I'm Simon Wistow. I'm the co-founder at Fastly, an Edge Cloud company that got started 8 years ago because of sheer bloody mindedness borne out of teeth grinding frustration with the incumbent Content Delivery Network market giant who had a distinctly late-90s view on how websites work. I shall name no names.
\n\nIn a past life I've been a bartender, a cowboy in the Australian outback, a scuba diving instructor, written mobile phone operating systems, been lead search engineer for Yahoo! Europe and worked on the Visual Effects for various movies like the Harry Potter series (good!), Wallace and Gromit (funny!) and Alien vs Predator (bad!). Since moving to the US from the UK I worked at LiveJournal (much to the delight of my goth friends back in London), Scribd and Zendesk. Someone looking at my CV once commented that it reminded them that "career" was a verb as well as a noun.
\n\nAt Fastly I started off running engineering but since then I've done most jobs at the company - usually when no-one else wants to do them and only until I can hire someone better to replace me. At the moment I focus on Strategic Initiatives and what that seems to translate to is spending a lot of time in airports and writing a lot of documents, whitepapers, screeds and manifestos that I'm not sure anyone actually reads.
\n\nComputer-wise I have the standard San Francisco startup issue MacBook Pro plus an iPhone. It is a boring setup that literally no-one gives a shit about other than the kind of people who write papers and op-eds about hyper-local monocultures. Instead I'm going to talk about travel because I've spent the last couple of years trying to streamline my approach as an attempt to save my sanity on the road.
\n\nI alternate between 2 bags that I take with me when I travel - a Hook & Albert Weekender in waxed Gray Canvas and a Henty Wingman Messenger. If it had been available when I bought the Wingman I'd have probably gone for the CoPilot which is a little bigger.
\n\nBoth are bags which are also suit carriers - to the shock of younger me I have to wear suits with surprising frequency these days, not least because it seems like every single one of my friends has been getting married recently. I prefer duffels or messenger bags to wheelie cases - I was put off by multiple instances where I had to run with a wheelie case or navigate it through crowded train stations up and downstairs when I couldn't read the signs because they're in a language I don't understand. The Wingman can take a surprising amount of stuff considering how small it is, plus the inner "tube" is waterproof. And since it's a messenger style bag with a cross strap it's super comfortable to carry for long periods of time. The fact that the garment bag wraps round the outside and is really easy to unclip and hang up is a super smart piece of design.
\n\nThat said - the Hook & Albert just looks cool and I can fit more stuff in it. The waxed canvas is water resistant (certainly enough for walking through a rain shower) and it just keeps getting better looking as it ages. That said it's expensive (although there are cheaper knockoffs I've seen advertised) and the fact that you have to unpack your whole bag to get at the suit is less convenient than the Wingman though. Also, I wish the pockets on the outside were real buckles rather than fake ones backed by magnets. I wouldn't feel comfortable checking the bag with anything in those because I'd worry they'd pop open and I'd lose whatever was in there (I think the latest version of the bag uses zips though which is much better).
\n\nThat said, Simon's First Rule of Travel is "Never check bags". The Second Rule is to carefully choose the person in the security line to go behind - there are certain groups of people who inevitably take forever. Go for the person who looks like they do this a lot. It will save you time and, when you travel a lot it's not necessarily about the big things but just shaving down the irritations to make things slightly nicer. My Third Rule is turn up early. I used to be one of those people who would leave it to the last minute but I realised that it was just stressful. Most of the time all I'm going to be doing is reading and writing email so why not just do that at the airport. That way the lines tend to be shorter, everything less rushed and, in case something goes wrong (like, for completely hypothetical example, picking up an old expired passport by accident) then there's time to sort it out.
\n\nI put all my toiletries in a Ziploc bag and leave those in my laptop bag - it's not exactly glamorous but it's easy to pull out and throw through the x-ray machine if security make a fuss.
\n\nI have an American Express Platinum card. Partly because it looks baller (solid metal card, what-what!) but also because the benefits are amazing if you travel a lot. I get 5x points on any flights booked, upgrades at hotels, lounge access (including the very cool Amex Centurion lounges), free Global Entry and TSA Pre, $200 worth of travel rebates, travel insurance and I've used the concierge service a couple of times and they've been incredible. There's also a $200 credit for Uber if that's your sort of thing.
\n\nIf you don't travel a lot then I'm not sure it's worth the hefty annual fee (it recently went up to an eye watering $500 a year) but for me it's worth it and totally pays for itself.
\n\nI've had a Chase Sapphire Preferred ever since the US Banking system finally admitted I was a real person and that I could have a proper grown-up credit score. I use it for almost everything else and it gets me a bunch of other benefits. They came out with the Reserve card which is very similar to the Platinum card but (for now) slightly cheaper. But the benefits overlaps mean that it's not really worth having both.
\n\n20 year old me kind of wants to reach through time and slap 40 year old me for writing about credit card reward programs but I like to think of it as minimal hacking of the system. If I'm going to be travelling a lot it's worth it to me to spend the relatively small amount of time to get the best out of the experience. It's not like I'm not one of these people that juggles 18 credit cards and goes on mileage runs to South Africa for the weekend just to keep elite status on Delta but by being a little bit smart things are just a little be smoother and less stressful - I get nicer seats, I get to board first, I get the occasional upgrade, if a flight's cancelled I get priority. Lounges aren't the stately pleasure domes of yore (except for Virgin Atlantic and a couple of others), mostly a few slices of slightly sweaty cheese and a fruit bowl these days, but if your flight is delayed they're nicer to hang out in then the seats by the gate and you don't have to engage in hand-to-hand combat with your fellow travellers over the one available outlet to recharge your phone.
\n\nI've got a universal power adaptor that I picked up in one of those ludicrously overpriced airport electronic shops. At the time I was outraged by how much it was (probably about $40) but I've had it for years now and so, amortised over time, it doesn't seem so bad.
\n\nI used to take a Kindle with me. The third time I stumbled off a red-eye and forgot one in my seat pocket I just gave up and started reading stuff on my phone.
\n\nFirst off - TSA Pre and Global Entry. So much time saved. So. Much. Time. Even if the Pre line is as long (or longer) than the regular line then the time saved by not having to unpack everything makes the line move faster. As someone who isn't a US Citizen having Global Entry makes coming back almost painless. I was lucky - originally when I applied wait-times for an appointment were several months but I happened to check a week later and there was a cancellation for the next morning so I jumped on that. I recently also got CLEAR because it came free with my airline status. I was skeptical at first but it's actually been really nice.
\n\nI use Hipmunk and sometimes ITA Matrix to search for flights, the latter mostly to find routes as recommended by a site called "The Flight Deal" which posts when a particular flight is on sale. I also skim read Ben "Lucky" Schlappig's "One Mile At A Time" site - again I'm not one of these crazy mileage running, SABRE hacking air-mile arbitrageurs but by catching up on their posts I get an ambient awareness of ways to get the best out of what I have and any cheap flight deals.
\n\nI have a subscription to Tablet because it's already made its money back in discounts and Hotel upgrades (best two so far: getting bumped to a two floor (!) suite at the Charlotte St Hotel in London and getting a steal on the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo, as seen in Lost in Translation).
\n\nI put my airline status and all my flights into an app called LoungeBuddy because it tells me which lounges I have access to in which airport. Sometimes there are weird cross promotions, like being allowed in the Air France lounge at Logan even though I wasn't flying with them so it's definitely worth it.
\n\nI've tried to use TripIt but I hate the interface. I miss Dopplr. Periodically I think about trying to rewrite it but I'm too lazy.
\n\nI use T-Mobile's Unlimited International Phone Plan. It has saved my arse on multiple occasions, especially in places where the addressing system for buildings makes no sense whatsoever. I'm looking at you Japan.
\n\nThere's a part of me that would like to be rich enough just FedEx my luggage to where I was going to head to and have it be waiting for me in my room when I arrive but then I'm far too disorganised to have everything packed early enough for that to work.
\n\nOther than that I'm pretty happy with my setup. I should probably put together a ballistic nylon pouch with all my travel electronics but I end up just grabbing stuff just before I head to the airport and that seems to work out fine. If I was smart I'd throw a Chromecast or an Amazon Fire Stick or an HDMI cable in there so I could watch stuff on the TV in the hotel room but watching stuff on my laptop works just fine so … meh?
\n\nI use an aging Timbuk2 bag as my daily laptop bag and for when I'm only going away for one or two nights. I wish I could replace it something a little more stylish so if anybody has any suggestions then please let me know.
\n\nI wish airlines other than American domestic carriers had more reach so I wasn't stuck with (omit name of my most frequent airline who I don't want to call out lest they revoke my status).
\n\nOn a non-travel, dream-hardware setup note - one day I want to build a full size replica of a Cray X-MP complete with vinyl covered benches. Inside it would be completely empty apart from an FGPA which simulated the original machine.
" }, { "id": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/christine.dodrill/", "title": "Christine Dodrill", "summary": "Senior SRE", "url": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/christine.dodrill/", "image": "https://usesthis.com/images/interviews/christine.dodrill/portrait.jpg", "date_published": "2019-10-29T00:00:00Z", "content_html": "I'm Christine Dodrill, a Senior SRE from the Seattle area who is currently in Montreal. I've worked at Heroku, IMVU and Pure Storage, but am currently working at Lightspeed POS.
\n\nOn the side, I enjoy making things with computers. I have a Twitter and a presence on the Fediverse. Lately I've been experimenting with OS design in order to make it easier to end our industry's Intel monoculture.
\n\nMost of my computing is done via a 12.9" 2018 iPad Pro. I really like the convenience of having nearly my entire digital life in one device. I have the Smart Keyboard and Pencil for it too. I also have a 12" MacBook that I use whenever I need to do things in macOS, but this is getting less and less often as the iOS ecosystem gets more and more powerful.
\n\nI have a dedicated server from SoYouStart with 8 cores, 32 GB of ram and 2 TB of storage. I use that for most of my programming on the side.
\n\nI have an iPhone XS and Apple Watch series 3 as part of what I carry around every day.
\n\nI develop my code inside Emacs in tmux via SSH. On rare occasions I'll do local development with Emacs/Textastic, but that's only for things I can't do remotely.
\n\nI'm pretty sure I have it already.
" }, { "id": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/maya.man/", "title": "Maya Man", "summary": "Artist, technologist, dancer", "url": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/maya.man/", "image": "https://usesthis.com/images/interviews/maya.man/portrait.jpg", "date_published": "2019-10-24T00:00:00Z", "content_html": "I'm an artist, technologist, and dancer. I spend most of my time making things that exist at the intersection of those worlds, dancing in studios and public spaces, and maintaining my love/hate relationship with the internet (mostly love though). I live online here, come visit!
\n\nI use a 15-inch MacBook Pro. At home I have a Google Home Mini that I ask about words I come across when I'm reading that I don't know or to play me the latest episode of The Daily. When I go out into the world, I am always carrying whatever book I am reading (right now, it's Ninth Street Women) along with a pen, my water bottle, my iPhone, and probably my backpack because probably also my laptop.
\n\nMy dream set up would be one that allows me to focus enough to have less than 47 tabs open at one time, but I'm still dreaming.
" }, { "id": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/pierluigi.dalla.rosa/", "title": "Pierluigi Dalla Rosa", "summary": "Creative technologist", "url": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/pierluigi.dalla.rosa/", "image": "https://usesthis.com/images/interviews/pierluigi.dalla.rosa/portrait.jpg", "date_published": "2019-10-22T00:00:00Z", "content_html": "I'm Pier, and I usually find it hard to put myself in a box, but I generally fit under the creative technologists' label. I studied Cinema and Media Engineering and Interaction Design, and since studying I've been constantly at the intersection between design and technology. In my every day life I create in code and atoms, I build things with behaviors, I dress spaces with interactivity, I solder, I make pictures, I teach and sometimes I sail as well.
\n\nYou can find some of my work at www.pierdr.com.
\n\nI have a 15-inch MacBook Pro (Late 2013, 2.6Ghz i7, 16GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M), my everyday companion that still works quite well and so I'm delaying the switch to dongle life. I use plenty of things that are wired and I kind of like them :) I go quickly through them. I have an unexciting LG 24 inch display, and I use a 1999 lime iMac keyboard (M2452) and a Phillips SPM4900 mouse with 2 buttons and a scroll wheel. The mouse is one of my best friends because it works great with a lot of software that still has that configuration as the main paradigm. I also have a Bamboo pen tablet that I use when playing with graphics. Often I connect my laptop directly via Ethernet, for nostalgia and reliability.
\n\nI do write the firmware of some physical computing devices, particularly Arduinos and my own embedded boards like the Z-One board or the tramontana board. I also have a Raspberry Pi 4 that is connected to two speakers and works as an AirPlay receiver, where I can send music while I work.
\n\nOn my desk I also keep an oscilloscope, the Siglent SDS 1000X, a non-glamorous frog designed 3D printer, the MOD-T, an Apple eMate and a 1986 512kb Classic Mac. The two latter are part of a wider collection of old computers but are particularly iconic for me and I believe many interaction designers, as they are the "first" ones (not starting a debate here...) to embrace interaction metaphors, respectively the Notebook and the Desktop, and I found them inspiring to look at.
\n\nUnder my desk I have boxes with all sorts of electronics, but my favorite devices are Raspberry Pi Zeros, ESP32 based microcontrollers, and old PS Eye cameras and Microsoft Kinect v1 (rigorously model number 1414). With these, I build sketches of installations, drawing robots, home sensors and more...
\n\nIn my bag, I always keep with me an Apple AirPort Express that I use to create a custom network when I need to prototype interactive spaces or connected objects, and I carry with me a Canon 550D, with few fixed optics: Canon 50mm f1.8 and SMC Pentax 24mm F2.8 are my favorites. To complete the photo setup I have a bunch of lightweight tripods, like the Ravelli APLT4.
\n\nMy phone is an iPhone 6s (16GB), which is my everyday phone, but my development phone is an iPhone SE (128GB) that almost always follows me as well.
\n\nDespite my fascination with the digital world I have plenty of physical notebooks, all of them from Muji, and I write on them with Muji pens as well, black ballpoint with tip size 0.38mm.
\n\nA good part of my work happens in code so I use a few IDEs - Xcode is my favorite. I use also Processing, Sublime Text, Arduino IDE and Eclipse.
\n\nI can't not mention two of the creative coding frameworks that I use and I'm a proud contributor of, openFrameworks and Processing (that is not just an IDE but a full environment for creative coding).
\n\nI use the Terminal embedded in macOS quite a lot - for version control, mostly git and for dependency management, mostly CocoaPods.
\n\nAnother part of my work is done in Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign - I use these to create UI, vector images, and documents to be printed. When visualizing ideas Blender is my go to tool!
\n\nWhen it's about creating mechanical designs for manufacturing I mostly use Fusion 360, and to create electronics I use EAGLE. My utility companions for electronics are CoolTerm, AVRFuses, and graphMe.
\n\nI'm a big fan of small utilities, so I use Spectacle, f.lux, and SelfControl.
\n\nOn iOS I use the usual apps but I really like the experience of the SoundCloud app. I'm also quite an experimental photography geek, and almost every day I use my own artgram and tramontanaCV apps to capture the world in unexpected ways.
\n\nAfter Apple release the new Mac Pro, I would definitely like to have one of those with the Pro Display XDR. I think I will pair that with an Apple HomePod for an improved audio experience.
\n\nI think the list of tools related to digital fabrication could be almost infinite, but I wouldn't mind a new 3D printer, and I'd go for an Ultimaker 3. In my wishlist also lies a ceramics 3D printer, probably the VormVrij LUTUM 4. With ceramics and electronics, I would need a couple of ovens, specifically a kiln and a reflow oven.
\n\nOf course, I would like to have everything solar-powered and hooked up to a Tesla Powerwall.
\n\nAs these tools occupy quite a little bit of space, I would need a large room, and in my dreams on one side I'd have the digital fabrication lab, while on the other I would have an inspirational display of old technologies.
\n\nWhen talking about photography and video I would love to have two more cameras: a Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4k with Arduino Shield to create experimental custom controllers and, clearly, some fixed focal length Micro Four Thirds lenses, from wide-angle to zoom; I would also like to update my camera, and I would probably fancy a newer Canon DSLR or a Leica M-D. With these two additions, I would mod my seasoned Canon 550D to become an infrared-only camera, and it would be a great one for outdoor photography.
\n\nAll of this is quite a bit of dreaming and budget, but who knows what the future holds!
" }, { "id": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/petra.leary/", "title": "Petra Leary", "summary": "Aerial photographer", "url": "https://usesthis.com/interviews/petra.leary/", "image": "https://usesthis.com/images/interviews/petra.leary/portrait.jpg", "date_published": "2019-10-17T00:00:00Z", "content_html": "Hey, I'm Petra Leary. I'm from Auckland, New Zealand. This is my home town and home base.
\n\nFor the last almost 4 years I've been working in aerial photography/video - this was something I originally began as a hobby and it soon became my full time career.
\n\nI've been very lucky to work with some pretty huge local and international brands over the last few years, and recently was the subject of a short doco produced for the 2019 New Zealand Loading Docs series, which profiles myself and my photography. It was an interesting experience to be in front of the camera after spending the majority of my time behind it, and was really exciting to see the final piece and the exposure it has been getting across the internet, and recently it featured on The Guardian.
\n\nDrone/aerial photography is something I love to do and am continually expanding on - it tends to lend itself nicely across a very large group of subject matter. I've worked on jobs for architecture companies, sports brands, skateboarding, travel and tourism, documentary, fashion, editorial, automotive, and product. Pretty much you name it, it's possible!
\n\nMy work focuses largely of the topdown style of aerial photography - I love shooting from this perspective as it portrays an abstract and somewhat unseen vision of the world. It also reminds me a lot of old video games (I absolutely love playing video games) when viewing subjects from above and can give something a very new and fresh look.
\n\nAt the moment I'm using both the DJI Phantom 4 Pro and DJI Mavic 2 Pro. I tend to use the Phantom 4 Pro mostly for my commercial work as the quality of the image and video is a bit better, especially in lower light or rougher conditions. I love my Mavic 2 Pro, but use this more for its portability if I'm travelling or when I want to just go walk or skateboard around as it compacts to such a small size.
\n\nI also use a variety of filters from the PolarPro Filter collections - specifics depend a lot on the conditions you are shooting in; if the light is harsh, the PolarPro ND Series are great for knocking down the brightness, especially when shooting video.
\n\nNot sure if this fits the hardware category, but for my gear side of things, I'm also using the PeakDesign Range for carrying my gear.
\n\nI use a combination of Adobe Lightroom (for cataloging and organising, as well as a bit of grading) and Adobe Photoshop, for straightening, cropping, retouching, or effects/compositing. Occasionally I'll use Adobe Illustrator too - some of my work you can see is a combination of photography and illustration. I like the idea of people looking at the photos and then having to do a double take, like, is this real? What's going on here?
\n\nMy dream setup? I'd like to upgrade to the DJI Inspire 2 Premium, with all the available lenses to go with it. If I was going really big, though, the ultimate setup for me would be to have my own shot over camera and an aircraft/helicopter to attach to it.
" } ] }