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 Jesse von Doom

Jesse von Doom

Executive director, developer (CASH Music)

Posted in developer, mac

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Jesse von Doom. Mostly I swear a lot on Twitter, but also I'm a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and the ED of a small nonprofit called CASH Music. We build free open-source tools for musicians to use in promoting, selling, and distributing their music.

What hardware do you use?

I use a 2010-era MacBook Pro. My kids cover it in fingerprints and snacks and shit to show me how much they love me. They love me a lot. It's pretty disgusting. The machine itself came from a friend. He saw me working on a crazy old laptop and the new one materialized. I don't ask questions. Funny thing is that's how I got the crazy old one before it. The last laptop I bought was one of those iBooks that looked like Apple was subcontracting out to TOMY or maybe whoever built Speak and Spells.

But the laptop is important. My office is either a kitchen table or a desk in my garage - depending on my router. Sometimes it's a dick and won't broadcast far enough for the garage. I don't remember what kind of router it is, but it really is kind of a dick.

My phone is a Nexus 5. I used Windows Phone stuff for ages - I really liked how it couldn't do anything except email and crappy broken websites. The camera's solid so now I can swear on twitter AND lots of very important pictures online.

Oh and Sonos. Holy shit Sonos. I'm seriously considering adding "save the Sonos speakers" to our family fire drill. Hooking up your turntable through flawless wireless speakers is maybe the best thing ever. The brackish waters of old meets new in perfect ratio.

And what software?

For software I mostly just use Sublime Text 2 editing PHP and JS, Photoshop CS6 when it's time to make pictures, and Firefox / Chrome for browser testing. (I have a strict "fuck you, IE" policy.) Slack rules everything around me. I've been playing with Vagrant a lot lately - made our main platform repo play nice with a "vagrant up" so I can have a fresh install whenever I need one. And we host things at Rackspace - they've been great, sponsoring the hosted version of our platform so we don't get crushed by hosting bills.

What would be your dream setup?

Hmm. I guess I'd love a laptop that was younger than my kids for a daily driver, and if we're talking about dreaming big I'd set up my current machine with Ubuntu and Windows. (Ubuntu for using, Windows for testing.) I don't really go in for gadgets too much so I doubt I'd add much more to it. Maybe a router that isn't such a dick. Oh and a Sonos Sub - those things sound amazing and my neighbors love it when I play music crazy loud.

Real moment of truth - the crown jewel would be a speaker for the bathroom.