Home Blog About Me Projects Nix

Yes, each device is named after a shipgirl from a gacha game.

Computer

Cheshire - destkop

HMS Cheshire portrait from Azur Lane The heart of my home setup, it's a desktop that I've build in early 2022. It was build with gaming and programming/compiling in mind that's why I have chosen the AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU.
Next computer that I'll build will problably be a AMD CPU+GPU combo because I don't like what Nvidia and Intel are doing nowadays.

Component
Details
CPU Ryzen 7 5800x (non 3D model)
GPU EVGA Nvidia RTX 3070 XC3 ULTRA GAMING LHR 8GB
(RIP EVGA)
RAM 2x8GB DDR4 3600MHz CL16 Ballistix Black RGB
STRG
  • 2x 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus
  • 1x 1TB WD Blue
  • 1x 1TB Seagate
PWR 550W SilentiumPC Gold Should have swapped to something more powerful
MOBO ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PRO (WI-FI)
CLR Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L V2 RGB 2x120mm
SYS NixOS

Noshiro - laptop

IJN Noshiro portrait from Azur Lane

My latest addition to the collection. It’s a ThinkPad T480 that I have bought used. It’s a little beaten up and the top cover has some patches of missing that nice rubber coating. One caveat is that one of the USB-C ports isn’t working at all. The good thing is that the thunderbolt docking port works flawlessly and it’s able to charge the laptop.

Component Name
CPU Intel i5 8250u
GPU Intel HD 620
RAM 2x8GB DDR4
STRG 1x128GB NVMe SSD
PSU 70W GAN charger
SYS NixOS

Roon - laptop

KMS Roon potrait from Azur Lane My now-old laptop, which I've used since I moved to live alone, was meant to be a desktop replacement; hence, it's a gaming laptop. The thermals are abyssmal and it's battery life is almost non-existent.
Nowadays, I'm looking forward to replacing it with something more lightweight. Maybe Framework 13? Temporarily replaced by Noshiro.

Component
Details
CPU Intel i7 8750h
GPU Nvidia GTX1070-maxq
RAM 2x8GB DDR4 ???MHz
STRG
  • 1x 256GB Silicon Power SSD
  • 1x 256GB ... SSD
PWR 200W Replacement power brick
SYS NixOS

Laffey - home server

My home server that I use as both playground for learning new things about being a system admin and as a home media and service center.
It's a computer built from parts of my old pc that I had lying around. When I have some spare money I'll downsize it as a mid-tower desktop as a bit too much for my small corner.

Component
Details
CPU Intel i5 4690
GPU Nvidia GTX960 2GB
RAM 2x8GB DDR3
STRG 1x 1TB HDD
PWR 550W
MOBO MSI ???
SYS NixOS

Phone/Mobile

Boise - smartphone

A Pixel 6 that I have bought over a year ago. I should have installed a different ROM but I have delayed that for over a year. Maybe after it looses it's warranty I'll do it.
In general I've been pretty happy with it's price to performance ratio and being able to run the latest version of android.

Component
Details
CPU Google Tensor
GPU Mali-G78 MP20
RAM 8GB LPDDR5
STRG 256GB
SYS Stock Android 15

Dewey - e-ink reader

My first ever e-ink reader, Boox Leaf 2. I've choosen it mainly because it's running on android and not some limited OS like the others. It was important as I wanted to be able to read both books and manga on the go.
It's performance isn't that great but the e-ink screen does wonders to text and artworks even if it's monochrome.

Component
Details
CPU Qualcomm 2.0G Quad-core (4 x Arm Cortex-A53)
RAM 2GB LPDDR4X
STRG 32GB
SYS Stock Android 11

Peripherials

Keyboard I - HyperX Alloy FPS TKL

My first ever mechanical keyboard that I have bought in 2017. It has Cherry MX Reds and it lacks proper customization options apart from on board backlight control. Has only red LEDs and it's original keycaps have been long replaced as the stems started to break apart. Other than that it serves me well but I'm inclined to change to some other keyboard some time.

Keyboard II - Anne Pro 2

My first ever 60% keyboard. It has Gateron Blue switches which I love. The clicky switches are the most satisfying to me. Sadly I'm not using it all that much right now because some keys regularly drop input or register more inputs than they should.

Monitor - Acer Predator XB253QGPBMIIPRZX

I use single monitor on my main desktop. It's nothing special just a regular gaming 144Hz display with G-Sync and "HDR" aka HDR400 it sucks but technicaly it's there.

Software

I'll mostly list the software that I use on my computers.

System - NixOS [Linux]

As I have mentioned earlier, I'm a NixOS user. I've been using it for over a year now and I love keeping my system infrastructure as a code. Thanks to nix flakes I can easily write a configuration for each of my computers.

Desktop - qtile

I'm using qtile for a couple of years now. It's a python based tiling window manager that is configured with an actual code rather than abstract and limiting configuration file. I'm using the X11 backend as the Wayland never have worked for me, problably due to how wierd wayland is with Nvidia GPUs.

Editor - Emacs

My editor of choice is Emacs of course. I use it as a GUI and a TUI editor. The base of my config is doom-emacs, I've added a few lines of config and packages to it over a course of years.

Terminal - Kitty

My terminal of choice is a Kitty it supports ligatures, it's image protocol is alright and it's GPU accelerated. I don't use majority of it's features such as built-in multiplexer.

Browser - Firefox

I'm using Firefox on almost every device that I use, only on my e-reader I have a different browser but I don't use it that much. I really like how I can customize it's appearance and the fact that even on android I can use the same extensions that I use on my computers.
Mozilla isn't the best company in the world and it's recent expansion choices show that even more but it's the only vaiable option outside of Chromium-based browsers.

Music Player - mpd + ncmpcpp

I really like TUIs and software that has good interoperatibility with other software. That's why I use mpd, I have it connected with my graphical environment and I can easily control it within my home network.

RSS Reader

For reading news, following blogs and youtube channels I'm using newsboat. It's a very nice TUI application. I've dabbled with elfeed in Emacs but I have never used it for long.
I've been meaning to create my own TUI for that with some expanded functionality and better text rendering and support for newsboat urls format. But it's still a WIP.

Email - mu4e and Thunderbird

To be fair I rarely need to check and write emails in my free time, but when I do I'd rather do it in my Emacs window. I use thunderbird only for more HTML heavy emails which sadly happends more often than I would like.