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

My name is Sebastián Villamizar Santamaría. I am currently an editor at Nature Cities, a new journal from the Nature portfolio focusing on urban research. Before that, I did a PhD in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and worked as a freelance editor, copy editor, and translator in Spanish and English for a variety of human rights practitioners. Outside of work, I enjoy biking, desserts, yoga, and walking around in the city.

What hardware do you use?

My desk is a standing desk by Fully, which unfortunately are not around anymore. I really like my chair, which is a HÅG Capisco. I bought both during a period of peak remote work in the pandemic, and they were a big but welcomed investment. I have a Mac mini M2 that I’ve used for a while and I have a work-issued 13” Lenovo ThinkPad. I have a 34” monitor, which changed my surface area so much (both physically and digitally), and my job gave me a 24” monitor that I have in a vertical angle. I have two mice, a Corsair for gaming and a very nice Swiftpoint mouse that I can take anywhere.

In terms of keyboards, I used a Moonlander for a few months and I liked it so much. Then, with my new full-time job at the journal I commute to the office once a week, so I tried to carry it, but it was too cumbersome. That’s why I got a now-retired Planck EZ, to carry around. I missed the split layout of the Moonlander and the portability of the Planck, and somehow you ended up presenting the Voyager and it seemed to be the best of both worlds. I gave my brother the Moonlander and the Planck, as he doesn’t have to commute as much, and he’s been enjoying them too.

I have a bunch of toys and mementos from different times of my life as decoration, including some Pokémon keycaps my brother gave me last Christmas. Last but not least, I have four plants on my desk, which is a really nice way to be in touch with nonhuman life, especially during the winters in NYC.

And what software?

I’ve had many hats, and each required different software. When I was doing my PhD, I used to write a lot on Scrivener (my dissertation was made possible because of it!) and did a heavy use of Zotero to manage the citations for everything. I also used stats software like SPSS and R, and mapping stuff like QGIS and ArcGIS, and Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, and GIMP to make them look nicer. Microsoft Word was the bread and butter too, especially in my work as freelance editor. I took some classes on Word for editors, and they were very useful—I didn’t know half the things I learned in them.

Now as an editor for a scientific journal, I don’t write that much but read a lot, so Acrobat/Preview are the way to go, as well as Google Docs for note-taking and sharing stuff with colleagues. My default browser is Firefox—I have it installed everywhere and can’t use anything else.

My gaming platform has switched from the computer to a PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, but I play World of Warcraft and Baldur’s Gate 3 sometimes.

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

My setup has been the result of a lot of trial and error, as many here. My work and personal lives are bilingual, so I had to have access to accents, etc. And when I got the Moonlander, I thought “What a great idea it would be to learn a new keyboard layout.” After reading a lot about it, I chose Dvorak because it also works in both languages (pretty much). So here I was learning how to type again after 30 years with a QWERTY keyboard. That not being enough, I use many shortcuts (my fellow editors would know how great it is to type an em dash through the key shortcut, or moving the cursor through words/sentences instead of letters), which I had to program through Oryx. Once I got the hang of it all and programmed everything I needed, I started the new job and they only use Windows, so I had to duplicate many of these but with Ctrl instead of Cmd.

I got inspired by many people doing Windows/Mac work, but sadly there were not many editors nor Spanish users available, so I hope this will help others trying to do a bilingual setup with many layers with shortcuts.

What would be your dream setup?

Frankly, I don’t know if I need anything new or have anything I would like to replace. My job doesn’t require lots of processing power, and the M2 runs the games I play well enough. I thought of trying the ErgoDox, but I’m very happy with the Voyager. Maybe more plants? I don’t know, that would be nice.