Uses This

A collection of nerdy interviews asking people from all walks of life what they use to get the job done.

A picture of Dustin Curtis

Dustin Curtis

Writer, UX designer

Posted in designer, interface, mac, writer

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Dustin Curtis. I'd like to think of myself as a writer. I'm also a user experience designer and I advise early startups on design.

What hardware do you use?

I use a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, but I'll be upgrading to a Core i7 with a high resolution screen soon. Inside I have 4GB of RAM and an Intel X-25 160GB SSD. I also removed the optical drive and hacked together a way to put a second non-SSD drive in its place. Here's a picture of the result.

At home I have a pair of Sennheiser HD-600 headphones and when I'm on the go I use Shure SE-530 in-ears. When taking photos, I use a Canon T1i camera with various lenses.

I also have a few VPS servers at Slicehost and Amazon.

And what software?

I keep all my files in Dropbox, but I'm trying to get rid of as much data as possible. There isn't any data on my computer that isn't also in S3 via JungleDisk or Dropbox. For design, I use CS5 Master Collection (primarily Photoshop). For code, I use Textmate and, rarely, Vim. I store code in Git and deploy using a really unstable and hacked Capistrano script. My site runs on nginx with a tiny bit of php. My default browser is the Webkit nightly from Webkit.org.

I should use Things more, but I have trouble keeping it up to date. I use iCal for simple to-dos.

Stuff in my dock:

What would be your dream setup?

I think my dream setup -- hardware-wise -- would be a MacBook Air with a 15" high resolution screen, a Core i7, and a 500GB hard drive with the speed of the Intel X-25 SSDs and a 20 hour battery life. We'll get there someday, but I'm getting tired of waiting.

Software-wise, it would be great if the internet browsing experience was better. But I guess that would require Webkit, Firefox, and IE to closely cooperate with the W3C for advancing standards.