Uses

What I use to design, build, and write. I'll keep this current as things change. Inspired by uses.tech. Hardware MacBook Pro 14" (M5). Does everything I need and stays quiet doing it. Two LG ultrawide monitors. Once you get used to the extra room, it's hard to go back. NuPhy Air75. A low-profile mechanical keyboard...

Phillip Lovelace @pixelflips.com

Oct 2, 20263 min read

hat I use to design, build, and write. I’ll keep this current as things change. Inspired by uses.tech.

Hardware

MacBook Pro 14″ (M5). Does everything I need and stays quiet doing it.
Two LG ultrawide monitors. Once you get used to the extra room, it’s hard to go back.
NuPhy Air75. A low-profile mechanical keyboard that feels great without taking over the desk.
AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. Pro for moving around, Max for heads-down focus.

Editor & Terminal

Zed is my editor. It’s fast and stays out of the way.
The theme is VSCode Dark Modern most of the time, with Ayu Light when the sun wins. Icons come from VSCode Icons for Zed.
Code is set in JetBrains Mono at 13pt. I spent a while coding in Noto Sans before realizing it wasn’t even a monospace font. Don’t be like me.
iTerm2, with cmux in the mix, running zsh and Oh My Zsh.
Curious what’s actually installed on a Mac? I built stockpile to answer exactly that.

AI

Claude Code, whenever I’m not writing it by hand. I use it for pair programming, PR reviews, documentation, and helping me draft and research posts like the ones on this site.
A few MCP servers: Chrome DevTools so Claude can see what the browser sees, Context7 for current library docs, and GitHub.

Design & Frontend

Figma for design work.
Brave and Chrome day to day, with Safari and Firefox for testing. Every engine has opinions.
ImageOptim for squeezing images down before they ship.
Git mostly happens in the command line, with GitHub Desktop when I want to see a diff.

Everyday Apps

Brave as my main browser.
Slack, like everyone else.
1Password, for now.
Obsidian for notes, plans, and a running log of my projects.
Proton VPN.

Music

Everything plays through Spotify and scrobbles to Last.fm. Here’s the latest:

    <div class='lastfm-widget'>
        <div class='lastfm-album-container'>
            <img src='https://lastfm-img.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/174s/bab3537fc343525db6d088b7e26ef682.jpg' width='174' height='174' loading='lazy' alt='Year to Be Young 1994' class='lastfm-album' onerror='this.onerror=null; this.src="https://pixelflips.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/album-placeholder.jpg";'>
        </div>
        <div class='lastfm-info'>
            <p class='lastfm-track' title='Year to Be Young 1994'><strong>Year to Be Young 1994</strong></p>
            <p class='lastfm-artist'>by Stephen Wilson Jr.</p>
            <p class='lastfm-status'>🎧 Last Played</p>
        </div>
    </div>

Beard & Tattoo Care

Not software, but still part of the daily routine.

Chicago Comb Co. combs and boar bristle brushes for the beard.
Harry’s Tattoo Frost to keep the ink, like this sleeve, looking sharp.

How This Site Is Built

A custom classic WordPress theme. No block theme, no build step, just PHP and CSS.
Hosted on DreamHost and deployed by GitHub Actions every time I push to main.
WP Super Cache for page caching and Autoptimize for CSS and HTML minification.
Schema, meta, and Open Graph tags are written by hand in the theme. No SEO plugin.
An llms.txt and a Markdown version of every page for AI tools.

Looking for what I do rather than what I use? Check out my portfolio.

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Pixelflips @pixelflips.com