The gear, software, cars, and tools I actually run. Opinions included whether you asked or not.
The T3i is a workhorse that refuses to die — great for situations where you'd rather not risk the good body. The R6 is where the serious work happens: IBIS and the autofocus system are genuinely hard to argue with for event and motorsport shooting.
The 75-300 covers pit lane to apex. The 18-55 handles everything close and environmental. The 50mm stays on a body when the shot is about a person, not a vehicle — it forces better framing decisions than a zoom will.
Leash, Slide, Slide Lite, Cuff, and the Everyday Backpack. PD's ecosystem is expensive to buy into and nearly impossible to leave once you do. The capture clip has prevented more dropped shots than any other single piece of gear I own.
Ten cards means never formatting in the field — cards are the cheapest insurance against a bad import. The four 2TB SSDs form a working archive; nothing gets deleted until it's in at least two places.
Lightroom for speed when on deadline; Darktable when I want to stay in the open-source lane. Photoshop for compositing work where GIMP's layer handling still falls short — I use both less than I used to.
Targa, HPDE & AutoX — 2009 Mazda MX-5 Miata (NC)
The right answer for a street-to-course car. Enough adjustment to be useful, durable enough that you stop thinking about them — which is the point.
A reasonable street tire that doesn't embarrass itself at an event. Not a dedicated competition compound, but the NC doesn't need one to be fun.
Hillclimb / Track — 2006 Mazda RX-8
Öhlins on a rotary hillclimb car is exactly as serious as it sounds. The platform rewards the investment — the RX-8 chassis wants to be set up properly more than almost any other car at this price point.
Three compounds for three contexts. The A7s are the serious tire — the 325 width is a deliberate statement about corner exit. Hoosiers reward a smooth driver and punish a lazy one.
The Hawk pads operate in a temperature window that rewards proper warm-up. Brembo hardware underneath means the limiting factor is always driver technique, not the calipers.
The onboard Pi stack is the foundation for Project N.O.V.A. tooling. Currently more capable than the driver — which is the correct ordering of priorities.
AutoX / XB Class — 1989 Honda Civic Si (EF Hatch)
Same philosophy as the Miata — Konis are the right answer when you want the car to behave. The -1° is the minimum useful camber for autocross without creating tire wear problems on the drive home.
A 200TW compound that actually respects its classification. Does what it says, doesn't pretend to be something it isn't — a useful quality in both tires and people.
Wilwoods on a 35-year-old Civic is either overkill or exactly right depending on how seriously you take the class. The Hawk AutoX pads are the correct choice: cold bite matters when your runs are 60 seconds.
SNELL 2020 rated with the upgraded visor and tint is the right setup for hillclimb where sun angle is unpredictable and you can't pull over to adjust. The audio capability matters more than people admit — radio communication on course is a safety tool, not a luxury.
The onboard GPS is the primary data source for N.O.V.A. telemetry — good enough to correlate with track position without needing a dedicated puck. Pairs with OBD Fusion and the Veepeak OBDCheck BLE+ for fuller data pulls.
Arch on the iMac is the daily driver for real work — KDE Plasma, full control, no surprises except the ones you caused yourself. The MBA runs a MacOS beta via OpenCore Patcher: the right amount of jank for a machine that was otherwise headed for a drawer.
VSCode without Microsoft's telemetry baked in. The same ecosystem, the same extensions, none of the data exhaust. The distinction matters when you're already running Arch because you care about that sort of thing.
The only Chromium-based browser that doesn't feel like it's trying to simplify you into submission. Tab stacking and the sidebar are genuinely useful, not just features on a spec sheet.
iTerm2 because nothing else on Mac comes close for split panes and profile management. Konsole because it's native to KDE and gets out of the way. Two machines, two correct answers.
GitHub for public-facing and collaborative work; GitLab for anything self-hosted or where the pipeline tooling matters. Git is non-negotiable and also occasionally insufferable — the usual relationship.
Python for data work and automation — it's the right tool for most problems that aren't latency-sensitive. JS because the web still runs on it. C when the hardware requires you to think carefully. Java when something upstream forces the issue.
Paru as the AUR helper of choice — faster and friendlier than yay. Pacman for the base system. Homebrew on the Mac side because it still wins for getting tools installed without a fight.
Pi-hole is the single best quality-of-life change on a home network — everything else is optional, but that one isn't. Immich handles photo backup without phoning home to anyone. The Arr stack is self-explanatory.
The Ender 3 is the Honda Civic of 3D printers: cheap to buy, endlessly modified, and more capable than its price suggests once you've put the time in. Marlin firmware and OctoPrint remote monitoring are both mandatory upgrades — the printer it ships as and the printer it becomes are different machines.
Forked from Bambu's slicer but without the lock-in. Better calibration tooling than PrusaSlicer and a cleaner interface than Cura. It's the right answer for a modified Ender where you're tuning frequently.
FreeCAD for parametric mechanical parts where dimensions matter. OpenSCAD when the part is better described as code than as a sketch. Blender when the goal is visual rather than dimensional — it's not a CAD tool, but it's the best tool for certain jobs anyway.
The Cameo 2 is older hardware that still does the job cleanly. Driving it from Inkscape via the plugin keeps the whole workflow in open-source tooling — no subscription, no cloud dependency, no nonsense.
The correct answer to "do I have the right measuring tool" is to own all of them. Digital calipers live on the bench; the micrometer comes out when the calipers aren't precise enough, which is more often than you'd expect.
The bench exists to support the N.O.V.A. electronics work and general hardware tinkering. A good soldering iron is the single most leverage-producing tool purchase for anyone building custom hardware — cheap irons cost more in time than they save in money.
Two surfaces because the work splits cleanly between them: the carbon desk for screen-based work, the shop table for anything involving tools or parts. Having the physical separation forces better habits about which mode you're in.
Used reluctantly. The camera system is genuinely excellent for a phone, which matters when the real cameras aren't handy. Everything else about the Apple ecosystem is tolerated rather than enjoyed.
T1D management on the grid and in the field. The G7 integration with the t:slim closes the loop well enough that it largely runs itself — which is the correct amount of cognitive overhead for hardware you depend on at speed.