
Ask HN: Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately? - rokhayakebe
I found that sometimes the little tiny changes have the biggest improvement in your work or life. For example yesterday I installed "Tab Mix" which forces FF to open external links in a new tab and take you there. +3 for me.<p>What tiny tools, hacks, changes do you know off that improved your work or life significantly?
======
kirubakaran
Every time I learn something about Emacs or incorporate someone's nifty elisp
code, it pays off and keeps paying.

Latest:

    
    
      ; CSS color values colored by themselves
      ; http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_html.html
      
      (defvar hexcolour-keywords
        '(("#[abcdef[:digit:]]\\{6\\}"
           (0 (put-text-property
               (match-beginning 0)
               (match-end 0)
               'face (list :background 
                           (match-string-no-properties 0)))))))
      
      (defun hexcolour-add-to-font-lock ()
        (font-lock-add-keywords nil hexcolour-keywords))
      
      (add-hook 'css-mode-hook 'hexcolour-add-to-font-lock)

~~~
jacquesm
Until you pick one that has the background colour by accident!

Be weird to see that floating semicolon in there.

~~~
kirubakaran
The #rrggbb text is still displayed with normal text color. So it will never
look like a floating semicolon. Try it. It is not even a problem when #rrggbb
color is same as the foreground, as I have (global-hl-line-mode 1)

------
maxklein
1\. Setting all the Step-Over and Step-Into shortcut keys to be the same in
eclipse, Xcode as well as the Visual Studios

2\. Going through my life-todo list and just getting rid of a lot of stuff
that I am not going to ever do

3\. Deciding that instead of the vague 3-4 foreign languages I wanted to learn
in my life, I will just pick one and stick with it

4\. Generally cleaning out the past - getting rid of peoples numbers I will
never call, throwing away all old bank statements etc

5\. Having a series of pictures of the concepts and figures that motivate me
directly above my desk. In case you are curious they are all from movies (I
have Mr. Glass, the Lina Leandersson Eli, Wei Tang as Wong Chia Chi, Omar
Little, Alfie)

6\. Using TheLastRipper with Winamp to play my songs, such that I discover new
songs, but get to save those I like

7\. Using XMarks

8\. Synchronising my work across both of my computers (laptop, desktop) using
Dropbox

9\. Being sure to read every single night before I go to bed

------
john7
Having someone else do my laundry for about a dollar a pound. No more buying
detergent, waiting around, having to find change if you don't have your own
washer/dryer, loading/unloading, folding, etc.

~~~
tome
I wish this kind of service was available in the UK. It doesn't seem to be a
popular thing to offer, at least not in my town.

~~~
yangyang
Service wash at a laundrette. They're still reasonably commonplace I think.

------
bgray
Exercise. Seriously, it keeps you healthy, gives time to think (away from a
computer) and keeps your mind fresh.

~~~
labria
I recently started running, it's awesome!

~~~
cakesy
Running is rubbish, slow and boring, and you never get anywhere exciting. Try
cycling, you can actually go places, have a great time, and see a lot of the
world around you.

Running if for people to cheap to buy a bike:)

~~~
jrockway
I agree, although the way you make your argument makes you sound like a
fanboi.

The advantage of cycling is that you get tired/bored when you are 30 miles
away from your house. When I run, I get bored after a block, and can just walk
home :)

------
visitor4rmindia
Screen: started using it because of this thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848821>

Now I really cannot imagine working without it. The ability to detach and re-
attach to named sessions is fan-tas-tic. Add the ability to run multiple named
processes within each session and it makes working on multiple tasks during
the day really pleasant. You can switch tasks and simply drop right back to
the exact point you were working on whenever you continue.

------
saurabh
In gVim

au WinLeave * set nocursorline nocursorcolumn

au WinEnter * set cursorline cursorcolumn

Everything <http://www.voidtools.com/> for searching files fast in Windows (
it makes use of the USN journal so doesn't need reindexing)

Reinteract <http://www.reinteract.org/trac/> for hacking Python code. It can
re-evaluate from where you made changes, so it doesn't run the whole program,
just from where you changed something, I wish I could do something like this
with IPython.

Xrefresh XRefresh can refresh browser as you modify source files
<http://code.google.com/p/xrefresh/>

SharpKeys for remapping caps-lock to esc.
<http://www.randyrants.com/sharpkeys/>

oh and do watch these in succession to feel better.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_every...](http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/john_lloyd_inventories_the_invisibl...](http://www.ted.com/talks/john_lloyd_inventories_the_invisible.html)

<http://www.whatthebleep.com/>

------
dryicerx
Keeping a notepad by me at all times (I use a pencil sketch pad). Great for
jotting down ideas, scratch area, doodle, design, plan. End of day, I quickly
write down what I want to get done the next day. Productivity++

~~~
safetytrick
I use graph paper, I can't concentrate without something to write on.

------
davidcuddeback
QuickSilver (<http://www.blacktree.com/>) -- Lets you do just about anything
by just typing it on a Mac. For example, to email a document to a friend, I
start typing the name of the document. It shows up, so I hit tab and type
"email", hit tab, and type my friend's name and hit enter. That composes an
email with the attachment and all I have to do is hit send.

~~~
ahlatimer
I also use Quicksilver pretty extensively. It drives me nuts whenever I work
on another person's Mac, hit cmd-space and spotlight pops up.

Growl is also a pretty cool thing to have if you're on a Mac.

------
yummyfajitas
Eproject (for emacs). Basically, lets me do things like "find file in current
project" or "switch to buffer in current project".

<http://github.com/jrockway/eproject/>

Projects are found automatically by searching parent directories for _darcs or
.hg. (This requires some additional configuration to make it work with
anything.el, email me if interested, can't post since I'm not at my home
computer right now.)

~~~
jrockway
You should add any insight to the eproject wiki:

<http://wiki.github.com/jrockway/eproject>

Glad you enjoy using it :)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Done.

------
bbhacker
Water...all I can say is water....

While I knew that drinking more than 1-2 glasses of water is good, I never
thought that the impact of drinking 1-2 liters of water a day could have such
an significant impact on my ability to concentrate and focus on programming.

My suggestion: drink at least 1-2 liters of water without bubbles (or gas) and
try to work on a mentally challenging task. And if you are stuck, drink half a
liter more.

~~~
covercash
Is there any particular reason you say without bubbles/gas? I'm a big fan of
Pellegrino but I can easily switch to water with a slice of lemon if it is
beneficial.

~~~
m_eiman
The bubbly stuff is supposedly bad for your teeth if you drink too much of it.

Googled a bit and found this collection of links to articles about possible
effects: <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=1006>

------
polvi
Setup git bash completion + put the branch name in your PS1 (previously
mentioned on HN).

[http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/archives/2008/02/git_bash_...](http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/archives/2008/02/git_bash_comple.html)

~~~
jpcx01
If you're on OSX, this one will work for you.
[http://blog.ericgoodwin.com/2008/4/10/auto-completion-
with-g...](http://blog.ericgoodwin.com/2008/4/10/auto-completion-with-git)

------
spudlyo
Recently I've been having to do a lot of editing inside a Firefox text widget
in order to update some Wiki documentation. The stupid mediawiki editor
rebinds a lot of my emacs keys, which makes it really hard to for me to edit.
I found this great firefox plugin called "It's all Text" that puts a little
edit button at the bottom of every multi-line text input field in your
browser. This button can be configured to shell out to Aquaemacs so I can do
extensive edits there, and when I save it updates the browser's edit box. It's
really made wiki editing a lot easier for me.

------
yangyang
org-mode for Emacs (<http://orgmode.org>).

It's made a big difference to my life. I've finally got a reliable place to
keep notes, a good way to schedule stuff, nice todo lists, a quick way of
publishing stuff to HTML / PDF, all accessible (and customisable) in a highly
efficient way from Emacs.

------
gcv
After years of using Emacs, I only just discovered that incremental search
works within the ordinary find-file (C-x C-f) function. Try it: C-x C-f, then
C-r, and search for a piece of a filename you opened in the recent past. Try
C-M-r, and it works with regexes, too.

~~~
DavidSJ
I think you mean M-R to search previous input. This works for just about any
interactive input.

~~~
gcv
No, I mean reverse incremental search. M-r doesn't show matches as you type
(at least not with Emacs 23 and my setup), but C-r does.

------
mchadwick
<http://ditz.rubyforge.org/>

A self-contained issue tracker. I switched from hand-hacked TODO lists to Ditz
a few weeks ago, and haven't looked back. I'm able to organize my tasks as I
would a codebase (components, releases, comments, et cetera). I saw an
immediate and sustained increase in my productivity.

Its tight integration with git is a huge plus.

------
Aiox
<http://www.autohotkey.com/> This is a great tool. You can easily configure
short cut keys to do every day stuff, which would need several steps.

------
yannis
(01) Pixel ruler has been with me for a couple of years
<http://www.mioplanet.com/products/pixelruler/index.htm>

(02) Reverse image search, good if you sitting with a hardisk full of images
and want to use some on your blog

[http://tineye.com/search/1c6e572120c79bf875264447d3f08eb9fbe...](http://tineye.com/search/1c6e572120c79bf875264447d3f08eb9fbe86bec)

(03) Answering emails on odd days of the month. Opening my mail 3 days after
payday.

------
RK
Obviously they get a lot of love here, but I'll list them again:

Dropbox

I find I am majorly neglecting by USB thumb drive. And sharing files with
random people is much easier now.

------
saurabh
<http://stereopsis.com/flux/>

"it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm
at night and like sunlight during the day."

~~~
mcantor
Is this just a neat toy, or does it really help you sleep, concentrate &
prevent eye strain? Anyone else here use it? Does it use brightness values
that you'd expect, or is it sometimes too bright when it ought to be dim, or
vice-versa?

~~~
goodside
The brightness values are nowhere near extreme enough, and they're not
adjustable beyond a few presets. The intent, which it does okay, is making
your computer match the color tone of whatever your indoor lighting is, which
makes the display more red than it makes it dark. But what you really _want_
it to do is make the display dark enough that it won't keep you artificially
awake late at night when the monitor is the only light source. On the Mac, the
best tool I've found for that is Shades
(<http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades>) which unfortunately doesn't have a
timer. But binding to alt-space or whatever is pretty much just as good.

As a side note, the effect that monitors and other bright lights have on
preventing sleep is the suppression of enzymes in the pineal gland that
convert serotonin into melatonin about an hour before bedtime. There's a
deletion mutation in the genes that code for one of these enzymes (ASMT)
that's very common in autistics and relatives of autistics (which is a non-
trivial subset of hackers/coders/geeks), so you might not be benefitting from
the darkness anyway. You can solve the problem more directly and reliably by
just taking melatonin supplements.

~~~
ahlatimer
Not to discredit shades, but I just tried it and it was giving me this
annoying brightness flicker. I'd imagine it has something to do with my extra
display, but without that display, what's the point? It's trivial to adjust
the brightness on my MBP with the F1 and F2 keys.

I do end up adjusting the brightness of my displays as the night goes on, but
I do it using a couple presets on my display.

~~~
goodside
I'm running Shades with two monitors without any problems. Did you have fl.ux
running at the same time? If so, that'll mess it up.

------
kvs
* Exercise

* One day without computer (mediafast) (thinking time)

* iPhone/Simplenote/Things

* Snow Leopard/Quick Silver/Things/Dropbox

* Friends & Family

* Absence of scheduled TV (no cable or disc) Hulu instead

------
jtuyen
If you're a Linux user, try out tasque + gnome-do w/ tasque plugin + remember
the milk screenlet. This is how I manage to sync all my GTD throughout my
computers and laptop on the go.

Klok time management software. I like know how much time I'm spending on each
project/task. This can be sync'd between machines using rsync but with a small
catch. Hopefully they can get some real syncing features built in. And yes, I
know it's a memory hog but I like the layout.

Oh and powerresizer for Windows, great tool to have if you have to manage
window sizing on 1 screen.

------
ashwinl
Spamgourmet.com I've been using it for years to register and try out new
services (online and offline) that require an email address. I'm surprised why
it hasn't gained more traction.

~~~
rms
I use nameofsite@mydomain.com. It lets you turn off an email address if you
want and you can also track the source of spam.

~~~
ashwinl
I can see your way working well. I use nameofsite.X.myusername@spamgourmet.com
where X is the number of emails you want to receive from the service. Also, I
like that I can filter all @spamgourmet.com incoming mail in gmail for easy
organization of my online accounts

------
pizza
Working with special-needs kids with soccer every Saturday.

~~~
mahmud
So, do you consider kids "little things" or "tools"?

Such a utilitarian view of children.

~~~
pizza
No.

Actually, most of them are dealing with their Autism or Down syndrome.

~~~
mahmud
That was an attempt at humor, given the title of this thread:

 _Ask HN: Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?_

------
codedivine
Food processor and a multifunction rice cooker and steamer. No more burger
king :)

------
pasbesoin
Windows environment:

Ditto clipboard manager/history. This helps both in avoiding context changes
(alt-tabbing back and forth, etc.) and in retrieving older items. Quite
configurable.

Winsplit Revolution window size/position manager. Put windows where you want
them with a single chord. Quickly get windows e.g. side by side, without
having to mouse around.

ToDoList list/project management. Hierarchical lists with priorities and many
other identifiers, as well as full text comments. Gets items and relationships
down quickly and without a lot of kerfuffle.

Paper and pen environment:

Original notes in black ink or pencil. Post meeting / follow up notes (e.g.
fleshing out what was originally noted more briefly) in blue ink. Items of
particular concern in red ink or marked up with red ink. Occasional, judicious
application of a highlight marker.

A digital camera to quickly capture or to provide a quick copy of items of
particular interest, written, printed, or otherwise (great for capturing the
state of a whiteboard).

~~~
pasbesoin
I should add that the ink colors I described work equally well as text colors
in electronic documents.

In particular, I'll take/make notes in a layered, bulleted list / outline
format. This lends itself to quickly noting items together with at least some
structure, while avoiding the superfluous words needed to tie things together
in a less structured format. Original notes in black. When I get some time to
myself, I flesh things out in blue. Items of particular note in red.

It's very helpful to have shortcut keys for changing indent. There's no need
to keep reaching for the mouse to execute those changes.

------
dkokelley
Not trying to take all of my school notes on my tablet. There's an extra layer
of complexity/distraction that hurts my ability to learn.

De-consolidating my email accounts. Instead of using Gmail to access all of my
accounts, I keep them each separate. It makes categorizing my emails much
easier. Wonderful on my iPhone.

------
icey
Totally unsexy, but a notebook that has gridlines instead of regular ruling
and a pile of pens (some people _really_ hate them, but I love Pilot G7 pens).

Having grids makes it really easy to flesh something out on paper, take notes,
etc. and you are forced to pay attention to things in sequential order.

------
ScottWhigham
Fences - it's a Windows desktop tool that I installed about a week ago and
it's made my desktop much better. Right now it is free - Nov 1, I think, it
goes to pay but I don't know how much.

<http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/>

------
rabidgnat
If you're writing software as DLLs, the venerable Depends.exe is critical:

<http://www.dependencywalker.com/>

If there was something that made debugging linking errors this easy, then C++
development would be a snap... kind of...

------
gruseom
I bound Super to the Fn key on my Macbook in Emacs.

~~~
weaksauce
What method did you use to do that?

~~~
gruseom
It turns out to be as simple as:

    
    
      (setq mac-function-modifier 'super)
    

I discovered this after spending an embarrassingly long time failing to figure
out how to bind Capslock to Super instead. I thought that would be relatively
straightforward given how often people talk about rebinding Capslock, but I
couldn't figure out how to do it (from Emacs anyway).

------
rguzman
Keeping short ToDo lists for every project (not necessarily software) that I
do which contain only the next 5-8 things to do next. Writing down a little
note along with the todo to help me restore state next time i work on the
project.

~~~
cmelbye
I've started doing that also. I'm using 37signals Tada List which has a nice
iPhone web app for managing lists on the go.

------
dwynings
Things for Mac OS X and the iPhone.

I'd never really kept up with a to-do list before (I usually just used a piece
of paper at my desk), but I'm able to do more things now because I want to get
rid of the red reminder icon.

------
nfnaaron
<http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/> multiple putty sessions in one tabbed
application.

Related, get cygwin ssh server running on your windows box (and set it up to
disallow password login, only keys). If you use putty then you'll like being
able to use putty for shell access to your own machine. You'll also like putty
to your own machine as just another tab in putty connection manager above.
Your option whether to allow connections from outside your machine.

Setting grub to prefer linux over windows on a dual boot machine. :)

------
jackchristopher
It seemed more productive to smash my hands with a hammer than to Twitter. But
I like the connections (and conversation) I'm making.

When I tried using it for news, I got bogged into the day to day hysteria.

------
extension
I remapped my keyboard to avoid some common wrist-wrenching motions. I bound
Shift-space to _ (underscore). I also changed the backslash/pipe key into a
modifier key called Woot, then bound Woot-[ and Woot-] to ( and )
respectively, Woot-- (minus) to * (asterisk), Woot-0 to & (ampersand), Woot-;
to | and Woot-/ to \\. I also used Woot to add some greek letters like lambda,
just for fun. It took a bit of getting used to but was well worth it.

------
greyman
1\. Evernote, the best notetaking software I know of - it starts to serve me
as an universal "external memory". The most undervalued software in 2009.

2\. Live Mesh - something similar to dropbox, for syncing files between
computers, while also provides online backup for up to 5GB of data

3\. Executor - application launcher for Windows, combines best stuff from
Launchy and AutoHotKey. You can quickly start app by starting to write it's
name or by assigned hotkey.

~~~
visitor4rmindia
I second Evernote :-) The free version is good enough but I felt it was worth
shelling out the $45 for the premium upgrade.

~~~
greyman
Yes, the premium is much better, if nothing else, just being able to store any
file type is worth that money, IMHO.

------
bwr
rlwrap to fix the awful command line interface of sqlplus.

~~~
yangyang
I used to to use yasql as a sqlplus replacement, it was pretty basic but much
better.

------
mcantor
PowerPro (<http://powerpro.webeddie.com/>) and ClipX Clipboard Manager
(<http://bluemars.org/clipx/>), hands down. I've even donated to the fella who
developed ClipX. The regex-based automatic navigation feature in ClipX is
worth the price of admission.

------
jseliger
I'm now using a Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which is awesome in ways I didn't
appreciate till I tried it; see more here:
<http://jseliger.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage> .

DevonThink Pro is a tremendously useful program that I didn't appreciate till
I began organizing bits of my life around it.

------
Dilpil
Windows Key + D = minimize everything. Most of you probably know this, but for
the few that do not... you are welcome.

~~~
mhansen
On Windows 7: Windows+1, Windows+2 ... Windows+0, bring to the foreground any
of the first the first ten items in your taskbar.

------
imperator
Scheduling my day the night before in Google Calendar. And then when I don't
meet the schedule, I alter it so that the schedule then becomes a journal.

It offers amazing perspective and turns vague concepts like when I got to
sleep, and when I actually played video games into solid temporal events.

------
neovive
Signing up for a third-party hosted Subversion account. The prices are so low
these days, there's no need to manage the SVN server on your own. I tend to
use SVN more now that I don't have to worry about managing it.

The sharing features of Google Docs has also been a big time saver.

------
sidmitra
i'm on Win XP so:

1\. PomoTime: One of the new things i'm into for productivity based on
Pomodoro technique Although i don't follow it religiously, but i still get
manage to get a lot more done than before.

2\. Microsoft OneNote: i jot down almost everything and anything there before
it slips my mind.

I am fan of lightweight apps:

3\. VirtuaWin: lightweight multiple desktops

4\. Q-dir: file mgr

5\. Console: instead of cmd.exe

6\. Locate32: i dont use content indexing stuff like Google desktop yet. I
find them too heavy and also, i already have everything arranged in folders
with relevant names. So searching by name is instant with this.

7\. TeamViewer: a free app to share desktop. It found it a little bit
easier/better/faster/lighter than VNC, DimDim.

8\. Miranda: for twitter/irc/gtalk/yahoo

9\. Most importantly, Executor: moved from launchy a while back.

~~~
saurabh
I highly recommend

MinTTY for Cygwin instead of Console2 for cmd.exe Everything instead of
Locate32.

~~~
sidmitra
I can't do multiple tabs inside one window. The mess on the taskbar really
hurts my eyes :-)

------
cpg
Using Putty (Windows) or iTerm (OS X) in full screen. Or use Visor in OS X
<http://visor.binaryage.com/>.

This allows distractions from other stuff to vanish for a while.

Also, I don't check the email as often ... productivity^2

~~~
ahlatimer
Visor has helped me a bit. It drives one of my coworkers nuts whenever he
tries to work with me on my computer, though. He keeps searching for the
terminal window that has the Mongrel instance without knowing that it's in
Visor.

------
barredo
I'll say 1Password and The Hit List (both OSX software). They are totally
worth the money.

~~~
bombs
I've been using Wallet (<http://www.acrylicapps.com/wallet/>) on my Mac and
iPhone instead of 1Password.

It might be a little less featured than 1Password, but it's also half the cost
on the Mac and AU$1 cheaper on the iPhone.

------
10ren
vim: Recursively load all java files (i.e. in all subdirectories):

    
    
      :args **/*.java
    

Refactor a package name throughout the project ("e" suppresses the "No match"
error message):

    
    
      :argdo %s/oldpackage/newpackage/e

------
brianobush
Read HN a little less often - serious here. I am trying to read news (I feel
like I am addict sometimes) a little less these days. Productivity gains are
obvious and my time is sliced up less.

------
catch404
Started using backpack from 37signals and have found myself using it all the
time - now a very important part of my workflow. Granted it has many downsides
but for now its working great!

------
dunham
In Safari, Cmd-1, Cmd-2, etc. activate the first, second, etc. bookmarks in
your toolbar. Great for things like readability. (e.g. Cmd-1 to make the
current page readable.)

------
surki
Wanderlust (Emacs Email client).

I use it with gmail imap interface. Completely changed the way I manage
emails.

<http://www.gohome.org/wl/>

------
bgnm2000
BOXING! I haven't gotten in the ring yet, but its an amazing workout on top of
my usual regiment (granted, I'm an exercise junkie).

------
bearwithclaws
1\. Switch from PHP to Ruby (on rails). 2\. Switch from Windows to OS X. 3\.
Meditates.

------
MikeCapone
Quicksilver on OS X.

I know it's far from obscure, but if you still haven't tried it, it's worth
it.

------
Clemens
PhraseExpress. It is a clipboard manager and text inserter (like Autotext).

------
10ren
Taking two days off per week, one for rest; one for self-development.

~~~
coliveira
I call this weekend.

------
prawn
StrokeIt - mouse gestures in WinXP.

------
sid0
I've started using AutoHotKey recently, and it's a wonderful little tool to
automate things.

Also, this great file search tool called Everything. Basically like locate on
*nix, except it uses NTFS tables directly to search (it indexed the names of
the ~600k files on my laptop in less than a minute, and searches through them
instantly).

------
zackattack
TextMate~

esc for function name autocomplete //todo: comments in the source appear when
you hit ctrl-shift-t cmd-shift-t search by method name cmd-shift-f search for
phrase within entire project ftp+ssh bundle

