What I use to design, build, and write. I’ll keep this current as things change. Inspired by uses.tech.

Hardware

  • MacBook Pro 14″ (M5). Does everything I need and stays quiet doing it.
  • Two LG ultrawide monitors. Once you get used to the extra room, it’s hard to go back.
  • NuPhy Air75. A low-profile mechanical keyboard that feels great without taking over the desk.
  • AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. Pro for moving around, Max for heads-down focus.

Editor & Terminal

  • Zed is my editor. It’s fast and stays out of the way.
  • The theme is VSCode Dark Modern most of the time, with Ayu Light when the sun wins. Icons come from VSCode Icons for Zed.
  • Code is set in JetBrains Mono at 13pt. I spent a while coding in Noto Sans before realizing it wasn’t even a monospace font. Don’t be like me.
  • iTerm2, with cmux in the mix, running zsh and Oh My Zsh.
  • Curious what’s actually installed on a Mac? I built stockpile to answer exactly that.

AI

  • Claude Code, whenever I’m not writing it by hand. I use it for pair programming, PR reviews, documentation, and helping me draft and research posts like the ones on this site.
  • A few MCP servers: Chrome DevTools so Claude can see what the browser sees, Context7 for current library docs, and GitHub.

Design & Frontend

  • Figma for design work.
  • Brave and Chrome day to day, with Safari and Firefox for testing. Every engine has opinions.
  • ImageOptim for squeezing images down before they ship.
  • Git mostly happens in the command line, with GitHub Desktop when I want to see a diff.

Everyday Apps

  • Brave as my main browser.
  • Slack, like everyone else.
  • 1Password, for now.
  • Obsidian for notes, plans, and a running log of my projects.
  • Proton VPN.

Music

Everything plays through Spotify and scrobbles to Last.fm. Here’s the latest:

Year to Be Young 1994

Year to Be Young 1994

by Stephen Wilson Jr.

🎧 Last Played

Beard & Tattoo Care

Not software, but still part of the daily routine.

  • Chicago Comb Co. combs and boar bristle brushes for the beard.
  • Harry’s Tattoo Frost to keep the ink, like this sleeve, looking sharp.

How This Site Is Built

  • A custom classic WordPress theme. No block theme, no build step, just PHP and CSS.
  • Hosted on DreamHost and deployed by GitHub Actions every time I push to main.
  • WP Super Cache for page caching and Autoptimize for CSS and HTML minification.
  • Schema, meta, and Open Graph tags are written by hand in the theme. No SEO plugin.
  • An llms.txt and a Markdown version of every page for AI tools.

Looking for what I do rather than what I use? Check out my portfolio.