Uses

I’ve been building PCs since high school, even though back then they were made up of whatever I could find in bargain bins or second-hand. Computers are the tools I use to earn a living, support my family and pay for my hobbies, two of which also involve computers. This page lists what my current setups are.

Daily driver – 14-inch MacBook Pro (Apple M1 chip)

Since I joined Automattic, my new daily driver is a company-sponsored 14-inch MacBook Pro, with the new Apple M1 chip. This laptop is a beast, and while I still don’t like macOS, the new Apple hardware is impressive.

  • Apple M1 Pro chip with 10-core CPU & 16 core GPU
  • 32GB unified memory
  • 1TB SSD

Personal Workstation

Custom-built as a new workstation in Dec 2020. I don’t use this as my daily driver anymore, but I still have it hooked up in my office if I ever need to access Ubuntu, Windows, or for gaming. During the course of 2022, I doubled the RAM to 32GB, and in Jan 2023 I upgraded the graphics to an RTX 3060.

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
  • Asus TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS (WIFI) Motherboard
  • 32GB 16GB Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR 4 RAM
  • Palit GeForce RTX 3060 12GB Graphics Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB
  • Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe SSD
  • 2 x WD Blue 1TB 3.5″ SATA Storage Drives
  • Cooler Master MWE GOLD 650W ATX PSU
  • Cooler Master Masterbox K500L ATX case

Gaming – Asus ROG Ally

In 2023 I sold my home gaming PC and replaced it with the ROG Ally. I rarely did anything with the home PC anymore, besides gaming, and I much prefer gaming wherever I want to on the ROG Ally.

  • AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Processor
  • AMD Radeon Graphics
  • 7-inch 1080p screen
  • 16GB LPDDR5 RAM
  • 512GB NVMe SSD

Latest Posts


  • Is This the Best Bag for Gaming Consoles?

    About a month ago I received an email in my inbox with the following subject line: Jonathan – This is the Best Bag for Gaming Consoles Now the subject line grabbed my attention for three reasons: Anyway, the subject line was intriguing enough for me to read the email. It was from Joclyn, the Media…

  • Asus ROG Ally Average User Review: Part Two

    As I mentioned in part one, one of the reasons I wanted a gaming handheld was that I had some work trips coming up, one to the US, and one to Europe. Part one only covers the unboxing and setup experience, so part two will cover a few days of day-to-day use at home before…

  • The state of WordPress developer tools survey results

    person pointing paper line graph

    About two months ago I asked folks to complete the state of WordPress developer tools survey. I had planned to post the results about a week after the survey closed, but a trip to WCEU and another to my team meetup in the US delayed that post. Additionally, I was finding it hard to find…

  • Asus ROG Ally Average User Review: Part One

    I’ve always played video games for fun. From my first experience with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons on my uncle’s Intellivision console to my last run-through of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order (4th time now and counting), video games are a hobby that I’ll happily spend hours and hours on, with no other reward than the…

  • The VSCode extensions I use to make it more like PhpStorm

    I’ve been using PhpStorm for about ten years now. Before that, I used Zend Studio, and before that I used Netbeans. I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that I was a Windows application programmer before I switched to web development, so I’ve always preferred feature-full IDEs to lightweight code editors…

  • 46

    low angle shot of pink and red balloons

    Today, I turned 46. I’m now officially on the wrong side of the downward slope towards 50. 🤣 In the past, I’ve always blogged about how I feel about turning another year older. This year, I want to share what I did on my birthday. I took the day off and spent it with my…

  • Testing out the WP Playground Interactive Code Block

    So if you attended the final keynote at WCEU you would have seen the WP Playground demo video. I’ve been following WP Playground for some time now, and I was able to meet with the developer behind the project, Adam Zieliński, who showed me the interactive code block, which I had to try out. Below…

  • Jonathan goes to WordCamp Europe: 2023 edition

    It has been three years since I was last at WordCamp Europe, and so I was excited and a little nervous as to how I would handle seeing my WordPress people again. Suffice it to say, my fears were unfounded, as I spent 4 and a half glorious days catching up with old friends, making…

  • Please take the state of WordPress developer tools survey

    business charts commerce computer

    Update: The survey is now closed, and I will be publishing the results next week the results have been published. In my work as a sponsored contributor to Learn WordPress, I often need to consider the environment that developers are working on. Are they using macOS, Windows, or a Linux distro? Do they use a…