Blog

Setup as of September 2013

Hardware:

• 13" MacBook Air 2011 - Like the fact that I can keep everything on one machine.  If I want to go portable it is all there.  If I want to plug in to the monitor, keyboard and mouse in the office I got that too.  Wish I could have had more than 4 GB of RAM, but otherwise it has been solid.
• Dell 30" Monitor 3008WFP - Like the size and the ability to connect from the MBA through DisplayPort.  Not a fan of the 5 second wakeup time.
• Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 - Got it because I wanted a separate 10 key, and then I promptly stopped ever using it.  Nice that there is no usb dongle, but not nice for the 5-10 second wake up.
• Logitech MX 1100 - Feels good in the hand, the scroll wheel works great, and love the additional buttons for forward and back in a browser.

Software:

• Windows 7 and Mac on Bootcamp: Mac for iOS development, Windows 7 for everything else.  Grew up with Windows, tried going to Mac, but couldn't adjust to the new keyboard shortcuts
• PHPStorm - PHP development, Git management.  Really like the ability to walk through code with the debugger.  Also the syntax checking and auto-completes are helpful.  Uses a ton of RAM but worth it.
• HeidiSQL - MySQL GUI.
• Gitbash: Command line Git.  Don't like the fact it is built on Windows' cmd.exe, but other than that works well.
• SourceTree: GUI for Git.  For the most part I use PHPStorm, but occasionally I use this.  
• EditPlus - old standby text editor
• Chrome v29 - main browser for development, Firefox v23 and IE 10 for testing.
• Pidgin - IM for AIM and Gchat.  IRC as well
• Skype - For talking.  Surprisingly the MBA microphone works better than the iPhone speaker phone.
• Spotify - Gotta have my tunes.  How Rhapsody never turned into this, I will never understand.

Services:

• Mozy - Backups
• Evernote - Note taking
• Pocket - Keep track of articles that I want to read later.  Although I am now at 538 articles, so I think I over-estimate the amount of time that I will spend reading them.