Software

Table of Contents

Software I use

This is a collection of pointers to software I use regularly and that I find useful.

I marked with a tag software that is only available on the specific platform I was using previously (Mac OS X, now abandoned for Linux).

Emacs

I use Emacs for code, notes, agenda, this site, and basically for all my text editing tasks.

hledger

I started registering all my expenses in 2014. hledger is a version of ledger written in Haskell. Having access at the underlying library is useful, here an article I wrote about that: Finding duplicate accounts in hledger journals.

git

I use github for work and for some public projects. Everyone of my projects is also in a remote repository on one of my servers. I use git-web to browse them.

Vim

Before switching to Emacs I was a heavy Vim users. I still appreciate it and it's my choice when it comes to edit text on remote systems. My configuration: https://github.com/larsen/vim-configuration.

If you want to improve your Vim skill, Practical Vim is an excellent resource.

dnvim_xlargecover.jpg

LaTeX

RStudio

I occasionally use R (in the integrated environment RStudio), mostly to produce graphics using ggplot2.

Excel

I love spreadsheets, in general. Or "spreadsheet computing", as I'm compelled to say. I would like to use something not-proprietary but Excel is still the best in the category.

Chrome

I tend to be drowning in tabs, especially when I need to keep different pages of the same webapp, and the favicon can't help anymore. Quick Tabs is very useful in these situations.

VirtualBox

VLC

Calibre

Utilities

Midnight Commander

Dismissed

urxvt

irssi

Always on, on a remote system to which I connect to via ssh. Sometimes I think about using something like znc to integrate IRC in Emacs but I guess the benefits aren't worth the time.

Update <2016-08-27 Sat>

I setup znc and I tentatively switched to ERC. Let's see what happens

hakyll

Hakyll is a static site generator written in Haskell. Used to power the blog section of my site.

Nisus Writer   mac

I now use different tools for writing, but Nisus Writer is worth mentioning because it's the product I used, back in 2008, for my largest writing project so far: Pocket Perl.

Evernote   mac

Quicksilver   mac

Spectacle   mac

iTerm2   mac

I am one of those guys that practically live in a shell. After a long time spent in Terminal.app I found this. It has many additional features that make life simpler or even nicer (badges, shell integration, …).

Apple Keynote   mac

I occasionally give presentations. I was very fond of MagicPoint back when I was using Linux, but when I switched to Mac OS X I didn't think the X11 dependancy was convenient. Keynote takes a totally different approach but is good enough.

Slate   mac

I'd love to use a tiling window manager (i3 or xmonad, probably), but I'm on a Mac so the best I could find is this utility.

TunnelBlick   mac

Software I'm looking for

Here some software I'm looking for. If you happen to have something to suggest please contact me!

<2015-10-28 Wed> Backup software

I'm currently using Time Machine for backups. It certainly works well, but as I'm considering the opportunity of switching back to Linux, I should devise a new way to do backups.

<2015-10-02 Fri> Something to gather, organize and maintain a collection of scientific papers

My non-workflow is currently like:

  • Download a paper (PFD, Postscript, …); most of time I'm willing to read it later
  • When I finally have time to read it, I discover I lost the file
    • Perhaps because usually the filename has little to do with its content?
  • Download the paper again
    • It's possible I'll decide to place the file somewhere else
    • I currently have many directories that were created as THE place where I should collect papers
  • Read and annotate it (I'm currently using Preview.app for that)

I'd like to be able to do more:

  • Maintain a list of papers I downloaded, with metadata
  • The archive should be easily searchable
  • Be able to add my own metadata, like tags
  • I want to store the files on the filesystem, but with some sort of infrastructure layer upon it to access them

Things I'd rather not use:

  • Anything "in the cloud"
  • Anything web based (but I'm non strict about that)
  • Anything that forces me to manipulate the original file (like, storing it in blobs/virtual-fs thus masking it in the native FS)

Things I'm considering   wip

Product Metadata Search FS based In the cloud Web based Price
Papers   -1 € 71.98
Mendeley            

<2015-10-02 Fri> Something cross platform that allows PDF reading and annotating

Update <2016-11-22 Tue 10:41>

I think pdf-tools is the right tool. It is an extension of Emacs, therefore fits nicely in my workflow. Annotations are embedded in the document and visible via some other tools.

Footnotes:

1

Available as optional online service

Date: 2015-08-26 Wed 00:00

Author: Stefano Rodighiero

Created: 2024-03-24 Sun 17:36

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