Ergodox intro
Job title: Open source full stack developer
Twitter handle: @brecke
Homepage: www.miguellaginha.com
My name is Miguel Laginha and I'm a generalist software engineer based in Brighton, UK. I'm originally from Coimbra, Portugal, where I spent most of my life and plan to go back someday. I currently work remotely as tech lead for Apereo, a US-based open-source foundation focused on Edtech, specifically on the Open Academic Environment (OAE). In previous jobs, I have worked on transportation open data and open science research publishing.
Outside of work, I like to read non-fiction books (mostly behavioural economics and self-improvement) as well as spend time relaxing assembling Legos (I'm especially fond of medieval castles from the 80s and the 90s and Star Wars spaceships). I also enjoy watching TV quite a bit. That includes popular tv shows, movies and English football.
I do most of my work on a new-generation Mac Mini on a furna electric E2 standing desk. I type on a black glow Ergodox with an Apple trackpad in between the two halves and a Logitech MX Ergo mouse on the side. I have tried several vertical mouses and this is by far the best regarding wrist pain (I'm quite sensitive to that). I seat on a somewhat unremarkable chair which is neither bad nor very good.
On the desk, I use a Fleximount monitor arm to hold a hefty 34" Dell Curved Ultrawide monitor, which is great to have up to 4 side-by-side terminal/code panes.
I listen to music all day while I work, either from Soma FM or brainFM, some of it on my Sony MDR-ZX770BN Headphones. I also make extensive use of a notebook and I have plenty of Tesla amazing magnetic notes on the wall.
Firefox is my default browser, mostly because I'm very aware of online privacy and a supporter of the Open Web. All my connected devices are connected to ProtonVPN 24x7 and I've been a ProtonMail user for a couple of years now. All my backups are on Spideroak One. I use Alfred for pretty much everything, Pinboard for bookmarks and Myki for passwords and 2FA.
For programming, I either use tmux+nvim on Alacritty or VSCode with vim bindings. I use the material Gruvbox theme wherever I can because I'm quite obsessed with appearance consistency.
Other apps I appreciate include Tweetbot, Reeder, Divvy, GitUp and Amphetamine.
My keyboard setup is still a work in progress. I have tried to adapt it to my kind of work, namely javascript and vim, but I also do a lot of non-programming work, so I rolled back a bit towards more general use. I type in European Portuguese 50% of the time, so I had to tweak the layout quite a bit to get easy access to accents like ´`~^. I will probably keep making changes since I am a maximizer and constantly striving to make things better. I'm currently using QUERTY layout but I keep dreaming of trying out Colemak one day.
Regarding keycaps, I have the default printed glow ones from Ergodox-ez. Recently I have purchased a set of rugged gaming keycaps just to replace the F and the 1/6 keys, as a way to help guide my fingers when needed. They're the grey ones on the picture.
I'm still using the Cherry Brown key switches, even though I think they're a bit too loud. I've tried Zilents V2 and loved how silent they are but then I started feeling pain because apparently, their actuation force (62g) is way too high for my hands (I've got long yet thin fingers). If I were to buy another Ergodox I'd probably go for a lighter and smoother linear key switch such as the Cherry silent reds or the Kailh silver ones.
Something else I've found is that it's more comfortable for me to type with plenty of elbow room. I now push the keyboard a bit further towards the screen which forces me to deliberately rest my elbows on the desk. For some reason, this position is less prone to causing pain on the back of my hands.
Although I like my monitor very much, I'm always envious of those 3 side-by-side monitor setups you see in movies. However, I'm not sure that actually works well in real life, it looks like too much screen real estate for a confessed unitasker such as myself. Speaking of envy, I keep seeing a lot of nice pictures of Clark Kables so I might eventually get one myself. Once I have all the cables I want, I'll finally sort them out properly below the desk, I promise!
In what comes to ergonomics, I intend to buy a kneeling chair in the future as it helps me to keep a good posture. Not sure my cats would approve though, as they love sleeping on my lap throughout the day :)
Oh, and a final wish: have ergodox-ez implement the Portuguese keyboard layout on the online tool because I still have some trouble with configurations from time to time! pretty please?