Ben WurgaftInterview
Writer, historian
Adapted from Ben Wurgaft's interview on Uses This, published 12 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 write on a late 2011 MacBook Pro with a 13” monitor.
It’s usually connected to a Dell 24” external monitor, with the laptop sitting on a Griffin iCurve stand so old (perhaps 2007) that the sticky pads have become unsticky.
An Apple Magic Trackpad sometimes occupies my right hand.
I also use an early 2014 iPad for reading PDFs, light Internet browsing, and some writing, although my hands are too large for comfortable typing on most portable device keyboards.
When I’m on my bike, which is as often as possible, I carry everything in a 2001 Baileyworks Super Pro courier bag (size L), which was originally hunter orange but which has faded over seventeen years to the color of certain west coast sunsets.
Productivity
I still use Word 2008 for my daily word processing, even though it is full of distracting panels and options I don’t use.
Browser
I browse the Internet with Firefox.
Media
I listen to music on iTunes, despite its myriad frustrations.
Other
Merlin Bird ID (iOS)+ 3 others
And I make very little use of apps on my phone or iPad (except for Merlin Bird ID, produced by ornithologists at Cornell, to identify birds) largely because my love of learning new things doesn’t seem to extend to technological tools.