Glenn FleishmanInterview
Editor (The Magazine), podcaster (The New Disruptors)
Adapted from Glenn Fleishman's interview on Uses This, published 17 September 2013. 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
A 2011 Mac Mini, which I recently bumped from 8 GB to 16 GB of RAM (for less than $100) with two external 19-inch displays, is my primary machine.
A hard-action Matias Tactile Pro (FK302 model) that I use for everything except when I am taking verbatim or other notes while talking to people by phone or VoIP.
I use this computer with a standing desk that also has a treadmill that I can use while working.
For work around the town and on the road, as well as upstairs, I rely on a 2011 MacBook Air, which I love more than any laptop I've ever owned, even though its motherboard died about 13 months into its lifespan and I had failed to purchase the extended warranty I always buy for Apple laptops.
An iPad 4 serves as a portable reading and video-watching device.
And an iPhone 5 can be an effective office-away-from-laptops.
Communication
Probably 85% of the time I'm not reading or writing email --- with the Mailsmith client designed by Bare Bones founder Rich Siegel and now maintained as freeware --- I'm programming, writing, or editing in BBEdit.
The Magazine and TidBITS use Markdown as our native format, and I convert from Markdown into the HTML required by the Economist's CMS.
Productivity
I was a latecomer to it, being required to used Word for most of my writing because editors relied on it (especially for tracking changes).
If I need to deal with a Word .doc or .docx file, I use Pages instead.
Coding & Development
I use SVN for version control with The Magazine and TidBITS as well.
I started using TextEdit not long ago to help with certain conversions, such as taking an RTF file with embedded links and exporting as not-too-horrible HTML, which I could then convert into Markdown.
Other
I recently discovered and fell in love with Zenna-Ware's Cornerstone as a Mac SVN manager.
Rounding out the Bare Bones-related triumvirate is Yojimbo, a sort of junk-drawer program that lets me drop in notes, serial numbers, Web pages, images, and PDFs, and optionally encrypt individual items.