Homepage | Blogpage | About me | Hardware I use | Software I use
WARNING: THIS PAGE IS DEPRECATED AND ONLY KEPT UP FOR POSTERITY IT WILL NO LONGER BE UPDATED. MOST OR ALL OF THE INFORMATION ON THIS PAGE IS OUT OF DATE.
I thought I'd make a page documenting the hardware and software I carry with me and use on a daily basis in case anyone is interested. This is also useful in case something gets stolen, lost, drive gets corrupted etc., I'll know how things were configured. This is the first of two pages, covering the hardware side. To see part 2 about the software I use, click here.
I'll start with my everyday carry. Going from the top left, the first thing I have is a cheap Faraday bag I got off eBay. It contains what is essentially an aluminum foil layer on the inside which blocks all wifi, cellular, Bluetooth and RF signals. My phone stays in the bag, in airplane mode, powered off most of the time. The phone in question is an LG Stylo 4. it has an SDM450 CPU, 2GB RAM, 32GB internal storage + a 64GB micro SD card. Since all smartphones are tracking devices by design, I try to use mine as little as possible. For my purposes, it's perfectly adequate. I also have tape over the front camera and fingerprint sensor, and a cheap silicone case on it. To the right is a USB-C to USB-C + 3.5mm dongle. The Stylo 4 actually does have a built-in 3.5mm jack but I shorted it out a while ago trying to connect some old speakers so I have to use the stupid dongle. On the bottom left is a basic Swiss Gear wallet, and next to that is my Koss Porta-Pro on-ear headphones. They're compact while still delivering great sound quality, and I carry them in the accompanying bag. After that is my Casio G-Shock, and my keys with an 8GB SanDisk USB drive, lanyard, and pull strap.
"Alright, that's nice and all, but you can't do much on a phone. What about the place where you actually do everything?" You might be asking. Here it is.
My American ThinkPad
I have many computers (WIP) but this Dell Vostro 1720 is the one I use to do basically everything, with the exception of video editing and playing games. Made in 2009 with a Core 2 Duo T6670, it's old but still mostly usable for my purposes. The laptop form factor allows for portability but the 17" 1440×900 16:10 display and full size non-chiclet keyboard are comfortably usable. Being an older business laptop, it has plenty of I/O (SD/MMC, DVD+R DL, VGA, 6 USB and more) which is necessary for my workflow. It also has a replaceable battery, 4GB of upgradeable DDR3 RAM, and used to have a slow SATA HDD which I upgraded to an SSD. I'm currently running Linux Mint 21 on it. I'm planning to upgrade it sometime to something with a more powerful iGPU and more memory, especially one I can coreboot, perhaps an HP EliteBook Folio 9480m or a Lenovo Thinkpad.
However, there's more to my setup than this.
This is where the magic happens (old photo from when I was still running Windows)
From the left, firstly you can see my external hard drives in a case. My Vostro sits on a cooling pad connected to my Delta DC-770 CRT (which I wrote a whole article about) which rests atop a partly deconstructed Dell Optiplex for added height. The 21" Acer LCD is attached to an adjustable aftermarket stand. For peripherals I have Topre Realforce TKL and Leopold FC750R keyboards (I hope to get a Model M soon), as well as Microsoft Intellimouse and Vaxee Zygen mice sitting on a Sanwa desk pad. In the audio department I have Audio-Technica ATH-M20x and ATH-M20 headphones connected to a Sony STR-V220 receiver and Focusrite Scarlett respectively. There's also MXL V93M and Blue Snowball (off screen) microphones as well as Aiwa and Sony speaker systems. Why do I have two of most of these things? Well, there's also a desktop computer hidden out of view.
My custom built desktop
This is the system I use to play games and record/edit videos. It has an i5 10400 CPU, high end MSI motherboard, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a GTX 1060 6GB GPU, all housed in a Thermaltake case. It's not cutting edge but it's significantly more powerful than my Vostro, and is perfectly adequate for what I do with it. Given my use case, Windows 10 is pretty much my only OS option on this machine, unfortunately.
"But what do you use to take all your beautiful photos?" I'm glad you asked.
What photographs the camera? My phone of course, in far lower quality
This is my Canon EOS Rebel T5 DSLR. There's an EFS 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II lens attached in this photo but I also have an Ultrasonic EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM lens for long range shooting. Not the newest or most cutting edge but it's more than enough for sitting in auto mode taking pictures of or recording youtube videos about computers, which is 95% of what I use it for.
To see the software I use, click here to see Part 2 - Software.
Made with love by graydog
Have questions? Comments? Suggestions for my website? Contact me at gdp770@proton.me