Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

I’m Brad, a builder. Currently I’m working on a Phlex on Rails video course. It’s my first video course and if it works out commercially, I’m hoping to create more that teach people how to build enterprise apps with SAML, SCIM, etc., how to integrate AI into Rails apps, use Sitepress for content management, etc. I’ve found that lately I really enjoy teaching people about things I’d like to see advance in the Ruby ecosystem that I think are hidden gems. Pun intended.

Before that I founded and bootstrapped Poll Everywhere into $10m+ ARR.

Outside of work, most of my time is spent being a dad to three girls and being present at all the stuff they love doing. On the rare chance I have time to myself, I enjoy outdoor activities like kayaking, backpacking, etc. I think the reason I’ve started to combine hiking with working is so I get the best of both worlds.

What hardware do you use?

I have several workstations and three Moonlander keywords, two with The Platform and one with a Tripod kit.

Since I have many workstations, I find it’s important to network them all together, so I built out a UniFi network to keep things in sync including a 48 TB NAS and a 10 GB switch to link it all together.

Let’s check out the workstations.

Indoor workstation

My primary workstation is an M1 Mac Studio with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD, which I have hidden in a box out of sight beneath my desk. Connected to it are three 27” Apple Studio Displays that float above my desk with LCD Arms.

I don’t like a lot of stuff on my desk, so I always have cable management boxes beneath it to hide my workstations and all the wires.

Outdoor workstation

My secondary workstation is outside in the summer beneath an oak tree. It’s an M2 Mac mini with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD.

When it’s not in use, I cover it with waterproof BBQ covers.

In the winter I keep it in my garage because it rains for a few months in northern California.

Ultraportable hiking workstation

Since I live in California where it’s sunny most of the year and the weather is 20-25C/60-80F, I built a hiking rig so I can get exercise and fresh air when I code.

I wrote an article that goes into the details of each component.

Sports practice workstation

My last and final workstation is another M2 MacBook Air that I keep in a much smaller pack to take to kids’ practices so I can be productive on smaller tasks.

And what software?

I run macOS on all of my desktops and am really deep into the Apple ecosystem, for better or worse. I spend most of my time coding and writing with Zed & iTerm, creating videos with Screen Studio, and asking lots of questions to ChatGPT via the Chat UI. I haven’t found agentic coding to be that useful yet since I rarely work on projects that require lots of boilerplate.

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

My keyboard setup is a weird hybrid between Mac & Moonlander defaults for the first layer.

The outer keys are set up to have shortcuts, like pulling up the Emoji picker.

I have the second layer keys mapped to two things:

1. The left side I moves the mouse cursor around the screen and clicks on things. This surprised me the most when using the Moonlander—I found that I prefer to use the mouse via the keyboard since I can keep my hands on the keyboard. I still keep a Magic Trackpad between my keyboard halves for when I need to pinch to zoom, scroll, or do something when my hands leave the keyboard.
2. The right side is mapped to macOS shortcuts like launching Spotlight, switching between apps, enabling Exposé, etc.

I don’t consider myself a leet keyboard user, which is why I’ve been surprised at how much I prefer using it to interact with GUIs over other methods. I call it “Ewwy GUI.”

What would be your dream setup?

An iPad Pro running macOS. Since the keyboards suck on Apple laptops and kill my wrists, I dream about a day where I can plug a Moonlander into an iPad and run Zed & iTerm for my writing and code.

I’m tempted to hook a Voyager up to my ultraportable hiking rig, but I worry I’d fall for that and end up buying three more for my other workstations.