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Andy at his desk

Uses

The gear, tools, and setup I use day to day for dev work and travel.

Editor and dev setup

  • Editor: VS Code. Extensions I actually use: GitLens, ESLint, Prettier, Astro, Volar (for Vue).
  • Terminal: Built-in VS Code terminal. Nothing fancy.
  • Frontend stack: Vue 3 and Nuxt at work, Astro for this site. Tailwind where it makes sense, plain CSS when it doesn't.
  • Design: Figma for anything that needs sharing. Pencil and lined paper for anything that doesn't.
  • Version control: Git and GitHub. Conventional commits where the project allows it.
  • Hosting: Netlify for personal projects. Azure and Drupal-hosted for NCC work.
  • Browser: Chrome for dev tools, Firefox for accessibility testing.
  • Accessibility testing: NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on Mac, axe DevTools extension.

Day to day

  • Notes: Notion for anything long-lived, Google Keep for quick captures, physical notebook for thinking.
  • Planning: Google Sheets for anything that needs a table. Notion for everything else.
  • AI tools: Claude for writing and code review. Testing others as they come out but nothing has replaced it for sustained work yet.
  • Communication: Teams at work (not by choice). Email for everything else.

Travel gear

  • Backpack: Cabin Max Metz 44L. Fits Ryanair's under-seat dimensions, holds 4–5 days of clothes, and I've taken it on every solo trip since 2022. One bag. No checked luggage.
  • Towel: travel towel . Dries in about 10 minutes, packs down to nothing, doubles as a beach towel. £12 well spent.
  • Power bank: Anker 10,000mAh. Fits in a jacket pocket, charges a phone twice. Necessary for long travel days.
  • Adapter: Universal travel adapter. The cheap ones work fine.
  • Laptop: Work laptop travels with me when I'm working remotely. I don't bring a personal laptop. Phone handles everything else.

This site

  • Framework: Astro with Vue for interactive bits.
  • Styling: Tailwind CSS plus some global CSS.
  • Search: Pagefind. Static search that runs entirely in the browser.
  • Hosting: Netlify, auto-deployed from GitHub on push.
  • Analytics: Google Analytics 4. No cookie banner because I don't store personal data.

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