Adam RobertsInterview
Writer, newsletter producer (SitePoint)
Adapted from Adam Roberts's interview on Uses This, published 19 July 2018. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
I have the requisite 13" Retina MacBook Pro checks system report from 2015.
Also important: I have a set of Bose Quiet Comfort noise-cancelling headphones for work, a set of AIAIAI headphones for home and transit, and then some $5 earbuds for when I don't want either of those over-ear ones.
I have an iPhone 6 which is a little slow but is still going strong!
Communication
Also, Slack groups, also other places.
I use Substack's CMS to prepare Versioning.
I use Campaign Monitor for other newsletters.
Productivity
If I see something interesting in my downtime on my phone or a desktop, I'll save it into Pocket with a 'versioning' tag.
Anything plan-ey, or collaborative, I'll write in Google Docs, then share it with other ~ stakeholders ~, then discuss it, then never open it again.
Browser
It's fast enough, pretty enough, and capacious enough for my needs, even when I've got 50+ Chrome tabs full of advertising open.
I spend the majority of my time inside a browser - currently Chrome because I keep putting off changing to Firefox.
Notes
Vesper is where I write notes.
Security
Coding & Development
For non-newsletter writing, I'll write in .md in Atom, purely because of the gentle vibe I've cultivated there.
I'm also writing a non-work-related book, and for that I use Scrivener.
Media
Overcast is how I listen to podcasts.
Other
Tab Counter has a little number indicating how many tabs you have open.
OneTab lets you gather up every tab you have open and chuck them into a list.
I use the Display Menu menubar app to make my screen high-res and therefore tiny and hard to read.
I use BetterTouchTool to toggle windows to different sizes with a keyboard shortcut.
Aware displays how long I've used the computer without stepping away, and Degrees displays the current outside temperature, so when I step away from the computer and head outside I know what to wear.
Oh, and F.lux plays with the color of my Mac's screen to stop it keeping me awake forever.