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.

FYI, 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

  • Plausible - My preferred tool for ethical analytics
  • Todoist - My preferred todo list app
  • Cloudinary - Fantastic image hosting
  • 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.
  • 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

Hosting Services

  • Vercel - where I host this site and others
  • Digital Ocean - where I have my servers currently
  • Railway - where I host several sites.
  • Fly.io - where I host the directus CMS used by this site

Tech / Coding

  • React - The most widely used frontend framework in the world
  • Vue - The next most widely used frontend framework in the world.
  • 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
  • Nuxt.js - The Intuitive Vue Framework
  • Prisma - A fantastic ORM for Node.js (I use it with Postgres hosted on Railway usually or MySQL with Planetscale).
  • Fastify - 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.
  • Headless UI - 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.
  • mdx-bundler - Compile and bundle your MDX files and their dependencies. FAST, used here on this site.
  • 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

  • Apple iPad Pro
  • Apple Airpods Pro
  • Apple Watch
  • Kindle

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: