id: uses title: Uses date_created: 2024-06-30 date_last_updated: 2024-06-30 description: Things that I use ---

## Things I use

### Analog stuff

- Bike: Trek... something. Hybrid. I have had it for almost 15 years and it shows no signs of slowing down as long as I periodically replace some parts.
- Bag: Kifaru Checkpoint. Never thought that an expensive backpack was worth the investment. I was so wrong. I tend to fill my bag pretty full for daily use and the fitted backplate makes it so that I notice almost no difference carrying it no matter what I have packed.
- Chair: ErgoCentric t-centric hybrid. Canadian ergonomic chair company. Was able to go and try it out in the showroom and get fitted for the chair. Fantastic and fully worth the price, especially with how much time I spend sitting in it.
- Home Fitness: Extreme Monkey Kettlebells, yoga mat blocks and straps, Captains of crush grippers, various therabands and other elastics.

### Hardware

- Desktop: My desktop is one that I built myself quite a while ago. AMD RX580 GPU and recently upgraded the cpu and memory to Ryzen 5 4500 and 32G of Crucial DDR4. 2.5Gb network card
- Network Attached Storage: Built it myself with a Jonsbo N1 mini ITX case, 32G RAM and a Ryzen 3 4100 cpu. 2 12TB Seagate Ironwolf Hard drives and a 500Gb NVME SSD. 2.5Gb network card
- Laptop: 2018 Asus Zenbook 3, have replaced the battery in it so is still going strong. If I was to buy a laptop today I would certianly go for a Framework. Really believe in their mission and value being able to fix and upgrade my stuff.
- Phone: Samsung Galaxy A20, got it used. Gets the job done.
- Keyboard: Built a Ferriss Sweep, looking at building another so that I can keep one at work and one at home. Has made such a difference to my comfort when typing. Kalih Choc blue switches.
- Mouse: SteelSeries something, currently using a wired mouse, have a logitech MxMaster and logitech MxAnywhere but the logitech univesal receiver dongle does not work through the KVM so don't use them at home. On my list to see if I can figure that out but not a high priority as I don't use my mouse all that much.
- Raspberry Pis: I have 2 raspberry pis in use at the moment and 1 more that I have yet to decide what to do with.
  - 2GB Pi4 runs my vpn, dns, network wide ad blocking
  - 8GB Pi4 runs some of my own scripts and programs, will also be hosting a home website when I get around to writing that
  - 8GB Pi5 still unused until I both decide what to use it for and take the time to get it set up
- General gadgets:
  - KVM to switch between desktop and work computer when I am working from home
  - 5 port 2.5Gb switch, and 5 port 1Gb switch so that all of my devices that can be hard wired are. The 2.5Gb switch is to have that bandwidth between my desktop and NAS for fast file transfer.
- E-reader: Kobo touch 2.0, reliable, though the screen has taken some damage over the years, might be time to replace. I like the Kobo because of they support epub format which is open and I think should be the default for all ebooks.

### Software

- Writing/Programming: Neovim with a fair few plugins. Telescope and Harpoon for file navigation, lsp and Treesitter for coding, Zenmode for minimal distraction writing.
- Finance: Firefly hosted on my NAS to budget and track my finances. Abacus on my phone to interact with Firefly on the go.
- Media:
  - Jellyfin hosted on my NAS for movies, shows, and music/audiobooks
  - Finamp on my phone to stream music/audiobooks from Jellyfin
  - Calibre for managing my ebook library
  - Liferea RSS feed reader for blogs and webcomics that I follow
  - Freetube for watching Youtube without sign in, tracking etc.
- Synchronization: SyncThing hosted on my NAS to keep files synced on my laptop, desktop, and phone. Lets my laptop and desktop function as essentially one computer
- Browser: Firefox browser with Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Link hints, plugins
- Operating Systems:
  - Desktop, laptop, and cloud server: Arch linux
  - NAS: TrueNas Scale
- Window Manager: i3 tiling window manager
- Terminal: Alacritty
- Shell: Fish
- Terminal Multiplexer: Zellij
- Programming Languages: Rust
- Memory: Anki flashcard app

### Services

I try to pay for the services that I use. I find that "free" services don't often respect the user very much and have been getting worse pretty quickly lately.

- Password Manager: 1Password
- Music: Spotify
- Server: Vultr minimal size instance
- Domain Registrar: PorkBun
- Backups: Backblaze, encrypted locally before uploading, periodic backup from my NAS.
- Email: FastMail
- Search: Kagi payed alternative to Google. So much different, any time that I use Google on another device I am reminded how bad the search has gotten
- Language Learning: Duolingo