Kittsteiner Blog

Uses

I use plenty of stuff.

Hardware

  • MacBook Pro M1 14″ from 2021 with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD in silver. So pretty much the base configuration.
  • iPhone 13 Pro with 128 GB storage and shattered back cover and main camera (still works fine)
  • iPad Air 5th generation, mainly to display receipts in the kitchen while cooking
  • Custom built NAS with AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 2400GE, 16 GB registered ECC RAM and 2 × Samsung 840 QVD SSDs
  • FRITZ!Box 5690 Pro router

Software

Mac Apps

  • Apple Calendar: I don’t need much more than checking my incoming events, including reminders.
  • Apple Mail: I just find Apple Mail superior when it comes to searches as well as its performance for a regular mail program.
  • BetterTouchTool: You can do nearly everything with BetterTouchTool, it’s so damn feature rich. I use it for custom trackpad gestures, window management and especially as clipboard manager.
  • Brewlet: Automatic updates for Homebrew formulae. Otherwise, I just would forget about them …
  • Brightintosh: When working outside, especially in the summer with a bright sun, I use Brightintosh to force HDR mode for my display, making it much brighter and let me see the content much better.
  • Bruno: An open-source alternative for Postman/Insomnia. It is in very active development and gets many new features, but unfortunately lacks keyboard support at the moment.
  • Boop: A nice little helper to manipulate strings. It’s really fast and I use it on a near daily basis. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be in active development the recent years.
  • Enpass: After using 1Password for a long time as password manager (which got worse with its autofill capabilities every major version) and a while with Strongbox, I now stuck with Enpass, which has the worst UI of these three, but the best autofill capabilities of all of them, which is the main functionality I’m using with my password manager.
  • iStat Menus: Having system load always in sight is important for me, since I usually feel already the smallest performance implications. Thus, having a tool, where I can monitor what’s happening, is used pretty heavily.
  • iTerm2: Terminal on steroids, with profiles and many options with good performance. Newer terminals just couldn’t convince me until now.
  • JSON Compare: Used to be “Text Differ” and does exactly that: diffing text. Not limited to JSON.
  • Latest: Getting my macOS apps updated.
  • Mona: Using Mona Pro to have the full feature set of an awesome Mastodon client on macOS as well as iOS and iPadOS.
  • Poedit: Translation files in WordPress is done via PO/POT files. To edit these, I use Poedit.
  • Pica: Not just a regular color picker, but one where you can define both foreground and background and it will automatically display the contrast ratio as well as it’s WCAG compliant.
  • Reeder 4: I’m still using RSS feeds to get news. And while there already is Reeder 6, I’m fine with version 4 and don’t need any newer (especially since the most recent version doesn’t have a read/unread mechanism, which I heavily rely on).
  • Red Lines Tool: If you need to be pixel perfect while creating layouts, Red Lines Tool can help you by visualize your (custom) grid. I don’t use it often, but if I do, it helps a lot.
  • Rocket Pro: The default emoji picker in macOS is garbage. Rocket enables the faster variant as known from Slack & Co. system-wide, while the pro version also adds some nice statistics and other stuff.
  • Safari: My main browser. Even if it has some quirks, it’s just way faster than any other browser.
  • Seafile Client: Synchronizing data from different locations to my Seafile server in the cloud.
  • Sequel Ace: A MySQL client for macOS, which works pretty solid.
  • Slack: Main communication tool at my employer and the WordPress community.
  • Syncthing: Synchronizing data from my MacBook to my NAS on a regular basis.
  • Transmit: Just the best file transfer app for macOS.
  • VSCodium: A privacy-friendly alternative to Visual Studio Code without sharing telemetry data to Microsoft and my go-to development environment.
  • WireGuard: Since my NAS is not exposed to the internet, whenever I want to get something from it, I need to connect via VPN to it, using WireGuard.

iOS Apps

  • Mona: Using Mona Pro to have the full feature set of an awesome Mastodon client on macOS as well as iOS and iPadOS

Systems

Web

  • All my domains are registered via hosting.de.
  • Kagi: A privacy-friendly and ad-free search engine with very good results. Proud to be an early adopter since February 2023.
  • Online PHP editor: For quick testing of PHP code when being too lazy to create and access a local file. Or when testing for different PHP versions.

Accessories

  • Apple AirPods 2
  • Apple Magic Keyboard (without number pad)
  • Apple Watch Series 7
  • Usually, I wear blue light filter glasses, which actually work for me. Otherwise, I can’t be concentrated more than an hour anymore while working.
  • Electrically height-adjustable desk with legs from SUSPA and a white plastic plate.
  • My chair is an old SpA from Sitland.
  • When travelling, I usually use a Bergen Midnight Blue backpack.

Backups

  • My MacBook is backed up via Time Machine to my NAS.
  • Additionally, my documents, music, pictures are stored via Syncthing to my NAS.
  • My iPhone is backed up via iTunes to my NAS (via Symlink), as well as my iPad.
  • My iPad is additionally backed up in the iCloud.
  • My iCloud photos are stored via Immich to my NAS.
  • My iCloud messages are stored via imessage-exporter to my NAS.
  • My NAS content is stored onto a Storage Box at Hetzner and to Backblaze B2 via encrypted rclone.
  • The most important NAS content is also stored to my Microsoft 365 OneDrive via encrypted rclone.
  • For my servers, every week a snapshot is created automatically.
  • The content of my servers is stored via BorgBackup to a Storage Box at Hetzner and to Backblaze B2.
  • Last, but not least, I have two SSDs with a Time Machine backup from my MacBook, one at my employer and the other at a friend’s house several hundred kilometers away.