Daniel Bogan’s Sweet Mac Setup

Who are you, what do you do, etc…?

I’m a web dork living in San Francisco, avoiding the sunlight and working for Flickr (primarily as the dude who breaks the site most often – sorry about that). As a side project I interview all sorts of people about their hardware and software three times a week.

I live near a park with three dogs, two kittens and one wife. I like coffee. A LOT. And you. But not you.

What is your current setup?

Daniel Bogan Sweet Mac Setup

Daniel Bogan Sweet Mac Setup

Quad-core i7 15 inch Macbook Pro. My last Pro had issues with the NVIDIA card, so this is a very very new beast. It’s pleasantly shiny and speedy and un-kernel-panic-y, which is nice. A Nikon D5000 and an iPhone. ATH-FC700A headphones (I am constantly destroying headphones somehow, but these are both my favourite and also not broken, so). A Time Capsule for backups/wifi, an Apple TV and a Mac Mini for streaming/watching stuff. That’s pretty much it; I like simple and minimal.

At home I sit on the floor with the laptop in my lap. I should probably think about a desk and a chair or whatever it is people use.

Why this rig?

Truth be told, if I wasn’t such a tragic, obsessive video gamer I’d totally gun for an Air, but I need a decent enough graphics card (obviously) so I stick with the Pros. I also hate the idea of having multiple computers and I tend to use this one for both fun and for work (my actual work one is a very very very old Pro with the silver keyboard that lives a quiet life in a drawer in my desk at FlickrHQ), so I stick with laptops.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

Some sort of text editor, mostly. I’m actually having a bit of a crisis of faith over which one to use, which sounds a lot lamer when I type it out. TextMate, usually, though it likes to choke to death on enormous projects (like, say, seven years worth of Flickr code) when regaining focus. I’ve tried neckbearding in vim, but the whole home row key thing really messes with my head (I type like a mutant, I guess). Currently I’m sticking with TextMate because I have a nice custom bundle set up for work, and I’m so used to it.

Chrome for browsing, because I love the omnibar. Adium for annoying people online in real-time, because it’s multi-protocol and works well. The official Twitter client nee Tweetie for annoying people in almost real-time. Colloquy for IRC. Boot Camp and Windows 7 and Steam for gaming. So much gaming. Aperture for storing my photos and punting ’em to Flickr — it’s pretty good, though a little slow at times. I use the new Mail in Lion for work email, and it’s pretty awesome. iTerm 2 for nerding it up (mostly for committing code or publishing interviews).

Google Apps for email and calendar fun times, mostly accessed via the browser. And I use CalendarBar to — in theory — keep track of
calendars via the menubar. I’m also using OfflineIMAP to slurp in all my mail locally, just in case. Not that I don’t trust Google, or anything. Yeah.

A tag-team combination of Time Machine and CrashPlan for backing up our laptops at home.

I keep my notes and to-do lists stored in SimpleNote, which is amazing – it’s syncing that actually, like, y’know, works. On the Mac I use
Notational Velocity and on the iPhone I’m actually accessing it via Listary, which lets you interpret selected notes as to-do lists. I love it — I use it to keep track of who I’ve interviewed on The Setup and which groceries I’ve forgotten to buy yet again.

Oh, and LaunchBar for launching apps — I am so totally not taking advantage of all the power under that little popup bar, that’s for sure.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

Everything just works!

How would your ideal setup look and function?

This is pretty much it. Faster and faster Interweb pipes would be nice. I basically want less stuff, not more, so give me a laptop with power and Internets and some puppies and kittens and I’m golden.

More Sweet Setups

Daniel’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Daniel Bogan’s Sweet Mac Setup