Phil GyfordInterview
Web developer, actor
Adapted from Phil Gyford's interview on Uses This, published 19 March 2019. 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
"Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015", it tells me.
I usually work with the laptop plugged into a 24" Dell display that's nearly a decade old but is still fine.
When at my desk I usually have music playing through a pair of Audioengine A2+ speakers which seem pretty good and aren't too big.
I'm not an obsessive audiophile but they do lack bass, being smallish, so I added a Gemini II subwoofer, made in Southend-on-Sea, which squats, throbbing, in the limited space under the desk.
Sometimes I'll listen on headphones and have a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50s which I've used enough that I had to repair the headband a while back.
In the lounge I have a PlayStation 4, and that old "Late 2008" MacBook is now in use as our TV set-top box, recording broadcast TV through an eyetv USB stick.
Our home doesn't have any voice-activated devices, and no "smart" or Internet Of Things things, unless you count a ten-year-old Pure Evoke Flow radio, which can play internet-based audio streams and has a frustrating interface.
Coding & Development
I inevitably use the Terminal app a fair bit in my work and usually manage to stay within the small field of command-line things that don't scare me too much.
Design
Media
Other
I read a lot of RSS feeds and some email newsletters, all of which live in Feedbin, which I love.
That syncs with Reeder, which I use on the iPad.