Writing

Currently finishing off a book project that I’m hoping will make a splash!

Coding

  • Getting familiar with the ES8266 controllers
  • Seeing if I can write code in Elixir to interface to an OBD port in my car

Looking At

  • Gleam language for Beam

Messin’ Around

  • Slowly getting better at wood turning. Working out a workflow for getting bubble-free epoxy resin inlays: current best bet seems to be vacuum degassing the resin, then pouring, then heatlamp.

(This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.)

Tools I’m Using

Hardware
Back to the Mac. In the end my one-year Linux experiment was great, but the alternatives to the tools I use (Adobe Premiere, PS, and AI, Graffle, and ScreenFlow) were not quite there. It’s a shame: in many ways Linux is now the nicest overall OS to use.

I’m on a 6x2 core i7 MBP with an old Intuos tablet. I steal one of my kids’ old screens as an occasional second monitor .

Content creation
Adobe Premier Pro, Audacity, Illustrator, Photoshop. Omnigraffle, Quicktime, Numbers, Keynote. I wish I could find a simple animation package. Skim for PDF reading.
Editor
After 30 years with Emacs, I’m now using Visual Studio Code. It’s faster than Emacs, and it just works. And students appreciate the fact that I’m using something familiar.
Utilities
  • BetterTouchTool: so I can reconfigure the ridiculous touch bar (which I keep hitting with my pinkies when I’m typing). I’m also using its window management stuff to let me tile and move things around (including a really useful “throw to other display” keyboard shortcut.
  • Git: for just about everything: my driving value is is “if my machine melts overnight, I want to be back where I was by that afternoon?”
  • Jekyll: for my website. LetsEncrypt/CertBot for keys.
  • Ruby: for general scripting