Software I use, gadgets I love, and other things I recommend.

Software I use, gadgets I love, and other things I recommend.

I get a lot of questions about the tools I use for different parts of my work, so I've put together this "uses" page that covers every part of my setup. Then when people ask, I send them to this page (And you can too! The short URL for this page is https://tr.ee/2nJNAB).

Note

💡 FYI! I use everything listed here. Some of the links below are affiliate links which means I get paid or rewarded in some way if you use them to purchase, but rest assured these are all tools and services I actually use.

Services

  • Umami - My preferred tool for ethical analytics
  • Todoist - My preferred todo list app
  • GitHub - Where I host my code. I also run CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions.
  • Directus - Flexible headless CMS that I use to handle all backend operations of this site, along with many of my other sites.
  • Calendly - For: "Grab a time whenever" link with consulting fees built-in.
  • Notion - App for pretty much everything
  • Sticker Mule - How I get a bunch of stickers of my various projects etc. printed for myself that I can hand out.
  • Wise - How I get paid for consulting
  • NocoDB - For When I want a quick "no code" setup / forms / etc, I use the self-hosted version
  • Airtable - My other go to "no code" for forms / etc, but moving more and more to NocoDB.

AI / Automation

  • ChatGPT - I use ChatGPT daily, either for their chatbot or via their API on various projects
  • Claude - When not using ChatGPT, I'm using Claude, pretty much the same as ChatGPT, either via their chatbot, or via their API. I find Claude a bit better to help with coding tasks but I use both.
  • n8n - For all my automation needs, I use the self-hosted edition.
  • ActivePieces - For other automatation needs, also self-hosted edition

Hosting Services

  • Vercel - where I host this site and others
  • Digital Ocean - where I have my servers currently
    • Coolify - Not really a hosting service, but I run this on my Digital Ocean servers for seamless site and setup and deployments
  • Railway - where I host several sites.
  • Fly.io - where I host the directus CMS used by this site

Tech / Coding

  • Astro - A flexible and modern web framework that let's you use React, Vue or neither.
  • React - The most widely used frontend framework in the world
  • HTMX - A lightweight, dependency-free, extendable JavaScript frontend library to access modern browser features directly from HTML.
  • Alpine.js - A rugged, minimal tool for composing behavior directly in your markup. Consider it a mixture of Tailwind and jQuery.
  • Remix - Focused on web standards and modern web app UX, it lets you build better full-stack websites.
  • Next.js - The React Framework for Production
  • Drizzle - Typescript ORM that runs on any environment.
  • Prisma - A fantastic ORM for Node.js
  • Hono - a newish fast nodejs framework
  • Expressjs - the OG node.js framework
  • TypeScript - I can't imagine building JavaScript projects without TypeScript.
  • Testing Library - A great testing library for anything that interacts with the DOM.
  • Jest - A great testing framework.
  • Cypress.io - I use this for E2E testing.
  • MSW - Next generation API mocking.
  • Prettier - I can't imagine life without it.
  • UI/Shadcdn - Completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS.
  • PostCSS - I only use these plugins: tailwindcss, autoprefixer, and postcss-import
  • TailwindCSS - A great way to keep my styling consistant and stay productive.
  • Markdoc - powerful, flexible, Markdown-based authoring framework.
  • Laravel / Laravel Live wire - when working with PHP, I go to Laravel with live wire.
  • Terraform - when working with Kubernetes and cloud platforms, terraform is a must.

Editor

Chrome Extensions

Desktop apps

Computer / Office

Other Tech

Podcasts

Here are some podcasts I "use" to keep me informed and entertained while I drive, clean, and camp:

YouTube

Here are channels I'm subscribed to:

Newsletters

Here are the newsletters I subscribe to: