Things I Use

Computer

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI
  • Not recommended for Linux users due to igc panicking from ASUS’ power management, unless they buy another Ethernet and/or wireless adapter. There are workarounds but the fix for this relies on co-operation from ASUS who doesn’t want to support Linux.
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7950X (base speed: 4.5GHz)
  • Wanted a CPU that can throw a punch towards 86Box, specifically emulating a decently kitted out PC of the time running Windows 98 SE. It does that, though depending on the emulated CPU it does stutter when browsing Windows Explorer.
  • Cooling: CORSAIR H150i ELITE CAPPELLIX XT
    • Best cooler for the case I was using. Was looking at the Noctua NH-D15 however it would not have fit the case or have enough RAM clearance. This computer was purchased before the NH-D15S as well.
• RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance RGB 32GB (2x16GB) (5600Mhz)
  • The RGB version was cheaper lmao
• GPU: SAPPHIRE Pulse AMD Radeon 7900 XT - 20GB
  • Likely a reference model, works with PlayStation VR 2 without the requirement of a PC Adapter - this is because the PSVR2 requires extra power, which is provided from USB-C ports that implement VirtualLink which reference models for Radeon 6000/7000 do have but not their partner boards.
• Operating System: Windows 11
  • Have tried Linux on this but had power management problems (see above) and workflow problems eventually led me to using Windows. Windows 10 end of life is in October 2025, so I’m just going ahead and using 11. No, I’m not happy about it.
  • StartAllBack and Directory Opus used to replace the regressions from the current Windows Explorer.

Accessories

• Virtual Reality Headset / HMD: PlayStation VR 2
  • Initially bought for PS5, now primarily used for PC VR. I still use the PS5 for No Man’s Sky though.
• Keyboard: 8BitDo Retro Keyboard C64 (Kailh Box Whites V2)
• Wireless: TP-Link Dual Band AX1800 connected via Ethernet to a small unmanaged Netgear network switch.
  • Was initially used to attempt to fix the power management issues with the wireless adapter. It failed, but it provided better speeds than the built-in wireless adapter so was kept.
  • Attaching everything to a network switch allows direct connection to other devices (e.g. music server) while giving them Internet access.

Software

Browsers

• My main browser is Zen Browser, a fork of Mozilla Firefox with a user interface that is close to Arc, with features from it including tab tiling, workspaces and a two-tiered tab pinning system. However, Zen improves on such features, such as the ability to drag tiled tabs (not available in Arc or Vivaldi) and globally pinned tabs (named “Essentials”)
  • I’ve had people ask why I don’t just use the operating system’s built-in window snapping. I prefer to have one instance of the browser open, as I’ve had annoyances from using multiple instances of the same browser, and I prefer tab tiling to window snapping when I need to display two pages at once.
• Vivaldi is used as a Chromium-based backup.
  • It’s not the best, I feel a bit more “locked in” using it compared to Zen. But it’s the best Chromium based browser I’ve used at the moment.

Extensions

• Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey for user scripts, dependent on browser.
• Stylus for custom user-styles (e.g. dark mode styles)
• Redirector or LibRedirect to auto-redirect YouTube to Invidious, Twitter/X to Xcancel.
• Consent-o-Matic to auto-fill GDPR/cookie forms
• DeepL for in-line translation
• Graze for QoL improvements to Mastodon/fediverse.
• Leechblock to block distractions
• Web Scrobbler to scrobble to Last.fm/ListenBrainz from web sources (e.g. Bandcamp)

Music Software

Player: MusicBee

MusicBee is an all-in-one customisable music player and library organiser for Windows. It has support for star ratings (5 star rating system with half-stars), It’s performant with my large music library (and that’s especially considering they’re on an SMB share), and it comes with a bunch of features unique to it. My favourite is the tag hierarchy explorer, which lets me filter my library based on a pre-defined template. I use it to filter my library based on genres I input from Rate Your Music.

It’s also pretty extensible too, some of the plugins I use include ScrobblerBrainz, a plugin that allows you to scrobble to ListenBrainz (which allows for extra metadata, possibly more accurate than last.fm especially for featured artists) and ScrobbleItem,

This is one of the few things holding me back from full timing Linux, as my workflow of going between MusicBee and my tagger does not work that well on Linux. I plan to rectify this sometime by having part of this workflow inside MusicBee via a plugin.

Tagger: MusicBrainz Picard

Picard is an advanced music/audio file tagger coded in Python, intended for users to match their audio files to entries on the MusicBrainz database (think Wikidata but specifically for handling music metadata). I am able to accurately tag my music and then, with its ability to move the files on save, automatically have it organised in my music library through a file naming script.

Picard is very extensible with plugins. Here are the ones I use:

• Additional Artist Variables: exposes additional variables relating to artists, used for the file naming script.
• Feat. Artists in Titles: moves featured artists to the title
• Standardise Feat.: replaces all “featured” artist join strings (i.e. ft., featuring) with feat.
• ReplayGain 2.0: scan audio files using the ReplayGain standard, or for OPUS files, EBU R128 standards
• Submit Folksonomy Tags: a plugin I wrote! It lets you submit tags to these MusicBrainz’ entities: recordings, release groups, releases, artists.
• View script variables: Pops up a UI for viewing script variables, great for debugging the scripts you write in Picard.