Gear

A list of products that I use and am happy with, but please don’t buy things that you don’t really need.

Need to add: clothing (pants, shoes, shirts), bike gear

Tech

• MacBook Pro – 13″ for home, 15″ for work. I have a Mac mini as well, but am thinking of selling it and making my laptop my main machine.
• iPhone 5S – The iPhone has been reliable for me, I’ve invested in some good, useful apps, and maintenance tasks like backups, contact and calendar syncing, and music are handled without my direct intervention
• iPad 4 – Work iPad. Great for taking notes during meetings, reading tech manuals, and mobile SSH sessions.
• ZAGG Keyboard Case – Makes those SSH sessions way easier
• Buffalo DriveStation DDR (3 TB) – Extra storage for my iTunes Library and other files that I don’t want to or can’t keep on my Mac mini’s internal drive. It has a 1 GB RAM cache to speed up transfers and USB 3 for when my home computer has that.
• Drobo (2nd Gen) – This used to do what the Buffalo does now, but it’s just too slow. The large capacity (currently about 4 TB) makes it a good catch-all Time Machine destination. The 5D is great if you need higher transfer speeds.
• Kindle – Yes I already have an iPad, but I received the basic Kindle as a gift and I much prefer reading on the lightweight, e-ink device.
• Senheizer HD201 headphones – Over-the-ear, great sound, very low price

Other

• Knog Boomer USB front bike light – Battery lasts a long time, charge via USB, and it doesn’t slip on my handle bars. What more could I want?
• Columbia Street Roastery – Really awesome coffee from friendly, local roaster? Yes, please.
• Contigo mug – The only mug I trust to not leak all over me
• AeroPress – Really good coffee, really easy cleanup. Especially great when I just need a single cup
• Pourover coffee method – Also great for making a single cup. Very inexpensive. Cleanup is also very easy
• French press – Can you tell I like coffee? This is my preferred method when multiple cups are needed Clear up is a little more annoying, but still way better and cheaper than a drip coffee maker. (NOTE – if you think cleaning a french press is harder than cleaning a drip coffee maker, then you probably have a nasty-ass coffee maker).

Software

• *Evernote (OSX, iOS, Windows) – Must-have. I store and organize everything here and the business card scanner is really awesome.
• *1Password (OSX, iOS, Windows) – Must-have
• *Dropbox (OSX, iOS, Linux, Windows)
• *Time Machine – All my computers are Apple, so this is the easiest “set it and forget it” backup solution.
• Carbon Copy Cloner – I use this for keeping a bootable clone of my work computer. If my work machine goes down, I want to be back up and running as soon as possible.
• Mailbox (iOS) – personal email
• Acompli (iOS) – work email
• Gmail (iOS) – for search
• Gmail (web) – Nobody else has the archive first, search later setup that Gmail does
• Tweetbot (OS X, iOS) – Better design and more consistent experience than the official app
• iSSH or Prompt (iOS)
• Screens (iOS) – Favorite remote desktop solution for Mac now that Parallels no longer works for me
• Rdio (iOS, OS X, web)- Better-designed than Spotify, cheaper than buying albums I’ll only listen to for a month. Several of my friends use the service which makes it that much better
• *CU Transit (iOS) – Essential app for riding busses in Urbana-Champaign
• Google Authenticator or Duo (iOS) – Two-factor auth is a good thing
• Sleep Cycle (iOS) – Vastly improves my waking-up experience and makes nerdy graphs for me
• PDFpen Scan+ (iOS) – More control than Evernote for document scanning, plus decent OCR
• Reeder (iOS, OS X)
• Pocket (iOS, OS X, web) – If nothing else, it lets me move passed items in Reeder or on Twitter guilt-free
• Calibre (OS X) – It’s not pretty, but it’s the best way I’ve found to manage digital books and comics.
• Comic Zeal (iOS) – Not as nice as Comixology, but the best option I’ve found for non-DRM comics
• Comixology (iOS) – Really nice app though I may retire it in favor of buying DRM-free comics
• Chrome (OS X) – It’s my current browser, but I have a heavy eye on switching back to Safari or giving Firefox another shot.
• Airfoil (OS X) – Makes it possible to stream Rdio from my Mac to multiple AirPlay speakers without also sending other system sounds. Totally worthwhile purchase
• AppCleaner (OS X) – The best way to get rid of all those pesky library files when you want to delete an application
• Gemini (OS X) – Really solid file deduplicator
• Handbrake (OS X) – Because there’s no reason for me to lug around physical DVDs anymore
• Notational Velocity or nvALT (OS X) – I use it to store searchable CLI commands and code snippets