I’ve always been fascinated to see what other apps or workflows others are using in their day-to-day lives. Every now and then I learn about a new app or some cool trick I didn’t previously know. I doubt anyone seriously cares about what I’m using, but figured I’d list them out anyway—if for no other reason than to keep a historical record at this point in time. Applications Alfred — I have a lifelong license, and I like it. No point in fixing something that isn’t broken. I primarily use it for app switching, but also use it for math, and to search for gifs. Aseprite — Sometimes I do pixel art! Even if the UI is clunky, and some keyboard shortcuts aren’t always convenient, there are some unique features that help facilitate creating pixel art. Audacity — I rarely use it, but sometimes it’s easier to make some quick audio edits with Audacity than to use a full blown DAW. Bear — This is the note-taking, task-tacking app I’ve landed on. The UI is beautiful and it feels snappy. It syncs, so I can use it on my iPhone too. Chrome — I used Arc for the better part of 2024, but after they announced they were done working on it to focus on a new AI-powered browser, I peaced out. There are a couple of features I really missed, but was able to find some extensions to fill those gaps: Copy Current Tab URL, Meetings Page Auto Closer for Zoom, Open Figma app, and JSON Formatter. Figma — I use it because it’s what we use at work. I’m happy enough with Figma. iTerm2 — Has a few features that I like that makes me chose this over Mac’s native Terminal app. Pixelmator Pro — I haven’t paid the Adobe tax for a long time, and it feels good. I started using Pixelmator because at the time it was the best alternative available. I’m comfortable with Pixelmator at this point. I don’t really use image editors often these days, so I probably won’t switch anytime soon. Reaper — My DAW of choice when composing music. It’s very customizable, easyish enough to learn, and the price is right. It also has a die hard community, so I’m always able to find help when I need it. VS Code — I’ve tried a lot of code editors. I prefer Sublime’s UI over VS Code, but VS Code does a lot of things more easily than Sublime does, so I put up with the UI. YouTube Music — I still miss Rdio. YouTube Music works well enough I guess. Paying for YouTube Music has the benefit of not seeing ads on YouTube. Command-line Tools These aren’t apps per se, but these are some tools that I use to help manage packages or that I use regularly when developing. Deno Eleventy Homebrew pure statikk Vite Volta yt-dlp Equipment I have one computer and I use it for everything, and I’m okay with that. It’s more than powerful enough for work, composing music, making games, and occasionaly playing games. Although I have a dedicated home office, lately I tend to work more on the go, often with just my laptop—whether that’s at a cafe, a coworking space, or even just moving around the house. 2021 M1 MacBook Pro AKG K240 Studio Headphones Arturia MiniLab MKII Controller Behringer UMC202HD USB Audio Interface Fender Squire Strat Guitar Fender Squire Bass Guitar Shure SM57 Virtual Instruments This is quite specific for composing music, so if that does’t interest you, feel free to stop reading here. This list is not exhaustive as I’m regularly trying out new VSTs. These are some staples that I use: 🎹 Arturia Analog Lab V (Intro) — My Arturia controller came with this software. It has over 500 presets and I love exploring the variety of sounds. 🎸 Bass Grinder (Free) — I recently came across this VST, and it has a great crunchy overdrive sound for bass guitar. 🥁 Manda Audio Power Drum Kit — Even though you can use this for free, I paid the $9 because it is fantastic. The drums sound real and are great for all styles of music. 🎸 ML Amped Roots (Free) — What I like about this is that I get great metal guitar out of the bost without having to add pedals or chaining other effects. 🥁 ML Drums (Free) — I just started experimenting with this, and the drum tones are amazing. The free set up is pretty limited, but I like how I can add on to the base drum kit to meet my needs rather than having having to buy one big extensive drum VST. 🎹 Spitfire LABS — More variety of eclectic sounds. I also use several built-in VSTs made by Reaper for delay, EQ, reverb, pitch-shifting, and other effects. Reaper’s VSTs are insanely powerful enough for my needs and are much less CPU intensive.

Over the past couple of years I’ve gotten into journaling. Recently I’ve been using a method where you’re given a single inspirational word as a prompt, and go from there. Unfortunately, the process of finding, saving, and accessing inspirational words was a bit of a chore: Google a list of “366 inspirational words”. Get taken to a blog bloated with ads and useless content all in an effort to generate SEO cred. Copy/paste the words into Notion. Fix how the words get formatted becasue Notion is weird, and I have OCD about formatting text. While this gets the job done, I felt like there was room to make this a more pleasant experience. All I really wanted was a small website that serves a single inspirational word on a daily basis without cruft or ads. This would allow me to get the content I want without having to scroll through a long list. I also don't want to manage or store the list of words. Once I've curated a list of words, I want to be done with it. Creating a microsite I love a good microsite, and so I decided to create one that takes all the chore out of obtaining a daily inspirational word. The website is built with all vanilla tech, and doesn’t use any frameworks! It’s nice and lean, and it’s footprint is only 6.5kb. Inspirational words While I’m not a huge fan of AI, I did leverage ChatGPT on obtaining 366 inspirational words. The benefit to ChatGPT was being able to get it to return the words as an array—cutting down on the tedium of having to convert the words I already had into an array. The words are stored in it’s own JSON file, and I use an async/await function to pull in the words, and then process the data upon return. Worth the effort I find these little projects fun and exciting because the scope is super tight, and makes for a great opportunity to learn new things. It’s definitely an overengineered solution to my problem, but it is a much more pleasant experience. And perhaps it will serve other people as well.

Over the past couple of years I’ve gotten into journaling. Recently I’ve been using a method where you’re given a single inspirational word as a prompt, and go from there. Unfortunately, the process of finding, saving, and accessing inspirational words was a bit of a chore: 1. Google a list of “366 inspirational words”. 2. Get taken to a blog bloated with ads and useless content all in an effort to generate SEO cred. 3. Copy/paste the words into Notion. 4. Fix how the words get formatted becasue Notion is weird, and I have OCD about formatting text. While this gets the job done, I felt like there was room to make this a more pleasant experience. All I really wanted was a small website that serves a single inspirational word on a daily basis without cruft or ads. This would allow me to get the content I want without having to scroll through a long list. I also don't want to manage or store the list of words. Once I've curated a list of words, I want to be done with it. ## Creating a microsite I love a good microsite, and so I decided to create one that takes all the chore out of obtaining a [daily inspirational word](https://starzonmyarmz.github.io/daily-inspirational-word/).  The website is built with all vanilla tech, and doesn’t use any frameworks! It’s nice and lean, and it’s footprint is only 6.5kb. ### Inspirational words While I’m not a huge fan of AI, I did leverage ChatGPT on obtaining 366 inspirational words. The benefit to ChatGPT was being able to get it to return the words as an array—cutting down on the tedium of having to convert the words I already had into an array. The words are stored in it’s own JSON file, and I use an async/await function to pull in the words, and then process the data upon return. ## Worth the effort I find these little projects fun and exciting because the scope is super tight, and makes for a great opportunity to learn new things. It’s definitely an overengineered solution to my problem, but it is a much more pleasant experience. And perhaps it will serve other people as well.

The other day I shared why I prefer coding prototypes rather than using design apps to create them. My prototyping environment has evolved over the years. I love to hear how others build prototypes, so I thought I’d share where I’m at now. Maybe you’ll find it useful. A single repository I currently have a single GitHub repo housing all of my prototypes. I do this primarily so I don’t have to remember where any given prototype lives. They all live in the same place! Another benefit is if I pull in a library or some CSS component, I can reuse it in other prototypes without having to go out and grab it from the source again. My old setup In the past I used Sinatra hosted on Heroku. Having Ruby and a basic server (Such as Webrick) in the backend was pretty nice: I could code up some fairly complex prototypes out with realistic url schemes. Gems! If I needed fake data, I could use the Faker gem. If I wanted a table with a 100 rows, I could easily generate that with a super simple loop. But it got clunky. Spinning up a new prototype wasn’t very efficient. Setting up the urls took time. Deploying to Heroku wasn’t always straight forward. Heroku also got rid of their free plan, and I didn’t want to go looking for a new service. Maybe I’m making excuses. A dumb server Now I just use HTML, CSS (vanilla), and Javascript with no special backend. I don’t have Node.js running, and I don’t use a package manager like NPM or Yarn. To start a server I navigate to the prototype directory in iTerm, and run Statikk. Easy peasy. This setup requires no upkeep, so I can focus on actually prototyping! I have a basic file structure for keeping prototypes separate. I typically use Preact for scaffolding. To import Preact or other NPM packages I use esm.sh. When I push changes to the GitHub repo it’s deployed to GitHub pages. I can then share a public URL to folks that need to review the prototype. One glaring problem There’s only one issue I’ve run into using this setup, and its not even related to the setup! The Porchlight design system (which we use at Harvest) doesn’t have it’s styles or components available to consume publicly via CDN. Womp womp. I can get around the CSS issue. I end up having to copy the compiled CSS from the design system and paste it into a new file in my prototype environment. And I’m kind of out of luck with the JavaScript: I have to code these up from scratch. Although, I suppose I could copy the compiled components, and paste them into my prototype environment. The easiest fix is probably to introduce a package manager, but I’d rather not. We have talked about making the design system’s CSS and components available via CDN–it’s just a matter of getting around to it. Prototype! So that’s my current prototyping setup. Maybe it will help inspire you to setup your own prototyping environment. Whether you use code or a design app–you should prototype!