re: https://davidawindham.com/den-studio/
25/04/07 - my new Mac Studio came in over the weekend. Right now I'm calling it Stu and it seems like it's going to stick. It's an upgrade I promised myself to go along with the new studio project. It's a replacement for my old Mac Mini ( Magic ) which was the last of my working local machines not on an ARM architecture. I remember when 1GB of memory was considered outrageous. It's a hoss and will serve as my primary desktop alongside of my laptop Ovid.
Every time I spin up a new machine, I take time to make considerations on possible changes. I never boot from backups or stuff new machines with previous projects. My approach is almost always minimalism. I look at my older system and ask myself what I can trim because I inevitably end up with multiple language versions, extraneous packages, and software.
π TP-link Deco XE75 Pro ( ethernet δ· )
π₯οΈ (2) ViewSonic 32" VX3267U-4K / Sony X85K
π· FujiFilm XT-1 / Nikon Z50II
π Onkyo TX-NR636 / WiiM / Polk monitors/center/sub
ποΈ Auturia MiniFuse / πΉ Auturia Mk3 / ποΈ Blue
Productivity - Alfred, Obsidian, Acrobat, Notes, Reminders
Development - Terminal, Xcode, Visual Studio Code, Cursor, Transmit, TablesPlus, DBngin, Docker, Insomnia, Postman, Proton , GPG Suite
Design - Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign, Figma, Color Picker
A/V - Monitor Control, Handbrake, Logic/Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier/Audition/Encoder, Screenflow, OBS, Audio Hijack/Loopback
System - Mail, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, Numbers, Pages, Photos, Passwords
Browsers - Safari, Orion, Firefox Developer
AI - Claude/OpenAI/Gemini/CoPilot APIs ( for Cursor, VSCode, Kagi Assistant)
Deprecated - Wirecast, Logseq, Slack
I use a good bit of Apple software mainly because of the convenience and interoperability.
I switched to an Apple One account several years ago so now I use the 2TB liberally syncing almost everything except my working Desktop and Documents files.
Show system Library and add additional folders. I've now migrated to using pretty much the exact same file structure on all of my backup and remote drives prefixing them with the machine name. /Projects and /Sites are the two main add-ons and I organize by acronyms and dates for both.
.
βββ _silver (2005-2009)
βββ _macs (2009-2014)
βββ _magic (2012-2025)
βββ _ovid (2021-)
βββ _stu (2025-)
βββ david/
βββ Desktop (projects/_desk - never use)
βββ Documents (daw,car,compute,family,finance,health,house,student,travel,work)
βββ Downloads (working directory)
βββ Library (show Library in finder)
βββ Music (hijack,logic,audition)
βββ Movies (audio,premier,screenflow,finalcut)
βββ Pictures ( graphics,scans - org by year )
βββ Projects (org by acronym/yr - all assets including docs - _notes.md root )
βββ Public ( rarely use )
βββ Sites ( working projects by acronym - mapped in etc/hosts)
I like to use QLMarkdown & Syntax Highlight as homebrew casks so that I have code and markdown previews within the finder and preview. I use the Base16 Brush Trees themes for syntax highlighting and the Github theme for Markdown.
david@stu:~ Β» brew install --cask qlmarkdown
david@stu:~ Β» brew install --cask syntax-highlight
I need the ISO C++ standard, libc++, & Make libraries
david@stu:~ Β» xcode-select βinstall
dotfiles @ https://code.davidawindham.com/david/dotfiles - Not on Warp, Hyper, Neovim or iTerm. default terminal with Oh-My-Zsh & Vundle
david@stu:~ Β» sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
david@stu:~ Β» git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
editor history: Notepad++ -> Textmate -> Sublime -> Atom -> JetBrains -> VSCode -> Cursor
Cursor is better than Copilot and is a fork so I sync other features and plugins I like. finds lint errors faster. biggest workflow change β
I've made in a while. added Gemini, Claude, OpenAI keys for Cursor
david@stu:~ Β» /<repo>/ . cursor
AI in the terminal via https://github.com/simonw/llm & npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
- https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code
david@stu:~ Β» npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
david@stu:~ Β» claude
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.2/install.sh | bash
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» nvm install --lts
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» node -v
v22.13.1
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» nvm -v
0.40.2
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» node -v
v22.13.1
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» npm -v
10.9.2
david@stuπͺ©:~ Β» apachectl -v
Server version: Apache/2.4.63 (Unix)
Server built: Jan 20 2025 19:35:41