#Lifestyle

Commentary about tech, devices, and the day-to-day joys and frustrations they inspire. Inconsequential chatter.

I built an AM5 PC for Python-related things

16 cores, 128 GB of RAM, an RTX 3090. Sounds great but… don’t be an early adopter. While I’m pretty stoked about what this new machine lets me accomplish, it was quite painful to get it running.

Using Fireface UFX II with Zoom and Skype on macOS

There are a few guides on how to do this but sadly I found all of them wrong, based on a single bad piece of advice. Here’s what I do instead.

The Apple Watch is more useful than I thought

I pre-ordered the Apple Watch 7 on the day it was possible. I received it on October 15th. Now, 45 days later, I can tell you that it’s a life-changing device. I did not suspect it to be nearly as useful as it ended up being for me.

Getting a top-tier GPU in mid-2021

Unless you’re a PC gamer or cryptocurrency miner, you might have missed the drama around GPU unavailability and scalper pricing. I was largely unaware of it myself before my son announced he wants to build a PC.

Building a PC in mid-2021

My 12 year old son’s aging 2012 11” Macbook Air has gotten him successfully through a year of online learning in the pandemic, but he was increasingly frustrated by its near-dead battery, tiny screen, and most importantly the inability to play with friends. Most games aren’t available for macOS and even lightweight games that used to work fine before like Minecraft or Terraria started lagging with updates over time. Wanting to give the little guy a motivation boost for the last stretch of the school year, I agreed we would build a PC together.

I Made My 2018 Macbook Pro Run Quietly with Ableton Live

I like my Intel MacBook Pro and will probably hold onto it for a while. But for music production it’s been more than a little annoying with its tendency to blast fans at full speed. I’m happy to say I solved that problem!

Micro blogging: a new attempt 12 months later

You might have read about why I decided to attempt a twist on the typical split between walled gardens and traditional blogs. It never got off the ground but I think now I have something better.

Micro blogging: why

While it’s so easy these days to publish things online, it always bugged me how little we have to say about the platforms we use for this purpose. This is an attempt to find a better way for my personal needs.

"IN" devices, "OUT" devices

I always had a craving for a device that would fix my productivity issues. Years ago I imagined if I could just keep my notes, tasks, reminders and e-mails in one place, that would be it. Mail.app in Leopard introduced this feature, I bought it on release day. That didn’t fix it.