These are links to other blogs, channels, software, or sites that I have found interesting or useful to me.

Blogs

YouTube

  • Jeff Geerling - has unique videos in the tech space and also has a website.
  • Steve Mould - fascinating videos examining various natural phenomena.
  • Practical Engineering (Grady Hillhouse) - great videos focusing on the very practical world of infrastructure around us. I really enjoyed details about projects that you may not have heard of otherwise including the New Harbor Bridge Project in Corpus Christi and the Washington Bridge in Rhode Island.
  • NileRed - totally interesting perspective as someone from a chemistry-adjacent field.

Software

  • GitHub Copilot - at least for the languages and IDEs/editors I use, this seems pretty solid without paying for the $200/mo offerings
  • Kagi - solid search replacement and, of course, no sponsored or ad-infused listings. Very handy!
  • Monarch Money - solid budgeting and finance dashboarding app
  • GeForce Now - avoid buying a GPU when you can rent a GPU
  • Pushover - creates an abstraction for you to send notifications to your personal devices
  • MobaXterm - pretty powerful multi-session remote manager.
  • Beyond Compare - solid diff/merge capability with continual improvements
  • Xyplorer - very different and unique way of approaching file exploration from the built-in Windows one. I thought this was most useful in the post-Clover but pre-Windows 11 23H2 tabbed experience.
  • DMDE - software is exceptional at helping recover data from failing (or failed) hard drives
  • IsoBuster - software was invaluable for recovering home movies from DVDs that the person who was transferring from VHS did not properly finalize

Free Software

  • ASCIIFlow - nice way to have imageless diagrams
  • pgloader - great way to transfer data and handle data type changes to PostgreSQL.
  • draw.io - nice alternative to Visio for diagramming needs.
  • Penpot - handy design and mockup tool comparable to Figma and similar
  • SourceTree - regardless of your opinion of Git UIs, sometimes, it’s easier to visualize a graph than read git log. For me, you still need a grasp of the underlying commands, but it tremendously helps with getting the right arguments 99% of the time.
  • Bitwarden - password managers are a controversial topic it seems, but Bitwarden seems quite reasonable

Miscellaneous

  • Linuxserver Fleet - consistently designed images for software that may be relevant to people running their own homelab.