Thinkcage

I recently discovered a great feature on Waferbaby called The Setup. In this series of short interviews, well-know tech people talk about the tools they use to do what they do. Now I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am fascinated by creativity — where it comes from, how we can encourage it, grow it, and share it. As such I’ve always been curious about the processes, tools and techniques that artists, musicians, and other creatives use to make things. In particular, I enjoyed reading about John Gruber’s setup and share more than a few items with him.

So, just for fun, I wanted to think about the things I use and share my setup. Here we go…

So, who are you, and what do you do?

I am Jason Zimdars. I am a web designer in Oklahoma City. You might have seen some of my work on various web design galleries; I did most of the marketing and UI design for LightCMS.

What hardware are you using to get the work done?

I’m currently using a 20″ intel iMac with 2GB RAM and a 250GB hard drive. I have an Apple Aluminum keyboard connected to it that I think is the finest keyboard I’ve ever used.

I haven’t used a mouse as my primary input device since 1995, instead opting for a pen and tablet interface. Right now that means a Wacom Intuos 2 with grip pen. The stylus is faster, more natural than a mouse, reduces strain on my hands, and lets me draw some deft shapes in Adobe Photoshop.

The only other things connected to this machine are an iPhone dock, and two Western digital USB hard drives; a 250GB for general backup, and a 500GB drive for Time Machine.

When I leave my desk I always have my 16GB 1st generation iPhone, a Moleskine large sketchbook, and a Pilot G2 .7mm gel pen. When I draw I like a wider tip pen and lots of ink that can keep up with me — the G2 is perfect for that.

And what software?

It all starts with Adobe Creative Suite 3, primarily Photoshop and Illustrator. I like Panic’s Transmit for FTP, which plays nicely with Textmate for editing HTML and CSS. I like xPad for jotting random notes, but I keep tasks on Ta-da list, and am in love with Dropbox for file sharing and backup. Many times I’ll work out of my Dropbox when I want to be especially secure since it saves versions automatically. I’m not sure I could use a mac without Quicksilver, and Adium handles my IM needs. Backups of my machine are performed by SuperDuper! in addition to Time Machine. I have too many email accounts and use both Mail.app and Gmail’s web interface. I like Twitterific, but wish it had more features — still I can’t bring myself to use any of the Air-based Twitter clients because they look terrible. I love Skitch for quick image sharing but I use SnapZ Pro more often because it is so powerful and integrated. I prefer Safari as my primary web browser, even though Firefox, does a few things that I wish Safari did. And my blog runs on WordPress. Whew.

If you could have any hardware or software setup, your most ultimate setup in the world, what would it be?

During the day at work I’ve been using a MacBook Pro with external LCD for the past 2 years and I really prefer the mobile platform. I’m not sure I’ll ever buy another desktop computer so I’d like to move to this setup at home, too.

There are probably lots of little things I missed and I really didn’t want to get into what I use on my iPhone, but that was fun. So, what do you use?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Creativity, Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.