Software
macOS: Vanilla
Small, unobtrusive and easy to use. That’s a pretty good description for a macOS utility I recently discovered: Vanilla (non-affiliate link).
Simply put, this little gem let’s you hide any or all menu bar icons in macOS, while still keeping them easily accessible behind a small arrow:
When playing around with Royal TSX I needed to mass convert the VMware Clarity .svg files to .png files that I could use as icons in Royal TSX.
After trying a series of different approaches, I ended up with using rsvg-convert from libRSVG. In order to get rsvg-convert installed on my MacBook, I turned to HomeBrew.
Myles Gray asked me how I integrate Pocket with Todoist, after my How I use Todoist post, and the answer is very simple: IFTTT. If-This-Then-That lets you connect services, and create rules (or applets) that trigger based on events in those services, luckily both Todoist and Pocket are supported.
Now, there is a bit of overlap between how I use Pocket and Todoist, but I mainly use Pocket to keep track of links I want to either read later, or use as basis for blog posts.
As I’ve mentioned before, I use Todoist to keep track of my personal to-do list. This is the first to-do manager I’ve been able to stick with, and I’ve been using it daily for well over 2 years now. In that two year period I’ve reorganised it a bit, but for the most part I’ve been able to keep to the main structure I initially created when setting it up the first time.
For those who don’t know, Royal TSX is an awesome Remote Management solution, which supports RDP, VNC, SSH, S/FTP and even ESXi and vCenter. I’ve been using it for years, not just because they offer free licenses for vExperts (and others), but simply because it works really well. Store it’s config file on a synchronized file area (like Dropbox), and boom, your config follows you around from machine to machine, including custom icons. What’s not to like?
Working with the keyboard to move resize, focus and arrange your applications is a great productivity tip. When I changed from Windows to macOS a few years ago, I had a pretty convoluted setup based on Slate for managing keyboard shortcuts, especially for moving applications around, but this has since been simplified by using Spectacle instead of Slate.
Since I set up a public jumphost for my homelab/network, I’ve been looking for an easy way to manage my SSH tunnels. After trying a couple of different managers, I’ve chosen to use Secure Pipes.