Everyday tools I couldn't live without.


Obsidian

This app is my bread and butter for literally everything. I use it to plan my life, write down ideas, map out my projects, and so so much more. I've gotten great use out of daily notes and the Tracker plugin for graphing out my habits, mood, and money over the last year. It's genueinly been monumental for me. Below I've listed some of the most useful plugins I've encountered that completely transformed the way I use the app.

Plugins:

  • Tracker
    • Compiles the data from inside the YAML heads of my daily notes and graphs them
  • Advanced Canvas
    • Adds some useful functionality to charts making them more useful for applications like network charts or flow charts
  • Waypoint
    • Pretty basic in function but can be super useful for someone like me who ikes to segment my notes under categories but still wants them to be linked automatically
  • Timeline
    • Used to make timelines out of markdown, super useful for TTRPG worldbuilding or taking notes on historical topics
  • Templater
    • Like the name implies, turning notes into templates. I don't use it to it's full potential but I know if used properly can be super powerful
  • ASCII Tree Generator
    • Does pretty much exactly what you're seeing right now, but with markdown lists. Super useful for laying out file paths when planning projects
  • File Explorer Note Count
    • Just shows how many files are under each folder in the side bar, nothing crazy but can be useful
  • Iconic

Themes

  • WY Console
    • I LOVE this theme. It tickles my ADHD just enough to make me feel like an elite hacker even though I'm just taking notes. I will say... using this in public definitely gets... reactions

Mulvad VPN

Just the best VPN around. Hands down. Works great on all my devices, great options, cool team. What else can you really ask for? Their browser is pretty good too, just slightly too security forward to be my daily driver.

Tailscale

Super powerful tool to bridge your devices under one "network". Awesome for checking on my home network on the go and accessing self hosted tools from anywhere.

Chrome Remote Desktop

Yeah yeah I know. Not the most secure deployment level solution out there, but for checking a render on my workstation from my phone or starting up an app while I'm away from home it just works.


For the Linux homies I would recommend RustDesk, it's pretty solid and has (Expirimental) support for Wayland. Not quite as useful for unmanaged access out of the box, but still a solid tool.

Windows Power toys

Especially Power rename, quick image resize, and fancy zones are my favorites.

(Far less useful now that I daily Nobara lol, but there are plenty of decent linux alternatives for the various tools)



IT


My favorite tools, programs, and helpful resources that allow me to put out fires more efficiently.


YUMI

Super useful multiboot tool that allows you to load up various ISO's onto a flash drive and take them on the go. Super useful for IT people who want to carry around multiple OS's and bootable tools at the same time.

TMUX

A super slick Terminal Multiplexer that acts like a tiling window manager (somewhat). Very useful to get into a terminal flowstate, and works great over SSH so I can keep it going even on my iPad. The whole attaching and dettaching system is super useful for contenuity, and it's scriptability allows for custom start up scripts so users can jump right into their workflow quickly.

Termius

Speaking of iPads, Termius is a great mobile SSH client for accessing your devices remotely! The free tier is more than enough, and requires practically no set up. It also includes some nice-to-have features like password keychains and built in themes. They also have a version for iOS, which is great for getting a download going from the other room or checking your system status, but on the iPad is where it really shines.

Clonezilla

Super useful bootable tool for cloning drives, it's saved me a hanful of times. I would highly recommend keeping a copy of this on YUMI just incase!

CrystalDiskMark

Pretty decent disk health tool. Also saved me a few times with failing disks, or just checking their health and benchmarking them against manufacturer numbers. They also have versions with built in anime skins for whatever reason if that's your thing.

Ghostty

I tried it out on a whim and ended up absolutely loving it! Pretty standard terminal with some nice added features and loads of customization! If you're looking to modify it I would whole heartedly recommend checking out this website to mess around with the settings and lock in your perfect set up!



Homelab


My favorite scripts, tools, containers, and more.


ProxMox

I promise someone else will be able to explain in better detail why Proxmox is the best, but I can confirm it is a phenomenal hypervisor.

NTFY

This is one of the coolest self hosted services I have ever found so I had to put it high on this list. It allows you to send mobile notifications from code by posting to your server. Sounds somewhat simple, but the integration with different languages allows for endless uses.

Trunas Scale

Scale vs Core... blah blah blah, I just like scale better. People have a lot of opinions on the matter, I just tried core years ago, thought it was meh, and swithced to scale and had a better experience. Thats it really. It's got some nice features and once you figure out some of the lingo its pretty easy.

Docker

Similar to Proxmox, someone else will be able to better explain why it's good. I love the portability of compose images, and the community is expansive. There are also so many projects out there and it's pretty easy to spin one up to test out and nuke it if it's not what you want.

Code Server

One other thing I will also add is that depending on what you are developing it can be extremely useful to build your own image and set up your Docker compose properly to allow for persistant configs. I ran into some issues when working with python and having to reinstall and set up everything as well as virtual envirnments breaking every time I had to rebuild my container. In retrospect duh, but at the time I hadn't really considered that.

This container is absolutely legendary. It's basically VS code hosted in a browser, which sounds simple at first, but it's enabled me to do so many things. It easily syncs my progress between devices, and brings full fat VS code power to devices that were never an option (like the iPad I am typing this on right now). In combination with tailscale this set up is out of this world for someone looking to shred some VS code on the go! I've heard theres a solid collaborative aspect to it but do your own research on that. I would recommend opening port 3000 & 3001 as well as the default 8000/80 when deploying this container for live view extension to work properly!

Plugins:

  • Live Server Lite
    • Hosts a live server locally to view your code
  • Auto Rename Tag
    • Much like the name implies, it renames the opening/closing tag when you do the other.
  • Image Preview
    • Another self explanatory plugin, shows previews of images when you hover over them in your code.
  • Typos Spell Checker
    • Same as the two before. Spell check.

Themes

  • grubby-theme
    • Classy Gruvbox style theme for when I'm chilling working on some code at a coffee shop
  • Deepdark Theme (Full Black)
    • Dark theme with some color pop for late night code sessions
  • 2077
    • Do I really use this? Meh. Do I absolutely love it? Hell yeah.


Graphic Design


The tools I use to create the images in my mind.


Blender

Free and open-source 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software. Perfect for creating 3D assets for games, films, and designs.

Visit Blender

REAL Video Enhancer / Flow Frames

Two different video interpolation tools (Linux and Widnows) that can turn 30 fps renders into a smooth 60+ fps using RIFE. Not perfect for every usecase, but can save huge amounts of time halfing render time. I've had great results with motion graphics, video is hit or miss.

Image Magick

Clean and powerful CLI image manipulation tool that I love. My primary use case is downscaling my export images for this website so the load times aren't awful, but its got a load of cool features and is highly recommended!
This is what I do to downscale to 1080 and keep the aspect ratio:

magick INPUTIMAGE -resize 1080x1080\> OUTPUTIMAGE



Misc.


Whatever other misc. tools and resources I find useful but don't fit in a catefogy!


CoreTemp

This is a pretty basic tool but I really like it. Pretty much just shows your CPU temps in the taskbar. That it, I just like the way it looks and can be useful to check on things at a quick glance! I think it also comes with some sort of server option that can host a feed of the temps to other devices which could be super cool for some projects (maybe like an esp32 that pulls the temps and changes the lighting based on it in your room) But I've never tried it.

SignalRGb

Just a really good RGB management software that syncs with a ton of different devices. Solves the age old problem of having like 6 different RGB programs for your different devices and none of them quite sync up right