Robin SloanInterview
Writer, media inventor
Adapted from Robin Sloan's interview on Uses This, published 27 April 2012. 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've been using an 11" MacBook Air for about a year.
When I was looking for a travel bag, I got a tip to buy a Filson Pullman and man it is super great.
Then there's the kill switch: If my objective is really just to write words in order and that's all - no code required - I'll open Freedom and cut off access to everything for a couple of hours.
Productivity
Google Reader is my idea-sieve, though I've learned you have to play fast and loose with the "Mark all as read" button.
Notes
Coding & Development
Next, when I'm ready to start making something, I plop notes into TextMate.
When something looks like it might grow into a bigger deal - whether it's a story, a novel, or even something like an iOS story app (?!) - I'll start a Scrivener project, usually by just pasting in a bunch of those notes and text files.
Media
Most of the time, Rdio supplies my soundtrack, but when I go offline, I revert to a bunch of downloaded Steve Reich albums on repeat.
Storage
Other
There's a solid OCR app for the iPhone called Prizmo that makes it easy to grab blocks of text from books and magazines.
First there's the filter: I use Gasmask with a preset that cuts off access to Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and the New York Times but leaves Google, Apple's developer site, Stack Overflow and the rest available.
I use Mailchimp for my email list, and the messages are always just plain text.