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.
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: Tor and Brave, these are the addons I am using:
- Email: Mozilla Thunderbird.
macOS
- 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, Textual for messing around IRC.
- 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
- Cobalt Strike
- Metasploit Framework
- Nmap
- Wireshark
- Nessus
- Aircrack-ng
- Snort
- Burp Suite
- IDA Pro
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.
- Test bed is an Apple MacBook Air 13", 2019, Intel.
Plants
- Sageretia theezans
- Fukien tea
- Chinese elm
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.
Colors
The colors haven’t changed since I started this website, usually I just mess around with the fonts.
- #5550ed
- #ed1980
- #44475a
- #ebe9f5
- #f5f4fa
- #8a8a8a
- #eee7e7
- #14143c
If you have a question about something that is listed here (or not), feel free to reach out to me.