Cory D. Dransfeldt

Uses

Software and services that I use for work and my own enjoyment.

Computer setup

  • Midnight MacBook Air (2025 - M4)
  • 27" Dell Monitor
  • Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID + number pad
  • Apple Magic Trackpad
  • AirPods Max and, sometimes, a Homepod Mini for audio

Desk and chair

  • My desk is a custom-made corner desk I bought on Etsy years ago. It's sturdy and has tons of storage. It arrived with a chip on the surface to add some character after the first one got lost by the freight company on the journey from Michigan to Los Angeles. I probably wouldn't repeat the experience, but I do love the desk.
  • Herman Miller Aeron chair: it's pretty comfortable and makes swiveling around my corner desk easy.

macOS + iOS

  • Vivaldi: an absurdly configurable browser with syncing between mobile and desktop that actually works.
  • Obsidian: fast and configurable (or minimal) as you'd like, I use it for all of my notes and writing.
  • Cadence: my opinionated and intentionally minimal/boring Navidrome client for iOS and macOS.
  • Indigo: a nicely designed, minimal client for both Mastodon and Bluesky (I suppose I'm a reluctant user of the latter but having them combined in one timeline is a nice take on the experience).
  • Feeder: an RSS reader I built myself using Go and Preact. It's lightweight, has a fiddly rules system, built in linkding support and a rules system to apply transformations for saved items.
  • Reader: an ePub reader built, again, using Go and Preact that allows me to read books stored on my audiobookshelf server.
  • Parcel: the most flexible and reliable package tracker for Apple's ecosystem.

iOS

  • Still: a nicely designed, native client for Audiobookshelf.
  • Ribbon: my native linkding client.
  • Magic Earth: private and reliable maps. The point of interest search works well, it suggests alternate routes based on traffic and has every feature you'd need in a maps application.
  • FontCase: for managing/installing fonts.

macOS

  • Mp3tag: a powerful utility for editing and managing music metadata (it also allows you to edit extended tags which can be important when adding music to Navidrome).
  • noTunes: a lightweight utility that prevents Music.app from launching. It also allows you to set a new default music player.
  • TinyStart: the lightweight Spotlight replacement I've always wanted. Efficient, minimal and no bloat.

Dev tools

  • Neovim: maybe I'm a grizzled old vim guy. I'm not sure yet.
  • Ghostty: a superb, configurable and fast terminal emulator.
  • Warm Burnout: a cozy, warm theme that I use everywhere I interact with code.
  • Mono Lisa: a relatively new find, I've been enjoying how pleasant and readable this font is (and have even gone so far as to install it on iOS via FontCase).

Services

  • Proton: the premier, privacy-focused email, calendar, et al provider.
  • forwardemail.net: a powerful and reliable service for hosting, forwarding and routing emails for the domains I own. I use it to handle emails for my site and to send API notifications.
  • Kagi: my favorite search engine that avoids AI cruft, provides relevant results and myriad other features (like ranking results) and highlighting trackers present for a given result.
  • audiobookshelf: a self-hosted audiobook and podcast server.
  • FreshRSS: not the prettiest RSS reader, but it's powerful, flexible and reliable.
  • linkding: a self-hosted bookmark manager for things I want to reference or read later.
  • Umami: privacy-friendly analytics.
  • Bäikal: a lightweight CardDAV and CalDAV server I use to sync contacts across devices (as Proton doesn't sync with local contacts).
  • Immich: a robust, easy to use and self-hostable photo management solution.
  • bunny.net: an affordable and altogether user-friendly CDN. I host the images for my site with them and use their optimizer/transforms heavily.
  • Backblaze: my go to web storage platform. I use it to host the images for my site, back up my laptop, archive data, backup databases — you name it.
  • NextDNS: a privacy-focused, set it and forget it DNS service. I use their security features on my home network and a profile with strict ad-blocking rules on all of my devices.
  • DNSimple: a robust, user-friendly DNS provider and registrar.
  • Tailscale: a wonderfully intuitive and useful networking service that I use to connect to (and connect) everything I host.
  • CoreDNS: a straightforward DNS server that I have configured to handle split DNS in Tailscale and route subdomains without needing public records.