JM Ibanez

Who are you, and what do you do?

JM Ibanez, jack of all trades and code monkey for AWS by day, dilettante blogger and photographer by night.

What hardware do you use?

I've retired my mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro that I bought and steadily upgraded over the years; I've upgraded my personal machine to a mid-2019 13" MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports and 16GB of RAM. Admittedly, I could have gone for the 16" MacBook Pro (as it came out a few days after I purchased my laptop), but I really like the portability of the 13".

I also have an older 13" MacBook Pro that work has issued to me. I've opted to use my refurbished Das Keyboard at my desk at work. I spend most of my day writing code on it, which is nice. I really haven't decided on an alternate keyboard for home.

For backups and storage, I've acquired a Synology NAS, a DS918+. I use it mostly as a Time Machine backup device over the network. I've also dumped my ripped media on it so I can stream them to my home TV.

I also acquired two Raspberry PIs a few years back, both of them original Model As, one with a case and one without (bare board). I still haven't yet decided what to do with them yet.

My choice of headsets has changed. Previously, I opted for a Sennheiser PX-100-II i headset, but switched to using an AudioTechnica ATH-M50 at my desk, since the PX-100-IIs can be pretty noisy, being open-backed. I commute with a pair of Sennheiser CX 300s in-ear headphones

(The ATH-M50 is no longer sold, but the ATH-M50X is more-or-less the same, with a replaceable cable)

My everyday phone is an iPhone XS, which replaced my iPhone 6; I previously had an iPhone 4S and an iPhone 4 before that. My Blackberry Playbook is dead, sadly: the LCD was cracked and I tried replacing it, but the replacement LCD was also damaged during shipping -- sad times.

I have a Nintendo Switch I play on for a lot of my mobile gaming, and I stopped playing on my Nintendo DS Lite (I just need to find a replacement adapter/charger).

And what software?

• Emacs for editing (among other things...)
• Git for version control
• Safari for browsing; occasionally Chrome or Firefox when some internal site needs it
• DEVONthink Pro for bookmarks and notes on my personal machine
• Backblaze for backups
• Dropbox for sharing
• Work email is via Outlook (I've learned to live with it)
• Hover
• Steam for gaming

What would be your dream setup?

Haven't thought of a "dream setup", to be honest, but I do lust after:

• the iMac Pro
• Multiple 30" displays (I have dual 27" monitors I use at work, though)

I'd also like to get my hands on a bunch of old hardware. On my short list:

• A NeXT Cube
• An original Apple Newton
• A working first-generation PC
• Any old SGI workstation (circa Jurassic Park), maybe an Indigo
• A Cobalt server

And the list goes on...

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