Introduction
I am thankful that in 2020 I was able to transition to working from home and that the Covid-19 pandemic didn't affect my employment situation. In fact, I learned a lot about what sorts of things I appreciate about working from an office, and what things I really could do without. This post aims to document some of the equipment I used throughout 2020 to get work done, what I thought about it, and what I hope to upgrade or change in the year that has just started.
Hardware
My daily driver computer is my work Macbook Pro from 2015. I am absolutely a fan of the pre-touchbar Macbooks and their longevity. The laptop itself does everything I need it to do as both a web developer and developer advocate. In daily use, I keep it connected to power, on a stand housing my audio interface and USB hub.
The interface itself is a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd generation. I bought it in the summer as a way of plugging in my guitar and being able to play with effects without having to turn on amplifiers and driving the neighbours crazy. I later also plugged in an XLR microphone, more of which later, and I have zero complaints about the Scarlett overall.
Also evacuated from the office when the UK lockdown started in March 2020 is a Samsung U28E590 HD monitor. I keep the laptop screen on for things like Slack and email that I only look at occasionally, and have my terminal, IDE and the like on the big external screen.
Furniture
This is the one section where I dreaded spending money when the situation with working from home was uncertain: would it be worth splashing out on office furniture if it was all going to blow over in a few months? Turns out it didn't blow over, and I'm glad I put in a bit more money than I initially wanted. Three weeks of working at a dining room table was more than enough, thank you.
I bought a Mercury Row computer desk for two chief reasons: Adjustable feet, as not a single surface in my house is level, and a reasonable 75cm surface height. I'm not especially tall, but I just can't abide dinky desks that I have to slouch over. I have bad enough posture already.
I threw an "executive chair" into the same order, and it's okay. The gas spring started sagging within a few months, for which they partially refunded me and I've been too lazy to get a third-party replacement. What annoys me is that the armrests have zero adjustment possibility, meaning I have to change seats or stand up if I want to play some guitar at lunch or after work.
Peripherals
I joined the clicky keyboard crew in 2020, when I wanted a smaller form-factor keyboard to not require me to reach so far for the trackpad. So I bought a Keychron K6 with Gateron Brown switches, which I promptly customised with uniform-height DSA profile keycaps. I like that it is a multi-device Bluetooth keyboard and has separate modes for MacOS, Windows and Android.
For a mouse, I have an Apple Magic Trackpad 2 configured with tap-to-click. It's the first thing I turn on with any trackpad, and wouldn't want to live without it. As I don't do any precision work with the mouse, having a stand-alone trackpad is great because I don't have to change the orientation of my hand or anything when moving from the keyboard to it. I'd still like to minimize the use of a mouse and the rotation from the elbow and shoulder further, though.
My headphones are a pair of Sony's WH-1000XM3 noise-canceling headphones, but I tend to use them wired up to the Focusrite Scarlett rather than wireless or with the noise-canceling turned on. I know a lot of people swear by the Bose QC series, but they just didn't feel as nice to my head as the Sonys do. My main gripe with the WH-1000XM3s are the absolutely dreadful touch panel controls that I had to just turn off when using them wirelessly, followed by the fact that the 3.5mm jack socket is set so deep that most cables aside from the one supplied with the headphones won't fit.
My microphone, not pictured above as it was a later purchase, is a Tonor TC-20. Given my office room isn't treated in any way for acoustics, it sounds lovely. The boom arm and mount feel solid, and the clamp to the desk has been improved and increased from pictures I've seen online. For a £45 (US$60) combo, it was a really good purchase. Even if I were to upgrade the mic itself the shock mount and boom can be used. Obviously, being an XLR microphone it requires an external interface, but for that I have the Scarlett.
Software
I use VSCode as my main IDE. Whether it's doing Ruby on Rails work for Civo's website, or writing scripts or YAML, I find that the various linters, theming options and source control tools are really helpful. Picking changes in code merges is actually about as pleasurable as I can imagine it ever being. It is heavy and occasionally takes a while to get started, but I guess that's the price you pay for all the tooling loaded in. (If anyone wants to help me set up vim to look and feel like VSCode, I'm all ears.)
I'm bad at using the integrated VSCode terminal. Instead I tend to Command-tab to iTerm. One of the things I'd like to learn to do more with in 2021 is tmux and the like. I've always been super impressed when colleagues do demos of multiple panes running commands and updating with changes.
After far too many years of memorizing increasingly complex passwords, I went all in on 1Password this past year. It's an absolute godsend, really. I honestly feel good about the fact that I don't even know what my passwords are anymore. Being able to store occasionally-useful strings like frequent flyer numbers (LOL remember when those were useful?) in the same app is really useful. I can't recommend it enough, plus their support is world-class.
I use Firefox to browse the web in normal use, but obviously dabble in Chrome and Safari when I'm doing web dev stuff to make sure it all looks like I need it to.
For streaming music I use Spotify. I can't say I know of any other streaming service that offers the type of discovery mechanic they have developed. I have my issues with songs repeating on Discover Weekly with suspicious regularity as if labels can pay to get on there, but overall being able to sync across devices and have it everywhere is pretty neat.
Other
My home network, before being routed to the Internet via Virgin Media's hub, has a Raspberry Pi 3 running PiHole to provide DNS-level ad blocking to all devices in the house. It's a thing you get so used to and don't think about until you see what pages look for others not on your network.
Upgrades and changes
As mentioned above, I'd absolutely want to get a different chair. Having adjustable armrests is something I miss a surprising amount, and being on the heavier side of human I worry about all the creaks and other noises from the chair.
You may notice the conspicuous lack of a camera being mentioned in this post. While I've done a few online meetups, my camera setup does need work and I'd be up for hearing recommendations. I ordered a green screen in November but ended up canceling that order because of reviews that weren't as glowing as I was led to think.
If I was made of money, I'd absolutely want to get a split ergonomic keyboard like the ZSA Moonlander. I think they're gorgeous.
One of my personal 2021 projects is also to integrate PiHole-style ad blocking to the VPN I use while out and about. Obviously, that's not been a priority in the past year given I've hardly left the house!
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