Tools

Stock image of tools as a featured image

Tools

Browsers and Apps

Chrome browser is a bit bloated but it is my default browser to get things done.

I use Chrome Canary at times to separate personal and work-related browsing. While Chrome has multiple profiles, having different browsers is visually and mentally a lot more efficient.

Some handy Chrome extensions

  • BuiltWith – Find out what the website you are visiting is built with using this extension.
  • Momentum – Shows a new tab with a nice beautiful photograph of a landscape. It is very calming.
  • Grammarly – Great to correct ones grammar on the fly while using Chrome. Works great with Google Docs!
  • Full Screen for Google Tasks – Creates a pinned tab with pull page view of your Google Tasks.
  • Font Finder – A no-frills font inspector extension
  • Awesome Screenshot – Easy Screenshots but the favorite feature is to create PDFs of an entire webpage.
  • Meta SEO Inspector – A nifty extension that is great to look up a page’s markup, alt-text.

Apps

  • Skitch for basic annotation, shapes, and sketches
  • Pixelmator for more advanced image editing
  • Alfred 3 for hotkeys, keywords, text expansion for MacOS
  • Slack – Have it on my computer but not on my phone or tablet.
  • Authy – for 2fa / but these days use 1Password more.
  • Spotify for music/podcasts

Writing and Editing

Notes, Docs and Ideas

  • Google Docs – I often scratch out a blog post on a Google Doc. The Grammarly extension works great in this workflow.
  • Pen and Paper – Great for simple quick temporary notes.

While I do not code much, I would not call myself a developer, but I like playing around with some design and code with Sublime Text.

I like using Atom too but at times I find it a bit too heavy on resources (especially for my limited needs)

For simple terminal tasks, I like using iTerm. That said the built-in terminal for Mac is perfectly fine for my needs.

While using the terminal, I these days like using the Ox Editor.

WordPress

I love open-source and contribute to the WordPress.org project mainly on the community side. It’s a place I truly call home when it comes to building a website online.

Here are some of the popular themes and plugins I use with WordPress.

  • Astra Theme: A great theme that has minimal personality with everything nicely packed into the customizer
  • Jetpack: While I started out not as its biggest fan, I use it often for things like infinite scroll and carousel gallery.
  • Coblocks: A nice bunch of blocks by GoDaddy that work great with the new block editor.
  • Yoast SEO: A nice SEO plugin for WordPress. The plugin feels a bit bloaty but I trust Yoast because I see a lot of their folks actively contributing to the WordPress project.

To spin up a local WordPress site on my machine Local by Flywheel but I would like a better alternative.

For spinning up multiple sites with LetsEncrypt SSL on a DigitalOcean drople, I like using EasyEngine

Devices and Headphones

  • My current machine is a Macbook Pro (15 inch – 2017) running MacOS Catalina. The phone is a Pixel 2 and it suits my needs.
  • I do own an iPad by I often end up using my Kindle Reader a lot more.
  • Sennheiser PC 8 Over-Ear USB VOIP Headphone with Mic (Black) – For online calls and meetings.
  • Sennheiser Over-Ear Wireless HD 350BT Black Headphone – noise canceling, great for listening to music while working