4 ms·

Would love to have you do a usesthis as well - the more obscure stuff is especially fascinating as it usually carries a much better story than just "I'm using t

by dy 15y ago

Would love to have you do a usesthis as well - the more obscure stuff is especially fascinating as it usually carries a much better story than just "I'm using the newest Macbook Pro and I got 8GB of RAM."

cstross 15y ago
Well, I am a gadgetoholic-in-recovery. Let's skip lightly past the colo server running Debian that I keep the blog on. I'm mostly a Mac shop. On my desk right now is an older 23" Apple Cinema display, being driven by an October 2010 13" Macbook Air (4Gb/250Gb SSD, OS: 10.7.2). Next to me is an iPad 2/64Gb and a 3 mifi, with a ZaggMate cover/keyboard. And there's an iPhone 4 that ain't going to be upgraded until it's at least 24 months old (next summer). Pretty dull, huh? (There are also hordes of eccentric items around here, such as the Viliv N5 palmtop -- currently running Win7 as I don't have the energy to battle a GMA500 chipset into cooperating with Linux right now -- but let's not get into lesser-used territory.) Core software: - Firefox 7.blah (with noscript, adblock pro, ghostery, beef taco, instaright, https-everywhere, and tab mix plus) - Thunderbird (mostly using gmail as an IMAP/SMTP/SSL server) - BBedit (what can I say -- it's prettier to stare at than MacVim, and seems to support MultiMarkDown better) - Apple Pages (I loath MS Office 2010's ribbon with a cold and fiery passion because it eats vertical screen real estate; Pages is "good enough" for layout and final markup) - Scrivener (because when I write myself into a corner and need to refactor the deep structure of a book, Scrivener makes life a lot easier) - NeoOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice (because sometimes I need something that can handle MS Office documents better than Pages) - Calibre (ebook management software) - NetNewsWire (this may change soon) - SplashID (because we all need unique passwords for each website, right?) - MacPorts - iTerm (and Go2Shell) ... I think that about covers it. I really don't game much, if at all (it interferes with work to have attractive nuisances on my computers). Dream rig: (This is going to strike you as deeply sad) Start with a build-to-order Macbook Air 11", 4Gb RAM/128Gb SSD. Add the 1.8GHz i7 CPU bump. Don't bother with the 256Gb SSD from Apple because we are going to replace the stock SSD with a 3G OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express sized in 480Gb. Finally add a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display for when it's sitting on my desk. Underpowered? Sure. But it's tremendously portable, and I'm on the road for 8-12 weeks of the year. Two wires to connect, and I have a decent desktop system. Unconnect, and I have a nice 1Kg notebook. The reason I don't have this dream rig right now is that I have the last generation, and I'm not quite enough of a sucker to upgrade every time Apple crack the whip, thanks. Maybe next year.
- dy 15y ago
  Awesome cstross - thanks for taking time to answer the question - I like the idea behind the MacBook Air with the 480 GB upgrade and may have to look into that myself. I just got an iPhone 4S and it surprises me how close it feels to being eligible to be my only computing device - in a few years I can imagine sitting down next to my computer and just having the Apple Wireless Thunderbolt display connect to it and have my entire computer ready to go (I'd go through the trouble of plugging in a cable if necessary :) This line really caught my eye: "(because when I write myself into a corner and need to refactor the deep structure of a book, Scrivener makes life a lot easier)" I've heard of Scrivener being used by writers for this purpose, but do you think it would work well for programmers? I'm struggling right now like I've written myself into a corner and notes/diagrams aren't really helping as much as I'd like.
  - inklesspen 15y ago
    Scrivener is really tuned for slicing and dicing prose. You _could_ use it for code, just as you _could_ use MS Word as your IDE. But it would probably be a bad idea.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - dy 15y ago
      Sorry for the ambiguity - I guess I'm looking for a better domain modeling tool, not IDE. I'm aware of UML but always looking if there are interesting tools from other trades that might apply to programming/modeling...
- rdl 15y ago
  Wow. This is much more what I'd expect from a scifi writer, or really anyone who uses a computer all day professionally. Have you considered Microsoft Office 2011 for office documents? I agree about the ribbon, but it is better than the free alternatives. Why not upgrade to the 27" or a dell u3011 now, and mba11 later? Also, backups?

by dy 15y ago

cstross 15y ago

Well, I am a gadgetoholic-in-recovery. Let's skip lightly past the colo server running Debian that I keep the blog on. I'm mostly a Mac shop. On my desk right now is an older 23" Apple Cinema display, being driven by an October 2010 13" Macbook Air (4Gb/250Gb SSD, OS: 10.7.2). Next to me is an iPad 2/64Gb and a 3 mifi, with a ZaggMate cover/keyboard. And there's an iPhone 4 that ain't going to be upgraded until it's at least 24 months old (next summer). Pretty dull, huh? (There are also hordes of eccentric items around here, such as the Viliv N5 palmtop -- currently running Win7 as I don't have the energy to battle a GMA500 chipset into cooperating with Linux right now -- but let's not get into lesser-used territory.) Core software: - Firefox 7.blah (with noscript, adblock pro, ghostery, beef taco, instaright, https-everywhere, and tab mix plus) - Thunderbird (mostly using gmail as an IMAP/SMTP/SSL server) - BBedit (what can I say -- it's prettier to stare at than MacVim, and seems to support MultiMarkDown better) - Apple Pages (I loath MS Office 2010's ribbon with a cold and fiery passion because it eats vertical screen real estate; Pages is "good enough" for layout and final markup) - Scrivener (because when I write myself into a corner and need to refactor the deep structure of a book, Scrivener makes life a lot easier) - NeoOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice (because sometimes I need something that can handle MS Office documents better than Pages) - Calibre (ebook management software) - NetNewsWire (this may change soon) - SplashID (because we all need unique passwords for each website, right?) - MacPorts - iTerm (and Go2Shell) ... I think that about covers it. I really don't game much, if at all (it interferes with work to have attractive nuisances on my computers). Dream rig: (This is going to strike you as deeply sad) Start with a build-to-order Macbook Air 11", 4Gb RAM/128Gb SSD. Add the 1.8GHz i7 CPU bump. Don't bother with the 256Gb SSD from Apple because we are going to replace the stock SSD with a 3G OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express sized in 480Gb. Finally add a 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display for when it's sitting on my desk. Underpowered? Sure. But it's tremendously portable, and I'm on the road for 8-12 weeks of the year. Two wires to connect, and I have a decent desktop system. Unconnect, and I have a nice 1Kg notebook. The reason I don't have this dream rig right now is that I have the last generation, and I'm not quite enough of a sucker to upgrade every time Apple crack the whip, thanks. Maybe next year.

dy 15y ago
Awesome cstross - thanks for taking time to answer the question - I like the idea behind the MacBook Air with the 480 GB upgrade and may have to look into that myself. I just got an iPhone 4S and it surprises me how close it feels to being eligible to be my only computing device - in a few years I can imagine sitting down next to my computer and just having the Apple Wireless Thunderbolt display connect to it and have my entire computer ready to go (I'd go through the trouble of plugging in a cable if necessary :) This line really caught my eye: "(because when I write myself into a corner and need to refactor the deep structure of a book, Scrivener makes life a lot easier)" I've heard of Scrivener being used by writers for this purpose, but do you think it would work well for programmers? I'm struggling right now like I've written myself into a corner and notes/diagrams aren't really helping as much as I'd like.
- inklesspen 15y ago
  Scrivener is really tuned for slicing and dicing prose. You _could_ use it for code, just as you _could_ use MS Word as your IDE. But it would probably be a bad idea.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - dy 15y ago
    Sorry for the ambiguity - I guess I'm looking for a better domain modeling tool, not IDE. I'm aware of UML but always looking if there are interesting tools from other trades that might apply to programming/modeling...
rdl 15y ago
Wow. This is much more what I'd expect from a scifi writer, or really anyone who uses a computer all day professionally. Have you considered Microsoft Office 2011 for office documents? I agree about the ribbon, but it is better than the free alternatives. Why not upgrade to the 27" or a dell u3011 now, and mba11 later? Also, backups?