Uses
The things you used to own, now they own you. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
I often get asked about my computing setup—my computers, the software I run on them, how I host my services, and other choices of personal technology. This is a relatively up-to-date list detailing what I’m currently using.
As I get older I try to be increasingly mindful about the products that I use. I’m a big fan of whittling down and paring away at long lists of tools and software, instead opting to go deeper and narrower into certain things.
I don’t use software or hardware by Google, Microsoft, Facebook Meta, or Apple (with the exception of my MacBook Pro, for now), for ethical reasons. One does not simply invite cancer into their own life.
Hardware
- Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro M1, 2020.
- Development: StarFive VisionFive 2 SBC, RISC-V, 8GB RAM, Kingston 1TB NVMe SSD, Keychron K7 keyboard, Samsung S34J55x display.
- Netbook: Nokia Booklet 3G, 2008, running Devuan Linux and xfce4.
- Typewriter: Olivetti Lettera 22, 1963.
- Phone: Fairphone 2 with LineageOS, basic phone setup with no apps or network connections.
- Camera: Krasnogorski Mekhanicheskii Zavod (KMZ) Zenit 312m body and MC Zenitar-M2s 2/50 lens, 1998.
Software
- I mainly use macOS on bare-metal or Debian with KDE Plasma and Windows 11 in Parallels virtual machines, depending on my current needs.
- On the server(s) I use Debian and openEuler.
- IDE/Editor: Sublime Text with SoDaReloaded Light theme and Fira Code font. Before that I was using Inconsolata. Never VS Code because I still remember what Microsoft really is.
- Android Studio Emulator for all the apps I don’t want installed on the phone.
- Version Control/SCM: fossil and git.
- Browser: Koumori, Tor and Brave, these are the addons I am using:
- Email: Mozilla Thunderbird and Sylpheed
macOS
- NetNewsWire for browsing RSS feeds.
- My terminal is iTerm, using zsh, Oh My ZSH, PowerLevel 10k, and Solarized Dark theme.
- I use Homebrew, and I usually install
git,coreutils,curl,findutils,hugo,htop,irssi,rsync,tor,tmuxand some more. - Little Snitch to block all unwanted network connections.
- 1Password, by far the best password manager I have used to date, always local vault, block all outgoing connections with Little Snitch and never update.
- Affinity Photo for basic image editing.
- Parallels Desktop for running virtual machines.
- iA Writer for taking short notes and writing long text.
- Things, my preferred task management tool.
- Telegram for instant messenging.
- Postman for API endpoints testing.
- OmniGraffle, my first choice when making diagrams.
- Raycast as an app launcher & switcher, clipboard history manager, workflow launcher, and snippet expander.
- VOX for playing music.
- Micro Snitch to log camera and microphone usage.
- VLC media player for … well … media playing.
- Kaleidoscope, a file/folder comparison tool, perfect for applying patches/updates when you can’t compare them in version control.
- Be Focused Pro for time-tracking.
- Dash, for those times you need documentation and there is no internet access.
Debian & OS agnostic
- Terminator with zsh, Oh My ZSH and Powerlevel 10k.
- Newsboat for browsing RSS feeds.
- HexChat and/or irssi for messing in IRC.
- Cobalt Strike
- Metasploit Framework
- Nmap
- Wireshark
- Nessus
- Aircrack-ng
- Snort
- Burp Suite
- IDA Pro
- Acunetix Premium
- SonarQube
- Fortify Static Code Analyzer
- HCL AppScan
- Invicti Professional
- AppDetectivePRO
- and some more stuff.
OS development
- I’m developing 星 on a Debian arm64 virtual machine running on Parallels (macOS) and testing is done mainly on QEMU and/or Bochs (if things are failing too badly). Screenshots are taken in UTM under macOS.
- Sometimes I use JetBrains CLion in addition to Sublime Text.
- Wireshark for snooping on the network connection when those pesky DHCP ACK responses are not received because fuck knows why.
Plants
- Portulacaria afra
- Chinese elm
- Microcarpa “Tiger bark” ficus
- Pinguicula “Tina”
- Sarracenia purpurea
Services
- Search: Yandex
- E-mail: Riseup
Website
- DNS: Njal.la
- Proxy: DDoS Guard
- Hosting: Earth-Trisolaris Organization
- Built with: Hugo, static site generation is always the best option for content sites, and this is the best static site generator I’ve ever used. If you want to read more about my website writing workflow, here is an article about that.
Colors
The colors haven’t changed since I started this website, usually I just mess around with the fonts.
- #5550ed
- #ed1980
- #45475a
- #ebe9f5
- #f5f4fa
- #8a8a8a
- #eee7e7
- #1e1e2e
If you have a question about something that is listed here (or not), feel free to reach out to me.