Toolbox

Here are things I use on a daily basis. You'll thank me later.

Workstation

IDÅSEN desk sit/stand 160x80 black/dark

I'm very happy with this desk. When I purchased this in 2021, it was €550, it's now €715. I also picked up some useful accessories like cable trunking and Gravity Headphones Holder.

JÄRVFJÄLLET office chair, Glose black

This chair is perfectly fine. I use it without armrests: I like to noodle on guitar when I'm waiting. When I purchased it, it was €200, now it's €250.

Yamaha HS 7 MP Studio Monitors

I'm very happy with these.

Shure SM 7 B

Very well made. It looks like it will last forever. High quality audio.

I had to buy a Cloudlifter, CL-1, Microphone preamp (was £115, it's now £150), which adds 25 dB of gain, because the SM7 needs a minimum of 60 dB and my audio interface only has 56 dB. It looks like Shure has noticed this common use-case issue and released an SM7 with integrated preamp, if you prefer that.

Rode PSA-1

A microphone studio arm mounted to my desk. Does the job.

Samsung 32" 4K Monitor

It does the job. I have two older 22" and 24" monitors. The 32" is in the centre with the 22" on the left and the 24", vertical, on the right. I'm happy with the 3 Invision Single Monitor Arms. I almost never move the monitors.

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface

It does the job. I have the 3rd gen model. I'm glad I sprung for the 2i2 instead of the solo, because the solo has no dedicated headphone volume knob. It looks like they fixed that in the 4th gen model. The Universal Audio Volt series might be worth looking at too.

Das Keyboard 4 Professional mechanical keyboard

Built like a brick shithouse. Best keyboard I've ever used.

Logitech MX Master 2s Wireless Mouse

I've had a few MX Master mice. I like them, but they're not made to last. I recently had to take this one apart to fix a stuck gesture button. I don't think I can use that button any more, but I never really used it. I've tried other mice and prefer the MX Master.

Sennheiser HD 599 Open Back Headphones, Black

They're a tad ragged at this point, the ear pads have come loose, but they're good comfortable headphones.

Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam

This is a good Full HD 1080p webcam. My previous one was the C270 HD 720p. It was fine, it served me well, but it was time to upgrade. The only downside is the lack of configuration tools, but it's a good quality picture.

Anti-Fatigue Standing Desk Mat

The one I got is discontinued, but it's essentially just a cheaper version of the Ergodriven Topo. I couldn't get the Topo at the time, it was only available in the U.S. I was impressed with the quality of the one I landed on. I've had it for over six years. It's still good.

Desktop

I started my current desktop build around 2018.

Obsidian Series™ 750D Airflow Edition Full Tower ATX Case

This case is enormous. I'm not kidding. I really underestimated the size of it. In the end, I'm very happy with it. I'm not short on space and it's nice to have all that headroom.

ASUS Prime Z370-A Intel 1151 ATX Motherboard

I can't complain. There is still room for upgrades.

Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Processor, 3.70GHz

12M Cache, up to 4.70 GHz, 6 cores, 12 threads. Overclocked, it runs at 5.0GHz fine, but I just run it at baseline, I like a quiet system. It drives my three monitors, I've yet to get around to purchasing a graphics card. Performance is still good.

I don't do gaming on this system, so I haven't needed a graphics card, the CPU is driving the monitors fine at the moment. The graphics card market has been ridiculous for years, but a graphics card would obviously add a big performance boost.

Corsair H115i RGB Pro Liquid CPU Cooler

As with most hardware on Linux, the control software doesn't support Linux. In order change the pump speed, fan speed, RGB, etc., you need open source tooling. I use OpenCorsairLink to reduce the pump speed at startup, because I like it quiet.

Corsair HX Series™ HX1200 — 1200 W 80+ Platinum PSU

Probably overkill, but I got a good deal. Lots of headroom.

G.Skill RipjawsV 32 GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200

For the initial build I had just 16GB (2 x 8GB), but I recently got a good deal and added 16GB (2 x 8GB). That's all the memory slots on motherboard filled, but I don't even think about memory issues any more. Even at 16GB I stopped worrying.

SSD 960 EVO NVMe® M.2 250GB

I use this drive for my operating system.

SSD 970 EVO Plus NVMe® M.2 500GB

For the initial build, I had one M.2 SSD, but I recently got a deal on this one. I use the 250GB for my OS and the 500GB for my projects. I also have a 1TB hard drive for media. That's all the M.2 slots on motherboard filled, but there is still room for more hard drives.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1TB HD

I use this drive for media. I have a few external drives for backups.

Software

Gnome + Ubuntu Studio

I've been happy with Gnome and Ubuntu for many years. I like Studio because it comes packed with lots of useful audio, graphics, photography, and video software, including OBS Studio, GIMP, and Ardour.

Vim - Vi IMproved, a programmer's text editor.

I love Vim. Sublime Text is my primary editor, but I use Vim too.

Sublime Text - A programmer's editor.

I use Vim too.

Alacritty - A cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator.

Faster, nicer.

Kitty - A cross-platform, GPU based terminal emulator.

Faster, nicer.

Tmux - A terminal multiplexer.

All the time.

GitHub CLI - A command-line interface to GitHub.

Productivity up to 11.

gitk - The Git repository browser.

No frills. Just an amazing tool.

Brave - The browser that puts you first.

Switched to Brave in early 2024. Love it. I now use Firefox + uBlock Origin only for development. I used to use Chromium for development too, but now I use Brave because it's essentially the same underlying engine.

Dotfiles

My setup and configurations for Ubuntu 24.04, bash, vim, git, and much more.

Liferea - A feed reader/news aggregator.

Yes, I still use a feed reader. I'm just an old chunk of coal.