Digital tools/hacks

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
Crusader
Posts: 342
Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada

Digital tools/hacks

Post by Crusader »

I realised that the ERE philosophy is as much about saving time as is about saving money. With that in mind, I wanted to share some of the digital tools that I have found very useful in my life, some of which might be lesser known:

Podcast Addict -> a free podcast manager for Android, with lots of features
KeePassXC -> a cross platform, open source password manager with lots of useful features
Syncthing -> a decentralized, cross platform way to sync files across all your devices (one of these files is the encrypted KeePass database)
7-Zip -> an open source archive manager which is on this list because it's the easiest way to encrypt files (AES 256)
Tabata Timer -> an Android exercise timer app
SpaceSniffer -> a free Windows program that visually shows you where your disk space is going

I don't think I could live without these. Anyway, I am interested in hearing about what others have to add to this list...

Green Pimble
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:16 pm

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Green Pimble »

For me, the MacOsX app SelfControl.
Add websites, set a timer, click start. You can't access those websites for the duration of the timer. At all. I don't even think uninstalling the app allows you access to them. I've got mine set for a week with all the common culprits of time wasting, which means that I usually only get sucked into a reddit vortex for 4 hours or so once a week before I snap out of it and set the timer going again.

Dream of Freedom
Posts: 753
Joined: Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:58 pm
Location: Nebraska, US

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Plantnet - for identifying plant species with the camera of your phone
Habitica - habit tracker, to-do list, and video game all rolled into one

basuragomi
Posts: 419
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by basuragomi »

A working knowledge of regex is incredibly useful. Notepad++ supports search by regex for Windows. LibreOffice supports regex use in spreadsheets. There's also the classic grep for Linux.

Tiddlywiki for organizing notes. Great for complex projects or even just sorting recipes.

Edit: Of course, Firefox is so fundamental I forgot about it entirely. With NoScript, uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock for Youtube, Decentraleyes, "Don't track me Google," "I don't care about cookies," and a pre-crippleware version of Blocksite. Knowing how to use the console to extract the data you want from sites is useful too.

Scott 2
Posts: 2824
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:34 pm

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Scott 2 »

I've been very happy with the paid version of TickTick, a digital personal organizer:

https://ticktick.com/
https://ticktick.com/about/upgrade

Google calendar integration and recurring tasks have been killer features for me. I tried Habitica, but found the gamification created too much overhead.

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Campitor »

  • Beyond Compare - an easy tool for examining differences in files - it's the GUI version of Linux "diff".
  • Snagit - great software for adding graphics to documents - it also has a desktop record option so you can create mp4 files for video presentations or recording your activity when you're debugging something or changing settings. Saves you from the "what did I change" memory hole that occurs when futzing around with computer/software settings.
  • Winrar - I very good zip utility in my opinion for managing archives.
    Windows Powershell - a very useful tool for debugging network or PC issues. You can also use it to debug file permissions.
  • jmeter for those of you have to do load/stress testing.
  • mRemoteNG - great opensource tool for managing multiple RDP sessions and you can configure it to launch external tools like Filezilla, SSH, etc.
  • Emeditor - it handles very large files, can use regex commands for searches/filtering - it will load files that are too big for notepad, notepad++, etc.
  • Amazon Web Services - if you're a real geek you can configure a virtual machine (linux, windows, etc) and run any software you want on it. You can shut it down and only get charged for storage - different VMs have different pricing. Very affordable for those of you who may need the occasional computing of a robust machine but without having to buy or build a high end PC or server. You can destroy the VM after use to eliminate all cost. You can save the configuration and just deploy another version whenever you want (puppet/yaml familiarity makes this easier)

Scott 2
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Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:34 pm

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Scott 2 »

Beyond compare is a tremendous productivity multiplier. One of my favorite work tools. Learning to diff effectively is right up there with being proficient in Excel.

Campitor
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Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Campitor »

I forgot to mention Wireshark for those of you have to deal with debugging SSL handshakes. When users, networking, and or management starts to claim your software is responding very slowly because its servers aren't tuned correctly, you can use Wireshark to capture packets and determine where the network bottlenecks are actually occurring.

In conjunction with Wireshark, I also use the native debuggers (F12) found in Chrome, Firefox, and IE/Edge. Great for sniffing out Cross Origin Resource issues or discovering Root SSL certs that are missing from your KeyStore; also good for detecting what unsecured objects are in the transmission.

Crusader
Posts: 342
Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Crusader »

I use Beyond Compare daily at work for software development, but I wanted to keep this general. I don't quite understand how it would be useful to non-developers.

If we do broaden the definition of "digital tools" to include domain specific stuff, then I guess I'll add the following to the list:
UltraEdit - my favourite text editor
Beyond Compare - my favourite compare editor
Audacity - for recording audio
Darktable - for editing photos
PDF X-Change Viewer - PDF reader
WSL for Windows 10 - to use Unix tools/distros from Windows
Waterfox Classic + FireFTP - FTP client

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Ego
Posts: 6359
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:42 am

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Ego »

+1 for Audacity
Calibre ebook manager
Paint.net and GIMP photo editors
Kdenlive and Shotcut video editors


My library allows access to a bunch of newspapers, magazines and research journals online by entering my library card number.

macg
Posts: 174
Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:48 pm
Location: USA-FL

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by macg »

@crusader have you tried Atom for an editor? I used UltraEdit religiously until a couple of years ago when I found Atom. Free, open source, just as good as UltraEdit without a price tag...

Crusader
Posts: 342
Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Crusader »

@macg
I never really needed anything elaborate for personal use, and I get to use UltraEdit for free at work. I remember trying Atom a few years back and I forget why I didn't fully like it. I think it was slower and/or didn't have the column mode or didn't open and search the large files (>1Gb) as fast. I will give it a shot on my personal computer again, though, thanks!

ducknald_don
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Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:31 pm
Location: Oxford, UK

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by ducknald_don »

Ledger - A command line bookkeeping tool. I use it for my business and personal finances. It uses a plain text format so everything can go in source control.

Crusader
Posts: 342
Joined: Wed Aug 19, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Toronto, Canada

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Crusader »

ducknald_don wrote:
Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:27 am
Ledger - A command line bookkeeping tool. I use it for my business and personal finances. It uses a plain text format so everything can go in source control.
When using it for personal finance, I would appreciate if you could explain a little bit what your process is. Say you spend X amount of money as a credit card purchase for lunch one day. When/how do you enter it in ledger? Do you maybe input all the data once a month? Once a week?

ducknald_don
Posts: 322
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:31 pm
Location: Oxford, UK

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by ducknald_don »

I export the records from my online bank and then manually translate them into an entry in ledger. Something like this:

Code: Select all

;19/01/2020,08:36:17,Card payment,Aldi,🍏,General,-31.49,GBP,-31.49,GBP,,Unit 3 George White Way,,ALDI STORES LIMITED       GBR,,-31.49,
2020/01/19  *Aldi
    Expense:Food                                    £31.49
    Assets:Current Account
The line with the semicolon is what I get from my bank and everything else is a ledger entry.

When I get time I'll write a script to handle the imports.

There are alternatives to ledger, see https://plaintextaccounting.org for more details.

Campitor
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Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Campitor »

@ducknald_don

Ledger sounds like a nifty tool. How do you control for duplicates should you download a file that may inadvertently contain a previously uploaded entry? I.e, do you use version control software, etc., to avoid duplicate entries?

ducknald_don
Posts: 322
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:31 pm
Location: Oxford, UK

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by ducknald_don »

That doesn't seem to happen. I just search for the last transaction and start importing after that.

I do use version control (git) on the files.

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Ego
Posts: 6359
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 12:42 am

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Ego »

Ego wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 7:12 pm
+1 for Audacity
I just learned that Audacity recently sold and changed their terms of service in important ways. Bummer. Alternatives?

https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/

CDR
Posts: 57
Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2020 9:45 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by CDR »

Ego wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:47 pm
I just learned that Audacity recently sold and changed their terms of service in important ways. Bummer. Alternatives?

https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/
The backlash was so fantastic that the contributors have backtracked on the idea. More info here https://github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/889.

Edit:
Software I like:
I use Anki for all sorts of flashcards.
PowerShell and Python to write simple scripts
Sublime Text as a text/code editor

+1 for Audacity, Pant.NET, GIMP, 7-Zip, Calibre, LibreOffice, Tiddlywiki, Git

Gitlab is a great FOSS version of Github. Free public and private repos.

I use to use Habtica, but moved to NirvanaGTD. https://www.nirvanahq.com/ I like it because they have a one-time payment option, so I am not on the hook of paying them every month until the end of time. I did do the math and found I have long since broken even on that payment.

If you want some FOSS for task management, I've recommended Taskwarrior to people in the past and they've had a lot of success with it. I would move, but I'm already use to Nirvana. https://taskwarrior.org/
Last edited by CDR on Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Ego
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Re: Digital tools/hacks

Post by Ego »

@CDR, good news. Thanks!

I just realized Handbrake has not yet been mentioned.

https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake
https://handbrake.fr/

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