Uses

Music production

The Teenage Engineering OP-Z is my main instrument these days. It's a super portable drum machine, sequencer, and sampler. I can make full songs using only the OP-Z, but I also use it to sequence external gear via MIDI, or with some effects units.

I use Ardour as my DAW. I learned music production on Ableton Live, which was great due to the number of tutorials available for it. Later I switched to Bitwig, which I still love for its modular capabilities. But I really wanted to make music with OSS, so I switched to Ardour a few years ago. Ardour made me less productive, but it forced me to learn more about music production and to use my ears.

I love small portable units that are versatile — I'm trying to build a studio that can travel with me, since I'm planning to move into an RV in the next couple months. The Empress ZOIA, the Poly Effects Beebo, the MOD Dwarf, the Norns, and the Organelle all fit into that category.

Music listening

I downloaded all the albums I own on Bandcamp (360+) plus a few other digital albums that I've downloaded over the years, and moved them to a Kodi enterntainment center running in my RV. Musicians are paid nothing for streams, so I highly recommend supporting your favorite artists on Bandcamp.

Programming

I used vim as my main editor for more than 23 years now (I wrote my PhD thesis with vim!), and I recently switched to the Neovim editor. Python is my go-to language, and I learned to love type hinting by working on open-source projects with other people. On the frontend I use Typescript and React, and I've been a fan of Javascript since I can remember.

Hosting

I run my own mail server on Digital Ocean, and have been managing my own email since 2000; I do not recommend it, though. Until recently I ran a few sites and services from a Raspberry Pi cluster in my closet, but with the move to the RV everything is now in Digital Ocean.

My personal blog is built by my custom static site generator called Nefelibata and hosted on S3, as well as my Gemini capsule, running on the Jetforce Gemini server. They have identical content.