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

I’m Olivier, living and working near Paris (France). I like to enjoy life by listening to music, eating good bread (luckily I live in France), and listening to documentaries or podcasts about technology and science.

I love listening to music every day at home on my Kef iQ5 speakers and Atoll IN50 amp. My CD player is losing quite often to Deezer, but I still use it from time to time to listen to old anime music and out of nostalgia, to see its white LCD screen display the playback time of the tracks. I like a wide range of styles: 80s pop, current pop, Japanese anime, hard rock, trance, classical (J.S. Bach is my god), movie soundtracks (my current favorite is Interstellar). A few years ago I could listen to Ravi Shankar for hours. I also enjoy music with my B&W Px7 S3 headphones at the office, when walking outside, or at home while making coffee.

I like drinking coffee and tea, but coffee is my favorite. I like the simple processing and taste of the French press (and no waste), and the quick preparation of the AeroPress, especially for caffeine-free coffee in the evening.

Previously, I worked for Europe’s largest legal publisher, where I handled SGML/XML files for web and print publishing. Now I work as a senior software developer on code analyzers at a company specializing in software intelligence.

When I was younger I hiked a bit in Ireland and the south of France (Collioure to Cadaques, where you can visit Salvador Dalí’s house, impressive!). I still like to walk, when my knees allow it. Lately I go to the gym to keep myself in shape.

What hardware do you use?

At home, I use a 24” 1920×1200 Eizo monitor because I wanted one with good colorimetry for photo editing. My PC is homemade from a few years ago, with a silent Fractal Design case, Intel i5 CPU, 20 GB RAM, a Samsung SSD for the OS, two Western Digital SATA drives for the data, and a fanless GPU (also to keep the case quiet). Finally, my input devices are a Kensington SlimBlade trackball and a Moonlander. The trackball is very comfortable and helps to reduce wrist pain.

Years ago, when my wrists started to hurt, I bought an ortholinear TypeMatrix keyboard. It helped, and so did learning the BÉPO layout. Later I discovered split keyboards. I didn’t want to solder my own keyboard, so I bought an ErgoDox EZ. I was planning to bring it home after work, but that turned out to be too troublesome, so after a few weeks I bought a Moonlander. The Moonlander is thinner, so I kept it for home, since my desk is high (it was made for lovin’ you—uh no, sorry Kiss, it was made for writing).

For working from home, I wanted a good chair, to avoid back pain. I bought an Aeron chair from Herman Miller. It is comfortable and easy to adjust, and the armrests are very good. It’s expensive, but since this chair lasts for years, the annualized cost makes it worth it—and health is priceless anyway. The keyboard and trackball are connected to a USB hub that I just plug into my PC or my work laptop. I rarely need to use both at the same time, so no need for a KVM. I usually use a USB to Ethernet adapter to ensure a steady Ethernet connection.

When traveling, I bring my notebook, an Asus UX331. For long vacations, I also pack the Moonlander, but for short ones I just leave it, to save space.

I also have a few smart home devices: lighting, roller blinds, robot vacuum cleaner. Ah, and a Netgear 24-port gigabit switch for the 1 Gb/s Ethernet wall plugs in each room (there is nothing better than a good cable for important meetings in the kitchen or the second office aka bedroom).

At work, I have a 27” monitor, a laptop, my own ErgoDox EZ, and a Kensington SlimBlade trackball. The ErgoDox has almost the same configuration as my Moonlander, except for color layers, since the memory is too small to support all of the Moonlander’s configuration.

And what software?

At home: EndeavorOS (Arch flavor with graphical environment) with paru for package management, Qtile as tiled window manager, Neovim (with LazyVim for light editing, but I’m still learning to use it and the “vim way”), Firefox, Notion (planning to move to Obsidian or an open source alternative synced with git), Proton (mail, VPN, password manager, and 2FA), Deezer for music, CopyQ as clipboard manager, VLC for videos, PyCharm or VS Code for coding. WezTerm for terminal, and zsh.

At work, Windows is mandatory, but I can’t work without a few GNU tools, so I have WSL2+Arch Linux to use PyCharm for coding and CopyQ for clipboard management. I’m experimenting with a few IDE for “AI” agents as well.

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

I replaced the switches with silent ones (Gazzew Boba U4 Silent Tactile Switch) for the peace of my co-workers and my loved one. I prefer lighter switches (Kailh Copper), so I kept those for the most-used keys, Space and Enter (the ones in the middle of the thumb pad).

At home I have more translucent keycaps, to enjoy the colors. For work I kept the original ZSA keycaps. I love their texture and prefer a more discreet look at work.

Both keyboards use a customized BÉPO layout (BÉPO is optimized for French, but I moved some keys since I write in English a lot when coding). I shifted the pinky finger columns down because I have short fingers, bravo for programmable keyboards :) ! Special characters, numbers, and function keys are on their own layers. I played with layers to add some vim motions and rarely used key combinations for Linux. I spent many hours tuning the layout, but it is mostly stable now.

What would be your dream setup?

Glasses with 3D screen projection to replace the monitor, Moonlander or similar with Kailh Copper switches attached to my Aeron chair. Voice-controlled barista robot capable of preparing and bringing me my coffee. For working remotely, add a home with an office and a nice view of the forest (without mosquitoes).