Links
These are links to other blogs, channels, software, or sites that I have found interesting or useful to me.
Blogs
- Bartosz Ciechanowski - absolutely incredible animations and detailed information about various natural phenomena.
- Bits about Money - really enjoyed the posts about gift cards and BNPL but there are many excellent ones.
- Raymond Chen/The Old New Thing - Raymond is a prolific writer and has some really in-depth articles into the nature of software or Windows.
- In the Pipeline - There are some real gold nuggets in there especially the
Things I Won't Work Withseries.
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
Paid Services
- 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
Paid Software
- 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.