The idea of a /uses page is to tell you about the stuff I use to either distract myself or bring more efficiency to my life. I swiped this idea from Wes Bos.

Editor + Font

Visual Studio Code is the text editor I'm currently using and I don't see anything unseating it anytime soon. It's incredibly extensible while still loading very quickly.

Night Owl by Sarah Drasner is my favorite theme for VS Code and also whatever other apps I can find it for.

Work Utilities

SecureCRT is my terminal emulator and SSH client. I'd love to find a viable alternative but its Python and JavaScript APIs are really hard to let go of. I've written a ton scripts for it, and it makes my work life much more enjoyable.

DataGrip is my database client of choice. It's platform agnostic and has connectors for any database you need.

Postman is my favored REST API testing and design suite. I use VS Code's Thunder Client when I just need to test an endpoint on the fly.

Beyond Compare 4 is the best diff tool for Windows, hands down. It does everything you could possibly need.

Lightshot is the app I use to take and edit screenshots quickly. It's very intuitive and the ability to copy to clipboard is a big time saver.

ShareX is my app of choice for video screen captures when I need to quickly show someone how to do something. It's a great tool for quick tutorials and video documentation.

Desktop + Productivity

aText Typing Accelerator is a must-have text expansion app and I use it constantly. This tool saves me more time than anything else that I have installed.

1Password is my choice of password management. I love its feature set more than any other password manager I've tried.

ScreenToGif is a great tool for capturing video and annotating it for animated gifs, if you're into memes.

MyRadar is the greatest weather app I've ever used. Essential for weather nerds, or anyone who's curious about Mother Nature's daily destruction. Wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, blizzards, etc.

Multimedia + Home Theater

VLC Media Player is free and open source and it's my favorite media player for Windows.

Plex Media Center is amazing for all of my personal media hosting needs. I run it on a System76 Meetkat with Pop!_OS, utilizing Docker and a few other containers to make for an insanely good HTPC (Home Theater PC).

Pocket Casts is far and away my favorite podcast app because your settings sync across all of your devices. Not only that, but it also syncs the time codes of whatever you're listening to, so you can seamlessly switch between your PC and phone without having to search for where you were in an episode.

Spotify is -- begrudgingly -- my streaming music player of choice until something better comes along.

Apple TV 4K is the choice I made for my streaming device. It's simple, powerful, and works well with my iPhone. Also, it can turn my TV on and off without me setting anything up, and I'm a simple man.

Writing & Note Taking

Final Draft is the tool I begrudgingly use for writing screenplays and graphic novels. I dislike the company's practices, and the shit is too expensive, but it's the best at what it does in my estimation.

Audio Production + Recording

FL Studio Pro has been my go-to digital audio workstation (DAW) for just under two decades now. I use it to sequence and edit all of my music.

MPC Studio is the drum controller/sampler that I use for producing beats. I chose it over the Native Instruments Maschine Mikro simply because the MPC's software is extremely good.

Serato Sample is a must-have plugin for any producer who's into flipping samples. It's incredibly good when combined with the MPC Studio above.

Hindenburg Pro is the recording suite that I use for podcasts and other simple audio editing. I couldn't imagine ever going back to Audacity. While Audacity is free, Hindenburg just has too many features that save time and make life easier. It's worth every penny.

Tracklib is an online vinyl digging website. Great for finding obscure but professionally recorded samples, and it also features a very simple licensing system.

Splice is where I go for a bunch of the VST plugins and presets I use as well as audio samples. Splice makes music production much less of a chore. I love it a lot.

Cymatics provides very high quality audio sample packs and MIDI packs, and some pretty decent VST plugins. They're the yin to Splice's yang.

Goodhertz provides two game-changing VST plugins that I use on literally every track that I produce. Vulf Compressor and Midside.

GoXLR is the USB audio interface/mixer/preamp that I'm using right now for my vocals, both for podcasting and music. The built in soundboard and fx are very useful and fun.

Shure SM7B is my microphone of choice for recording vocals. It's kind of most people's microphone of choice, for good reason. It's just a great sounding microphone for spoken word or singing. I also have a Shure BETA 57A for when I'm feeling a lazy hand held session. It's a lot less bulky for not much of a hit to sound quality.

Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro are the closed-back studio mixing headphones that I use when producing music. I love them and I think they’d survive a nuclear bomb going off.

Hardware + Accessories

HyperX Cloud II Wireless are the headphones I have on my head basically all day, every day. Wireless headphones seem to all come with gotchas, but these have been good to me so far. I used to swear by the Steelseries Arctis line of wireless headphones but after a horrible RMA experience, I've sworn the entire brand off.

SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL is my mechanical keyboard of choice. I prefer a tenkeyless layout to a 60% or a full. It also has a USB passthrough port, which is a necessity for my setup while being incredibly difficult to find with a TKL layout for whatever reason.

Razer's Basilisk V3 Pro is the mouse I'm using right now. After several issues with Logitech wireless mice phantom clicking, I refused to buy another one. This was the only other mouse I could find with left and right clicks from the scroll wheel, so here we are. The wireless dock is nice, and I turn off all of the RGB stuff so the battery life is great. It's also very customizable. For instance, when I'm coding, I just hit the side button + left click and suddenly, whatever I have highlighted gets commented out. Pretty cool.