I’m pretty old and pretty tired and perpetually sore so I’m always on the lookout for things that make my life easier.
Here’s some of the stuff I use, it’s far far from an exhaustive list.
Digital Art
All my recent art is done on an iPad, using an Apple Pencil (I went over a year using a cheap knock off and it was largely fine, cost about twenty quid from Amazon and did the job I needed it to). I draw in Procreate.
I stopped drawing for a long time because the hand tremors made it a more frustrating exercise, being able to steady the pen with Procreate has reopened doodling to me and I’m enjoying it again.
If I need to touch anything up on the laptop, I use Affinity. There are iPad versions but I find them really cumbersome and ill fitting. YMMV, natch.
Pixels
For pixels, I use Aseprite on desktop, ReSprite on the iThing though the past day or so I’ve been having the occasional rummage with Pixquare and finding it really good. I’ll likely use that much more in the near future,
Writing
I’m a terrible human for dumping things straight into the CMS and it’s a cursed behaviour I don’t recommend. Whenever I need to behave myself or I’m working on something that isn’t a blog post, I swear by IWriter and Scrivener.
I like to use Bear for blog stuff that doesn’t quite fit on the main site. It’s a smolweb does what you need it to service and, well, highly recommended,
Games
I still use Gamemaker. It’s served me well for around twenty years and I’m fair used to its quirks.
Misc
I’ve sang its praises elsewhere on the site but Retrospecs is a genuine joy to use. I’m of the habit of just popping any old finished drawing into it and enjoying the multitude of variations it throws up. If I had to pick just one app to be stranded on a desert island with, yeah, this.
I use Deedum to browse Gemini space.
Panels is great for reading comics on.
Obviously, VLC gets a lot of use. I know everyone already knows about VLC but it doesn’t hurt to remind myself what an essential piece of software it is.
Fluid Simulation is a great fidget toy.
Inoreader is my RSS reader of choice these days. As you’d expect, I use it fairly heavily.