Vili LehdonvirtaInterview
Economic sociologist
Adapted from Vili Lehdonvirta's interview on Uses This, published 21 April 2015. 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
My main tool is a 13" MacBook Air (currently a Mid-2012 128GB SSD).
I also use an iPad (currently a white 4th gen WiFi 32GB) for reading, gaming, and recently also for recording face-to-face interviews.
I use a Time Capsule (currently a 5th gen 2TB) for over-the-air incremental backup.
My main phone is a white iPhone 4 from 2011.
I have a Google Nexus One as a backup phone.
One is a Micro 3in1 Luggage Scooter.
Communication
I use Twitter and LinkedIn for work-related communications and Facebook for more personal communications.
Productivity
But LaTeX-based solutions missed a good visual editor and change tracking features essential to collaborative writing and editing, so for most of my career I've used Word for collaborative writing, passing files back and forth via email or shared storage.
Sometimes collaborators want to use Google Docs, because it allows multiple people to work simultaneously.
I use Zotero for reference management.
Browser
I use Chrome for browsing, though I'm unhappy with how it has started to bloat and duplicate operating system features.
Notes
When I need focus, I draft with WriteRoom.
Coding & Development
Most of the time I simply use TextEdit for taking notes and drafting papers, proposals, and book chapters.
Design
Very occasionally I produce diagrams with OmniGraffle.
Other
I've advised various startups, game companies, and public sector organizations, including CCP Games (EVE Online), Mojang, and the World Bank.
My MacBook Air runs OS X, which is set to Japanese to help to maintain my language skills.
The way Spotlight allows me to invoke them rapidly is just wonderful and I make very heavy use of it.
I use JEDict to look up Japanese words.
I've been using Dedoose for qualitative analysis.