Tools

This Site

This site is generated using the Nikola static site generator. For information about why I chose Nikola, and how that works, I wrote a blog post about that a long time ago in Dec 2013. I wish the themes were more customizable, for now I'm using it stock. My site README shows the authoring/publish workflow. The workflow isn't bad once you set up the branches and GitHub correctly.

This site is hosted on GitHub Pages and delivered over CloudFlare. I'm happy with what they give me for free, thanks!

I moved comments to Disqus years ago and I'm surprised they're still in business. At some point if that become enshittified I'll move them away, or turn them off altogether. And Google Analytics is more than enough visibility for me.

My resume is hard-coded simple HTML. It's formatted the way you would format something back in 1998: just barely css, tables with colspans for layout. I use wkhtmltopdf to render that HTML into a PDF, all managed by good old fashioned make. I know there are way better ways to do it now.

Editors

vim. Still my go-to tool for writing: text, code (unless it's very complex), simple lists, meeting minutes. Lots to like about it: ubiquity, speed, easy on the fingers.

VS Code with VI keybindings.

Google Docs.

The Command Line

ITerm2. A nice replacement for the mac's built-in Terminal.app. It's always worked well and seems to be maintained well.

Autojump. Watches what you cd to and then you can quickly jump back there. j posts takes me to my "posts" directory. Magic.

Zsh. I finally switched over to Zsh when MacOS switched the default shell to Zsh several years ago (Catalina). I've found Oh My Zsh to be a helpful way to manage themes and plugins. I expected it's trick of updating every time you open a window to be more onerous, but it hasn't troubled me yet.

Mac Things

Alt-tab. My key requirement is I need to quickly switch between windows with alt-tab. I prefer lots of windows to tabs, and alt-tab is hard-wired into my fingers from so many years on Windows. And the Mac has never done this right, differentiating between windows and apps (why?). Prior apps I tried for this were Witch and Hyperswitch, but it's hard to find one that's reliable.

Moom. I've tried a bunch of Mac things for moving windows around and this one is the best. The hotkey I've assigned is easy to type (ctrl-shift-semicolon), pushing once gets me to some nice instant macros (top, right, full screen) but the best thing is pushing twice to bring up this nice little micro-manager where I can place windows manually. Well done and works.

CopyClip. I've come to rely on a clipbar manager quite a bit and it's one of the things I miss most when moving to another OS like Linux or Chrome. This one has always done the job for me.

Homebrew. The missing package manager for the mac has proven remarkably durable.

Productivity and Apps

Gmail. Keep trying other things but keep coming back.

My GPG key is 4C79 48F2 2057 0647 D573 937B AFD1 2F02 88AC 23B2. Don't really use anymore.

Google Calendar and Tasks. I use my calendar as my journal and todos too. There are much fancier systems for keeping and managing task lists but I keep coming back to the basic one.