I've been trying to shake things up a bit in terms of my go-to tools in my work / computer life. Mainly out of trying to understand what else is out there, but also to see if I can bring back any ideas to the tools I use daily from other places.

Instead of Safari

I have been trying Arc out. I love the sense of style it has. You can paint the darn thing any colour you want and it's just so much fun! Which is an odd thing to praise a browser for, but so much of our software has lost its whimsy in an effort to appeal to as many people as possible. There are some other neat things, too. Like, you can split view multiple tabs directly in the browser. I've found this useful for reading the orange website, and opening comments on posts next to the post itself. The last thing that I will call out, is the tab system. I didn't think I'd dig tabs in the sidebar, but now I don't really notice them. Arc's command palette is so good that I rarely every look to the left to pick a tab, not when I can hit a shortcut and quickly type a few letters. Oh, and you can set tabs to close after a given period of time. I've set my "close tab" timeout to its max, as I generally do close tabs I am no longer actually using and keep things open that I actually go back to.

Instead of LaunchBar

I've been trying out Raycast. I had minimally extended LaunchBar with my own extensions over the last, checks notes, 9 years! Mainly for things like opening certain apps, and creating shortcuts to search carious websites. In all cases, LaunchBar was a wrapper around an AppleScript, so thankfully, these were a cinch to port over to Raycast. So far the other things that Raycast has going for it over LaunchBar are a bunch more builtin extensions (for things like searching screenshots, and window management), as well as being able to do some handy things with numbers and conversions. Also, just before I switch to Raycast, LaunchBar was doing some weird things with its index. It would constantly want to open up a file instead of Apple Music, or take me in to an iCloud directory for an app instead of opening the app itself. I ended up disabling files and folders from the index to rectify this, but that was an annoying bandaid to have to place.

Web frameworks

Ok, this one's a bit of a gimme because I use Rails almost every day at work, but it has been a long time since I have started a new Rails project with all the modern trimmings. I think the last time I did that, was Rails 5? I have to say, Rails has come a long way since then. I still don't love the MVC pattern or ActiveRecord, and Stimulus is still a bit too magical (especially as compared to ViewLoader, Defo or Alpine / HTMX), but my little side project did come together very quickly. Though, now I want to port it to Hanami 2 😉.

Instead of iTerm2

I've been trying Alacritty out. And, well it works really nicely, it doesn't have a million and one options, but so far that's working out well for me! I really only used the theming / font settings anyway, so we'll see how continued use goes and if anything comes up as a deal breaker of a feature.