What I Use - September 2024 Edition
I wanted to put together a post that outlines the things I use on an (almost) daily basis. This won’t be a complete list, but it should be close, and will at least give me something to iterate on in the future.
Just for the sake of clarity, I have not been paid to promote any of these products. What you see in this article is what I actually use every day. There is one referral link for Fastmail below, but everything else goes directly to the manufacturer’s website.
Hardware
Laptop
I switched to a Mac in 2012 and haven’t looked back. In fact I’m so used to the Mac that when I started at Microsoft and was given a Windows machine, I didn’t even last a year before I had to get a Mac to use for work.
Currently I’m using a 2023 MacBook Pro 14” with the M2 Pro chip and 32 GB of RAM. It has 512 GB of storage, which is plenty for me. I don’t generate a ton of data, and with most modern cloud storage solutions allowing you to offload infrequently-used local content, I’m barely using half the storage.
I do have to use Windows every so often for a few things, so I have a Parallels subscription that allows me to run Windows 11 VMs on my Mac. This is part of the reason I went with 32 GB of RAM, so that I had plenty to power both my Mac workload as well as leave a decent amount for use in a VM. Without the need for Parallels, I think I would have been just fine with 16 or 24 GB of RAM.
Peripherals
I have always been a huge fan of the Mac’s keyboard and touchpad, so I am currently using that as my main keyboard and mouse. I have a couple other keyboards, but they just sit in the closet.
For about the last year I’ve been using the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station 4 docking station. It’s slightly overkill for my needs, but it is a high quality docking station that provides dual 4K monitors at 60Hz with plenty of additional bandwidth for using other Thunderbolt accessories.
For monitors, I have two Dell 32 Curved 4K UHD screens. I splurged a bit on these, to be honest… I don’t use all the screen real estate. I saw a co-worker using one and decided it looked really good. The resolution is high enough that it looks good on the Mac.
Headphones
I have a couple pairs of headphones that I use regularly. First up are a pair of Apple AirPods Pro 2. These work great except for when I end up on a very long support call that is longer than the battery life of the headphones. That part gets a tad annoying.
I recently procured a set of Shokz OpenRun Pro bone conduction headphones. These are designed more with an active lifestyle in mind, but I have long been intrigued by bone conduction technology and decided to try them out. I feel like it’s nice sometimes when I’m at the office and want to have some background noise still filter in while I listen to music.
I also keep a backup pair of wired Apple EarPods around in the event that I somehow forget to charge my headphones or I accidentally leave them behind.
Desk
When the pandemic hit and I started working from home a lot more, I very quickly upgraded my desk setup from what I had (which was super basic and cheap). Today I work off of Vari’s Electric Standing Desk 60x30. It was a pricey investment, but the top is solid wood and it feels like will last 100 years. I’ve been very satisfied. I still don’t stand as often as I should, though.
Mobile Device
I’ve been using iPhones since 2012 as well, and I’m stuck here. Currently I have an iPhone 15 Pro. I mainly went with the Pro because I wanted the always-on display, which hasn’t been added to the base models yet. I don’t take enough pictures to care about any of the fancy camera features.
Tablet
I have an iPad Mini 6 that I use for taking handwritten notes (mostly D&D notes) and consuming some media. I have some e-books that I read there. I have previously used full-sized iPads, but I don’t use them enough to justify keeping them around. There’s part of me that would love to try switching to an iPad Pro as my primary computing device, but I know that I’m geeky enough that I’d very quickly miss having a full-blown operating system.
Software and Services
Website
The website you’re currently viewing is a repository on GitHub, and I’m using GitHub Pages to publish it. I used to have a Wordpress blog many years ago (that barely ever got used), but I wanted to get more familiar with using GitHub, so I decided to use this hosting method. The site just uses markdown files, so writing blog articles is quite easy once you get used to the syntax.
I use Cloudflare for all my domain registrations and DNS. So far their free plan is all I have needed. I started using Cloudflare for DNS a long time ago because changes propagate almost immediately, so there’s no more waiting 24-48 hours for changes. I eventually moved all my domain registrations to them as well, mainly because they don’t add any markup to the registration fees. They just pass through whatever the ICANN fees are. So it ends up being a good bit cheaper than someone like GoDaddy.
Email is probably where I’ve done the most experimentation over time. I’ve had Outlook (originally Hotmail) accounts, I’ve had Gmail accounts, but I have grown tired of the big (free) email providers. I don’t like the fact that the free Google and Outlook accounts serve you ads mixed in with your email. Plus, Microsoft removed the ability to have a custom domain on an Outlook account, so that wasn’t an option for my personal domains.
I have a paid Proton account that I use for some things. I like the fact that this is completely encrypted and no one can see any of my data. However, the feature set was a little too restrictive for my liking, so I have moved away from that as my primary email system.
I am now using Fastmail as my primary email system. Fastmail still has a good emphasis on privacy while allowing more flexibility in how I access my emails. The data isn’t fully encrypted like Proton’s service, but I was willing to sacrifice that. I wrote more about the reasons that made me switch here. If you’d like to get a discount on your first year of service with Fastmail, you can use my referral link. It will give you 10% off your first year!
Social Media
Social media might be an odd category to include here, but I wanted to take the opportunity to plug Bluesky. Originally begun as a project inside of Twitter (pre-Musk), it is a decentralized social media that has many similarities to Twitter in how it functions. One of the things that I really like is the ability to bring your own username/handle to Bluesky. So as you see in the footer on the site, my Bluesky handle is @jasontenpenny.com. Since I own the domain, I’m able to use that as my handle, proving that my account is the Jason Tenpenny that is associated with this website. Yes it’s a bit nerdy, but I think it offers great benefits for authentication of people and companies that have a web presence in addition to their social profile. Bluesky also allows you to take your social profile, including your posts, followers, likes, etc., and move it to a new host if you don’t like your current host. Here’s a great writeup on Bluesky’s feature set as well as how to use it.
I have moved away from maintaining a separate account on Mastodon since I don’t post enough to warrant maintaining both. Instead, I use Bridgy Fed to mirror my Bluesky profile on Mastodon. This allows Mastodon users to follow my Bluesky activity natively in Mastodon, and any interactions with my posts show up in my Bluesky account.
Cloud Storage
Like email, I’ve used most of the major players at one time or another. Currently I have some of my more sensitive data stored in my Proton account. But most of my data is in iCloud. Now that Apple supports full encryption of all iCloud Drive data, I feel much more comfortable storing things there. And I manage an iCloud Family plan for my family, so there was plenty of available storage space I was already paying for.
Browser
Up until recently, I have been using Safari as my main browser. However, I recently came across Orion and have been using that as my main browser for the last couple of months. I mainly like that it is not gathering any data about me or my browsing habits. It also has a built-in ad/tracker blocker. It’s very similar to Safari in its look and feel (and it’s based on Webkit, just like Safari).
When I need a Chromium-based browser, I will usually open Brave.
Web Search
I’ve been a DuckDuckGo user for years, and it’s been a fantastic search engine that has always seemed to get me the results I want and has good privacy focuses. However, I recently have been trying Kagi search. This is a paid search engine that works hard to elevate actual user content as opposed to AI garbage (although they do have an AI that you can use). They also don’t include any search ads or trackers. I’m still deciding how much I like Kagi, but as a general rule I’ve been coming around more and more to the idea that I should pay for services where I’m not the product. But obviously any paid service has to deliver good results, and a search engine is no different.
Password Management
I have been a 1Password fan for many years now, and it is still my main password manager. It is cross-platform and has a great feature set. They are also heavily involved in the push for Passkey adoption, which I appreciate. I might decide to play around with Apple’s new Passwords app at some point, but based on my preliminary review, it looks like it’s still missing some of the features I regularly use in 1Password (associating multiple domains with a password, as an example).