Tools

My Favorite Software Tools

  • I tended to use ipynb-py-convert to convert between .py and .ipynb (jupiter notebook) files. This is practical when you don't like to use the notebook editor. In my case, I write a python file in emacs. Then, with adding the minor formatting string # %% to delineate the cells, this tool converts the python file to a jupyter notebook file. However, orgmode is so much better that I will not use notebooks any time soon.

Youtube videos

  • uxplay to mirror my ipad so that I can write on my ipad, with an apple pencil, and have the notes shown on my computer screen (which I can then share with google meet for instance)
  • qvidcap for screen capturing. I used cheese before but qvidcap is pre-installed on manjaro.
  • kazam to make youtube movies. Before kazam I tried simplescreenrecorder, but this froze my screen a few times.
  • qvlc (or vlc) to play video. parole is pre-installed on manjaro linux, but it crashes on my machine.
  • Perhaps this is a useful tool for screenrecording: https://obsproject.com/
  • pinta for on screen drawing. However, now I write on my ipad with an apple pen and share the screen of the ipad via uxplay. The apple pen works amazingly well on the ipad; I am very satisfied with this actually. (Earlier I use a wacom device and xournal to write and draw, but I found is very unpractical to only see on the computer screen what I was writing.)

Building this site

I built this site with Nikola, a site generator that I chose for three reasons:

  1. I want to write pages and posts in org format and plain and simple \(\LaTeX\). (I find writing maths in restructured text abhorrant.)
  2. I don't want to use yet another programming language, python suffices for nearly all my goals, and Nikola is written in python.
  3. I want to deploy my site on github pages. With nikola it's super easy to achieve that.