My current environment

I’ll update this post periodically to reflect my current tooling and setup.

Emacs, Nix-Darwin, MacOS, and more <2025-02-28 Fri>

Now that I’ve finished refactoring my entire development and writing environment, why not specify why I’m using, what I’m using and why? Maybe it’ll be useful for you

Hardware

Computer(s): Macbook Air (Apple Silicon) & X1 Carbon (Thinkpad)

I use both mac and linux pretty regularly, I have them both configured using Nix which allows parity between system configurations. New Apple computers are superb, but I can’t let go of my Thinkpad because I love tinkering on it and I’m sure I’ll sell the macbook one day but keep the thinkpad for many more years.

Monitor: BenQ Coding Monitor

It is big, it is probably overpriced, but it is really nice. No regrets for me here. It’s a lovely 4K monitor with a stellar ergo-arm, doubles a USB hub, and charges my laptops at the same time.

Audio: Rode AI-1 DAC, NT1 Mic, Sennheiser 660S Headphones

Guilty admission, I love good quality audio. This setup has been serving me well for years and years. The DAC sounds superb, and Sennheiser consistently makes my favorite sound.

Keyboard: HHKB Pro Hybrid

HHKB makes the best keyboards in my opinion. They are dead simple, a pleasure to type on, and carry a certain allure that the flashiest RGB monstrosity can’t touch. I’ve had mine for over 5-years and have never wanted for another

Mouse: Logitech MX Master 3

It is a great mouse, though I’m mostly keyboard driven these days.

Editor: Emacs

I’m currently using emacs-plus configured with doom emacs as my primary editor. Yes, I still have neovim installed and use it occasionally when the work is light. I’ve used nearly every editor you can get your hands on… yes I’ve had a lovely time with VSCode, a neovim configured to the hilt, zed, Jetbrains, and more. The editor world has only become more colorful over time and that is a heartening thing to see.

Why I keep coming back to Emacs

In short, every other editor, not matter how configured pails in comparison to the speed, configurability, and efficiency in Emacs. Bold statement, I know. But for just about everything I do (including writing this blog) emacs takes the cake. Emacs, especially when paired with a nice starter configuration like doom emacs truly makes for some superb workloads (and you get to use Vim keybindings).

The truth is, even the most well-built setup in something like neovim only ever approaches the functionality of emacs. Neovim is not an IDE and most “riced” neovim setups do their best (admirably) to make it into one. For me, neovim is a lovely text editor. Emacs is more like an entire operating system. I’ve used both extensively for years and I will continue to use both; Emacs is my go-to system for authoring files (code or other writing) but neovim is my fast “let me edit this file right here right now” editor of choice. I don’t see why I would ever change that. I’ll write a full blog post about Emacs compared neovim and other editors one of these days.

Window Management: Amethyst

I really LOVE yabai, but have been too busy to bother configuring it. Amethyst works right of the box and paired with Karabiner gives me 75% of what I would look for out of Yabai. I’ll probably still configure Yabai again one day (for perfect parity with i3 on my thinkpad). For now it is fine though

Browser: Zen

Really enjoyable Firefox derived browser. Beautiful and clean. Ladybird also looks interesting but isn’t quite ready yet.

Terminal: Alacritty

I’ve used a few terminals over the years (including the newest ones like Ghostty) and came to the conlusion that Alacritty served my needs the best. It is simple, supremely performant, and light on resources.

Passwords: Proton Pass & Bitwarden

I have my family setup on Bitwarden, so still use it. I’ve been experimenting with Proton Pass lately, namely for their email aliasing capability (similar to Apple “Hide my Email” functionality)

Email: Proton Mail

All of my emails, ultimately route to my proton account.

Music: Tidal

I appreciate the high quality sound and that it tends to pay artists better.

AI: Claude Pro + Perplexity

I tend to use Claude to assist in programming related activities and it is the one integrated via gptel in emacs (meaning with a single keystroke I can query Claude Pro from emacs). I tend to reach for Perplexity these days when searching for something over Google or DuckDuckGo.

3D Printer: Bambu X1C with X1Plus Firmware

Fantastic 3D printers that rival flagship DIY systems. Jailbreaking it with X1Plus frees it for my use. I almost went with a Voron but opted for Bambu purely to save me the tinker time.

Home Automation: Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi

Genuinely, Home Assistant is a pleasure to use. Highly recommend for any home automation

That’s all for now, maybe I’ll add more stuff if it comes up. If I change anything significant, I’ll make an update.