Hardware & OS

Organizing these posts can be a bit random, so let’s start with systems themselves.

Interactive Software

Across my various devices, I tend to rely on the same software for my interactive (graphical) computing:

• Chrome for work browsing, Firefox for personal.
• Office for editing, spreadsheets, and presentations; I do use Google Docs for work stuff that is lightweight and/or needs high collaboration.
• VS Code for text editing.
• Overleaf for LaTeX document preparation.
• Paperpile for reference management.
• DynaList for tracking work notes and my runway document.
• FreeCommander for Windows file management, Marta on macOS (when I am not just using the system’s native file browser).
• The Affinity suite for graphics & photo editing.
• Visio for diagramming (when PowerPoint or diagrams.net won’t do). I’m not using Grapholite much any more. After switching to Mac I will look at OmniGraffle.
• Drawboard PDF for tablet-based PDF reading and annotation; Acrobat Pro on laptop/desktop.
• 1Password for password management.
• iTerm 2 for my macOS terminal (Microsoft Terminal on Windows).

Command Line

I do a fair amount of work from the command line, both for running the software and analyses I’m doing and also for general file and data manipulations. Key pieces of this load:

• zsh on *nix (including WSL), PowerShell on Windows.
• nano for quick terminal editing; I’ve also been experimenting with Helix and Micro but the nano keybindings are pretty engrained now.
• tmux for terminal multiplexing / disconnection.
• mosh for connecting to servers at home, will probably start using it more across the board. I’m now just using OpenSSH’s direct PKCS#11 support for my YubiKey.
• direnv to provide ergonomic project-specific configuration.
• zoxide (on *nix) and ZLocation (PowerShell) for directory navigation.
• htop for performance monitoring.
• bat for file viewing.
• fd for finding files.
• ripgrep for searching files.
• ndcu and dust for managing disk usage.
• exa for listing files.
• pandoc for Markdown processing.

Data Infrastructure

On the personal side, we moved off of Microsoft for our primary data infrastructure. E-mail is now on Fastmail and we’re using iCloud for file sharing, calendars, contacts, tasks, etc. Microsoft was working fine for us, but with moving towards macOS it wasn’t making as much sense, and we were able to cut our infrastructure & services bill a bit. Using Syncthing for data transfer between endpoints and the NAS, Samba/CIFS for direct access to NAS storage, and Backblaze for endpoint backups.

For work, there are a few things in play:

• Google Drive for cloud/synchronized document storage (and all the Google Doc storage, of course).
• git and GitHub for source code and text document management. Most of my documents either live in Google Drive or a Git repo.
• Data Version Control (dvc) for managing research data and pipelines.
• Minio (S3-compatible storage server) for storing and synchronizing DVC-managed data.
• rsync and robocopy for CLI data transfer; WinSCP for GUI transfer.
• Kopia for endpoint backup, using a university CIFS drive as the backup target.

Programming and Science

I am still using Python + Pandas + NumPy as my primary software development environment for scientific computing & open-source work. I wouldn’t say I love it, but it’s widely-known, gets the job done, and has libraries for a lot of things. I’ve been working on filling a few gaps myself, such as the seedbank package for random number generator initialization. For plotting I’m mostly using plotnine, but sometimes seaborn and matplotlib.

I use Rust for high-performance data processing code; this year, I finished rewriting the Book Data Tools to be completely in Rust (except for notebooks computing statistics on the data set) instead of a combination of Rust, Python, and SQL.

JavaScript is my primary language for web stuff; this web site is generated with a custom JavaScript codebase. I’ve been experimenting with Deno some as an alternative to node.js, and might start doing more with it. I also reach for JavaScript when doing some data processing that is heavily web-native, like extracting data from a Twitter archive dump.

I’ve also started playing around a bit more with TCL for lightweight scripting. I’ve used it for a while for helping with some setup bits for my Unix shell environment, and have now written some admin scripts in it. It definitely has some warts and missing holes, but it’s a rather pleasant language to do simple things in, and it’s fantastic for building eDSLs.

I use Conda/Mamba (typically through the Mambaforge distribution these days) for managing my primary scientific software environments, as it allows me to get Python, Rust, R, and other tools as needed. These days, if something isn’t in conda-forge or available on a pretty basic OS install, I don’t depend on it in my research projects, so that students and collaborators can get all the requirements from environment.yml.

For projects that aren’t in Conda, I use rustup for managing my Rust versions and asdf for managing most other interpreter environments (Python, Node, Ruby, etc.). I’ve been using pip-tools to pre-resolve Python dependencies for lack of a better solution.

Media Production

I’m not recording as many videos as I did the year I did the build-out of CS 533, but I do still record and edit a fair number.

Camtasia is my go-to recording & video production software; it’s much easier to use for my use case (educational videos) than something like Preimier. I also have a USB shuttle to help with precise navigation while editing.

The game-changing addition this year was TechSmith Audiate. It’s an audio editor and transcriber that allows you to edit an audio track by editing its text transcription. Corrections just correct the transcript without editing the underlying audio; deletions edit the audio track as well. This way I can more aggressively trim my videos to delete blank spaces, false starts, etc.; previously, I only edited out big gaps, because more detailed editing to clean up the speech is very labor-intensive. It integrates with Camtasia, so I can export the audio track from Camtasia to Audiate, clean it up, and round-trip back with an edit list that Camtasia uses to trim the corresponding video. This cleanup process also gives me working captions at the same time. I haven’t gone back and re-edited all my videos with this, but it makes it much less time-taking to produce both a cleaner video and edited captions for new work.

For recording hardware, I’m using a Logitech Brio as my primary webcam, and a Blue Yeticaster as the microphone. I have a green screen that can clip to the back of my chair and some USB lights to facilitate chroma-key work. I also use my phone sometimes, with the Camo software that turns a phone into a webcam. This, combined with a desk-mounted boom arm and a QuadLock mount, allows me to do document camera work in my office either on video or on Zoom without needing to record and edit in a separate video stream. I also use my phone for mobile video recording.

I’m still using Unsplash and The Noun Project for sourcing most of my artwork & icons, with the occasional addition from OpenClipArt.

Analog Information

I’m still using Leuchtturm1917 A5 notebooks and a collection of fountain pens for my daily and weekly productivity management, note-taking, and journaling. I use a Pentel Orenz mechanical pencil for working out maths, sketching diagrams, and other things where I need to be able to erase.

I also bought a turntable this year and began collecting vinyl music. Tactile, analog engagement helps me ground myself and feel more connected to what I’m doing; it’s been effective in my journaling, and I wanted to bring that to a more purposeful connection to music (in some contexts — I still make heavy use of streaming as well). I’ve been putting together an eclectic collection including P!nk, Sturgill Simpson, The New York Rock & Roll Orchestra, Chicago Transit Authority (before they changed their name — found that album for $1 in the bargain bin), Carly Rae Jepsen, and many others. My weekly ritual has now extended to include spinning an album to go with my whiskey and longhand planning.