Stu 🪩

Stu Discothèque - Days of Future Future ( ep. 548] April 13, 2014 ) Disco Stu becomes Nothing Stu at a center called MovingOn where Bart undergoes neural implants and Homer is being cloned by Frink.

Notes

re: https://davidwindham.com/den-studio/

25/04/07 - my new Mac Studio came in over the weekend. Right now I'm calling it Stu and it seems like it's going to stick. It's an upgrade I promised myself to go along with the new studio project. It's a replacement for my old Mac Mini ( Magic ) which was the last of my working local machines not on an ARM architecture. I remember when 1GB of memory was considered outrageous. It's a hoss and will serve as my primary desktop alongside of my laptop Ovid.

Every time I spin up a new machine, I take time to make considerations on possible changes. I never boot from backups or stuff new machines with previous projects. My approach is almost always minimalism. I look at my older system and ask myself what I can trim because I inevitably end up with multiple language versions, extraneous packages, and software.

Log

• 25/04/07 - init 🔥

Peripheral

🛜 TP-link Deco XE75 Pro ( ethernet ䷇ )
🖥️ (2) ViewSonic 32" VX3267U-4K / Sony X85K
📷 FujiFilm XT-1 / Nikon Z50II
🔈 Onkyo TX-NR636 / WiiM / Polk monitors/center/sub
🎛️ Auturia MiniFuse / 🎹 Auturia Mk3 / 🎙️ Blue

Software

Productivity - Alfred, Obsidian, Acrobat, Notes, Reminders
Development - Terminal, Xcode, Visual Studio Code, Transmit, TablesPlus, DBngin, Docker, Insomnia, Postman, Proton , GPG Suite
Design - Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign, Figma, Color Picker
A/V - Monitor Control, Handbrake, Logic/Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier/Audition/Encoder, Screenflow, OBS, Audio Hijack/Loopback
System - Mail, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, Numbers, Pages, Photos, Passwords
Browsers - Safari, Orion, Firefox Developer
AI - Claude/OpenAI/Gemini/CoPilot APIs ( for VSCode, Kagi Assistant)
Deprecated - Wirecast, Logseq, Slack

System

Preferences

• 'unnatural' track pad direction
• aerial screen savers
• dark mode always

Network

• switching to Quad9 over Google for DNS b/c more privacy and a bit faster ( .1 ms )
  • using the ECS version @ https://quad9.net/service/service-addresses-and-features

MacOS

I use a good bit of Apple software mainly because of the convenience and interoperability.

iCloud

I switched to an Apple One account several years ago so now I use the 2TB liberally syncing almost everything except my working Desktop and Documents files.

Finder / Files

Show system Library and add additional folders. I've now migrated to using pretty much the exact same file structure on all of my backup and remote drives prefixing them with the machine name. /Projects and /Sites are the two main add-ons and I organize by acronyms and dates for both.

.
├── _silver (2005-2009)
├── _macs (2009-2014)
├── _magic (2012-2025)
├── _ovid (2021-)
└── _stu (2025-)
  └── david/
      ├── Desktop (projects/_desk - never use)
      ├── Documents (daw,car,compute,family,finance,health,house,student,travel,work)
      ├── Downloads (working directory)
      ├── Library (show Library in finder)
      ├── Music (hijack,logic,audition)
      ├── Movies (audio,premier,screenflow,finalcut)
      ├── Pictures ( graphics,scans - org by year )
      ├── Projects (org by acronym/yr - all assets including docs - _notes.md root )
      ├── Public ( rarely use )
      └── Sites ( working projects by acronym - mapped in etc/hosts)

I like to use QLMarkdown & Syntax Highlight as homebrew casks so that I have code and markdown previews within the finder and preview. I use the Base16 Brush Trees themes for syntax highlighting and the Github theme for Markdown.

david@stu:~ » brew install --cask qlmarkdown
david@stu:~ » brew install --cask syntax-highlight

Xcode

I need the ISO C++ standard, libc++, & Make libraries

david@stu:~ » xcode-select –install

Terminal

dotfiles @ https://davidwindham.com/code/dotfiles - Not on Warp, Hyper, Neovim or iTerm. default terminal with Oh-My-Zsh & Vundle

david@stu:~ » sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
david@stu:~ » git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

Development

Editors

editor history: Notepad++ -> Textmate -> Sublime -> Atom -> JetBrains -> VSCode -> Cursor -> VSCode

26/08 — back on VS Code, and Cursor is off the machine entirely. It was a VS Code fork, so coming back is mostly the extensions and keybindings I was syncing across anyway, and the Gemini / Claude / OpenAI keys moved with me.

david@stu🪩:~ » cd /<repo> && code .

AI

AI in the terminal via https://github.com/simonw/llm & npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code

david@stu:~ » npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
david@stu:~ » claude

Packages

Homebrew

161 formulae, 3 casks — but only 21 installed on request. The other 140 arrived as dependencies, worth remembering before pruning: brew uninstall runs autoremove and takes orphans with it, so the reversal is messier than the install.

david@stu🪩:~ » brew list --installed-on-request --formula | wc -l
      21
david@stu🪩:~ » brew list --pinned --versions
apr-util 1.6.3_1
httpd 2.4.63
libnghttp2 1.70.0
mariadb 11.7.2

Four formulae are pinned, so a bare brew upgrade skips them and says so:

• httpd — PHP loads as mod_php, and libphp.so is compiled against the httpd headers present at build time. Upgrading Apache underneath it leaves a module that may not load, which shows up as Apache refusing to start or serving .php as plain text.
• apr-util, libnghttp2 — pinning httpd does not pin what it links against. These would still move on a bare upgrade, and brew cleanup then drops the old dylibs.
• mariadb — see Databases.

PIP

Python is Homebrew's, not Apple's. uv for anything project-scoped.

david@stu🪩:~ » pip3 --version
pip 26.1.2 (python 3.14)
david@stu🪩:~ » uv --version
uv 0.12.5

PECL

One extension only — xdebug and opcache ship with php@8.3 itself.

david@stu🪩:~ » pecl list
imagick 3.8.1   stable

Every php@8.3 patch upgrade wipes the PECL registry. It lives inside the Cellar version directory while the .so files live outside it in lib/php/pecl/. So after a PHP upgrade pecl list reads empty while the extension still loads — it needs reinstalling, not upgrading. Two more traps, both hit 26/08/20: PECL will not overwrite a .so that is currently loaded, so comment the extension= line out first; and never sudo pecl install — the root-owned file it leaves behind blocks every later rebuild.

Languages

Rust

used rustup - https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install

david@stu🪩:~ » brew install rustup
david@stu🪩:~ » rustup-init
// installs:
// rustc - the Rust compiler
// cargo - the Rust package manager
// rustup - the Rust toolchain manager
david@stu🪩:~ » rustup toolchain list
stable-aarch64-apple-darwin (active, default)

rustc and cargo live in ~/.cargo/bin, which is not on the shell PATH here — so rustc --version returns "command not found" even though the toolchain is installed and current. Add ~/.cargo/bin to PATH, or call them by full path.

TypeScript

Not installed globally — per-project via npm rather than a global tsc.

PHP

Two versions installed, and the running one is deliberately not the newest.

david@stu🪩:~ » php -v
PHP 8.3.33 (cli) (built: Jul 28 2026 17:56:10) (NTS)
    with Xdebug v3.4.2
    with Zend OPcache v8.3.33

php@8.3 is what Apache loads and what the shell resolves. The unversioned php formula is also installed (8.5.9) but out of the running stack — only PATH order keeps it there, so anything resolving /opt/homebrew/bin/php directly gets 8.5. Worth knowing before chasing a mystery version difference in an editor.

8.3 because that is what the client server runs. Developing against a newer interpreter than production is how deprecations ship:

host	PHP	MariaDB
client prod	8.3 (most sites)	11.4
my prod	8.4	10.6
local mirror	8.5	11.8
stu	8.3.33	11.7.2

The local mirror is the machine that deliberately runs ahead — it models the next server. stu matches the oldest live target instead.

php.ini is a dev profile: memory_limit 512M, max_execution_time 360, upload_max_filesize/post_max_size 80M, display_errors On, error_reporting E_ALL, xdebug on port 9001.

Python

david@stu🪩:~ » python3 --version
Python 3.14.6

Homebrew's python@3.14, not /usr/bin/python3.

Ruby

Nothing installed — only Apple's system Ruby, 2.6.10 from 2022 and deprecated. If anything needs Ruby seriously it gets a version manager, not this.

david@stu🪩:~ » ruby --version
ruby 2.6.10p210 (2022-04-12) [universal.arm64e-darwin25]

Go

Not installed.

Dart

Not installed.

Servers

Apache

david@stu🪩:~ » apachectl -v
Server version: Apache/2.4.63 (Unix)
Server built:   Jan 20 2025 19:35:41

Nginx

Installed and current, but not running — Apache serves the local sites. Kept for testing config against the remote hosts, which front everything with nginx.

david@stu🪩:~ » nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.31.4

Node

Via nvm rather than the Homebrew formula, so a project can pin its own version.

david@stu🪩:~ » curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.2/install.sh | bash
david@stu🪩:~ » nvm install --lts
david@stu🪩:~ » node -v
v22.13.1
david@stu🪩:~ » nvm -v
0.40.2
david@stu🪩:~ » npm -v
11.6.2

Databases

david@stu🪩:~ » mariadb -N -B -e 'SELECT VERSION();'
11.7.2-MariaDB

Pinned. Homebrew offers 12.x, and taking it would put stu ahead of everything it develops against — the next server is 11.8. 11.7 sits deliberately between the oldest live target (11.4) and that one. No early-warning value in running a version nothing will deploy, and a major bump runs mariadb-upgrade against the data directory, which is one-way without a dump.

The collation default also changed at 11.4. Dumps restored here need --databases so they carry their own CREATE DATABASE ... COLLATE, or the local server invents one with its own default and the mismatch surfaces months later as an "Illegal mix of collations".

Integration

Audit & Testing

Frameworks