Tech

Various notes about technology, – especially software that I use or work with.

List of software etc.

Some of the software, file formats etc. that I use (and various tips):

• Firefox with ublock-origin – browsing the web without adds/tracking. Settings: auto-delete cookies, localstorage etc. on exit.
• Anki – great tool for learning, – open source flash-cards
• protonmail – seems to be the best privacy-aware email
• Vim – the text editor that I am most efficient in
• Brave – privacy-aware chrome-based browser – better default privacy/adblocking than firefox without plugins (usable on iOS, where Apple disallows firefox plugins etc.).
• libreoffice – good-enough office-suite
• Gimp – good-enough image editing
• Blender – great 3d program, with good-enough video editor
• Syncthing – synchronising files between computers – cloud-alternative
• Signal – instant messenging
• Facebook/messenger – worst software – but needs to use it due to things only communicated there 🙁

VR:

• Thrill of the fight – Best cardio exercise – but brutal
• Beat Saber – good cardio exercise with fast version of song "FitBeat" – includes squads and jumps to the side
• HoloPoint – decent cardio exercise
• Gorilla tag – good arm exercise
• Google Earth – good for learning geography
• TiltBrush – creative drawing

Progamming languages:

• Clojure – nice / favourite programming language
• JavaScript – fastest language for me to build something in, as I have lots of experience with this.
  • serverside: node or deno (prefer deno due to sandboxing, but often use node due to
  • the web platform!
• Python
  – data science! Jupyter Lab
  • micropy – for scripting on embedded devices
  • scripting blender etc.
• Lua – good/easy to embed in other applications

Operating systems I use:

• Linux – clearly the best for my use cases. Always using this on server (although would also be tempted to return to FreeBSD), – and often on laptop/desktop (prefer i3 as window manager). Great!
• MacOS – lots of small bugs, but runs on the new Apple ARM processors, and allows web development/testing on Safari, and possibility to develop for iOS, – good enough, but not great.
• iOS – locked-down operating system (You don't control your device, Apple does, which is bad). But Android is worse, – and you need to have Android or iOS to function in modern society (payment, school-apps, sign-in, authentification, coronapas, etc. (Open-standard web-applications are unfortunatly often only developed as an afterthought if at all)).
• Windows – needed for some use cases (best VR-support, playing certain games with my son that is unsupported on Linux/MacOS).
• Android – developed by a company whoose business model is to sell your attention to highest bidder (and collect information about you to be able to do that).

File formats:

• SQLite – database, – data can easily be accessed from different programming languages, and it is really easy to backup an share the database with others, as it is just single file.
• Markdown – simple, good-enough plain-text format, – can also be converted to print etc (pandoc).

todo:

• etherpad – really good for collaboration on text (need to re-install this asap).
• gitea – self-hosted simple github-alternative (github was taken over by Microsoft, – currently using gitlab but want to shift to this).