Just Write

the setup is interesting.

Self-described as “a bunch of nerdy inter­views,” they basi­cally ask “What do peo­ple use to get the job done?” The inter­view ques­tions are all the same, con­sist­ing of four ques­tions:

1. Who are you, and what do you do?
2. What hard­ware are you using?
3. And what software?
4. What would be your dream setup?

Like most good intro­spec­tive exer­cises, you can approach it on dif­fer­ent levels–and with more or less rigor. Here are my answers:

Who are you and what do you do?

Michael Mont­gomery. Hus­band, father, lawyer, tech­nol­ogy fan, inter­net affi­cionado, speaker, orga­nizer, and write with a foun­tain pen. I blog some­times, and work for Christo­pher & Weis­berg as a reg­is­tered patent attor­ney and intel­lec­tual prop­erty lawyer. On the web, I play with markup & styling, teaches, presents, help with God­bit, Refresh­Laud­erdale and Refresh­Mi­ami.

What hard­ware are you using?

At work, I use a non­de­script box from a com­pany I won’t name, that’s been down­graded to XP for com­pat­i­bil­ity with Pro­Law, our office back-end. The dis­plays are a 19″ HP f1905 and another 19″ non­de­script sec­ond monitor.

At the office, I have a 30Gb iPod dri­ving Tivoli Audio Model Two stereo speakers.

My lap­top is an HP G70 with 4Gb of RAM and Vista Home Pre­mium. It came with a free upgrade to Win­dows 7, but I haven’t yet had the courage. At home, I use a 19″ HP L1945w and the lap­top as a sec­ond monitor.

I tend to carry an 8Gb iPhone, and usu­ally either a book or Mole­sk­ine note­book. And a pen.

And what software?

For browsers, I use Fire­fox and Chrome (mostly for apps like Gmail). For text and code, Notepad++ rocks. For doc­u­ments, I use OpenOf­fice Writer by choice and MS Word when required.

For web­sites, Textpat­tern usu­ally, Expres­sio­nEngine for larger projects, and Word­press for blogs. Drop­box (love it!) for syn­chro­niz­ing, and Jun­gle Disk (meh) for backup. Deli­cious for bookmarks.

Online I use Gmail, Google Cal­en­dar, Google Reader, Remem­ber the Milk, Read­er­naut, Ether­pad. I go by Mont­gomery most every­where. For games, LotRO, EVE and Babas Chess.

What would be your dream setup?

Vastly improved voice recog­ni­tion capability–so good it doesn’t require a head­set. I don’t under­stand why we’re all still typ­ing!

Corol­lary: kill the key­board and mouse. Long live the pen!