Background
I have been running websites or blogging in some capacity on and off for probably 12 years or so. This blog has been existence since early 2011. The idea to post link posts intertwined with longer form writing was inspired by tech blogging royalty John Gruber, Shawn Blanc and Ben Brooks.
The name is derived from my Xbox Gamertag BeserkHippo (yes spelled incorrectly). During the Gamertag creation process, at least part of it five years ago, was a mechanism for suggesting names. At some point Berserk[something] and [Something]Hippo came up separately. I decided to combine them, but then obviously misspelled it, on accident, and am not able to fix it because someone else owns BerserkHippo.
I love tech, sports, television, movies and video games. Those are the things I write about. The tech portion is definitely slanted towards Apple products. The sports portion is slanted heavily towards baseball and football, specifically the Chicago White Sox and Michigan Wolverines. Video games are almost exclusively Xbox. Television is reality-free with a rare exception.
Hardware
If it wasn’t obvious already, I pretty much stick to Apple products. My primary machine at this point is an 11″ MacBook Air (2010). I do most of my blogging and web surfing on this. I also have a 13″ MacBook Pro (2009) which I use for software development and podcasting. It pretty much spends all the time docked to a 24-inch non-Apple display. I use an old(er) Apple keyboard and Magic Trackpad.
I also have an iPad 2 (WiFi edition) that is mostly a toy. I read on it, and often take it on the road with me, and I am hoping to do more blogging on it in the future. My phone is an iPhone 4S, my third iPhone.
I use a Samson Meteor Mic and the Sennheiser HD 202 II Professional Headphones for recording the Hippo Podamus podcast. I have the mic mounted on a DIY shock mount and arm I constructed from an ikea lamp and hardware store parts.
Software
I use a plethora of software for different things. For blogging, I outline/take notes in nvALT, write longer posts in Byword and publish using MarsEdit. All of my posts are written in Markdown until they are published to my website, which is powered by WordPress. The site is hosted by Sharkspace. The textures are from Subtle Patterns.
Once things get to WordPress, there are several plugins I use:
- DF-Style Linked List – For making Link Posts show up and act different
- CF Setter – For setting custom fields easier
- Feedburner Feedsmith – To replace existing feeds with Feedburner ones
- Markdown Quick Tags – Creates an amazing Markdown editor on the WordPress editor
- Markdown for WordPress and bbPress – A failsafe in case I forget to convert the Markdown to HTML before publishing
- Typekit Fonts for WordPress – To add TypeKit fonts on this blog
- WP Footnotes – For easily adding footnotes to a post
- WP to Twitter – To publish posts to Twitter
For podcasting, most of the recording is done with QuickTime. Skype is used to involve guests. Levelator is occasionally used to clean up audio. GarageBand is used for editing and the podcasts are hosted on LibSyn.
Other software I use on the Mac:
- 1Password – For storing passwords and other sensitive information
- Adium – Instant messager
- Alfred – Application Launcher
- Dropbox – Online storage/syncing
- Fantasitcal – iCal replacement
- Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander – Ninja-like maneuvers
- Moom – Window management/organization
- OmniFocus – Task management
- Pixelmator – Graphical work
- Reeder – RSS reader
- TextMate – Text editing and development
- Transmit – FTP
- Twitterrific – Desktop Twitter client
On iOS, my favorite third-party apps are:
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