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Forest Urquhart

My setup.

A curated list of the hardware, software, and services I use daily.

Hardware

  • MacBook Pro (16-inch, M2 Pro)

    My primary home computer, and the best computer I have ever owned. I have no complaints whatsoever, and I use it for all of my personal projects. I would always recommend a MacBook Pro if you have the budget, and a ThinkPad if you don't.

  • iPhone 12 Pro

    The perfect size, performance, and features for my needs. The camera is great quality, Face ID is really convenient, and it's both waterproof and surprisingly resilient to falls. I have no desire to upgrade, and I've already had the battery replaced once.

  • iPad Pro (11-inch, M1)

    I've had a lot of tablets, and the iPad Pro is the first one I can sincerely say I have no complaints about. The screen is perfect, with great quality, a good size, and unobtrusive bezels. The M1 processor means that performance is invariably good. I use it to read, and I bring it whenever I travel.

  • Custom Built PC

    My most powerful computer has a Ryzen 7 5700X processor, 64GB memory, 2TB of NVMe storage, and an RTX 3090 graphics card. I use it for 4K gaming with my LG C1 television, as well as making use of the processor cores and memory for running virtual machines, and the graphics card for running local language models.

Software

  • Firefox

    I've been using it since 3.0, and I've never looked back. I use it with uBlock Origin, but I have no other extensions installed other than developer tools. The simplicity and privacy-focused approach work perfectly for me.

  • JetBrains

    For serious development work, nothing beats JetBrains IDEs. I rely on WebStorm, GoLand, and PhpStorm for their powerful features and intelligent code assistance. They're worth every penny.

  • Visual Studio Code

    My go-to text editor since its initial release. While I use JetBrains IDEs for major development work, VS Code handles everything else beautifully.

  • Adobe Creative Cloud

    Despite Adobe's flaws, Photoshop and Illustrator remain essential tools in my workflow. I've tried alternatives, but nothing quite matches their capabilities when I need to work with graphics.

  • iTerm2

    My terminal setup is built around iTerm2 with Oh My Zsh and the powerlevel10k theme. For Node development, I use npm for package management and nvm to handle different Node versions.

  • Other software

    My daily toolkit includes 1Password for security, OneDrive for cloud storage, Apple Music for tunes, Word and Excel for documents, and Byword for writing. For communication I rely on Outlook, FaceTime, Slack, Telegram and Discord. I also use Raycast for quick access to my most-used tools.

Services

  • 1Password

    I've relied on 1Password for years to help me manage my credentials. It has the perfect combination of features and aesthetics.

  • Office 365

    I use OneDrive, Word, Excel and Outlook regularly enough that the surprisingly low cost of Office 365 was good value for money.

  • Apple Music

    After years with Spotify, I made the switch to Apple Music and haven't looked back. It offers a more complete library of my favorite artists, integrated lyrics, and better artist compensation. The clean interface and sound quality are just bonuses.

  • Gmail

    Gmail has been my email backbone for over fifteen years. It's refreshingly straightforward, just reliable email delivery with decent spam filtering and search capabilities. Sometimes simplicity is exactly what you need.

  • YouTube

    YouTube gives me uninterrupted access to an incredible range of content, from casual entertainment to technical tutorials and in-depth lectures. I pay for premium, making the experience more pleasant.

  • Artificial Intelligence

    I pay for ChatGPT and Claude, but also make use of Google's AI Studio and NotebookLM. ChatGPT 4o and o3 are my primary workhorses, while I use Claude 3.5 Sonnet to help with code and writing. Gemini 2.0 proves useful for analysing large codebases with its massive context length.

Colophon

This site was built using the hardware and software above. It's based on Astro, React, Tailwind CSS and TypeScript, and hosted on Cloudflare Pages, which handles continuous delivery. The domain is registered with Namecheap, while the source code is stored on GitHub.