What I use to write and maintain this website:

Hardware

(I finally(!) got a Retina iMac. More on it later...)

My primary machine is a 2013 13" Retina MacBook Pro with which I use a Matias Laptop Pro Bluetooth Keyboard and (the original/old version of) the Apple Magic Trackpad.

I also have a semi-retired 2010 27" iMac which currently functions as a server for files, Time Machine backups, and Xcode builds.

On the go, I use my 128gb iPhone 6S. On the couch, I have an original iPad Air 64gb from 2013.

Software

I capture most of my notes, thoughts, and initial ideas on Drafts for iPhone. I sit down to write the text of my blog posts and web pages on Scrivener. (I'm currently trying out Ulysses to see if that works better for me.) For markup, I use Markdown.

I then copy posts into text files which I bake into a website using Pelican, a static blog engine written in Python. I publish the website to a cloud server hosted by Digital Ocean.

Other Apps

These other apps also come in handy quite often:

• Chocolat – a text editor native to OS X
• vim – I use vim for all the things
• Pomodoro One – a great pomodoro timer, free on the App Store
• Workflow – let your iPhone to do useful things
• Acorn – for image editing

The Diligent is a journal about working from home, working on the home, and balancing the two sets of responsibilities.

My Commitments

My name is Anthony Castillo. I'm an independent software consultant and developer. My home is my office and I work from there most of the time, except when I'm visiting clients. My wife “M” manages her third-generation family business from our home as well. She does this mostly at nights and during her days off after putting in five full days of work at their retail location.

We also both have relatively large extended families. This makes gatherings and holidays lots of fun, but also takes up a significant chunk of our calendar.

Balance

It's all too easy for one's work-life balance to be thrown off in one direction or the other. Too much work can be just as bad as too little work. On this blog, I write about strategies and tools I have found that help me and my wife manage our day-to-day business responsibilities while at the same time keeping our home a happy and healthy place to live.

Writing

I currently write at least one post every week. I publish links to all articles on The Diligent Twitter account as well as on this site's RSS feed. Some of the product links I have on this site are affiliate links – using them helps support this blog. I only recommend products that I actually like and use.

I'd love to hear from you if you find anything I write interesting or useful! You can contact me on Twitter or via email at hi at thediligent.xyz.

Finally, I have another blogging project where I log my progress as I try to lose some weight.