I’m an old grumpy curmudgeon and I’m set in my ways. I like my computers set up Just So™, and I tend to install the same stuff every time. Here’s a list of the things I usually have handy.

I’ll publish other lists later on for Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, probably).

  • Brew (package manager for macOS) I use this to install all kinds of stuff, like:
    • ffmpeg (transcode video, make .gif files)
    • imagemagick (convert between image formats, make PDFs)
  • Aegisub (subtitle editor)
  • Anaconda-Navigator (Python plus libraries for data science and AIML)
  • Anki (flash cards)
  • Audacity (audio editor)
  • Blackhole (audio loopback driver, handy for audio routing). I install with:
    • brew install blackhole-2ch blackhole-16ch
  • Loopback (paid audio routing tool, route from any source to any destination, very handy!)
  • balenaEtcher (for creating bootable media)
  • BespokeSynth (super fun virtual synthesizer, and it’s open source too!)
  • Blender (2D and 3D animation, modeling, and rendering)
  • Cyberduck (handy app for remote file management via FTP/SFTP/WebDAV/etc…)
  • Mountainduck (paid version of Cyberduck that lets you seamlessly mount all sorts of remote storage, including S3, natively through macOS’s Finder)
  • DCV Client (also called “DCV Viewer”, connect to NICE DCV remote desktop sessions)
  • Disk Inventory X (visualize disk usage stats using a treemap)
  • draw.io (the world’s best diagramming tool!)
  • Firefox (because Firefox has the best plugin marketplace, hands down)
  • Fityk (handy curve fitting software, for when you really want to find a best fit curve)
  • FlashPrint (for my 3D printer)
  • GIMP (photo editor)
  • Google Chrome (world’s most popular browser)
  • Handbrake (world’s best media transcoder)
  • Inkscape (vector graphics editor, great with SVGs)
  • KeePassXC (password manager)
  • OBS (broadcast, screen recording, and an audio routing tool and mixer in a pinch)
  • Obsidian (world’s most awesome note-taking tool)
  • Onyx (for cleaning up mac default settings, twiddling with advanced settings, etc…)
  • PICO-8 (“fantasy” retro gaming console and game editor)
  • Raspberry Pi Imager (for when you need to flash an SD card for use with the Pi)
  • Screenbrush (a great paid tool for drawing on the screen…great when teaching online)
  • Shotcut (open source video editor)
  • Sonic Pi (make music by coding in a Ruby-derived language)
  • UNetbootin (used by some CLI tools to flash USB media)
  • Visual Studio Code (world’s best editor)
  • VLC (world’s best media player)
  • Voxatron (from the creators of PICO-8, a 2.5D game editor)
  • Zoom (for those people who won’t use MS Teams)

China Stuff Link to heading

Not everyone will need or want these tools, but I use them often because I live and work in China:

  • Tencent Meeting (腾讯会议) (if you want to have a meeting with somebody in China, this is the way, but be careful to get the Chinese version, not “VooV meeting”, which doesn’t work in China)
  • Baidu Netdisk (百度网盘)
  • WeChat (微信)
  • QQ (china’s equivalent to “AOL Instant Messenger”…very optional these days, but some folks still use it to exchange large files)