Apps I’d have a hard time being without
The list
- Evernote
- MacVim (via Homebrew)
- 1Password
- TeuxDeux.com
- Chrome/Firefox
- Git/Gitx
- TextExpander
- Dropbox
- Alfred
- Parallels
- Time Machine
- CrashPlan
- iTerm
- Skitch
If you read my previous post you know why I can’t live without this tool. In case you didn’t, it’s because I use Evernote to track a majority of my day, to the point of being obsessive about it. I use Evernote is the “Google” for my memory. I keep everything in it, and can recall it with a query when I need it.
I started using vim in college, but was no pro at it. I used it primarily for C/C++ development, but used some thick IDEs for my Java and .NET work.
About a year or two ago, while still doing primarily .NET/Javascript/HTML/CSS I decided to do all my coding from MacVim, and then compile/deploy from a VM. What an awesome idea that was for me. I became very proficient in MacVim, and it is so fast compared to launching VS2010, etc. I’ve tried VSVim and VSEmu, but they didn’t compare to pure MacVim in my opinion.
I wouldn’t be able to remember all the complex and different passwords for all my accounts without it. It’s generated some doozy passwords that I’ll never remember, nor will I ever have to.
Again, if you have read my previous post you know that I recently reintroduced myself back to teuxdeux and I don’t think I’m going back to another way of organizing my tasks. The interface is so simplistic, yet powerful. It is another way to clear things out of my mind so I can focus on the task at hand.
I also get a high from moving my tasks between days, and pushing things into the next week. Seeing the week at a glance helps me get a sense for how overloaded I am with work, and gives me permission to push back on new tasks until my backlog is done. Although my “Someday” list is starting to get unruly and neglected.
Chrome/Firefox
My browsers of choice due to their speed and developer tools. That’s it.
Being given the flexibility to create branches, squash commits, and be unruly on my local machine gives me the sense of being a movie-quality hacker. I also get to hide as many of my typos and mistakes as possible before releasing a polished set of commits to the master or staging branch. Pulling in other people’s work and merging seamlessly is pretty great too. It’s not without it’s headaches, but it’s a far-cry from being anywhere near as bad as SVN/Source Safe/TFS.
GitX is my favorite UI for when I need to see commits in a nice tree-view. Otherwise, I’m a command-line addict.
My primary use for TextExpander is to expand “etime” into the current time while in evernote. Just speeds up the process of time-tagging my lines of notes.
“[4:31pm] Started working on bug FUCASHA-194. Pulling latest from master first.”
A nice place to keep a lot of my documents (work or otherwise) so that I’ll never have to worry about losing them to a system malfunction, plus the added bonus of simple-sharing.
I used Quicksilver for a long time before I came across Alfred a few years back. It took only moments before I purchased a full license of the power pack.
Creating custom filters and extensions is very powerful, a simple example is a filter I created for my Parallels VMs. If I need to launch by WinXPIE7 machine, I can just type “para WinXPI” and hit Enter. It’ll complete the rest, and launch that VM with Parallels for me. Handy.
Speaking of Parallels, it has been a delight to use as my primary VM software since 2009.
Time Machine + CrashPlan
CrashPlan is my off-site backup, while Time Machine takes care of quick, local backups. I had a recent HD failure and both of these apps were instrumental in my quick recovery (especially restoring a complete system backup from Time Machine in < 2hrs).
iTerm gets a lot of great updates, and is an awesome terminal app. It has more features than I use, but I feel like I need to sit down and explore the docs some more to get more power out of it.
Snapping screenshots, mocking them up with text and arrows, then sending them to Evernote is a common occurrence for me. Skitch makes it easy and awesome.
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