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UTILS.md

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Handy utilities & apps

Computer hygiene

  • f.lux: a desktop app that filters blue light out of your display settings after the sun goes down, to prevent your sleep schedule from getting wrecked. Indispensable for computer addicts. (cross-platform)
  • OneTab: a browser extension that lets you nuke all your tabs while saving the links in local storage. You can also export and restore browsing sessions if needed. Indispensable cleanup tool for tab hoarders.
  • Stretchly: a desktop app that periodically reminds you to get up and take short breaks from your computer, and dispenses really good prompts for stretches and eye strain reduction. (cross-platform)

If you're not sold on Stretchly, sedentary lifestyles are associated with significantly elevated chances of early death, and getting up for just 2 minutes every hour can nontrivially lower that chance.

  • trash for OSX: a CLI utility that moves files to the trash instead of rming them forever.
  • LeechBlock: an extremely configurable browser extension for timesink management. You can block/filter by domains and URL patterns, set schedules and time quotas with different consequences, and decide what kinds of override are allowed. I find it much more effective to have tiered blocking/filtering that's customized to my psychology, vs a normal domain blocker, which I am more likely to just deactivate.
  • Grayscale The Web: a simple browser extension that grayscales tabs or domains. Great for making social media less appealing.

Window management

Terminal

  • iTerm2: a significant improvement over OSX's stock terminal.

Browser-based IDEs

  • replit: cross-language coding IDE & way to persist+share snippets.
  • p5 editor: online IDE/display for p5.js visualizations.
  • coderpad.io: excellent browser-based RTC (real-time collaborative) coding platform with an interactive shell and support for ~35 languages. Targeted at interviewers but also works for pals.

Environment management

  • pyenv: a CLI utility for managing multiple Python installations on the same machine.

Web dev

  • Postman: a REST client desktop app that makes it easy to manually test/inspect APIs and save request patterns, especially if you need to parameterize between dev/prod environments, repeatedly run similar queries, or you frequently do this from Terminal and want a less rote approach. (cross-platform)
  • Stylus: a browser extension that makes it easy to auto-apply custom CSS onto certain domains. Honestly I mostly just use this for my own personal browser experience.

Lookup tools

  • 0to255: a lookup website that scales hex value colors up and down in lightness in HSL space. You can also make a shortcut by adding https://0to255.com/%s in your custom search engines.
  • httpstatus: a lookup website for HTTP status codes. Pattern: https://httpstatus.com/%s
  • LoremIpsum.co: has an impressive list of filler text generators, great for filling divs so you can test website layouts. My personal favorites are Hipster Ipsum, Space Ipsum, and Postmodernism Generator.