This is a list of hardware, software, websites and services I use & recommend to anyone!

Affiliate & referral links: Affiliate and/or referral links can be identified by their gold underline, gold underline & colour when hovered, and “This is a _ link” tooltip when hovered for ~ 1 second or longer. Here’s an example:

Referral Link   Regular Link   Affiliate Link

See also: Colophon

Hardware

I mostly use my laptop for personal things, such as this site, but I have access to a really beefy PC at work, which I can “borrow” during breaks for personal stuff.

MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

PC Build

PC build details coming soon!

iPhone 17 Pro

iPhone 17 Pro

Peripherals

Software

Visual Studio Code

I firmly believe the fact Vscode don’t charge for their software is a gift from God.

To offer such a solid, well-made piece of software completely for free is absolutely astounding to me.

I’m not exactly a professional programmer - in fact, I’m about as beginner as it gets - but this is about my opinion right now and I think it’s spectacular.

I’m sorry, I don’t know why I got so defensive there. It’s just really good, and the community around it seems very storng to me.

Extensions

Plugins

Themes

Mozilla Firefox

On my phone I use Safari, but everywhere else I use Firefox. Most browsers, for the average consumer, are pretty much the same. As a result, it’s the smallest of things that make all the difference.

For me, Firefox offers pretty much exactly what I’m looking for. It’s robust and has a strong community, plus it’s FOSS which I really like.

Extensions

Adobe Illustrator

I (reluctantly) use Adobe Illustrator for pretty much everything, even things that would be better done with Photoshop. I’m completely self-taught and very proud of it…also my brain only has room for one Adobe product. Similarly, I only have the patience for one Adobe product.

I cannot stress enough how much I hate Adobe, but their vector software is the best, and it’s too deeply woven into my workflow for me to swap it out without severely bombing my productivity.

No links. They don’t deserve my links. (಑‸಑)

Websites

SVG Tools

I really like SVG

Fonts

Guides

Colours

Other

Services

1Password

I started using 1Password like 4-5 years ago after I got hacked and needed to beef up my passwords, and I’ve never looked back.

I’ve looked adjacent (Bitwarden, LastPass, Google Password Manager, etc.), but I’ve never left 1Password. Why? They’re just so good at what they do, better than I’ve experienced with any of their competitors.

I’m aware that others have had bad experiences but I’ve never personally had any bad experiences with them. In fact, I’ve had a number of really good experiences with their customer service.

They don’t really have a free plan, but this is one of those things where the cost is worth it.

Cabin

For analytics, I use Cabin, a privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics.

I really like how easy it is to use - it’s literally 1 line of JavaScript you paste into the footer and it’s done!

I prefer it to Google Analytics because it doesn’t use any cookies and runs on renewable energy.

For more info on how Cabin collects analytics, please visit Cabin’s privacy page.

Also, I personally found the Google Analytics dashboard really confusing, so the simplicity of the Cabin dashboard is really nice.

Fastmail

For email, I use Fastmail. It’s not free, but the features you’re paying for, in my opinion, are totally worth it. Learn more on their features page.

Porkbun

I use Porkbun for my domain because they offer a lot of domain services for free, services other registrars charge extra for…

[source]

GitHub Pages

To host my site I use GitHub pages.

It’s completely free, so long as you don’t mind ALL the code for your website being available to literally anyone. I’m a big fan of FOSS, so I don’t mind this, but you should be aware of it.

There are paid plans with GitHub that allow you to use GitHub pages and keep the code private, but there are competitors like Codeberg that offer this for free.

Sync

For my personal cloud storage I use Sync. Initially, because their servers are in Canada πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦, but also because their service is really robust, reliable and secure.

One of their big thing is privacy, so everything has end-to-end encryption, which I like.

If you’re tired of Drive, Dropbox, etc. I’d definitely suggest giving Sync’s free plan a try.

I still use the free plan to this day, by the way - it’s not a free trial! They have paid plans available but I don’t have any experience with these. I don’t believe in keeping all my files in the cloud so the free plan is more than enough for me.

That’s pretty much it, they do what they do and they do it well.

YouTube Premium

Warning!
YouTube Premium is a curse. Once you've started paying for this subscription, you can never stop.

I’m sort of not even kidding about that, by the way…as soon as I tried their 3-month trial and experienced the bliss of no ads, I knew there was no turning back.

It’s simultaneously the best and worst thing because I tried to stop paying it for a while and I genuinely couldn’t handle the number of ads and how intrusive they were to my viewing experience.

Yes, I recognize this is a me-problem. Yes I recognize this is a very entitled & privileged ‘problem’.

Regardless, I freaking love it. Just the no ads by itself is enough to make the subcription worth it. On top of that though, you get a PiP feature, you get to lock the screen and the audio keeps playing…

Not to mention, it comes with full YouTube Music subscription!

YouTube Music

Don’t get me wrong, in terms of music streaming services, Spotify is still king in my opinion. The only reason I use YouTube Music at all is because I get it “for free*” with the YouTube Premium subscription.

That said, it’s not that bad. It does the job and saves me CAD13.99 /mo (Spotify Individual subscription).

Social Networks

Social Media

The usual suspects of social networking. I’m not very active on social media, but may change that in the near future.

Other Networks

Community social networks that are a little more niche and hobby-specific.