One of the most interesting articles or posts to read is what other people use, for things like traveling and computing.

I’m an impressionable sucker; reading about interesting people’s recommendations will sway me.

Here, be swayed.

Computers

Codes

  • I prefer the front of the front-end. Modern HTML, CSS, and JS. I often use React. My code is accessibility and performance minded. Read more about what I know and don’t know as a developer
  • Frameworks or libraries are useful if default languages don’t provide enough. It’s usually difficult to avoid using React/Vue/Svelte or WordPress/Drupal if you want to create a custom site. However, I often enjoy the challenge of native web languages without overhead.
  • A modern front-end design layout starts CSS Variables and a grid, like CSS Grid and Flexbox, with SVGs, and your preferred server-side rendering language with client-side JS. I aim to paint the browser viewport in ~3 seconds.
  • I use Visual Studio Code (now a tracking-free version of it called VSCodium) since summer 2017, but I initially could not find the right combination of extensions or shortcuts to beat Sublime Text as a code editor. However, because of momentum, I now usually start with VSCodium.
  • Sublime Text 4 – This editor is solid, with a recent push to modernize since 2021. I often use it for older projects. Because it’s so fast, it’s an easy one to grab for a one off. These are my settings and packages.
  • WordPress is my jam.
    Roots is my reference WordPress dev environment.
    And I’ll get a little down and dirty with WooCommerce.
  • I forked the Sage theme into Sage Starter as a static project starter, which requires Node.js, NPM, Gulp, and Bower. You’ll see many of my favorite NPM plugins such as BrowserSync and Autoprefixer.
  • I learned to write HTML, CSS, and JS on my own since 1997, assisted by A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, CSS Tricks, Codepen, Wes Bos, javascript.info, udemy.com, codecademy.com, ui.dev, and Dmitry Soshnikov among many others

Browsers

Firefox and Brave (with some complications since). I open up Safari as needed. I play with Brave Nightly and Firefox Dev Edition. Tor Browser for privacy. Chrome is dead to me.

For the best experience with Firefox, I am a relatively new fan of Arkenfox’s user.js recommendations. Specifically, the extensions recommendations.

Etcs

  • Read privacyguides.org. Ask me questions if anything confuses you.
  • Stop using Google as your primary search engine. Use DuckDuckGo. Bang your way to Startpage.com or Google when necessary.
  • Mullvad – Virtual Private Networks are necessary. Mullvad is the best and easiest VPN I’ve used and released as open source software. Payment is in Euro instead of Dollars. I use VPNs on most devices at most times.
  • Wireguard is the best VPN client out there, better and lighter than OpenVPN.
  • I installed Pi-Hole on a RaspberryPi to help with blocking bad URLs. I even route all my network traffic through Pi-Hole and into Mullvad via Wireguard. It’s complicated so I’m writing up how to do it.
  • All media edited with Affinity Photo, Figma, Aurora HDR, or Luminar. I left Photoshop and Lightroom behind in 2020.
  • I try to use Open Source Software when possible.
    • I’ve been faithful to VLC for more than a decade. It just works.
    • LibreOffice is free and open source, covers most things that Office is, but is slower. Still a good back up.
  • belong.io is a Twitter scrape of popular links. Liberal biased, still interesting
  • memeorandum.com and thehill.com for news, left and right
  • Less social media, more indieweb.org. It’s time.

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