The Setup

Things that I use. Last updated on 7th September, 2015.

Laptop Setup:

1. MacBook Pro Retina (2015), 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM.
2. Dell U2414H monitor
3. Logitech G300 mouse.
4. 1TB Western Digital Passport Ultra, 1TB Seagate external HDD and 2TB Western Digital Passport.

Tablet: Nexus 7 2012 3G 32GB running downgraded Cyanogen Mod 10 for better performance on an ageing device.

E-Reader: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2015 edition

Mobile:

1. One Plus 2. I absolutely love it. It has a great camera and performance, at par with the flagships, if not better.
2. Yu Yureka, a Cyanogen OS phone. Bonus point: OTA updates from Cyanogen directly.
3. A dumb samsung phone for when I’m travelling and need the week long battery life.

Audio:

1. Audio Technica M50X. Absolutely brilliant. Perfect sound, very good passive noise blocking. MKBHD certified.
2. Panasonic RP-TCM125E-K in-ear headphone. Top rated by The Verge. I agree.
3. Roland Cube 20XL guitar amplifier that I use as speakers sometimes.
4. Logitech UE Mini Boom bluetooth speakers. Decently priced. Loud enough for one room.
5. Apple iPod Shuffle for music in gym 💪

For listening to music I have a paid subscription of Rdio. I extensively use its listen offline feature on mobile. Apart from Rdio, I use iTunes on desktop and Google Music on mobile/tablet.

DIY Electronics:

1. Raspberry Pi 2 Mod B.
2. Photon by Particle.
3. Arduino Uno rev3 board.
4. Cubieboard that is running Android 4.1.
5. Intel Galileo board.

OS: OSX Yosemite

Development: I use iTerm2 for command line fu. I spend most of my time on either terminator or browser. Some of the terminal tools that I use daily:

• Vim for all my coding
• Git for version controlling. I put nearly everything in a git repo
• SCM Breeze for easy git
• Axel for downloading
• Autojump for quickly moving around my system
• PDFtk for all things pdf. I only deal with pdfs when syncing docs between my devices
• A custom terminal prompt called Gitster
• Whole lot of custom scripts
• My dotfiles are on GitHub

A5 ruled notebook and Stabilo fine tip pens for sketching when I am working on a user interface

Browser: Google Chrome with the following must have extensions:

• Postman for API development and testing
• Better History because chrome’s history page sucks
• Ghostery to block all the social nonsense
• JSONView for pretty JSON
• Last.FM scrobbler because I like to track my music listening habits
• Motivation for nothing is more motivating than to see your life pass by right in front of your eyes
• PushBullet for sharing stuff between my mobile devices and laptop
• Pocket for offline reading
• Workflowy for offline note taking

Web Apps:

• Most of Google stuff
• Google Drive for document management. Special mention because it helped me move away from Windows environment. Linux still doesn’t have a half decent document suite
• 8tracks for super awesome, human-curated, music playlists
• Workflowy for note taking. I also use the android app.
• Twitter for bite sized updates
• Feedly for RSS

Desktop Apps: The few desktop apps that I do use include:

• Slack for team chat
• Rdio for music
• Flux for it slowly warms the colors of your screen based on the time of day. This helps me work late in the nights without straining my eyes.
• Atom for those few times when I feel like moving out of vim
• Ulysses for writing long form stuff. It has an absolutely brilliant interface
• VLC. Because if not this then what else
• Adobe Illustrator and Sketch for creating mockups
• Alfredfor quick switching and general productivity
• Rdio for music streaming. Have a paid subscription.

Nexus 7 and One Plus 2: I do a lot on my mobile and tablet now a days. Some apps that I use multiple times a day:

Photos:

• Instagram for sharing photos
• Snapseed for times when I need more than Instagram filters

Reading:

• Opera Mini for compressed, faster browsing
• Play Newsstand for casual reading. I wish there was something better. I don’t like Flipboard and the rest either.
• Pocket for offline reading
• Feedly for rss feeds of must read blogs
• Mantano for ebooks

Social:

• Twitter for in class entertainment!
• Facebook messenger and main app
• Whatsapp for staying in touch

Music:

• Google Music
• Rdio. It allows downloading songs for offline listening in paid subscription which I have
• 8tracks for super awesome, human-curated, music playlists on the go
• SoundHound for identifying music
• SoundCloud for indie stuff

Productivity:

• Google Keep for short notes and reminders
• Workflowy for note taking

Tools:

• Twilight so that I can sleep
• Splitwise for splitting bills
• Google Fit for keeping count of my steps
• Camscannerfor creating soft copies. Highly recommended for students.
• AirDroid for moving files over WiFi

Update Log

5th September 2015

• Moved to One Plus 2.
• Added Rdio to various setups. Been using it for a month now
• Switched Sublime to Atom

28th June 2015

• Removed Sennheiser HD439. Added ATH M50X.

13th May 2015

• Moved to MacBook Pro from the four years old Dell Inspiron 15R which was dual booting ElementaryOS Luna and Windows 8.
• Removed ElementaryOS/Ubuntu specific apps like Banshee