/uses Page

Nice find! 🙌 /uses is a nice sort of personal-website standard where people post stuff they use to do their work or just in their life. I swear it is, but I can't find a link about this anywhere now.

Hardware

  • I use a 2023 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro. It's the one my job gives me, but I'd probably use something similar anyway.
  • I have an iPad Air that I use to draw slides (with the Apple Pencil) and watch movies, and sometimes do some shopping.
  • My phone is an iPhone 15 Pro Max. I don't really care about which computer or iPad I use, but I'm a sucker for phones and I love the iPhone.

Software

I'm a software engineer, so I use computers and software a lot, but who doesn't these days anyway.

Computerz

I use macOS as my main OS.

macOS Apps

  • VS Code as my main text editor.
  • iTerm 2 as my terminal.
  • 1Password for password management. I pay for a family subscription, and I think 1Password might be my favorite piece of software ever?
  • Dash for consulting documentation. It's an app that aggregates documentation from different software, programming languages, and ecosystems (it supports hex.pm packages!!). It lets you search though everything. Just awesome.
  • Obsidian for taking notes.
  • Mail.app (the default) for email.
  • Calendar.app (the default) for calendars.
  • Reminders.app (the default) for reminders.
  • Keynote.app for giving talks.
  • TablePlus for talking to databases.
  • Alfred to do a lot of stuff. I launch apps with it, run little scripts that I wrote as extensions, use it for clipboard management, for snippets, as a calculator, and probably more.

I also use a lot of little utilities here and there to make life on macOS more pleasant.

  • I use Magnet to move my windows around.
  • AltTab lets me command-tab my way around much better than the default.
  • CleanShot X to take screenshots. I'm a nerd for screenshots.

iOS/macOS/iPadOS Apps

There are a bunch of apps I use cross-device and outside of doing software development.

  • HiCoffee for tracking caffeine intake. I'm a data nerd.
  • Pocket Casts for listening to podcasts.
  • My wife and I have an AnyList subscription. We use this for sharing grocery lists. It's a good way to spend ten bucks a year IMO.
  • We also have a YNAB subscription. YNAB is awesome.
  • Furthermore, we use Sweepy to track stuff that needs to be cleaned in the house. I promise we're not just big old nerds that speak through apps, it's just really handy to keep track of this stuff.
  • I use Paprika for storing and archiving recipes. I like to cook.

Traveling

My biggest passion in life is probably traveling. I like to optimize the things I can when traveling, so this is my favorite section in this page.

Software

  • Even though I hate it and it's a battery hog, I use Google Maps really all the time. It's the only place where I trust transportation, reviews, and opening times in most places around the world. I don't use it for directions much because I rarely drive when traveling. Apple Maps is nicer and doesn't drain battery, but here in Italy it's pretty much useless.

  • TripIt is the place where I store all the info about the trips I do. Plane tickets, hotels, train tickets, parking, restaurant reservations, whatever. Also super handy because I can share trips with my wife, both as a viewer and as a traveler, so that she has access to everything too.

  • I use Flighty.app to manage my flights. It's the stupidest sixty bucks (you read correctly) I spend out of every single cent that goes out of my bank account, but man do I love this app.

  • When I travel with friends, I love to use Splid to track expenses. It makes it so easy to just pay for stuff and then figure it out later.

  • I mostly use TikTok (yes TikTok) for finding out places to visit, restaurants, and whatnot. I also Google around, sure, but TikTok has a lot of interesting content when it comes to travel.

  • I recently discovered Airalo for buying travel eSIMs. My life is changed forever.