tools

CLI Productivity Tools - FZF & Yank

fzf

Came across an powerful CLI fzf utility. There are plugins for vim, tmux and bash too. If you are a command line junkie like I am, you should definitely not miss this.

yank

do check out yank and on mac with

brew install yank

source: http://brewformulas.org/yank

Now fzf | yank

ps -ef | fzf | yank

copy the selected output from fzf and copy it into clipboard. There are lots of other options. The demo is just the book cover.


Data Visualization Tools

As part of work I was looking at a problem and came across an amazing set of Data Visualization tools. You may have seen this Data Visualization Talk from couple of years ago.

Data Visualization by GapMinder is a proper tool for analyzing large sets of data.

This video below is dated (2003), but the tool can be used as-is at gapminder.org/tools

The vision of GapMinder is to fight ignorance with a fact based worldview that everyone can understand

Other Tools

Finding the types of charts


Today I learnt - Image Magick scripts

I was generating logos for Git Notify’s Chrome Extension with the help of GoSpaces Tools. I have got a generic one in a decent sized banner. I had to crop off in the centre.

imagemagick to the rescue. but the args? A simple Google search solved it.

convert input.jpg -gravity center -crop 25x25+0+0 output.jpg

source: Image Magick Forum

Fred Weinhaus has put together lots of Image Magick scripts. One I was looking was to crop in the middle is called squareup.


Look here if you want to generate your own logos


Bye bye Delicious! Yo Pinboard!

Delicious has been one of my favourite and a tool that I have held since 200[78]. The entity has been through several transitions. People have feared and moved out and became in-active. del.icio.us the most famous domain hack around 2008. Yahoo bought it, later sold it and I don’t know what happened later on.

Then, starting around Dec 2015, Delicious started popping up Advertisements. They were like the ads from 2000s where you see amazing animations which sucked. Improvising to it, in March 2016, they decided to move from https to http which blew my mind away (not literally).

Time to evaluate choices

What I really want? (aka The Product Spec)

What I really wanted was a place where I can maintain a public list and query bookmarks by tag for later references.

Both services (Pocket and Pinboard) offer you a way to search through the text itself for the higher versions of the service. You can achieve that with the help of Evernote. Evernote has that capability as well. Google and Chrome Bookmarks sync through devices and follow you, but they lack the UX feel I have been used to(like Delicious). Pocket felt overwhelmingly because of the UI. Its a 2015 UI product, while Pinboard UI continued to stay in the 2010s with the light-weight and simple(way too simple) UI.

I realized that Evernote gives this and way more, but I made the hard choice of keeping Evernote to referencing data from sites instead of actually bookmarking them. Evernote does a lot of things(A LOT).

The DECISION - Pinboard

Pinboard has a yearly $11 pricing for the basic version and been in service more than others. I might move to Pocket later only for the UI, even if it means $45 for the Pro version Also, Pinboard does not bug me with weekly newsletters like Pocket does 😃

Pinboard has the social angle of tagging “for:user” which Delicious killed off just after the Yahoo acquisition(to my knowledge) or after the news Yahoo was buying Delicious. My social circle who were in Delicious immediately reached ZER0.

Follow and suggest me links https://pinboard.in/u:sairam/

The bookmarklet which I can invoke through the keystrokes on chrome helps a lot. yd which invoke the bookmark to open a new window to prompt to add tags.

I am yet to explore notes in Pinboard