✕ close home projects blog uses
// my setup

What I use
every day.

My actual tools — hardware, software, terminals, editors. No affiliate links, no sponsored picks. Just what I actually use.

// hardware
workstation
Laptop
Mid-range laptop running Ubuntu 22.04 dual-boot. Most dev work happens on Linux.
External Monitor
24" 1080p IPS. Not fancy — but horizontal space is everything in terminal workflows.
Keyboard
Budget mechanical with blue switches. Loud enough to keep me awake during long sessions.
peripherals
Mouse
Logitech MX Master 3. The horizontal scroll wheel is underrated for wide terminals.
Headphones
Sony WH-1000XM4. ANC is essential when the internet goes down and I have to concentrate harder.
Network
100 Mbps fiber. I've learned to really appreciate fast internet when working with container images.
// dev environment
editors & terminal
VS Code
Daily driver. Extensions: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitLens, Error Lens, Remote SSH.
Vim
For quick server edits. Only know enough to not get stuck in it.
Alacritty
Fast, GPU-accelerated terminal. Configured with tmux for multi-pane sessions.
tmux
Can't live without it. Persistent sessions, split panes, one SSH connection for everything.
shell & tools
Zsh + Oh My Zsh
With powerlevel10k prompt. Git branch, kubectl context, AWS profile — all in the prompt.
fzf
Fuzzy finder for history, files, kubectl. Once you use it you can't go back.
bat + exa + fd
Better cat, ls, and find. Installed on every machine I touch.
htop / btop
System monitoring. btop looks cooler but htop is on every server by default.
// cloud & devops tools
cloud & infra
AWS Free Tier
My main cloud playground. EC2, S3, Lambda, EKS. I've hit the billing alert limit more than once.
Terraform
Infrastructure as code. Everything I provision gets a .tf file. State in S3 with DynamoDB locking.
Ansible
For server configuration and automation. When Terraform provisions it, Ansible configures it.
k3s / minikube
Local Kubernetes for development. k3s on my homelab, minikube for quick throwaway clusters.
observability
Prometheus + Grafana
My default monitoring stack. kube-prometheus-stack helm chart gets me 80% of the way instantly.
Loki
Log aggregation. Way cheaper than Elasticsearch for what I need.
k9s
Terminal UI for Kubernetes. Faster than kubectl for interactive cluster browsing.
Lens
GUI Kubernetes IDE. Good for showing things to people who don't live in the terminal.
// apps & services
productivity
Obsidian
All my notes — learning logs, runbooks, ideas, post drafts — in markdown files. No lock-in.
Excalidraw
Quick architecture diagrams. Hand-drawn aesthetic means nobody expects pixel-perfection.
GitHub
Everything lives here. Public repos, private experiments, GitHub Pages for this site.
learning
Killercoda
Browser-based Linux/Kubernetes environments. No setup needed, just scenario and terminal.
Official Docs
Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS — always the source of truth. I read docs like other people read Reddit.
This Blog
My own notes in public form. Writing forces understanding. Reading back saves me from repeating mistakes.