MFu

I thought it might be fun to categorize some of the tools, gear and software I use to create things:

Music:

Software List:

It's become easier to template ideas in primarily software; some portion of this is mastery of Ableton itself, which I've been (amateurishly) using since Live 9 in 2014. Expression control is the primary challenge with a computer keyboard and it's challenging to have a piano roll always set up for my workspace. This leads to...

Hardware List:

Development:

I have a B.S. in Computer Science that I barely earned back in 2015, and eventually gained a year of experience in 2023 being paid as a software developer / engineer by a friend whose project didn't really catch on. I'm still sad about it.

In the between years I worked for a few larger companies as a sort of glorified white-glove tech support for clients integrating ads software. Since, I haven't been able to secure work in my field.

Climbing:

Started gym climbing in 2017 and never really looked back. It's one of those things that's usually excellent when I have the energy and structure to hit the gym, but moving further from the gym has certainly depressed my frequency of attendance.

PC:

I have two primary "workstations":

The last time I upgraded was during the pandemic, which thankfully I was working remotely for. Because, what else was I going to do? It's handled most things I've thrown at it just fine. Playing more indies these days has certainly helped me, and the last thing it struggled on was Jedi Survivor, which was no fault of the rig and entirely the fault of the game optimization. It's run Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra (sans RTX) and pretty solid settings with RTX as well. Very decent card for its generation, even though the 30XX and 40XX series have been major improvements.

Keyboard:

This is my favorite keyboard I've ever used. The learning curve was steep (ideally, don't start with blank keycaps). It's a solid 9/10 for me. It was the first keyboard to introduce me to layers, and the layout is similar enough to QWERTY that it's not intimidating to learn. It's small enough to pack up and take with me, it doesn't run on batteries, and doesn't have stabilizers to tune in order to feel good.

Despite all that, as a keyboard enthusiast, I wish there were smaller pre-builts that use a similar form factor. I've thought about getting a soldering iron and building a Lily58 or similar from scratch but even those feel pretty expensive. My only gripe with the Preonic is that it's obviously pretty narrow profile, which doesn't aid shoulders sore from climbing. I'm open to trying a wireless keyboard because my desk is already a cable management nightmare, but my thought is that any keyboard I replace this with will also mandate cables living on the desk to maintain a charge level for when I do want to walk away with it.