tag · Tools
21 piecesa thing to make another thing
In 1773 James Boswell wrote down a definition of a human being: an animal that makes “a thing, by means of which he can make another …
how to audit an argument you didn't make
Nine steps, all in a public repo, that let anyone check a math fight without trusting either side.
Recall
A spec for the smallest useful tool in a trade where the entire lifetime value of a customer is one well-timed text message.
paint is a physics engine
Wiremod and Dreams both work, and almost nobody is fluent in both. That split is not a fact about people.
we gave it a shell
Entry ten of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. It closes the series. Each one stands alone. The first thing anyone …
the multi-organization problem
A person belongs to many organizations at once. Every tool assumes one, every method assumes a task.
the room that forgot what it was for
Forty years of research built a place for each context and a memory of what it was for. Only the place shipped.
a root to stand on
Every multi-organization tool ships a switcher, not a root. So I built the root Paperclip shipped without.
no process control block
The phrase is borrowed. “Context switch” comes from the operating system, where it names the moment the CPU stops running one process and …
name it after the paper
A tickler file is office furniture. An accordion of folders — thirty-one for the days of the month, twelve for the months of the year — and the only …
the unremade
The remake business is the cleanest natural experiment games have ever run. Almost nobody reads the results.
you can't paste a gesture into a bug report
Entry nine of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. The terminal produces a transcript. The GUI …
one character, one night
Entry five of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. The pipe is the most consequential character …
the layer with no name
There is a layer between your shell and your terminal, and the protocols have no words for it.
forty terminals
The terminal is fine. The problem is the fortieth one — and no protocol can name the layer that would fix it.
eighty columns
Entry three of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. Nearly every arbitrary-looking thing about …
the inverse of the hammer
Entry one of ten in “the end of the wire,” a series on the terminal. Each one stands alone. Maslow’s law says a tool shapes what you …
Chessbrief
Reads every game you have ever played on Chess.com and tells you the true things in order of how well the evidence supports them.
Tickler
A plugin for Paperclip that puts every organization you run on one page, with a single queue of what needs you, sorted by when you have to decide.
zsh_custom
A shell suite that makes moving between sixty-nine projects cost one keystroke — and makes coming back after a reboot cost nothing at all.
mattermost rocks; a self-hosted web-based chat.
Mattermost is a self-hosted, fully-developed #slack alternative. Own your data, and don’t be locked in to a vendor. It’s real-time, and …