Productivity Tools
Update (2020)
Started:
- Safari: Back to use it as my main browser since Chrome always takes more resource and is less responsive.
- LanguageTool: self-hosted, replaced Grammarly
- Remark42: self-hosted, replaced Disqus
- Flycut: clipboard management
- GIF Brewery: Edit GIF
- Inoreader: subscribe to RSS feeds (used with https://datatube.dev for some social network feeds)
- Poetry: a better python package manager
Stopped to use:
Firefox: The extension ecosystem is average, the speed is average, …Basecamp: still quite heavyweight … also, why are there SO many project management tools?Evernote: too expensive, not working well with Markdown, can’t export to Mardown, poor math/code supportSmart Countdown TimerGrammarly: I don’t want to expose my dataDisqus: bad badanaconda
Update (2019)
- Big fan of Google Calendar
- Increasingly use more Dropbox Paper than Google Docs / Evernote
- Simplicity
- Responsive collaboration experience
- Export to markdown
- TODO tracking
- Try out Basecamp right now
- Typora for Markdown
- iTerm2
- Zoom
SafariChrome + Firefox- Why: try not to use too many services from Apple
- Chrome is for managing most of web services that requires log-in
- Firefox is for browsing information in a more private way
- Clocker: time zones
- Grammarly
CaffeineAntiSleep- More Docker, less virtual machines
Update (2018)
- Linux workstation with Ubuntu LTS
- Command line editor:
emacsvim- Why: 80 column visual bar is impossible to configure in emacs. vim mode is useful for preventing mis-editing in Ops.
- Font:
- monotype: Source Code Pro
- Evernote: B612 - The font family
- GUI Editor:
Atomvscode - IDE: IntelliJ
Alfredspotlight is sufficient for meIRCSlack. Also, there is an open source alt called mattermost- Paper management:
MendeleyFinder - Markdown:
MacDownvim - reStructuredText: better fit for big project than markdown
- python: anaconda +
virtualenv
Some new MacOS Apps:
- Smart Countdown Timer
- TeamViewer
Had been using some old applications: e.g. Evernote & Dropbox. They are stable and not too expensive. Evernote is platform friendly and exportable to XML
2016-2017
Computer: MacBook Pro 13 inch + Linux Workstation + iPhone
Operating System: OS X, Virtual Box (in which live many Linux and Windows). Linux distro is [Ubuntu, including Lubuntu (LXDE) and Xubuntu (XFCE), sometimes Fedora and CentOS. Why Virtual Box?Great command line tool VBoxManage
, headless mode + ssh
forwarding is nice. More tips here.
NOTE: the following software are all on Mac.
Terminal: Terminal App + ohmyzsh themed zsh
.
Command line tools:
cloc
: code statsctags
: for editorstree
: print directory structure nicelytmux
: tiled layoutfasd
: shortcuts for locating file/directoryrlwrap
: wrap any stdin/out withreadline
- Package manager:
brew
Editor:
emacs
dotfiles customization includeemacs-color-theme-solarize
theme andmath-symbol-lists
package- Sublime Text 3 for writing Haskell and Rust. Tried Atom before, but given up for its slowness in launch, response, and code search, as well as that atom.io is GFW’ed, editor UI is too gloomy, and no highlight for special characters.
- IDE: not a lot, Java needs IntelliJ IDEA. Xcode is useless, sometimes MATLAB. Use Proof General mode in
emacs
to write Coq - Markdown: MacDown
Font: Source Code Pro for terminal and editor
Haskell: Haskell Platform for global ghci
and snippets; per project using stack
Visualize git repo using SourceTree
Window manager: Spectacle
System Monitor: Colossus (drawback: too resource savvy)
Launch & search: Alfred
Test REST API: Postman
Use Caffeine to prevent Mac from sleeping.
Microsoft Office 365
IRC with irccloud (web app + iOS, great UI, persistent history, mention notification, $5/m)
Paper mangement: Mendeley
Books: Preview, no iBooks
Proxy: ss + proxychains for terminal applications (spawned process might not be properly proxied). ss traffic is safer than L2TP traffic
Blog: Jekyll + Github Pages.
Personal homepage: DO droplet (SFO).
Domain name: godaddy
Image processing: GIMP
pandoc
+ MacTex for complex document formats.
Pre-installed: Notes, Safari, calendar
Mail client:Airmail 3.
Python: iPython
OCaml: no ocaml
for interpreter, use utop
cnpm
for node source (in China)