Essential tools
- Published: 2024-01-20 15:47
- Updated: 2024-01-20 21:09
This is a collection of everyday tools, command line utilities, and strategies that streamline my workflow. This list only contains things that stood my test test of time. It’s the result of either:
- Process optimization
- If a process consists of more than three steps: “How can I automate that—or reduce the number of manual steps to three, or less?”
- Process customization
- If a process is annoying: “How can I make it more fun?”
- Satisfying my sense of ownership
- I simply get a kick out of above, especially:
- When overcoming, or working around the stupid UX of a tool
- When using very specific command line tools to replace cumbersome manual labor
- I simply get a kick out of above, especially:
- Wanting to be nice to my future self
Windows software¶
These utilities personalize and ramp my Windows experience up to 11.
Total Commander¶
Total Commander is the first piece of software I’m usually installing on every Windows machine. It’s deeply tied into my everyday processes. It offers:
- A variety of ways for navigating between folders using tabs
- Custom menus you can tweak to your liking
- A highly capable tool for renaming multiple files
- A straight forward FTP client
- Support for archives out of the box
- The awesomest way of filtering long directories to find something
- And a metric ton of plugins, including
- Packers
- File listers
- Converters
Notepad++¶
Notepad++ replaces Windows Notepad for me. It’s my default F4 editor in Total Commander. I’m using it for quickly editing any text file along the way. It loads fast, gets out of my way. And sports a very flexible ‘search & replace’ function.
Windows PowerToys¶
PowerToys is a set of utilities to customize the Windows experience. Its FancyZones has become an indispensable tool to quickly structure my screen estate. It allows for setting up different layouts, and snap windows to them on the fly.
Windows Terminal¶
Windows Terminal is a meta-console. From where I either launch the oldschool cmd line, Powershell as well as the WSL terminal.
Oh My Posh for Powershell¶
Oh My Posh is a highly customizable theme engine for about any terminal and OS available. It allows for using additional information, custom fonts (incl Nerdfonts, see below), colors and icons. And just makes my nerd-heart happy. To get an idea what that might look like, check out the list of available themes.
Nerdfonts¶
Nerdonfs are patched versions of fonts targeted at developers. Extended by custom icons from various sources. Including:
Powerline extra symbols¶
Powerline extra symbols is a set of freaky glyphs for customizing boring Terminal shells, as well as editors like VIM.
My Nerdfont of choice: Fira Code¶
You can download it here. If you like to get a preview first, and check out other Nerdfonts for terminals and code editors, you can do so at programmingfonts.org
Better ClearType Tuner¶
Unlike MS ClearType config, Better ClearType Tuner provides access to the specific parameters to finetune the font anti-aliasing.
Chocolatey (package manager)¶
Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows. I’m mainly using it for maintaining packages like Python. Because things like that scare me shitless. So far, I can report: it does its job very well!
Seafile (Dropbox alternative)¶
Seafile is a FOSS alternative to Dropbox, sans the flabbergasting kaboodle beyond file syncronisation and sharing. I’ve been using it for 3 years to sync files between Windows, MacOS and iPhone. And had a positive experience so far.
Folder & file organization¶
I’m not a friend of following a data organization scheme in an anally retentive way. At the same time, I always used something that became known as:
Jonny.Decimal (kind of)¶
Jonny.Decimal can be used for organizing all aspects of one’s digital life. I’ve been applying a simplified version of it to organize the directories I’m using productively.
Example of my samples folder:¶
| Name | Purpose | Logic: Flow/Use |
|---|---|---|
| 📁00 inbox | Where I’m recording new samples to | Input/Most used |
| 📁10 library | Library of my own samples | |
| 📁20 research | Topics I’m researching | |
| 📁30 wavetables | Library of my own wavetables | |
| 📁50 projects | Samples for specific projects | Rarely used |
| 📁51 remixes | Samples for remixes | |
| 📁60 field recordings | Library of my own field recordings | |
| 📁90 demo sounds | Samples for product demos | Output/Least used |
| 📁91 sample packs | My sample packs |
If that looks arbitrary at first glance, the folder structure follows a dual logic: from input to output, and thus how frequently I’m using the individual folders.
I get the biggest benefit of numbered indexes when using Total Commander, as well as Terminals w/ autocomplete. And selecting folders from file requesters. This has proven handy for working with command line tools and scripts.
Further principles:
- 00 - 40: Reserved for most frequently used items
- 00: Always the inbox
- 50 - 80: Projects that only see frequent use temporarily
- 90 - 99: Done—only very occasional use
- Topmost level never exceeds 10 subfolders
- No files allowed—to prevent myself from creating a mess, and rendering the structure useless
- Change is encouraged to adjust to my needs
I’d like to stress:
I'm only using this for directories I'm productively working with. That I already spent a lot of time stressing about one system to fit everything. And failed. Bigtime. Realizing: I don't want to be such a rigid person.
Audio tools¶
RME Digicheck (Analyzer)¶
Digicheck is one of the reasons I’ve been RME Audio customer since 2001. It’s always on my screen, to quickly grasp what’s going on audiowise.
OcenAudio (Audio editor)¶
OcenAudio is the simplest, yet fast and capable audio editor I used so far. It’s my go-to editor for cutting files, quickly saving selections as separate files (drag’n’drop hooray!), and simple things like that.
Audacity¶
I’ve never been a friend of Audacity, but it’s been growing on me lately. Mainly because:
- It allows for changing time formats from its main interface
- Displays crucial information about selections
- In a highly and quickly configurable way
- It’s the only audio editor (I’m aware of) supporting working on a tempo based time signature grid
- Supports changing tempo/pitch at sample accurate values (that’s a big one)
Foobar2000 (Music player)¶
Foobar2000 has been my mp3 player, tag editor, audio converter, and collection manager of choice ever since. It’s nerdy, highly customizable, supports about every format. And whenever I was missing something, somebody had already made a plugin for that.
Notable Foobar2000 plugins¶
TagBox¶
TagBox offers the fastest way of editing tags. I’m using it whenever I’m adding new tracks to my DJ collection.
Waveform Minibar (mod)¶
Waveform Minibar is great for skipping through tracks, and getting a quick impression of its dynamics. Loving this eg for previewing promos.
Loudness PeakMeter¶
Loudness PeakMeter allows for monitoring loudness related information, incl. True Peak.
Enhanced Spectrum Analyzer¶
Enhanced Spectrum Analyzer does what it says, in a very customizable way.
SoX - Sound eXchange¶
SoX is a command line utility for manipulating and converting audio files. Most of the time, I’m using it for merging a number of .wavs into one. It’s also got a highly configurable sampling rate converter. And then some.
Photo/imaging¶
Affinity Photo¶
Affiinity Photo serves my image editing needs. No bells and whistles here.
ShareX (Screenshots, screen caps)¶
ShareX is the most versatile and tool for screenshots, recording gifs and even capturing small videos with sound I found so far. I love that it allows for customizing destination folders towards my specific needs. Instead of using eg docs/pictures.
FastPictureViewer¶
FastPictureViewer is my image viewer of choice. Highly optimized for .raw’s and operating with network drives. Also supports rating photos, batch operation, image resizing and format conversion.
Video-production¶
OBS Studio¶
OBS doesn’t need an introduction, I guess?
Davinci Resolve¶
Resolve is way too powerful for my video editing needs. At the same time—despite being the most capable solution—I found its UX to be the most accessible.
Writing¶
Markdown¶
Markdown is a very straight forward markup language. Its syntax seemed to have conversion to HTML in mind. And I started adopting it while writing content for my Wordpress blog. As well as creating and maintaining HTML pages in a more readable fashion.
Obsidian (Writing & managing notes/website)¶
Obsidian replaced Markdownpad, and it immediately changed the way how I write and what I write about. Its magic is in the way it links between files. As well as the ability to create new documents while writing.
Firefox’ search shortcuts¶
To reduce the number of clicks/steps, and focus on writing when writing, my search engine shortcuts (opens your preferences!) include:
| Shortcut | Purpose | Search engine |
|---|---|---|
| e | Etymology | https://www.etymonline.com |
| d | Dictionary | https://www.dictionary.com/ |
| s | Synonyms | https://www.thesaurus.com/ |
| t | Translation | https://dict.leo.org |
Web development¶
Visual Studio Code¶
VSCode is my environment for HTML & CSS development, also using Fira Code as my font of choice. In this case, because I’m liking Fira Code’s native set of replacement glyphs for common arrows etcpp.
Laragon (local webserver)¶
Laragon is portable, and just works. Need a different PHP, mySQL whatever version? Unpack into a specified folder, switch from the UI—done. Includes a one-click Wordpress installation.
Codepen (CSS playground)¶
Codepen is my go-to playground for testing and experimenting with CSS directly in the browser. Without the need of creating a local folder structure, setting up a project, or messing up existing ones.
Firefox Developer Tools¶
Firefox is my browser of choice. And its developer tools offer everything I need.
Online publishing¶
MkDocs Material (for these notes)¶
Once Markdown made my HTML-writing life easier (I 💖 styling lists, especially playlists for my DJ sets—though the editing was a pain in the butt), I became much more weary of using Wordpress.
Add being an anally retentive typoholic, and I entered the endless rabbit hole of either developing my own Wordpress Theme. Or finding one suiting my needs. None of which led to a satisfying conclusion.
MkDocs Material filled that void perfectly. Being developed by a fellow Dubtechno head and netlabel artist made it even more appealing to me 😃
PS: I’m using it to build this site locally, sans the entire Git-foo. And sync it with:
WinSCP (FTP sync)¶
WinSCP is a SFTP, FTP, SCP and S3 client for Windows.
Why am I not using Total Commander’s FTP client for syncing?
Because I constantly open and close TC instances as I go along. And I want to prevent myself from closing the instance that syncs files while I’m writing.