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A picture of Adam Newbold

Adam Newbold

Web developer (omg.lol)

in developer, mac

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Adam Newbold, a web programmer living in Louisville. I run omg.lol, which someone once described as "a BBS adjusted for inflation," as well as Neatnik LLC, where I work on internet miscellany.

What do you use to get the job done?

Lots and lots of PHP, which I started learning nearly three decades ago and never stopped. I use the FastCGI Process Manager with Caddy to bring my silly scripts to life in the browser. If I have to use a database, it's SQLite or MariaDB, but I'd rather store JSON in a flatfile. For mail handling, I use Postfix with Postgrey, OpenDKIM, OpenDMARC, and OpenARC. For DNS, I use BIND 9. All of this is powered by Debian servers running on Hetzner hardware.

For programming and writing, I use Vim and Nova interchangeably. Boxy is my go-to tool for SVG and icon work, and Pixelmator Pro for sticker design and other graphics work. I use Glyphs to create and manage custom fonts (mostly icon fonts), and Wakamai Fondue for debugging those. I store all of my notes (mostly server build and service configuration stuff) in Obsidian and make heavy use of its wikilink syntax.

I have a small home office where I work, and it has just one computer: a 2022 Mac Studio which is still chugging along. That's what I use to do pretty much everything. I don't use laptops because I'm completely tied to my Happy Hacking Keyboard and Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse. If I have to do some kind of emergency computery work when I'm away from my office, I use an iPhone 16 with Prompt 3 to connect to stuff.

When away from screens, my main tools are Uniball Signo 1mm Pens and Kokuyo Campus B5 Dotted Notebooks.

What would be your dream setup?

Honestly? I would love to have a Rotom Phone.