Some things I like:
Vim xmonad FreeBSD ZFS Go EFF Rockbox zsh chromium youtube‑dl Closure
Tools mplayer LaTeX
Send email to bt@brandonthomson.com.
Being somewhat of a nerd, yes, I'm going to tell you about my favorite programming languages.
These days I usually reach for Go whenever I need something more complex than a few lines of sh. It is simple, fast, and comes with a great library. I've found Go code to be very maintainable even as the language evolves. This site is served by Appengine Go.
Go might not get you a job, but it will make you happy.
I know enough Haskell to keep my xmonad.hs up to date (read: not much). Haskell is a bit too unusual for my taste.
I admit to using Makefiles for lots of weird things. Make is great if you stick to the simple parts.
Like everyone else I use Javascript because I have to. Closure makes it bearable, sortof. Maybe Dart will be better.
Some notable posts from my old blog:
My favorite part of college, besides switching from Windows to Unix, was getting to use LaTeX and all the neat packages like PGF/TikZ. Some selected work: