Tools I use

Disclaimer : I am not here to sell anything. This is just what I am using and what I paid for using my own money

Software #

Main software #

• macOS BigSur always running one major version behind, for stability
• VSCode for most projects, sometimes SublimeText for smaller hacks
• Firefox with uBlock Origin
• iTerm2 because, what else ?
• Typora A nice markdown editor
• TablePlus A really well made SQL databases explorer and editor
• Fork My favorite Git GUI. Full of nice features, fast and beautiful

macOS addons #

• Alfred Still as convenient as ever, and much nicer than Spotlight
• Maccy Open Source clipboard manager. Extremely convenient
• Yoink A convenient utility app to make drag and drop easier
• Keka Open Source archiver
• Lunar A must-have for external monitors
• Bartender When your menu bar is becoming crowded...
• TextSniper A surprisingly convenient app to do OCR on any text on the screen in seconds
• Mountain Duck A nice utility to make remote storage services like S3 appear as normal disks
• Cyberduck A browser for remote storage services like S3
• DaisyDisk Beautiful storage use explorer
• Stats Nice CPU/GPU/Net usage stats and more

CLI #

• Homebrew macOS is not usable without it
• Fish shell I just like it better than ZSH despite the POSIX incompatibility
• Nice utilities : exa, htop, tldr, fd

Graphics #

• Affinity Suite (Photo, Designer, Publisher) I LOVE this suite and I find it much better suited to my workflow than the super bloated Adobe Creative Cloud nightmare which makes 100s of API calls per minute...
• Sketch Nice for making user interface sketches that are more realistic than a quick drawing on paper
• Omnigraffle For making ... well graphs...
• Monodraw An ASCII art editor, great for making art or quick diagrams directly inside a codebase.

CAD #

• KiCad Very nice open source electronics design automation suite
• EasyEDA A much more closed EDA that is very convenient to make boards that are destined to be assembled in China
• Fusion360 Quite nice CAD software... Except for the cloud-based part. (Cloud model sharing is nice though)
• Inventor (windows) Basically an offline version of Fusion360, though sometimes less practical and on Windows only

Reverse engineering #

• Hex Fiend A super handy hex editor
• Hopper Disassembler A convenient and beautiful reverse engineering tool
• Ghidra Usually way to complex for me, but still useful sometimes
• Apparency & Suspicious Package Utilities to better understand macOS apps and packages

Misc #

• Datagraph I am a very big fan of this visualisation tool. It helped me find and show trends in many datasets
• ff·Works Nice FFmpeg GUI
• VMWare Fusion Miles away from the super slow Virtual Box...
• Parcel A convenient app to get the shipping status of your parcels from most delivery companies

Hardware #

Computer hardware #

• Main computer : MacBook Pro Retina 2013 13", 16GB RAM, i7 processor, 2TB storage (OWC Aura Pro X2) Still holding up fine ! (I will need an upgrade because of the latest macOS requirements...)
• Backup computer : Macbook Pro 2012 15" with GeForce GT 650M, 16GB RAM, i7 processor, 4TB storage. These things are so durable...
• Two Lenovo ThinkVision T2324pA 1080p monitors. Very reliable and nice to use. No flicker, no noise, reasonable color accuracy, great connectivity
• Logitech Pebble M350 This mouse is very nice and compact, with both integrated receiver and bluetooth
• 3Dconnexion space mouse compact A fun little mouse for CAD. Still not entirely proficient with it, but I am slowly getting used to it

Electronics #

• Pace Soldering station Although the front-panel design is ridiculous, this soldering station is simply marvelous
• Solder Sucker SS02 From the "Engineer" brand in Japan, this solder suction device is unbelievably well made and effective.
• Rigol DS1054Z Oscilloscope Hacked to increase the bandwidth. A trusty low-end oscilloscope that is still enough for my work.
• Old Hameg 1980s equipment : Digital multimeter, function generators etc. These units are still running fine...
• iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit Not the highest quality, but still very nice to have around
• Supplies :
  • too many Teensy 3.2 (my favorite Teensy, because this one is still 5V tolerant, but I also stock on the other 3.2+ Teensies )
  • way too many Qwiic/Stemma QT products (because how could I resist ?...)

Mechanics #

• Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printer with MMU2S upgrade I bought the kit and assembled it myself, which was pure joy. The Multi Material Upgrade is not really compatible with flexible filaments, so I disabled it for now, but the rest of the printer is just perfect.
• Nomad 883 CNC I used and customised this machine a little too much and I should get it back in working order... Today I would buy the newer machines with automated tool changers
• Wera Kraftform Kompakt Screwdriver I fell in love with this screwdriver. I simply carry it with me all the time
• Wera Zyklop Speed Ratchet Set A stunning tool that has helped me many times