Me, abbr.

I’ve just moved a few pages into this one, bear with me. I need to fill out this page’s content with:

• How I make a living
• My modus operandi
• Brief history
• Personality
• FAQ

Starterpack

Things I do to procrastinate

We all have our own suboptimal behaviours, which are usually as revealing as they are load-bearing. These are some of mine, in no particular order.

• Read (mostly on my e-reader).

• Add writing or design improvements (see Changelog) to this site.

• Sketch new interface ideas in tldraw.

• Binge-read the classic DC comic series on Read Comics Online

• Go lounge around at a friend’s place.

• Talk to an LLM about sync engine architectures.

• Go through the tabs in my reading backlog.

• Emptying my Twitter bookmarks. Which means either making use of the information in those tweets, quotetweeting them, and/or adding them here, before unbookmarking them in the app.

• Tweak the CSS or do a minor refactor for one of my apps. Lately, that app has been Scatterpad.

• Put on a random episode from a podcast/channel, based purely on the title and person being interviewed. Usual suspects: localfirst.fm, Dialectic, Manifold, Ryan Carniato’s streams

• Draw up plans for a new microsite, or think about ways to improve an existing one.

• Browse the Commoncog Forum.

• Doomscroll Twitter, sometimes Bluesky.
  I use write-only clients for both these apps, no timeline to scroll.

• Rewrite my todo lists to clean up/reprioritise them.
  No more!

• Prune my unused notes in Bear or the drafts section of this site.
  No longer necessary, I have banished all my non-active notes to the archive.

• Go through the designs on Dead Simple Sites to see what simple ways of laying out text I can make possible in the Scatterpad editor.
  Not my goal anymore.

Things I use

Electronics

Computer: An M4 MacBook Air just replaced my M1 Air, which was possibly the best laptop ever created, but was starting to choke with too many Electron apps.

Monitor: I moved out and got a desk, which means I no longer work from the couch/bed but use the 27″ Dell U2723QE as an external display. It’s good – thin bezels (very slight backlight bleed), an internal power brick, and a large array of ports (so I plug everything into the monitor instead of juggling cables).

E-reader: The Kobo Libra Color, which I do not recommend you buy. Get the Kobo Clara B/W instead, trust me.

Phone: A pink 2016 iPhone SE. iPhone 13 Mini. iPhone 17e, a very pleasant pink.

Speaker: Soundcore Motion+, a really solid Bluetooth speaker.

Earphones: Sony Linkbuds S, because they have the best ANC for the price.

Furniture

Table/desk: IKEA MELLTORP, chosen because of its metal legs (that make it really solid) and dirt cheap price relative to quality.

Work chair: IKEA LÅNGFJÄLL, short back and no arms. Because I’m not an office worker or gaymer and I have the right to a chair that looks nice.

Misc: Other IKEA products include this bookshelf, a lamp, and a shoe rack.

Music

Guitars: My Yamaha Revstar RSS02T has the best build-quality of anything I’ve ever held, and I don’t think Yamaha has ever made a guitar that wasn’t easily worth the price. Which is why I also own an FGX800C semi-acoustic, and the very cheap but serviceable Yamaha C40 classical.

Amp: Fender Mustang LT25. I don’t pretend to need anything more expensive — good tones, very intuitive interface, and a portable weight for its size.

Drumsticks: Vic Firth Nate Smith Signature sticks, I like the heavier weight combined with a thin size, but I would like to try a longer + lighter stick someday.

Wearables

Shoes: One pair of Nike Cortez (dark blue), Nike Court Zooms (white), and Vans Old Skools. A pair of Adidas Adizero Adios 8’s for training and rough use.

Watch: Kalenji Geonaute W500 M. It is 8 years old and still runs fine.

Software

Here are the boring defaults I use. For a general list of “good apps” that I recommend, visit the mac.joodaloop.com directory.

• Mail Client: Apple Mail
• Launcher: Alfred
• Notes: Bear for local notes + tldraft for shared docs
• To-Do: Things
• Calendar: Google Calendar for meetings and not much else
• Window manager: Rectangle
• Cloud storage: iCloud
• Screenshots: Shottr and Cleanshot X
• Transcription: Hex
• RSS: Good ol’ NetNewsWire, with the custom themes I’ve made for it.
• Browser: Arc
• Chat: Telegram preferred, WhatsApp tolerated
• Read-it-later: A personal Telegram channel
• Personal finance: Fold
• News: Twitter, unfortunately
• Music: Spotify, the Family plan is too good to pass up
• Password management: Bitwarden, it just works
• Code editor: Zed
• Place to find interesting collections of things: are.na
• Media file veiwing: FlowVision
• Music-making: Garageband on iOS/iPadOS
• Whiteboarding: tldraw, through my own app for it
• Payments: Wise
• Website hosting: Netlify
• CLI tools: fish shell, pnpm, Hugo, Amp, Opencode, Claude Code, all with Comic Mono as my terminal font.

Misc.

Notebook: Muji double-wire plain (size: B5). Nothing special, just very functional.

Bags: A Navy Blue Doughnut Macaroon as a daypack and a larger Under Armour Hustle 3.0 for travel, both in excellent condition after 3 and 8 years of usage each.

If you feel like commenting on this post, send me an e-mail at judah@joodaloop.com. I check all mail and respond within 2 days.