Things I use

I use a Helix keyboard that I built myself using a kit from Little Keyboards.

The split form factor makes a notable difference in shoulder tension based on my arm placement and the stress accumulated through the day. Technically I use a 50% Helix (including the number row), but I learned how to type on 40% keyboards (no number row) already, so I mostly use the numbers as gaming shortcuts rather than for typing numbers or symbols.

The board is hot swap and I'm currently using Tangerine switches (62g) from TheKey.Company. I'm a huge fan of linear switches for both gaming and typing. I like a medium weight, around 62g seems to be ideal :)

For keycaps I have the long awaited DSA KeroKeroKeys, which are extremely green and frog themed. The frog-child within me is thrilled, and my green-loving side is quite happy as well. I only use DSA profile keycaps because I think they're both more comfortable to type on and easier to use effectively on a keyboard with such a weird layout.

I'm a total freak about mice. I love buying and trying mice. The first gaming mouse I loved was the Logitech MX518, and it's a far cry from what I go for these days. I think my grip style would be classified as "relaxed claw grip", because I don't like scrunching up my index/middle fingers super hard near the top of the mouse, but I also don't put a lot of my upper palm on the mouse. I usually touch the mouse with the right side of my upper palm. I like when the rear of the mouse fits snugly into the base of my palm. I refuse to click the mouse wheel with my finger tip, opting for hitting it with the pad of my index finger.

Anyways, so right now I'm alternating between the Lamzu Atlantis OG V2 PRO in matcha green and the Pulsar X2H in white.

Both mice have substantial rear-ends that my lower palm can grip comfortably. The Atlantis has amazing angled side walls that make lifting the mouse extremely easy. Though the Atlantis has an inferior coating, being somewhat slippery when the mouse is cold. The scroll wheel click is nicer on the Atlantis (softer), but the X2H has better scroll wheel step definition. The X2H has the largest rump of any mouse I've used, which really forces you into a nice claw grip. It freaked me out so bad that I almost returned the mouse initially, but it's grown on me a lot.

I find it really hard to decide which to keep using, and unfortunately I go back and forth between mice a lot...

Honorable mention to the Lamzu Thorn, the Pulsar X2V1, and the Razer Viper V3 Pro.

The Thorn is the best ergonomic mouse I've used, but the extremely round shape and strange coating can make it a little unwieldy when the mouse is cold. It actually grips really nicely when it warms up, which is weird to say! Also it's using Razer's optical switches which don't feel very good and sound extremely loud in this mouse.

The X2V1 is the mouse that made me realize how fun a relaxed claw grip can feel. I don't have especially large hands, but gaming mice have been trending down in size for a while now. It's great to have lighter weight mice, but I feel like palm grip has suffered because of this. This was my first ultra lightweight mouse, and my first wireless gaming mouse, and I'm a total convert to both now. Mouse tech has advanced so much in the past 5 years or so.

The Viper V3 Pro has a pretty inoffensive shape that's good at many styles while being great at none, in my opinion. But I love Razer's signature "deep dish" indendentations that lock in your grip at a comfortable wide set angle, and the coating is nice.

My main display is the Dell Alienware AW2523HF. It's a 24.5" 1920×1080 360 Hz display. The 360 Hz is overkill for me, I just wanted a good 1080p 24" display that supported HDMI 2.0 so that I could use high refresh rate on both my gaming PC (DisplayPort) and my work laptop (HDMI).

I previously used a 27" 2560×1440 144 Hz display for about 8 years, but I realized that the increased pixel density made everything harder to read, and the size/resolution meant that maximizing any window felt absurdly huge, but splitting in halves felt too small.

I'm a nerd about refresh rates and that previous monitor was a G-SYNC compatible display I bought as an early adopter of the tech. The difference between 60 Hz and 120 Hz is night and day, not just for gaming but even basic stuff like scrolling looks so good. I've noticed a difference at 360 Hz for moving my mouse cursor, but I haven't played any games that can take advantage of it yet. I should boot up DOOM (2016) at some point and try out the different refresh rates...

I also have an ancient (2013) screen in portrait mode to the left of my main monitor. I only use this to house Discord and video game guides while I play games on my other monitor. I do not multitask with it. It makes my neck hurt staring to the side, so I try to minimize it.

I use the Koss KPH40 as my all day headphone for video calls, music, and gaming. I have modded them with the Yaxi Porta Pro earpads, and a 3.5mm audio cable extension.

They are lighter than a feather, never fall off, barely put any pressure on my head, look nice, are durable, and sound pretty good! And that's all for $40 USD on Amazon if you're lucky enough to get them on sale. The replacement pads were $10 USD.

Given that they're on-ear headphones, I can hear myself perfectly for work calls or voice chat while gaming. They sound incredible for music! Maybe for gaming you could want a bit of high end for clarity, but they're very easy listening. My only audio complaint is that certain deeper frequencies when speaking can cause a strange rattle in the driver that's distracting. I never notice it in music though.

I honestly haven't used speakers with my PC in years, but I do have a decent budget stereo setup for the TV downstairs: the Sony STRDH190 2-ch receiver and two floor-standing speakers. We don't even have a subwoofer any more because honestly I'm satisfied with the level of bass from what I have.

A high end prebuilt gaming PC. I used to build my own PCs, but these days it's not that much more money to get a good prebuilt, and it saves a lot of time and headache if parts arrive dead—or worse—crash your PC randomly.

This is my work computer. It's got a ton of computing power and incredible battery life. I don't really like macOS, but other than that it's nice.

This is my personal laptop. It's so old Apple doesn't release macOS for it any more. It's currently running Fedora, but I almost never use it since my work computer is always charged and ready to go.

I was an early adopter of VS Code, back when Atom was extremely popular. Atom's slow performance and constantly breaking plugin system made me eager to leave it. Before that I had used Sublime Text, which is the gold standard for fast editors in my experience. My main problem was the janky plugin system.

Before all of that I used vim for like 8 years, but I left it behind the moment I saw multi-cursor editing in Sublime Text. I'm happy to be living in the modern era now lol.

Ever since Firefox showed up and introduced tabs and fast web browsing, I've been a huge fan. There was a while where Firefox was notably slower than Chrome, and I jumped ship. After they fixed performance issues I came back. I love that they're privacy focused and really care about users in a way that Google never will.

I was an early adopter of Discord, just a few months after it was released. Even back then, it was obvious that using Slack for non-work chats was not a good idea. And for voice chat across games, my gaming clan was using... Ventrilo, or "Vent" as everyone called it. Vent had (has?) some awful Windows 95-ish interface, though it did technically get the job done.

Discord is a lot less cool now that it's ubiquitous and desperately trying to squeeze money out of its audience, but it still seems like a relatively unchallenged tool for doing online gaming with folks.

It also ends up being a de-facto global direct message app since so many people have it, even if they're not gamers. Plus, the emojis are super fun.

I started using this because of some friends who use it. Honestly I kinda hate it, but it's cool that it has end-to-end encryption (though it's not open source). I love the sticker packs and privacy, but very few people have it, and it's kind of horrible on desktop.

I was thrilled when 1Password went cross platform, finally letting me ditch LastPass's awful user interface. I know some people are upset with 1Password's rewrite as a universal app using web tech rather than maintaining separate desktop apps for each platform, but I think they've done a good job making it feel relatively native and snappy.

Honestly I don't really love either of these, but I need to use them. I'm a sicko about buying and owning actual music files (like the times of old! remember the iPod?). Sadly, music apps aren't very popular any more with music streaming dominating the landscape. Musicbee for Windows is obtuse but works well. Doppler for Mac is pretty polished, and the only music player for Mac I currently like.

I have a few requirements for music apps: gapless playback, and the ability to browser albums by album artist. It doesn't sound like much, but many players fail to have both of those features. It seems a lot of players are very "playlist" and "file system" focused. I usually just queue up a few albums I like, rather than curating songs for a playlist I will use again.

I love Bandcamp, but they don't usually have big label music. I used to use iTunes or Amazon to purchase DRM free files for those, but their UIs are increasingly shoving music streaming down our throats. I recently discovered Qobuz, which seems to do a good job of just letting you buy DRM free music files in peace.

Extremely cute, snappy, and functional app for making pixel art. It's so fast and easy that I actually use it for general image editing too, as long as the files aren't too large. I also have Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, but I rarely use either of them.