🔧 Tools I Use

These are the tools that I use everyday to write code and do fun stuff on the internet. This is not necessarily an endorsement of these tools, but this is what works well for me.

🖥 Hardware

• 💻 Laptop: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
• 🖱 Mouse: Anker Ergonomic Vertical USB Wired Mouse
• ⌨ Keyboard: Kinesis Freestyle Pro (with Cherry MX Red switches)
• 🎧 Headphones:
  • Sennheiser HD 598 CS - For use while working, and on airplanes. Very comfortable, great sound quality. For me, these are the best balance between sound quality and comfort that I've found in an over-the-ear headphone. Unfortunately, they're a bit hard to find these days.
  • Airpods Pro - For use while on-the-go, running, or doing work around the house. Superb noise canceling.
• 🖊 Pens
  • Sakura Sigma Micron Black 03
  • Pilot G2 O7
• 📓 Notebooks:
  • Daily Todos, Brainstorming, Ephemera: Leuchtturm1917 A6 Hardcover Dotted Notebook
  • Longer term notes: Leuchtturm1917 A5 Hardcover Dotted Notebook

👨‍💻 Development

• VSCode - VSCode is my go-to editor. I'm not a power user of it, but I think it has one of the better ecosystems of editor plugins of current GUI-based editors.
  • Boxy Theme Kit - Boxy Solarized Dark is my VSCode theme of choice.
  • JSON Tools - Useful for pretty-formatting JSON.
  • Paste URL - A simple extension for pasting URLs into Markdown documents. Automatically pulls the link's title, and formats it as [title](url).
  • Auto Close Tag - Automatically adds closing HTML tags.
• vim - I'm using vim more and more these days. Still a novice, but I'm becoming more comfortable with it.
  • You can find my vim config here. I've also been keeping notes on my vim learnings.
• SourceTree - This is a bit controversial, but I like having a GUI client for git. Not for everything (most in-depth git operations will still require dropping down into the CLI), but SourceTree allows me to minimize the number of common git mistakes that get made. Seeing graphically staged changes is a big deal for me, and SourceTree allows you to stage specific lines of a file much easier than the git CLI.

⌨ Terminal

• iTerm2 - Much more customizable than Terminal.app. Has better theming support,
  • Source Code Pro Light Font - Super readable, and I like the aesthetic.
  • I use either the builtin Solarized Dark color scheme, or Solarized Dark High Contrast (found here).
• oh-my-zsh - I'm not a hardcore ZSH user, but oh-my-zsh is really awesome. This shell gives you tons of productivity wins: git status in the prompt, super great auto-completion and history searching. Seriously, it's worth a try. I was skeptical of leaving bash, but it's really been worth the switch.
  • agnoster theme - Agnoster is a great theme for zsh. I've been told it's a ‘newb’ theme by a more experienced user of zsh, but I really like it. It's a bit flashy, but that's what makes it fun.
• z - “z” is super useful for jumping between frequently used directories.
• fzf - “fzf” is a fast fuzzy file finder. Works great in vim, on the CLI, and for searching shell history.
• lazygit - A powerful git terminal UI for when I'm feeling lazy.

📱 Services/Apps

• Feedly - My RSS reader of choice.
  • Here's a curated list of blogs I subscribe to.
• Instapaper - My “read later” service of choice. It's simple, it works well, and it has text-to-speech support, so I can listen to articles on-the-go.
• Overcast - My favorite podcast player.
• Pedometer++ - A perfect pedometer app. It's simple, never breaks, and isn't bloated. I've been using this since I ditched my Fitbit. Works great with the Apple Watch.
• Libby - A slick app for renting ebooks and audiobooks from our local library.
  • Here's what I've been reading
• BookPlayer - An open source audiobook player for iOS.
• Buffer - A service for scheduling Tweets. Helpful when I want to use Twitter in “write-only mode”.
• Artvee - Public domain scans of classical artwork. Useful for blog post headings.

🖥 Self-Hosted Services

• Miniflux - An RSS reader.
• Node-RED - Automation platform, similar to IFTTT. Has a large community plugin ecosystem.
• Podsync - Tool for creating Podcast Feeds (RSS) from a Youtube channel. Useful for listening to tech talks on-the-go.

☑️ Productivity

• Todoist - Todoist is my favorite todo application. It suits my needs very well: it's cross platform, has an open API, supports complex repeated tasks (i.e. “repeat every third Sunday of the month”), and has a pleasing design aesthetic. I pay for Todoist premium, and it's one of the few services that I feel delighted to give them my money.
• Drafts - I use Drafts as a medium-persistency notes app (similar to iOS's default Notes.app). It syncs consistently between my Mac and iPhone, supports Markdown formatting, and has a ton of power-user features like tagging, scripting, filters, customizable tool palettes, and Shortcuts integration.
• AnyList - My app-of-choice for making grocery lists. It keeps a history of items you've purchased in the past, supports list sharing, and has power-user features like associating items with a particular store.

🌐 Chrome Extensions

• Distill Web Monitor - A useful extension for getting notified when a webpage changes.
• The Great Suspender - Suspends tabs when they're not being used, to reduce Chrome's memory footprint.
• Redirector - Personal URL redirections.
• Watch Later Tweaks - Various usability improvement tweaks to YouTube's Watch Later system.
• Strict Workflow - A pomodoro timer that has the added benefit of blocking distracting sites while you're in “work mode”
• Vimium - Vim keybindings for navigation and scrolling in Chrome.
• Picture-in-Picture - PiP mode for Chrome (works for Youtube!)

🛠 Utilities

• Spectacle - My favorite window resizing/tiling utility app for macOS.
• BitBar (Github) - A super flexible menubar tool for macOS that allows you to turn any script into a menubar program. I maintain a repo of personal bitbar plugins.
• grip - Grip allows you to preview Github markdown really easily. It's a simple command line tool, works reliably, and speeds up the process of writing Github READMEs.
• mojibar - I use this all the time. Mojibar lets you search for emojis with a keystroke. An essential tool for communicating pictographically in the modern internet. 😝
• f.lux - Eye strain can be a real headache. I've found that “screen-yellowing” after sunset cuts down on the worst of eye strain. I don't use f.lux so much anymore - I've found that Night Shift is just as good, and is supported natively on macOS. I still do use f.lux on Linux.
• SensibleSideButtons - I use an Anker ergonomic mouse, which has side buttons. By default, macOS ignore these buttons. SensibleSideButtons allows these buttons to be used as forward/backward buttons in browsers.
• codemod - Straight-forward tool for performing large-scale find-and-replace refactors on code.
  • fastmod - A rewrite of codemod in Rust that's much faster. Great for very large codebases!

Single Serving Websites

• Kill the Newsletter! - Converts email newsletters to RSS feeds.
• rewind.website (a.k.a. “Cast Rewinder”) - Allows you to listen to podcasts “from the beginning” by rehosting an RSS feed that emits olds episodes on a schedule.
• PolitePol - Creates RSS feeds from websites that don't publish feeds.

💽 Databases

• Sequel Pro - Sequel Pro is a great GUI interface for MySQL. It allows you to create and modify tables, query tables, edit and create rows, everything you'd need to bootstrap a database setup. Two thumbs up. 👍👍
• Postico - Postico is pretty much at feature-parity with Sequal Pro, but for PostgreSQL.

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(Updated October 25, 2020 )