Charlotte Uses ♥

One of the first places I stop when I visit someone's website is, if they have it, a /uses page. It's one of those things that satisfies my curiosity and maybe, just maybe, I will get an idea or two!

Computing

Operating System

As the result of a few things, like the spike in hardware prices, hardware compatibility, and colour management, I recently decided to retire my Linux desktop and return to the Mac.

I am running macOS Tahoe. The return of lickability.

I find Tahoe's "Liquid Glass" interface profoundly unattractive when compared to Gnome's GTK4/Adwaita. If aesthetics had been the main (or only) thing that factored into my computing choices, I'd have stuck with my Debian 13 install.

Desktop View (2026/03/12)

Hardware

I am using an M4 Mac mini, which I customized a little, to come with 32GB of memory and 512GB of internal storage. It replaced a late-2019 Dell Precision 3630 Tower with an Intel Core i5-8500 and 32GB of DDR4 running Debian 13.

I use one monitor: a 32" 4K Samsung.

I recently retired my long-serving IBM Model M from 1993 and replaced it with a WOBKEY Crush 80 Reboot Pro (in purple, of course). What a heavy and wonderful-sounding dream of a keyboard to be typing on!

Default Applications

Since I have always been more-or-less pleased with Apple's bundled software (such as Mail, Messages, Photos, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Music, etc.), I mostly rely on on them for my needs.

There are a few others, however!

• Web Browser - Mozilla Firefox. A mixture of not wanting browser monoculture, having a measure of support and access to certain extensions (that FF-derivatives like LibreWolf can't support), and hating Apple's unnecessarily aggressive tab-sleeping policies in Safari (that also result in interface glitches under Tahoe), I've returned to Firefox. I'm still not jazzed with the AI stuff (and am choosing to trust that what is off is off), but I've decided that for my purposes, it's the least-worst.

• Markdown Editor - uFocus. It's really unfussy and reminds me of Apostrophe, which I was using on Linux until recently. I am not a heavy or advanced user of markdown, but I really like the way I have this website set up, using markdown files in 11ty and pushing to GitHub, which publishes to Neocities.

• Radio - Triode. While I do have a nice little music collection (Bandcamp, iTunes Store, physical CDs) on my computer, I do listen to web radio a whole lot, mostly KEXP.

• RSS - Current. Thanks an online mutual, I was made aware of Current, a very thoughtful and well-designed RSS reader whose design was motivated by a desire to fight back on creeping phantom obligations.

Laptop

As the result of planned surgery (and necessary downtime) to come later this year, I also decided that it was time to take my mid-2014 13" MacBook Pro out of the drawer, have the battery replaced, and get it working again!

Since the last-supported version of macOS for this laptop is Big Sur, I recently installed elementaryOS 8 and am happily running this nice Linux distribution.

Mostly, I just want to be able to blog my post-surgical delirium here in the way that I know and love: using a text editor, 11ty, and GitHub to push updates to Neocities.

Given its age and role as a laptop for blogging on this website, with the exception of Firefox, I am using the distribution's default applications, including Mail, Code, and Terminal.

I'm a basic girl with basic needs: so long as I can type some markdown and occasional HTML, CSS, and even-more-occasional Nunjuks, run npm run build and a little git push, I'm a happy camper! 🏕️

Laptop View (2026/05/25)

Mobile

As a sometimes anxious and indecisive lady, I spent nearly two years going back-and-forth as to whether I just wanted to go back to a flip phone for my mobile needs. In the end, I decided that it would be better to stick with a smart phone due to the features that I use.

As of November 2025, I use an iPhone 16. In Ultramarine, of course.

Photography

New! lottiephoto.ca/uses

Last Update: June 8, 2026