The Neat List
This is a list of “Things I find Neat”. Or Cool. Or Awesome. Or novel. Or worth mentioning at the time.
Most of these are productivity or workflow based, or tools. Some of these tools are old hat for people, but if I recently learned of their existence and find them useful, I list them. One day I’ll probably do a writeup about how they integrate in my workflow and/or interoperate with each other - good stuff.
Here’s the list in no particular order (initially). It’s not categorized yet either. Over time, I expect newer apps to approach parity with cronological order. If an item has a corresponding blog post, it’s hyperlinked (most likely blue in color depending on what theme I’m running).
I may or may not provide pricing details, OS compatibility, etc. unless I have it readily available.
Know of a cool app?! Email me and I’ll take a look.
sysz
( Posted: 2021-09-22 )
A neat linux utility for using systemctl interactively via fzf or basically, a fzf terminal UI for systemctl.
Plash
( Posted: 2021-05-01 )
Plash is really neat. It’s very similar to Ubersicht (another handy app). I’m not sure how to categorize it. It’s a utility, but it’s kinda like wallpaper too.
It lets you display a webpage as your wallpaper in macos:
Plash displaying a webpage as deskstop wallpaper
I’ve found most things work, but some javascript may or may not work properly because of the DOM. For example, a scrollable ticker only displays on refresh. It seems to be light on resources (on an M1 Mac, what isn’t?) even when driving a 3840x2860 display.
pyWhat
“Say what one more time!” pyWhat is a neat app that helps identify files, strings, or blobs. It’s a python cli utility:
The neat thing about pyWhat is that the identification signatures are open-source and can be ammended in the repo. Check it out here: https://github.com/bee-san/pyWhat
Note: I’ve contributed to the pyWhat identification database.
KeyboardCleanTool
As the name suggests this tool makes it easy for you to clean your keyboard. It stops all keystrokes until you click to sop it. I rarely reboot or power off my Macbook and sometimes I just randomly want to clean things up. Nothing groundbreaking or novel here, just a super useful tool that does one thing and does it well.
Paletter
xBar (macos)
Glimpse
Glimpse is a tool in python for viewing system status.
yq
It’s jq for YAML.
dyff
Since I mentioned a YAML tool above, I’d be remiss to not mention this handy YAML diff tool. It’s great for Ansible playbooks or Kubernetes Helm charts.
Inxi
Platform: Macos, Linux
Inxi is a system overview utility.
Inxi
binwalk
MicDrop
Yoink
Tot
The Neat List