Flaky

dumb blue jay lol

Uses

Hardware

Main Tower

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
  • Cooler: Corsair H150i CAPPELLIX XT
  • RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB
    • I was initially going to go RGB-less because I don’t care for it, but the RGB cost less.
  • GPU: SAPPHIRE Radeon 7900 XT
    • It has a specific brand name to it but I forgor.
  • OS Drive: 2TB Samsung 980 PRO
  • Media Drive: WD Red Plus 12TB
  • OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro

VR Headset – PlayStation VR 2

Initially bought for PS5, I ended up using it more on PC. It’s a decent headset, if you don’t mind a wired headset it’s probably the best PC headset you can buy, especially with the modded eye tracking support.

Laptop

  • Model: Lenovo Legion C7 – basically a “creator’s” version of the 7i with a 140hz colour-accurate screen and less configurable RGB.
  • CPU: TODO
  • RAM: 16GB
  • GPU: Intel Integrated Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Max-Q
    • Basically a mobile version of the 2070 Super, I guess.
  • OS Drive: 2TB (2x1TB)
  • OS: Fedora Linux

NAS

  • Model: QNAP TS-454
  • Drives: 12TB – 4x4TB in RAID 5
    • Yes, I have a backup external drive for this.
  • OS: QNAP QTS (basically their flavour of Linux, I guess)

Other Devices

  • Steam Deck 256GB: Mainly for emulated games, but it’s also a good JRPG machine. I haven’t really used it though.

Software

Music library – MusicBee and MusicBrainz Picard

MusicBee is like iTunes on steroids, it’s a really good library organiser. You can created filtered views of your library for different purposes, your playlists’ views can be tweaked to provide more specific information (I use this to create a Eurovision playlist detailing a song’s country and the year/host city), and filter based your own criteria using the Tag Hierarchy Explorer and a tag hierarchy template. The template I use is one I build based on Rate Your Music’s tree, which you can find under my projects.

MusicBrainz Picard manages the filesystem structure, using metadata downloaded from MusicBrainz (essentially a music-specific Wikidata) to correct the tags and move files to the library using file naming scripts.

Music streaming – Apple Music

I go in detail about what I like and hate about Apple Music here. The tl;dr: it’s a lot calmer to use than Spotify and fits nicely with how I want a portable music library even with all the flaws it has.

Office suite – Microsoft Office/OnlyOffice

Microsoft Office is still the standard, and it works, but OnlyOffice is a genuine contender. I cannot go back to LibreOffice given how slow and janky it is on Windows.

Browser – Zen Browser/Vivaldi

I am currently using Vivaldi. It was the browser that popularised tiling, and it still does it well. The follower tab is also really good at preventing some cases of tab hoarding. It’s also Chromium so everything Just Works while Firefox has issues like lagging while using Gutenberg or Bluesky’s video player de-syncing on any OS that isn’t Linux.

For Firefox-based browsers, though, it’s gotta go to Zen Browser, which is essentially like you the Arc UX into Firefox.

Extensions

  • LeechBlock (for blocking distractions)
  • Harper (grammar checking)
  • Linkumori (URL cleaner)
  • Redirector (redirect certain sites to alternative frontends)
  • ScriptCat (userscript manager)
  • Shazam (finding songs, SongRec is a good universal solution on Linux)
  • Simple Translate (inline language translation)
  • Stylus (user styles)
  • Tab Wrangler (auto-closes tabs)

Website/CMS – WordPress

I go into detail on why I’m currently using WordPress here, but the tl;dr: 99% of static sites assume you are a web developer and want to do web development, while WordPress doesn’t.

Note-taking/personal knowledge management – Obsidian

Obsidian is like the Swiss army knife of note-taking – it’s very customisable/extensible and is great for curating a personal “digital garden”. It’s free for the major desktop operating systems, Linux, and the major mobile operating systems.

Backup utility: FreeFileSync

It’s a GUI app for backing things up. I find the GUI really helps where rsync doesn’t, as it tells me exactly what is going on.

Text editor: bouncing between Kate and Sublime Text

I can’t chooooose lol. Kate is nice, but Sublime Text is much snappier, especially on Windows.

IDE: JetBrains Rider

It’s a really good .NET IDE that is also cross-platform. I cannot see myself using Visual Studio unless I have to work with legacy .NET Framework (shudder)

Services

Music cataloging: Rate Your Music

It’s a bit clunky, but it’s been going since before MySpace was a thing. I use the track ratings and genre tree very extensively.

Large language model: Anthropic Claude

Mainly use it to help with coding, things like tracking where a code change on one file led to unexpected behaviour on another. I’ve not messed with paid ChatGPT at all, really, but I like how blunt I can get Claude to be when my ADHD goes awry. That said, I want to try and reduce dependency on it, not because of anti-AI – in fact, it’s been proven time and time again that the shame and bullying they do doesn’t lead to reduced use, and a lot of shit I’ve seen from that crowd verges onto conspiracy theory – but for myself and to build up my own skills.