Software I Use
Finding good software is tough. Just looking something up can get you generally unhelpful results, assuming that you didn't just stumble onto malware.
That's why I'm putting a suite of software that I recommend. All software is what I use personally, on at least a semi-regular basis or what I default to when the need arises.
| Name | Role | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Operating System | You already know what this is. More or less just to say I don't use Linux. |
| YT-DLP | Youtube Downloader | You want to download a Youtube video? THIS IS WHAT YOU USE. NOT ANYTHING ELSE. THIS. If you don't know how to use a command line, it's a great way to learn! |
| VSCodium | IDE | Fork of an industry standard and pretty good for general programming work. Doesn't choke on plugins like its competitors. |
| Neovim | Terminal Text Editor | Modular text editor, nice for light terminal text editing. Starts horribly choking and breaking with too many plugins and can be a pain to debug. |
| mpv | Video Player | Playes videos, and a lot of other things too but mostly videos. Simple to use but also highly extensible and customizable if you need it to be. Slight learning curve maybe? |
| Windows Terminal | Terminal Emulator | Windows ships with a bad terminal emu by default, this one's a lot better. Use a modern version of Powershell along with it. |
| qbittorrent | Torrent Manager | Nice and lightweight. Use it to download torrents. If you don't know what those are, look it up. |
| KeePassXC | Password Manager | Access all of your accounts with a single password. Offline and heavily encrypted to minimize points of failure. |
| SumatraPDF | Book Viewer | Views most types of book files, including PDF, EPUB, DJVU. Regrettably bad at displaying Japanese. |
| Musicbee | Music Player | Just werks. mpv also plays music files but this one's easier to use. |
| Freetube | Youtube Viewer | Avoid Youtube's bullshit and just watch videos. |
| Vimwiki | Personal Wiki | Haven't found a better personal wiki yet. Highly portable series of linked markdown files, easily accessible within neovim. |
| OBS Studio | Recorder/Streamer | Used when I record. I think most people know this one. I don't know of any better alternatives. It's fine. |
| Flashpoint Archive | Web Technology Preservation | Flashpoint preserves stuff that was once hosted on the web, mostly flash titles but also Shockwave and HTML5 stuff. Lots of games! |
| Everything | File searching | Search your ENTIRE COMPUTER easily without bricking your harddrives. |
| Inkscape | Vector Graphics Editor | Make vector graphics, like the ones on the site. Can spruce up your site without you having to worry about scaling. |
| yarr | RSS Feed Reader | See that RSS Feed button on the right side? That's an RSS feed. You can put the link in this and use it to follow the blog. |
| 11ty | Static Site Generator | Useful if you're reusing code over and over again, which everyone does. 11ty is what I'm using right now but Hugo is also pretty good. |
| SASS | CSS Processor | Makes it a lot easier to write CSS, without changing the rules too much like some tools do. Some features were added into CSS itself. |