It's amusing and eye opening to see what other people are using to get their stuff done. So like many folks at /uses (https://uses.tech/), I'm sharing below some of the tools I'm using daily.
Software
- ๐ Accounting: Cloud Demat (crap), moving soon to Odoo while switching accountant.
- ๐ค Automation, monitoring: Changedetection (and its browser extension), cron jobs, Miniflux -- Check also my articles Reading RSS in peace with a few Miniflux Hacks and Default settings for watches in Changedetection. I'm also using Macrodroid for automation on mobile.
- ๐ฃ๏ธ Blogging: WordPress (self-hosted), it's not as fast to load as a static site (pure HTML - see ๐ฑ Web minimalism) but it saves me from the pain of having to deal with extra tooling and docs. It just works.
- ๐ Bookmark:
Wallabag, Shaarli, Tapas (Home-made, still WIP, see Ideas)Wallabag comes with nice extension and integrates with Shaarli.-> its search engine lacks precision for years and they are too much focused on refactoring and frameworks upgrades instead of features, so using this tool is a waste of time.- Shaarli comes with nice bookmarklet.
- ๐ Browser: Brave. I don't trust Mozilla Firefox (whose existence depends on Google) but the appeal of extensions in Firefox would be great on mobile. Anyway I stick with Brave for now for it's advanced privacy protection.
- ๐ Calendar: Google Calendar for sharing various agendas with my partner. One for her events, one for mine, one for our common events (company, and both of us), one for the little one/school. And TickTick syncs perfectly (1-1) with Google Calendar.
- ๐จ๐ปโ๐ป Code Editor/Text Editor: VSCode, Neovim. And even if rich UIs are lovely, I'm a terminal nerd.
- ๐ค Code generation and correction: Chat GPT4 Plus o1, Le Chat Pro.
- ๐ง Code version control server: Gitea.
- ๐ธ Duplicate photos finder: dupeGuru and fdupes are my friends.
- ๐ธ Expenses management: Wallos.
- ๐พ Files sync: Syncthing, Dropbox, Signal.
- ๐๏ธ Font: I'm a big fan of Miriam Libre which I use on this blog, but I'm migrating to Geist Mono.
- ๐ Habits tracking: TickTick.
- ๐ป Information system (OS): mostly Linux Ubuntu (work) and MacOS (ex-work, now rather for projects).
- ๐งพ Invoicing: InvoiceNinja, free self-hosted version. I'd be happy to pay them when they emit valid business invoices ยฏ\_(ใ)_/ยฏ.
- ๐ฎ Mail: Fastmail and Hostinger.
- ๐ฌ Messaging: Signal, Session, Slack (work), WhatsApp (unfortunately everyone).
I don't trust Telegram nor WhatsApp nor Slack. - ๐ต MP3 tagging: AutomataTag to fixing tags and missing album covers on MP3 files and each change is synced to Navidrome.
- ๐ News/stalking: I'm using Miniflux (and RSS-Bridge) + Changedetection to ensure I do not miss new content from my favorite sites. Miniflux tackels the "read news, track RSS feeds" while also, in pair with Changedetection, let me follow blogs, and monitor changes in websites, blogs, lists, GitHub repositories, blogrolls...
- Miniflux comes with nice bookmarklet and has many integrations.
- Changedetection comes with nice extension.
- ๐ Notes: Obsidian + Signal 'Note to Self', and Shaarli.
- Shaarli comes with nice bookmarklet.
- ๐ช Productivity: all above and ChatGPT sometimes, also Tampermonkey, CLI/Scripts.
- ๐ Password manager: Vaultwarden.
- ๐ป๏ธ Podcast & Music: Navidrome (Spotify alternative player), DSub (Android client), Last.fm, Rate Your Music, Seeker (music collection).
- ๐๐ป Privacy: Kill the Newsletter! and private email generator by DuckDuckGo. I'm also using Fastmail as privacy-first email client, and I use Brave browser for privacy-first web surfing.
- โ Tasks/To-Do: TickTick + shared calendars for the reminders and prioritization, + some notes through my pocket notebook, Obsidian, Shaarli.
- ๐งฎ Spreadsheet Processing: Google Spreadsheets.
- ๐ Search engine: DuckDuckGo, occasionally QuackQuackGo, even feedle. Bing (Microsoft) and Google in last resort and if possible not directly. Look also the search engines in my /links.
- ๐จ Theme: I'm a big fan of Ethan's Solarized Dark theme but I'm migrating to Catppuccin (https://github.com/catppuccin/catppuccin).
- ๐ 2FA: Aegis and Vaultwarden.
- ๐ท๏ธ Screenshot: Flameshot on Linux, Skitch on Mac.
- โ SSH client on Mobile: JuiceSSH. Because we can... ๐คฆ๐ผโโ๏ธ
- ๐ Word Processing: Google Docs, Obsidian.
โฝ Services subscriptions
- ๐ฅ๏ธ Self-hosting web apps: Cloudron makes self host apps so easy without making it feel like work.
- โจ๏ธ Cloud Server/VPS: Contabo for running Cloudron, Hetzner for running CI/CD workflows.
- ๐ค
AILanguage model and hallucinations generator: ChatGPT. - ๐ป Web hosting/DNS/Nameserver: Hostinger. I've used OVH and Gandi in the past.
- ๐ฝ Cloud storage/backups: Dropbox and Hetzner Storage Box (migrated from Contabo Object Storage).
- ๐ฑMobile UX enhancements: Macrodroid for enabling more features and automation on mobile.
- ๐บ๏ธ Legal streaming: Netflix, Prime, Disney+ I'm testing also alternatives (Plex-Seedboxes etc) as all those offerings are very expensive and do not fulfill my expectations.
- etc.
๐ Browser extensions
- User-Agent Switcher and Manager - spoof your browser "user-agent" string to a custom designation, making it impossible for websites to know specific details about your browsing arrangement. I used it to be able to access lobste.rs from brave browser which otherwise is blocked, but now I've just delete my lobste.rs profile like many users, because a community with a closed mind is not worth it, I've left X/Twitter/FB, and now I leave lobste.rs.
๐ณ Terminal tools
I run most of the commands below within the comfort of Terminal on Linux or iTerm2 on Mac, Usually with Ethan's Solarized Dark theme applied. And even if rich UIs are lovely, I'm a terminal nerd.
- asciinema - terminal session recorder.
- atuin - sync shell history between machines.
- bat - cat clone with syntax highlighting.
- broot - another way to see and navigate directory trees.
- chezmoi - dotfiles manager.
- colordiff - colorize diff output.
- diff-so-fancy - human readable diff.
- dive - explore docker layers.
- emote - emoji picker for Linux.
- fd - alternative to find.
- fdupes - find and eliminate duplicate files.
- fish - user friendly shell but not POSIX compatible (for this, prefer bash or sh).
- git-delta - syntax-highlighting pager for git, diff, grep, and blame output.
- git-extras - git utilities.
- gitlab-ci-local - tired of pushing to test your .gitlab-ci.yml?
- glab - bring GitLab features to your terminal.
- htop - interactive process viewer.
- httpie - modern CLI http client, alternative to curl.
- hyperfine - benchmarking tool.
- k9s - manage your kubernetes clusters.
- lazydocker - manage everything docker.
- lazygit - simple terminal UI for git commands.
- lazyjj - simple terminal UI for jj (Jujutsu) commands.
- lsd - next-gen ls.
- lynx - text web-browser.
- ncdu - better du (disk usage stats).
- neovim - Vim-fork with better usability and extensibility.
- ohmybash - bash configuration, it's the bash equivalent of ohmyzsh.
- ohmyzsh - zsh manager to unleash your terminal.
- ๐ python3 venv - for managing virtual envs because some pythons can be dangerous ๐.
- rclone - sync data, similar to rsync but between various cloud providers.
- ๐ rg (ripgrep) - blazingly fast grep.
- ๐ rvm - ruby version manager, it feels like pain but it saves some.
- shellcheck - static analyzer for your shell scripts.
- shellharden - does actually the fixing that shellcheck complains about ๐.
- shfmt - shell formatter.
- thefuck - corrects your previous console command.
- tig - git repo browser.
- tldr - simple community driven manual pages.
- wttr - the right way to check the weather.
- yt-dlp - A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader. Ideal for archiving YouTube.
- zoxide - fast jump to any directory.
see also my public dotfiles.
Hardware
- ๐ป๏ธ Home Laptop: Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB.
- ๐ป๏ธ Work Laptop: Dell Precision 5550 with Ubuntu 22.04.
- ๐ฑ Phone: OnePlusOne 10 Pro.
- ๐ง๏ธ Audio: Sony WH-1000XM4 Midgnight Blue + KLIM Nomad CD Player.
- โ๏ธ Coffee: Breville Barista Express. I drink my coffee mostly black and mostly espresso.
- ๐ฑ๏ธ Mouse??? Fuck the mouse, I'm a keyboard user.
- โจ๏ธ Mechanical keyboard: Mechanical ? No thanks. I don't need fancy keyboard yet, as long as my current keyboard is not noisy. And I don't play computer games, any keyboard is well.
- ๐ฎ Gaming/Entertainment: Nintendo Switch Lite.
Food & drinks
- ๐บ Beer taprooms/breweries: Cantillon, La Source, La Mule, L'Ermitage, L'Amรจre ร Boire, Brussels Beer Project - Port sud, Atrium, Illegaal.
- โ๏ธ Coffee beans: I like coffee beans from Wide Awake Coffee, and Cafรฉs Windara.
- โ๏ธ Coffee drinks: mostly espresso and flat white.
- ๐ Baraques ร frites / find the best belgian fries
- Au ptit creux Ghislenghien - Chaussรฉe de Bruxelles 387, Ghislenghien, Belgium.
- Friterie Barriรจre de Saint Gilles - 5, avenue du Parc โ 1060 saint-Gilles, Belgium.
- Bourse - Friterie Patatak - Rue de la Bourse 34, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium.
- Fernand Obb - Rue de Tamines 27, 1060 Saint-Gilles, Belgium.
- Fritapapa Montigny-Le-Tilleul - Rue de Gozรฉe 640, 6110 Montigny-le-Tilleul, Belgium.
- ๐ฏ๏ธ
Fetafrite - Place Roger Desaise, 6032 Mont-sur-Marchienne (Charleroi), Belgium.
Unfortunately the place burned down in December 2024 ๐ฅ. - Chapeau Blanc - Rue Wayez 200, 1070 Anderlecht, Belgium.
- Friterie Chez Stelio - Sq. des Vรฉtรฉrans Coloniaux, Anderlecht, Bruxelles, Belgium.
- ... I have yet to test Joe La Frite in Brussels Centrum, and a few others.
Further
- I recommend visiting https://usesthis.com/ it's like /uses but in the form of interviews.