Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@norm
Last active January 13, 2017 17:26
Show Gist options
  • Save norm/2b2b70f34361048f067a00651aae5f3d to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save norm/2b2b70f34361048f067a00651aae5f3d to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.

Software I use

Enforced keyboard breaks

First things first — I've had RSI and incessant pain before, and I don't want it again. There are many instances of keyboard break software, but the one I use is AntiRSI. It's available from the Mac App Store for a fiver, and its worth every penny to me. If you prefer free, an older version is still available. I enforce it always being running (but with the ability to turn it off when playing games) with a script I run from cron.

Controlling my computer

I use LaunchBar for more things than I can count. A Mac just doesn't seem to work right until I've got LaunchBar working.

Text editing

I use Sublime Text 3 for almost all text editing and coding.

I use Markoff for previewing Markdown as I am editing it.

Folding Text is useful if you take notes or keep todos in text, in an outline manner.

I keep short notes, code snippets and other miscellany in nvALT, which I keep synced between all of my Macs and Simplenote on iOS using the Simplenote sync service.

For more mathematical things I use Soulver.

Source control

I use git via the command-line for almost everything, but I find GitX-dev very useful for previewing changes and exploring history.

Email

I use the stock macOS Mail.app for reading email, but I beef it up a little with the Mail Act On plugin. On iOS I use Dispatch.

Web browsing

I use Safari day-to-day as it syncs bookmarks etc between Macs and iOS. Extensions I can't live without include Sessions and Ghostery.

I also have Chrome installed for viewing the work of people who don't know how to build websites that work in all browsers, or when I need to be signed into websites with multiple accounts.

I have Firefox and Opera installed for when I'm making websites that work in all browsers. They rarely get used.

Reading

I use Reeder on both Macs and iOS for consuming RSS/Atom feeds, backed by the Feedbin service to keep everything in sync.

Long form blog posts and things I want to read later I hand off to Instapaper on iOS, because I try to keep my feeds at Inbox Zero.

Todos

I keep all of my general todos in Things on both macOS and iOS, synced with Things Cloud.

I use Due on iOS for daily routines and reminders that need to happen at a specific time.

Image editing

For general Photoshop-like tasks, I use Pixelmator. For creating images from scratch I have used both Acorn (which is also a capable image editor, I just prefer Pixelmator) and Sketch.

For my photos I use iCloud Photo Library and Photos, but I am flirting with Adobe Lightroom.

Miscellaneous

I use Tweetbot on macOS occasionally, but predominantly on iOS.

I use xScope a lot, especially when doing web development.

I use 1Password and their Families service.

I use GIF Brewery to make gifs.

I use VMware Fusion to pretend to have many more computers.

I keep other files in sync across computers and services using Dropbox but wish there was something better and more trustworthy.

I use the Slack desktop app to help consume the spare RAM in my computer.

I keep an eye on my spare RAM and CPU usage using iStat Menus.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment