About this site
The Briefcase is a podcast about things that should be on your mind. Written and produced by Benjamin Welch. Episodes are short-form narratives, exploring personal experiences and areas of interest in an effort to make sense of them, both for the listener and for himself.
The world is a confusing place. Let Benjamin help you sort it out. One episode at a time.
This site would not be possible without the help of coffee, computers, and the internet.
Portrait by Zebulon Sola
About me
For a long time, I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life. What was I born to do? In pursuit of this, I’ve done a crap ton of plays/musicals in high school, toured/recorded with a band for years, learned some graphic design, learned HTML/CSS, made websites, made short films, directed a web series, learned programming, made a web app I’ll never release and started this blog/podcast. After all of that, I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to do anything. This site is a place for me to get better at making stuff. I have no idea where any of this is going except for a very vague feeling that I’m on the right track.
Currently, I work at Typekit, the coolest group of people I’ve ever worked with. I do my best to make life a bit easier for our customers. I live in Los Angeles, CA.
The Briefcase is a beginning for me. Thanks so much for reading & listening.
Publishing
This site is happily hosted on Linode and published using a customized version of Nanoc. Freight Sans, Skolar and Proxima Nova Extra Condensed are loving served by Typekit. Site statistics courtesy of Mint.
Tools
My current machine is a 15-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2010) with 8 gigs of RAM. I recently put in an SSD to speed things up and I’ll never be the same again.
I use an iPad (3rd generation) and have found this to be a fantastic tool for research, writing, and making music.
The device that never leaves my side is an iPhone 4.
SOFTWARE
Byword App
Byword is my Markdown text editor of choice and is installed on all my devices. Anything longer than a paragraph and shorter than a book is written in this app.
NValt
Most of my ideas start out as notes in NValt which syncs with Simplenote. There isn’t a better way to quickly jot down a note on a Mac. It’s simply the best.
Simplenote
Simplenote is how I keep my notes synced on all my devices. It’s never let me down.
TextMate
My code editor of choice when programming in Ruby.
Hazel
This app makes my life so much better and yet it’s really hard to explain. Just do yourself a favor and check it out.
RECORDING
Logic Studio
The software I use to record, arrange and make all things audio.
Vintech X73i
A killer mic preamp and EQ.
Apogee One
A great little mic and interface for recording into a computer.
Really Nice Compressor
The most bang for your buck when it comes to digital compressors.