TheSetup Changelog

In April 11, 2012, I did an interview with The Setup which is online at http://benjamin.mako.hill.usesthis.com/. Over time, my technology use changes but I don't get to update the website very often. As a result, I've tried to keep a changelog here where I update lists of major pieces of software that I adopt. Between that interview and this changelog, you should be able to get a pretty comprehensive idea of what I'm using.

• (January 2013) I've migrated my personal blog, and all of the other blogs that I maintain, from PyBlosxom to Wordpress. You can read more about my experience and rationale on my blog.
• (April 2013) I've started using mosh instead of ssh for most of my interactive shells. It works wonderfully on high latency connections and in situations where you're frequently moving around. It use remote terminals quite a lot and this has been a huge upgrade.
• (April 2013) I've started a long process of switching my slides from LibreOffice/OpenOffice over to LaTeX Beamer. Now that I'm becoming a teacher, I want to make sure I invest my time in teaching materials that I love and that will work over the long haul. The missing pieces for me in Beamer will mostly filled by pdfpc (a former version of which was called pdf-presenter-console) which is something I was previously using quite a bit in openoffice. Reproducing my slides and doing all the things I used to be able to do in LO/OO is a challenge but so far I'm pretty happy with it. I've posted details on getting setup with my Beamer setup over on my research collective's wiki.
• (September 2013) Bose has discontinued the MediaMate speakers long ago so I've replacing them as they break and wear out with their Companion 2 Series III speakers which seem to occupy the same niche in the Bose product line. They do all the same things and I'll buy them again. I have also switched to using Bluetooth to connect to speakers although I haven't found a particular Bluetooth adapter that I love or would recommend.
• (September 2013) I very rarely need headphones but I do need them sometimes and I prefer big over-the-ear models to earbuds. In my office, I keep a pair of Aerial7 Tank headphones (I learned about these from Matt Boch) which, in all honestly, I only chose because they sounds reasonable and are bright orange, pink, and blue). In my backpack I keep a pair of SkullCandy earbuds which I literally found on the ground at airport.
• (January 2014) After many months of research, I replaced an old Chrome bag with a Mission Workshop Rambler bag and I am beyond thrilled with it. It's the best all-purpose, all-weather cycling gear I own and I use it every single day. If I had had multiple separated waterproof pockets a decade ago, it would have saved me replacing at least once laptop.
• (May 2014) I've moved on to another X series laptop. This time it's the second-generation, type “20A7″ Lenovo X1 Carbon. This is the laptop with the strange LCD-powered F-key strip above the keyboard. With the laptop, it also made sense to switch to the ThinkPad OneLink Pro Dock. I've documented the specifics of installing GNU/Linux on the devices on my blog.
• (December 2014) I've completed a nearly complete migration away from LibreOffice which I now only use for reading Office documents. All of my slides that I've developed for teaching are in LaTeX beamer and I've actually gotten pretty good at using TikZ for doing graphics and layout. The learning curve was step but things are great up at the top of it.
• (December 2014) I'm trying to focus more on using Python and the Scientific Python stack wherever possible in my research. Although I'm comfortable with R and many other languages, having one language to work with my students in is deeply useful. This one is going to a very long multi-year project.
• (July 2015) I've dumped the Kindle DX in favor of the Sony DPTS1. It's unbelievably lightweight, incredibly fast, fantastic for highlighting and note-taking with a great multi-touch eInk screen. For someone in my line of work where reading student papers and research papers is the name of the game, it's fantastic. I don't have very high opinion of its manufacturer but it's a "Bizarro" Sony product in many (good) ways: no DRM, only reads/writes standards compliant PDFs readable with free software, no support for any proprietary formats, only speaks WebDAV over the wire. Just try to not remember that it's a $800 PDF reader and that it does effectively nothing else.
• (August 2015) I've started using OwnCloud for storing images synced directly from my phone automatically. I'm also using OwnCloud for hosting my calendar and contacts which I love. I sync these using CalDav and CardDav to my Android phone using some pretty awesome free software sync tools available in FDroid. I'm using IceDove (i.e., Debian-branded Mozilla Thunderbird) as my desktop-based client for both calendar and contacts although I sometimes just use the OwnCloud web interface for contacts.
• (October 2015) Switched my phone to a OnePlus Two. I still don't really use it more than I absolutely need to.
• (November 2015) Since 2012, I've completely switched to standing desks at both home and at work. At home, I've used a couple different plans from Ikea Hackers including this classic one and a similar one with six legs but without the second shelf. At work, I used my startup budget to buy a Mod-E Standing Desk from Multitable. In both cases, I have gone for the longest desktop possible so I'm setup for collaboration with others. I use a Crown King Comfort anti-fatigue matt but I've used others and don't really think it's really anything unique or very special. Many other matts are just as good but I haven't found any that I think are much better.
• (December 2015) An essential piece of furniture that I've now adopted at both home at work is the Jasmine Bookstand from BestBookStand. Although I do sometimes use it in the more obvious ways for putting papers, notes, or books in a place where they are visible, I mostly use it as a way to hold my laptop above my desk surface so that it is at appropriate/ergonic eye-level for use with an external keyboard (i.e., the EnduraPro at home/work and the HappyHacking when traveling). The bookstand itself folds up compactly for travel with a external keyboard.
• (December 2015) In a slightly strange change, I've switched away from using org-mode for basically all short-term task tracking. What I use now is... a piece of paper. I still use org-mode for tracking my progress on long term projects and for nearly all note-taking but I find that for things I plan to do today having this on a fresh page of a notepad is perfect. It also creates a strong incentive to make sure I finish my daily tasks each day so that I don't have to carry over any tasks to the new page tomorrow.