Turns out I’m pretty dogmatic about some of the things I use. This page is a collection of the tools, products, and services that I use in my daily life and work. There are no affiliate links here because I don’t want to have any conflicts of interest.

Analog Things

As I’ve reflected for this page, I have realized that I’m super unfussy about many of my earthly possessions. I don’t want to spend a lot of money (which I don’t have anyway) on things that don’t matter to me. But there are still a few things that I do care about.

Office Supplies

Notebooks. I mostly use a Leuchtturm1917 notebook for journaling and planning when I want a notebook to last many years. When I don’t have (or care to spend) $25 for a notebook, I've found some off-brand notebooks that are almost as nice around the $5-10 mark at my local large, monopolizing corporation. I just use dollar-store mini legal pads for the notes and lists I make throughout the day.

Pens. My favorite pens are Zebra Sarasa brand. I like them because they are smooth, reliable, and affordable, and they have a version designed to write atop with highlighters. They are the least messy gel pens I’ve ever used, and the ink is replaceable.

Printer. Brother laser printers are not just the best option; they are the only option. I have regretted every other printer I’ve ever owned or used.

Chair. While I’m sure there are a few great (expensive) chair options, I am very comfortable in an office chair that I bought at a thrift store. I was completely broke (starting a PhD) when I bought it, and it has continued to treat me well. I cannot offer a brand or model name. It is a black leather office chair with lots of cat scratches on it.

Visual

Art. We display art in our home that we have made ourselves, that we have been gifted, and that we have purchased from artists we admire. We don’t have a lot of art, but the art we do have is meaningful to us. A lot of our art was painted by family members, but we have a few pieces from farmers’ markets and art fairs. I would love to gradually acquire prints from artists I admire, but I have neither the budget nor the wall space for that right now. Pieces I have my eye on include works by Joe Lycett, as well as some finer pieces from a handful of Etsy artists. I may also get some prints made from art in the public domain, such as those at Useum.

Pottery. We have a few pieces of pottery we use every single day. On a recent trip to Oregon, we visited a studio and purchased a couple of mugs, a vase, and a pour-over coffee dripper. We use them every day, and they are beautiful and functional. I would highly recommend finding local potters rather than buying mass-produced pottery from big-box stores. Handmade mugs win on all three axes: prettier, better to use, and they come with a person attached.

Kitchen

Cookware. I use almost exclusively 8, 10, and 12 inch Lodge cast iron skillets and a 7-quart Lodge enameled Dutch oven. After a few years of use, the cast iron is in great condition and more non-stick than most non-stick pans I’ve used. I also have a few stainless steel pots and pans, but I don’t use them as often.

Coffee. For drip coffee, I use a Chemex or a ceramic pour-over cone with a paper filter. For espresso, I use a Breville Barista Express. Logan, Utah is not the easiest place in the world to find decent coffee, so I grind my own beans with a Niche Zero. I buy my beans from Caffe Ibis or Keats & Co. at good.store, depending on how fast we need them. If I’m feeling adventurous, I sometimes use an Aeropress or a French press.

Cleaning & Organization

Cleaning Products. I have a hard time with fragrances, so I spent the last few years on the hunt for decent unscented cleaning products. If you’re on a similar journey, here are my favorites:

• All-purpose cleaner: Green Llama All Purpose Cleaning Tabs
• Disinfectants: Hydrogen peroxide (3% solution) and isopropyl alcohol (70% solution)
• Dish soap: Natural Grocers brand (unscented)
• Dish scrubbing: Cotton dishcloths, which I wash daily in the washing machine. I also use a few plastic-free dish brushes, which I replace every 6 months or as needed.
• Laundry detergent: Nellie’s Washing Soda (the absurdly large bucket from Costco)
• Laundry booster: Meliora Oxygen Brightener
• Broom: The cheapest Libman broom at my local large, monopolizing corporation.
• Mop: O-Cedar H2Pro flat mop system with my all-purpose cleaner (since I have a very small tiled floor area, I don’t need a traditional mop)
• Vacuum: Shark upright vacuum with PowerFins and a HEPA filter. I have had this vacuum for 5 years, and it is still going strong and cleans up lots of cat fur.

Chore Chart. We divide chores using a combination of approaches from K.C. Davis and the Fair Things system. We have a wooden tray on our kitchen counter with note cards for each chore, and we move the cards around to indicate who is responsible for each chore, when it’s done, and communicate when we need help or are stuck.

Random Tasks. For our irregular tasks, we use a physical bulletin board with sticky notes that acts as a shared Kanban board. We have a column for “To Do”, “Doing”, and “Stuck”, and we crumple up the sticky notes to fill a large jar when we’re done (for a visual sense of accomplishment). We write the task, the person responsible, and the due date on each sticky note.

Organization. When it comes to physically organizing a home, I find it hard to beat the cheap-as-dirt Sterlite clear plastic bins. I use them for everything from pantry organization to craft supplies to cat toys. I also use a few inexpensive drawer organizers and shelf organizers, but I don’t have any specific recommendations for those.

Digital Things

Organization & Productivity

Catch-All (Second Brain). I use Anytype as my catch-all for notes, personal tasks, and information management. I have been using it for just over a year now, and it has quietly absorbed my entire brain. Notes, tasks, reading list, recipes-that-sounded-better-at-2am — it all lives in Anytype now. I also use it to store important information that I need to access quickly. It’s open source!

Email & Calendar. I use Proton services for email and calendar. It’s not perfect, but I have been using it for a few years now, and I have been happy with the balance of price and features.

Password Management. I use Bitwarden for password management. Open source, cheap, cross-platform, and boring in exactly the way I want a password manager to be. I know Proton includes password management, but it feels really dangerous to me to have all my eggs in one basket, so I keep my passwords separate from everything else.

Documents. I use OnlyOffice for my word processing and spreadsheet needs. I use Overleaf for collaborative LaTex writing (for work, mostly), though I’m honestly not the biggest fan of their interface and business model. I might be transitioning to Typst soon.

Research Management. I use Zotero for research management. Zotero is the reason my citations have never once been wrong, which is more than I can say for me. It’s open source and cross-platform, and I use it to manage my research papers, citations, and notes, plus bibliographies for my personal writing projects.

Development

Website Development. At this point, I use Hugo for my static site generation needs, with themes I develop myself using HTML, CSS (Sass) and JavaScript. I write the content in Markdown and Hugo styles it into a static site for me. I have been using it for a few years now, and I have been happy with it. I use Hostinger to host my website and Porkbun for domain names. It’s probably not a perfect setup, but it gets the job done.

Git. I hate GitHub with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I self-host Gitea for personal projects, but I’m going to switch to Forgejo soon because of Gitea’s increasingly corporate direction.

Languages. I write in whatever language best fits a project. I’m loving Rust at the moment, but I’ve also written plenty in Python, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Go, Matlab, and a few other languages. I have a soft spot for C, but I don’t use it much anymore. Of course, I use formal modeling languages and paradigms for my research, but I won’t go into those here.

IDE. Honestly—and I know this is a hot take—I’m not too fussed. I have had a decent time with Vim, VS Code, Codium, Kate, and (when my employer feels generous and I have the RAM to spare) JetBrains IDEs. I don’t have a strong preference.

Generative AI. Not today, Satan.

Other Software

Web Search. I use Kagi for web search. It is not perfect, nor is it free, but it is miles better than the dumpster fire that is Google or Bing/DDG. I’ve also been enjoying more niche search engines like Marginalia Search and 4get.

Graphic Design. I used to use Adobe products, but since my switch to Linux, I’ve developed a real affinity for GIMP and Inkscape. They are more than sufficient for my (limited) needs, which mostly include designing shitposts or shitpost-adjacent graphics.

Finances. I manage finances using Actual, since it lets me track a budget using the most flexible paradigm I’ve found. It has some plugins to automagically import transactions from my bank.

Weather. You can’t beat Climendo for weather forecasts. It aggregates forecasts from multiple sources and gives you a consensus forecast.

Media

Music. I am in the process of buying my favorite music in a format that I actually own (CDs, vinyl, or DRM-free digital downloads). I use Bandcamp for most of my music purchases, and I use MusicBrainz to keep track of my collection. While I transition, I’ve been enjoying Tidal.

Books. There is not (really) a local independent bookstore in Logan, Utah, so I buy most of my books online¹. I use Bookshop.org for physical books, Kobo for e-books, Libro.fm for audiobooks, and Libby for library e-books and audiobooks. I use StoryGraph to keep track of my reading and to find new books. I manage my owned audiobook streaming with self-hosted Audiobookshelf. Books are one of the best categories to go anti-Amazon in these days.

Papers. Thankfully, my employer provides me with access to academic journals and databases. However, I have been loving oa.mg for finding open-access papers. oa.mg has saved me more paywalls than I can count. I also use arXiv and watch profiles of folks in my field on Semantic Scholar or Orcid.

I have a separate collection of Favorite Media that I’ve curated over the years.