Software I use, gadgets I love, and other things I recommend.

The M3 Max might be the most powerful machine I've ever paid for at retail. Inference, RAG, and running models with Ollama? Not a problem. Editing 4K video and 60+ Megapixel images? No Sweat. Running dozens of docker containers testing some products and experiments? Easy peasy.

They don’t make keyboards the way they used to. They also don't produce this goodie for sale anymore. You can build one yourself, however, the folks at zsa had one of the best ways to get into these keyboards as a fully supported, prebuilt kit. 40% sized. Ortholinear layout. The most comfortable keyboard I've used in a long time.

I use this in combination with my Logitech POWERPLAY Wireless Charging Mat. I have not had to physically plug in a mouse via USB to charge in at least 2 years now. The 502X PLUS adds some interesting features my previous G502 didn't have, including the crazy sensor DPI options. Really precise, and great tuning for mygaming sessions.

This changed the game for me. I went from dual Dell 32" gaming monitors to this. Freed up some desk space, and I love gaming in a crazy immersive view when I use it as one really large monitor. Splitting it into two panels is pretty seamless, and I can do funky things like work machine on one screen, personal laptop on the other.

My first foray into the world of ortholinear keyboards. Finger strain has been reduced. Love using layers for all sorts of keyboard shortcuts. Configuring with Oryx is dead simple.

The Sony α7R IV. This is the camera for when the little details matter. Full frame 61MP sensor. This is my main camera, because it is really good at what I mainly shoot: landscapes. It's also really good for portraits, weddings, and all sorts of events. It may not be the best for sports/high action - I mean, it can handle 10 frames per second with some tweaking, but if you're doing a lot of action or sports, this may not be the one.

That said, this is my go-to for any trip where pictures might be taken. If I'm traveling, I'm not leaving home without it.

My trusty Sony α7III. Absolutely reliable. Love this camera for street photography and catching random scenes playing out around me. It's traveled with me across the US, and if it wasn't for it's big brother, would still be my first option whenever I go shoot.

Oh, Reflect. Networked note-taking didn't really take off for me until I tried Reflect on a whim. It's amazing at helping me understand just how much context I tend to hold at any given moment. The only thing that would make this perfect would be to allow me to configure my own endpoint for LLM integration, and not OpenAI.

Ollama + M3 Max w/ 128GB RAM = a whole new world of AI awesome. Interact with dozens of models. I'm building an AI course (a "Getting Started" type for those interested in topics like RAG), and Ollama has made that cheap and dead simple.

Now, AnythingLLM is awesome. Their ethos is something to the effect of "if it can be done locally, this application will do it". You can interact with a large number of LLM providers, both locally and hosted. The application includes a vector database (LanceDB) by default, but supports others, like ChromaDB and Pinecone.

I also have a hosted version of Open WebUI running in my homelab, which uses an instance of Ollama hosted on my mac studio. It's been great, and I really have no need for OpenAI's ChatGPT suite (I do not believe that their true goal is to build safe AGI for the world, but rather to monopolize AGI compute - and that's dangerous).

I use Twingate as an alternative to more typical VPN providers. As they focus more on least privilege access and other principles of zero trust networking, I find it great for managing my growing set of services in my homelab.

I'm intrigued by Netbird, but so far, this is just fine for me.

You may not think Raycast is necessary on macos, considering you have the launcher (using CMD + Spacebar), but trust me - it's worth it. Configurable shortcuts. Easy enough plugin system. Large ecosystem of tools that have integrated with it. It is my launcher and shortcut application of choice. Another app where I hate that it is hard-embedded with ChatGPT (if you buy a Pro subscription), but I use the Ollama plugin and for free!

Still the second best editor I've ever used, and I've used a lot of them over the years. JBuilder was the first IDE I ever used, way back in 1998 (sheesh). Since then, I've used Notepad, Notepad++, Eclipse, Aptana Studio 3, Dreamweaver, Sublime, RubyMine (and all its JetBrains friends), and plenty of others. VS Code sticks around for me. Language servers make it easy to use with any language that has an LSP. Tons of good extensions. Pretty fast.

I still miss the good ole days of Textmate, though.