.

• I've stuck an Aputure MC RGB to the back of my monitor. I've tried a few things for behind-the-monitor light and this one's the best solution so far. It can be really bright white by day and a toned down orange for late night gaming. I would've prefered something with HomeKit support.

• The tabletop only holds my two computers, the A/V gear, the peripherals and a tray for coffee or drinks. The switches, hubs and power bricks are all stuck underneath with two-sided tape. This removes the clutter but also makes it much easier to raise and lower the table as there's only 2 cables hanging from it, power and ethernet.

Peripherals

• My main keyboard is the ZSA Moonlander MARK I with blank rainbow keycaps and custom cables - here it is on Reddit. It's configured with this closer-to-normie Mac configuration.

• My gaming keyboard is a Wooting 60HE which isn't as nice to type on as my Tofu build but it feels like cheating. My alt keyboard is a custom built Tofu60 with silent Alpaca switches and Cherry profile white blanks. I love how heavy it sits on my desk and how soft the switches feel. It's like typing on a stick of butter. Here it is on Twitter.

• After many years of using trackpad only, I'm back with a mouse on the regular. A Logitech G Pro X Superlight in white. It's amazing how lightweight it feels at 63g. Using a mouse on macOS can feel a bit wonky because of the heavy mouse acceleration. I use killmouseaccel and practice my FPS aim on folders and files.

• I have an Artisan FX Zero Soft XL. It's a state of the art mousepad. Haha.

Audio/Video

• Next to my monitor I have a pair of Kanto YU2 speakers. They sound amazing but lack a bit of bass on their own so I have the accompanying subwoofer on the floor.

• When I'm gaming, I use a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro in-ear monitors. They’re plugged into an EVO 4 audio interface. This is mostly to combat latency but it's also very handy to be able to have your own voice mixed into the audio when talking and having an actual dial to turn things up or down.

• I'm using a mirrorless Sony a6000 as a webcam. I've used built-in webcams and tried some dedicated USB ones and they've all been shit. An actual camera like this is an enormous upgrade in quality. It's connected via HDMI and an Elgato Cam Link 4K. It's mounted to my monitor mount with a clamp and an arm.

• I have a Shure SM7B mic on a RØDE PS1 arm connected to my audio interface. I use it primarily as the world’s most OP gaming mic.

Gaming PC

• My PC is custom built in the SSUPD Meshlicious case, black version.

• Specs

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO WiFi
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (6 cores)
  • RAM: 16gb Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200
  • PSU: Corsair SFX SF750 Platinum
  • SSD: Crucial P1 3D NAND NVMe - 1TB
  • GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING OC PRO
  • FAN: NZXT Kraken X53

• I have undervolted the GPU for about a 10°C temp drop with no visible loss of performance. It runs Warzone comfortably around 120fps in 4K with DLSS on. I need to upgrade the CPU next.

On my Mac

• I have a completely empty Desktop folder. Sometimes it serves as a holding area for a file or two but most of the time it's completely empty.

• I never use my Dock for launching apps. It too is mostly empty, holding only Finder, the apps that are currently running, a Downloads folder stack and the Trash. I have it on the bottom edge set to auto-hide.

Software

• My favourite editor is vim inside tmux inside iTerm2 nightlies. I switched to vim over 10 years ago and never figured out how to quit it (haha)
• My colorscheme is zenbones. I use Iosevka which is just delightful.
• Safari is my browser of choice. I like Firefox but nothing beats Safari's speed and macOS integration. I'm a heavy user of Reading List for saving links for later and that only works in Safari. I hate using Chrome as it feels bloated and icky with all the Google.
• I use Mail.app and Fastmail (coupon link) for email.
• Apple Music for music that's not YouTube synthwave mixtapes. Yes, I am the only person using Apple Music but it's ok now. Only thing I miss from Spotify is Discover Weekly but I use Spotify for kids' music so now that's completely messed up.
• Things for todos which is mostly the same repeating list I (fail to) run through each day. Todo lists are really great but I have to force myself to use them. It just doesn't come naturally.
• A combination of VimR with Vimwiki, iA Writer, nvAlt and Notion for notes. It's a mess and I'm never satisfied. Part of it is that I'm bad at keeping notes and part of it is not knowing what it is that I want to capture in those notes. But having good notes looks like a superpower so I keep struggling.
• Quicksilver for launching apps and scripts. It's better than all the alternatives.
• Hammerspoon for general shortcuts, window management presets and more.
• Moves for mouse controlled window management (I made it!)
• Sprinkles to mod websites (I made it!)
• Pastebot for clipboard history.
• 1password for password management.
• CleanShotX for screenshots.
• Battery Buddy because it's cute.
• Espanso for text expansion.
• Hand Mirror and Webcam Settings for calls.
• Sketch for vector graphics.
• Acorn for raster graphics.
• Slack for chatting with friends, incoming notifications from services I run and generally not getting shit done.
• Discord for gaming with friends and not reading NFT servers.
• Apple Photos for photos.
• Time Machine and BackBlaze for backups.

On my PC

• Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends. Battle Royals are so much fun.