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Update Uses page.
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ryan-p-randall committed Oct 18, 2023
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Expand Up @@ -12,18 +12,46 @@ Much like a colophon, it's intriguing—and sometimes even useful—to see what

Here I'll selectively highlight some of the things I use. **None** of these are affiliate links.[^sc]

[^sc]: Friends don't throw friends further into the Moloch of [surveillance capitalism](https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-surveillance-capitalism-and-how-does-it-shape-our-economy-119158). Thankfully, I don't need to monetize the few folks who stumble across this page.
[^sc]: As much as possible, friends don't throw friends further into the Moloch of [surveillance capitalism](https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-surveillance-capitalism-and-how-does-it-shape-our-economy-119158)… at least without sufficient prior warning. Thankfully, I don't need to monetize the few folks who stumble across this page—but I also know I've got privileges not all of my readers share. In other words, I know your mileage might be different.

## Hardware

- LogicTech [MX Mechanical](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/mx-mechanical.html) keyboard
- LogicTech's [MX Mechanical](https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/keyboards/mx-mechanical.html) keyboard easily switches between a few different devices, and is compatible with Mac, Linux, and Windows.

## Software

### Reading and Writing

- [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/), a free text editor
- [Dendron](https://wiki.dendron.so/), a great extension for organizing notes
- [Daybreak](https://daybreaktheme.com/), a lovely warm dark theme
- [Zotero](https://www.zotero.org/) for research, citation, and annotation
- [Zettlr](https://www.zettlr.com/), a free, open source Markdown editor with lovely design and nifty research features
### Coding

- [GitKraken](https://www.gitkraken.com/) provides a useful interface for interacting with Git.
- [iTerm2](https://iterm2.com/) is a gratis terminal emulator. If you use things like Jekyll or Pandoc on a Mac, this is a great tool for doing so.
- [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) is a gratis text editor with many, many themes and extensions. Here's an example of each of those:
- [Daybreak](https://daybreaktheme.com/) is a lovely warm dark theme.
- [Dendron](https://wiki.dendron.so/) is a great extension for organizing & retrieving notes.

### Reading

- [Murasaki](https://genjiapp.com/mac/murasaki/index_en.html) is an EPUB reader with free and paid versions—and it presents each chapter on a single, scrollable page! In other words, it treats chapters more like web pages than books. This small interface change somehow helps me focus on reading much longer. You can also set it for horizontal scrolling, if that's the kind of thing you prefer.
- [NetNewsWire](https://netnewswire.com/) is a gratis and open source RSS reader for MacOS and iOS.
- [Zotero](https://www.zotero.org/) is easily my favorite app for anything related to research, citation, and annotation. With the PDF reader built-in to version 6, it's also become my favorite PDF reader. It's also gratis.
- [Night for Zotero 6](https://github.com/tefkah/zotero-night) is a plugin that brings a much-needed and well-designed dark theme to Zotero.

### Utilities

- [Bartender](https://www.macbartender.com/Bartender5/) is a paid utility that keeps all your menu items nice and orderly.
- [Bunch](https://bunchapp.co/), a free utility, is one of Brett Terpstra's many amazing tools. It lets you quickly automate things for MacOS. What kind of things? When I had chat shifts multiple times a week, I set it to always do this, from one single click:
- 1. Remember to check the shared Library email account and respond to any messages,
- 2. Open one app,
- 3. Open another app,
- 4. Log into a web-based chat client,
- 5. And keep my display from falling asleep if I had to go grab a glass of water in the other room.
- [Lungo](https://sindresorhus.com/lungo) is an inexpensive menu bar tool for MacOS that can keep your screen/computer awake. The same developer makes a ton of [other tools](https://sindresorhus.com/apps), many of them free. This one's definitely worth what little I paid for it, though.
- [PopClip](https://www.popclip.app/) is a great paid utility that provides a bunch of small tools for text. Want to quickly sort a list? Want to know word or character count, anywhere? Want to change something from all caps to sentence case? It does all that and more!
- [Rectangle](https://rectangleapp.com/) is a gratis utility that lets you move your windows in MacOS using just keyboard commands. I never realized how much I'd benefit from something like this until I started using it.
- [SoundSource](https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/) is a paid utility that lets you easily change audio input and output on MacOS, plus add volume controls and effects. Want to send the sound from app to your headphones, the sound from another to your speakers, and also reduce the treble from a browser with jarring notifications? Yep, this will do all that, easily.

### Writing

- [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) is a gratis, command-line tool for making static websites. [Building a static website with Jekyll and GitHub Pages](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/building-static-sites-with-jekyll-github-pages) and [Running a Collaborative Research Website and Blog with Jekyll and GitHub](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/collaborative-blog-with-jekyll-github) are a great pair of introductions to how you might use it.
- [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) is a gratis app for making interlinked notes in Markdown.
- [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/) is an amazing, gratis command line (terminal) tool for switching between document formats. You probably don't need this… but if you do, and you don't already know about it? Wow, this will make your day! [Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text using Pandoc and Markdown](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/sustainable-authorship-in-plain-text-using-pandoc-and-markdown) provides an excellent introduction to using it.
- [Zettlr](https://www.zettlr.com/) is a robust, gratis, open source Markdown editor with nice design and a variety of nifty research features.

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