Software

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Summary This page, and the downloadable Expansion Packs, provide a collection of best-in-class software tools (mostly free and/or open source) for an effective toolbox on Windows. At the core of this list are tools that can be combined in various ways to automate most non-quantitative tasks: Perl, Python, Notepad++ and Total Commander both with powerful plugins, Shell scripting (bat scripts), and an AI-augmented browser for ChatGPT generated assistance. For quantitative/algorithmic needs, add The R Statistical Platform, Octave (Matrix Platform), AMPL (Optimization Platform). For embedded systems and sensors, add Arduino/C, RealTerm, TinyCAD, and Forth. For sound and image manipulation, add Audacity and Irfan View.

The first part is a short essay followed by the List with hardware first, then software. Feel free to leave your recommendations in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

1. Using your computer as a force-multiplier to provide ‘solutionizing’ capabilities

(4th ed. Jan 2024, 3rd ed. Dec 2019, 2nd ed. Apr 2013, 1st ed. Feb 2010)

“When your vision of what you want to do is what you can do single-handedly, then you should pursue it. The day your vision (what you think needs to be done) is bigger than what you can do single-handedly, then you have to move toward management. The bigger the vision is, the further into management you have to go.” – Richard Hamming, You and Your Research, Talk at Bellcore, 7 Mar 1986, (PDF).

There are two sides to a career building great things. One side is about what you can do yourself, as an army of one. This depends on how extensive is the knowledge you’ve acquired on your journey, how quickly and efficiently you can extend your own capabilities, and how well you can leverage technical skills to deliver high quality results. The other side, no less important, is what you can do with others, at scale. It is about the soft skills which you bring to the table as you collaborate with others. It is about how well you develop and articulate a vision that inspires others to join in tackling challenges. It is about recognizing, attracting, and retaining talent, and creating an environment in which diversity of thought becomes a strength to harness. Both sides are necessary. In today’s high performance hyper-competitive environment, the essential humanity of a team’s approach becomes a key differentiator for those who aspire to build better, more wisely, and more sustainably. While the age of AI will be on the one hand a great leveller for many, it will also be an accelerator for the few who take the opportunity. As with all technology, the requisite curiosity, mental agility, and integrity of purpose will still need to come from you.

When you rely on yourself, your computer, kitted out with best-in-class tools below (many free and open source), has the potential to become your greatest force-multiplier, extending your capabilities and increasing capacity through efficiency and automation (higher output to input ratio).¹ Once the problem to be solved is clear, you will typically have three choices: (1) find an existing off-the-shelf package and see whether it works the way you need it to (if it’s well-designed, it may have customization options or the ability to extend its functionality through plugins through an API), (2) write a customized shell script or simple Perl/Python script in which you chain together a series of simple pre-existing modules into a processing pipeline, the output of one step becoming the input of the next, or (3) you could program the required functionality yourself. The last two options are not as hard as often imagined. Option 2 requires skill at ‘software joinery’. Option 3 requires software development skill. All three options require curiousity, the willingness to experiment, and tenacity. Handy tools for ‘software joinery’ are Perl, Python, Ruby, Forth, R (Statistics), Shell scripts. Since October 2023, ChatGPT and other Large Language Models make it easier to engage in Options 2 & 3 (see the ChatGPT section below).²

With software tools that you control yourself, you can become your own R&D army of one. Besides the feeling of liberation this brings, you’ll likely find that your increased abilities also increase your creativity when considering problems and their solutions.³

Recommended approach: master a ‘minimal spanning set’ of tools that can work well together rather than an assortment of standalone packages. For those who have worked on UNIX/Linux systems, this is the underlying perspective that defines the shell environment. Investing time to master your computing tools is investing in yourself. Start by upgrading your toolset against what you already have/know. Each tool in the list provided should be weighed up based on the extent to which it can boost your productivity and increase the power you can bring to bear to tasks at hand, vs. the investment required in cost and time to ramp up your proficiency. With better tools, you will gain three benefits: 1) increasing your self-reliance to be able to proceed without requiring someone else to have created an off-the-shelf package for you to download and consume. 2) the ability to keep things simple and do more with less (simplicity and frugality are essential for success in bootstrapped/self-driven environments); and 3) the ability, in principle, to conceptualize better solutions to more difficult challenges.

“Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity — it is very much like compound interest.” – Richard Hamming (Applied Mathematician), You and Your Research

2. Computing Platforms: Laptop, OS, Smartphone, Useful Accessories

2.1. Laptop
Windows, Mac, or Linux? In the 2020s, the distinction matters less than it used to in the 90s and 2000s. Hardware capabilities are converging, and software converters, emulators, and virtualization has made it easier to bridge between the different platforms. What is most important is familiarity. If you are already familiar with Windows, stick with it while you strengthen your abilities in whichever direction best fits your goals. The below focuses on Windows.

In the Windows world, PCs fall into roughly 3 disjoint classes by cost: the budget category (sub £500, Pentium, Celeron, Intel i3 series), the medium category (£600-£800, Intel i5 series), and the performance category (£900+, Intel i7). Don’t bother with the budget end as despite the temptation, you will regret it in the long-run: usually the WiFi chip is weak, the peripherals are limited and substandard, RAM memory is constrained so that the OS is already using more than 90% of it, and the camera and microphone are low quality, not worth it in this heavy remote working new world.

In the medium category, you can get a lot for your money as there are almost always some standout examples of premium laptops seeking to gain market share by pricing into the medium category. Example from 2024: Asus Vivobook S15 OLED 15.6″ screen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel Core i5, List £750, Deal £590.⁴ And equally there are mid-range laptops pricing in the budget range. Example from 2024: Acer Aspire 3 16GB Intel Core i5, 512GB SSD, 15.6″ screen, List £590, Deal £400. Both laptops have plenty of RAM at 16GB RAM, strong/stable WiFi modules, and a big enough screen to be able to work comfortably without a second monitor.
WiFi connectivity – WiFi 6 (802.11ax) or better, gets you to 2019 or better wifi technology vs. WiFi 5 or AC WiFi (802.11ac, 2013) that is now more than 10 years old.
On a budget? Don’t compromise on RAM memory (16GB is plenty for standard usage in 2024, 8GB may be ok, 4GB too little for Windows). Don’t compromise on WiFi (WiFi6 or 6E should ensure strong connectivity and range). Processor: Intel i5 or equivalent is fine for standard usage (i3 your mileage may vary – if you go with a slower processor, get more RAM). Where you can compromise: For standard use, SSD can go low 128GB is plenty and you can always add a TB external drive to store photos and videos. Screensize, for standard use 14″ is fine, 15.6″ is better if you don’t mind a slightly heavier, bigger laptop. Touchscreen, not needed if you primarily use the keyboard and are facile with it. On a budget, the Asus Vivobook 15 8GB RAM, WiFi6, Ryzen-5, 15.6″, £360 laptop is a decent compromise.

Windows 11 vs. older Windows OS’s. Windows 11 is worth the investment. Clean look and feel. Clear usability. Bad ideas from previous versions have been removed and some genuinely useful new features put in. The ones I’ve found particularly valuable: once click screen screen/sensible app tiling. Others are a secured core PC through Trusted Platform Module, running android apps in Win11, running Android apps on your phone through phone link, running Ubuntu on top of Windows through Windows Subsystem for Linux, and multiple virtual desktops. Windows 11 also heralds the arrival of generative AI on the desktop with Microsoft Co-Pilot. Downsides: when installing as a new PC, you’ll have to sign into a Microsoft account, but you don’t have to do more than this, i.e. you can decline further cloud integration at each step (Edge integration, Browser synch, phone sync, One Drive, 365 trials, Xbox, Ad personalization). (A peek ahead.)⁵

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This is one way to get the best of both worlds on a Windows machine. It’s easy to install (one command), installs Ubuntu Linux distribution by default (this can be changed). make sure you have a computer that has at least 16GB RAM and is running Windows 10 or 11. The choice of Ubuntu (initial release 2004) is a good default as it has a huge installed private, public, and commercial installed user base, is a full featured OS including support for embedded systems and cloud computing with OpenStack, and has a stable foundation (Canonical) to ensure continuity of releases, support etc.

2.2 SmartPhone
Two primary choices based on operating system preference⁶: Apple’s iPhone (proprietary) and Google’s Android (open sourced with adoption by a wide array of manufacturers⁷: Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, Honour, more). Effective computing with smartphones is now largely agnostic to OS/manufacturer: the hardware, features, and much of the software have largely converged, and all mid-grade smartphones are essentially adequate when used effectively.⁸

On iPhone: Settings to take care off⁹ | Noteworthy Capabilities ¹⁰

On Android: Noteworthy Capabilities¹¹

2.3 Digital Pencil / Digital Notebook.
This is a worthwhile investment if creating freehand diagrams frequently (sketches, engineering designs, mathematical formulae). Equipment-wise, there are a few choices with varying levels of investment: 1) touchscreen computer or smartphone with stylus (cost of the computer/smartphone), 2) dedicated eNotebook / eTablet, such as Remarkable and Kindle Note (2024 prices c. £380, or on sale £250). Note, I don’t view the iPad or tablets as a functional option. 3) Pen Tablet accessory, such as provided by WACOM” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>WACOM, c.£50 for entry model¹², 4) specialized paper/ink/friction erase pens, with QR codes for capture, such as provided by Rocketbook, c.£20. More details including a discussion of the necessary software in the article Converting to Digital Pencil.

3. Softwares for capability and efficiency

The softwares below extend capability and increase efficiency. Where capability is equal, the preference is for software that is portable followed by software that is free/open source. Where softwares are listed that require a commercial license, there are essential attributes for which I have found no free alternatives offering comparable quality.

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A. Basics: file manager, text editor, desktop search, browser, PDF, content creation/publishing/typesetting, printing, antivirus

1. Total Commander (TC) by Christian Ghisler. Powerful, extensible two-panel file manager with a host of useful plugins, viewers, and tools. Portable, keyboard operable, fully customizable. Nag-free unlicensed use. Lifetime license with perpetual upgrades, 42 EUR. TC is the Swiss Army Knife of computing. It is typically the first software I install to a computer. See the TC article for more detail and for the freely downloadable Total Commander Expansion Pack containing 50+ useful utilities.

2. Notepad++ (NPP) by Don Ho. Programmable, extensible, professional text editor with outstanding built-in features that can be further enhanced by a collection of plugins. Fast, stable, fully open-source. Features include syntax highlighting for a large range of languages, column editing, recordable macros, line-level bookmarks, code folding, cloned views, hotkey mapping, complete automation, tabbed documents, and much more. Plugins with exceptional capability allow NPP to become a power-tool capable of more than text editing: NppCalc, NppExec, PythonScript, PorkToSausage, FingerText. It is the second piece of software I install to any Windows computer I work on. See the NPP article for more detail on custom configuration, and for the freely downloadable Notepad++ Expansion Pack integrated into Total Commander. Notepad++ is included in the TC Expansion Pack.

3. Everything Search by VoidTools. Ultra-fast desktop search engine that indexes up to a million files a minute. Everything can find a file on a 120GB desktop in less than 5 seconds. Integrates tightly with Total Commander. See the Everything article for details on TC integration, and to download the pre-configured TC Expansion Pack with Everything Search integration built-in. Everything Search is included in the TC Expansion Pack.

4. Brave Browser with Leo integrated AI by Brendan Eich (former CEO of Mozilla Firefox). Thoughtful, elegant design, with many convenient features. As of Jan ’24, I found it had the cleanest integrated generative-AI compared to the ‘Big 3′[Firefox Portable (Mozilla), Chrome Portable (Google) and Edge with Copilot (Microsoft)]. Brave Leo is helpful without being obtrusive. Leo can have a conversation about any page and/or summarize searched results into a single integrated summary (Summariser mode). Searches can be submitted in traditional fashion (in the URL search bar) or specifically to Leo. AI generated content is footnoted meticulously so that you can follow up/supply references. Additional attractive design principles: Brave takes a strong stance on privacy/surveillance (with its vigorously enforced fully opt-in model to limit ad tracking/surveillance. (Although Microsoft Edge also has integrated generative-AI that also provides references, I’m less enamoured with the way in which Edge presents its search results, and there is certainly no comparable commitment not to harvest/track data.) Other neat integrations are:
   1. Page-level AI integration: Brave Leo, integrated AI on every webpage, (Llama-13B backend), providing Summarizer and context-based follow-up questions in natural language chatbox.
   2. Wayback machine integration: If a link is broken/doesn’t exist, Brave asks if you want to check the Wayback Machine
   3. Translation integration: automated, integrated translation from any language.
   4. Ability to cleanly copy a Google link without the cruft.¹³
   5. Effective Dark Mode: goto Settings, turn on Dark Theme, and follow-it up on brave://flags, find “Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents”, and select from the drop-down Enable with inversion of all non-images. This is also the setting that you need to turn off if you encounter a page in dark mode which is not usable.

   Other settings given in the endnotes.¹⁴ The browser wars are not over, and the good news for consumers is that there continues to be innovation in this space as a result.¹⁵

   For rapid documentation/storage of links in plain text, Notepad++ has Macro URL evaluation command Ctrl+F7 to load the selected URL into the default browser.

   Second choice is Firefox Portable Edition which is entirely self-contained and able to be easily ported between machines when needed without losing anything (all tabs, history, bookmarks, extensions/plugins port over cleanly). However, setting up Firefox Portable can be a bit fiddly, see the footnote for some tips.¹⁶ Some plugins are so effective that really, they should just be built into the browser itself — an interestingly Brave Browser does exactly this.¹⁷

   Google Chrome Portable has portability but it is not as clean as with Firefox. There are some useful features however (see endnote)¹⁸

5. Lynx Browser Engine (NCSA) : this is a text based browser, with a key drawback that it does not support https protocol. Nonetheless, if you cannot get onto the web in any other way, then this gives you a way.
6. Digital Pencil For freehand diagrams, concept sketches, engineering design, mathematical formulae, it is hard to beat pen and paper for convenience, versatility, and efficiency. Except now there are digital capabilities that are starting to exceed the classical tools. See the article Converting to Digital Pencil (MetaMoji Note). Rocketbook is the hybrid alternative to a purely digital pencil (editing and precision are easier).
7. Rocketbook Notebooks: Re-usable (wipes clean), Erasable (using Frixion pens), Quick scan and handwriting to text translation using the Rocketbook app. Pristine Used or Gently Used (£18 Grade A, or £13 Grade B), £35 A4 (32 pps, blue, gray, teal), £33 A5, £36 A5 Executive Set with pre-prepared pages, Fusion £18 Pristine Used, £13 Gently Used, Panda Planner (many more forms)
8. Smart Whiteboarding with Rocketbook Beacons – £15.50 for set of 4 – transform your whiteboard.
9. Frixion Pens – £9.23 for 5 (£1.85 ea) or £6.90 for 3pc (£2.30 ea) or £10 for 5pc (£2 ea) (choice of color)
10. Frixion Pen Refills £8 for 12pc or black £10 for 12pc (83p ea) or Refills £4 for 3, £13 for 12 (4 colours, 3 each)

11. PDF Xchange Viewer is a free PDF Viewer that is better (much faster, with annotate, edit, and other features) than the ubiquitous, but crippled, Acrobat Reader, and Adobe’s non-free PDF editing software. PDF Xchange Viewer has a Portable version. (Note: when installing, DECLINE the offer to use the ASK search engine. Other than that minor marketing pitch, the software is outstanding.) PDF Xchange Viewer is included in the TC Expansion Pack.

12. PDFill’s PDF Tools is a free PDF Toolkit for splitting documents, inserting pages, rotating pages, cropping pages, and other various manipulations of your PDF files. Additionally, it supports PostScript (PS) to PDF conversion (option 12). The tools are portable provided you include msvcr70.dll and mfc70u.dll into the same folder. PDF Tools is included in the TC Expansion Pack.

13. Google Docs, Sharepoint, Quip, Jamboards Google Docs is an excellent lightweight free collaboration tool. Easy to get started, real-time updates, granular security. Great for use as a collaborative / asynchronous ‘whiteboard’ and many other uses (free for personal use, £6/user/month for business use). Others.¹⁹ Microsoft Sharepoint is good for real-time collaboration on Word documents. Quip (Amazon) is another useful real-time content collaboration system akin to Google Docs. For a digital interactive whiteboard, virtual + physical, Jamboard (from Google, but being shutdown in 2024). Alternatives: ziteboard (3 boards free), stormboard (5 boards/5 users free), Mural (3 murals free, unlimited members), Miro (3 boards free), LucidChart/LucidSpark (3 diagrams free), Figma (3 free)

14. Microsoft Office Suite – Word Tips²⁰
    Timeline: 1990-present.²¹. Core applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, with Pro/Small Business applications: Access, Publisher. OneNote was introduced in 2003, and Sharepoint in 2013 (with annual subscription model Office 365). Ribbon layout (fluent interface) and Pivot Tables (in Excel) were added in 2007. From its inception, Microsoft has had competitors in the space and who continue to prioritize building viable alternatives and attempting to capture user share. Most prominent alternatives are: Google Docs, and on the desktop LibreOffice and OpenOffice by Apache formerly Sun.[OpenOffice itself was the continuation of StarOffice from 1985.] Options: Home & Student versions are available in standalone (perpetual license) desktop versions for 1 to 3 PCs. Office 2003/14 £44 in 2011, Office 2010 was £77 in 2012 for 3 PCs²² Office 2016 was £49 for 1 PC. Office 2019 was £49 for 1PC, or retail price at £108 1PC/user, instant download. Office 2021 Home & Student (no Outlook) is £120 retail price for 1PC, or Professional (with Outlook) for £32 for a download code. Office 2019 Professional is £20 (History)

15. LaTeX (pronounced “lay-tech”) is a free, professional grade typesetting engine that efficiently produces the journal quality papers of almost every working mathematician, physicist, and computer scientist.²³ Where symbols, formulas, and equations²⁴, comprise a large portion of your professional communication, you will gain significantly by becoming proficient with the document preparation platform that is universal amongst working scientsts for technical communication. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Don Knuth, the brilliant perfectionist whose decades long obsession with mathematical typesetting done right has put the power to communicate complex ideas simply into the hands of anyone who possesses a little perseverance. With the right tools and a little practice, the relative ease of creating beautiful mathematical documents with LaTeX will likely mean that you leave Office in favor of LaTeX for your technical writing. LaTeX as an individual typesetting platform, allows you to that produce “camera-ready” technical material with a minimum of fuss. Read the LaTeX article (Part 2: Getting Started)…. (See also: Part 1: Intro, and Part 3: Advanced Usage).

16. Web Publishing / Blog / HTML Editor – For simple HTML file editing in a WYSIWYG editor, all you need is NVU (“New View”) (22MB) by lead developer Daniel Glazman (v1.0 from 2005). If you want to build a website with multiple web pages, consider rather using WordPress, whether self-managed on a hosting platform’s server or hosted by WordPress itself.²⁵ WordPress allows a number of roles and capabilities for a multi-user community.²⁶

    For the fascinating history of HTML editors, that illustrates the churn associated with open source software, and for the evolution of the editor code from Netscape to SeaMonkey (lastest in 2024), see the Endnote.²⁷ NVU is included in the TC Expansion Pack.

    Other useful capabilities on a self-hosted server.²⁸

17. Modern Website – I recommend Concrete CMS as your content management system. It lives up to its slogan – WYSIWYG for website development. Beautifully designed, reasonably intuitive (once you have the right mental model). Install to your server using cPilot and Softaculous.
18. Desktop Publishing (DTP), Page Layout, Marketing:
    Affinity Publisher
    Microsoft Publisher.
    Scribus: Free and open-source desktop publishing tool with cross-platform compatibility. (download)
    Canva: Online design platform with a simple and intuitive drag-and-drop interface and a library of built-in templates. Download desktop app.
    PagePlus Starter Edition: Free desktop publishing software with features for creating dynamic marketing materials. X9

19. Printers & Drivers
    • FinePrint (£40 license) is an elegant print driver handling everything from reformatting to preview, page insertions/deletions, many-to-one page consolidation and booklet printing. Works with any printer. Not free, but saves the environment. Investment pays back within a year with the in savings on toner/ink alone.
    • iPrint by InZone Software, has booklet mode, and is a free alternative to FinePrint above. Another free alternative is Sav-a-Page.
    • Brother Multifunction Black&White Laser Printer DCPL250DW (£107 in 2017) Drivers here. Download the Full Driver & Software package (166MB). Keep printer disconnected. Install the driver.
    • Lexmark Multifunction Color Laser Printer MC3326adwe (£197 in 2021) Setup instructions Driver here
20. Antivirus Software.²⁹
21. Two-Factor Authentication Apps – Choices. Allows your phone to become a private and secured key to online services. Recommended: 2FAS (Android and iPhone, free, clutter-free UI, no ads, backs up to Google account)
    

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    B. Collaboration & Control: contact management, messaging, video conference, email, distributed version control, wiki, project management, defect tracking, remote desktop

22. Contact Management: Google Contacts/Android, iPhone/iCloud, LinkedIn (how to export your LinkedIn contacts³⁰), Facebook (your information), go to Your information & permissions to download your contact data³¹ Use vCard format for standard import/export storage. Use labels/lists for grouping.

23. Collaboration Software. Collaboration software typically provides: 1) Messaging, 2) Video conferencing, 3) Collaborative whiteboard, 4) Tool integration.
    Options abound: Teams by Microsoft (Free Personal use allows up to 5 channels, 60 min meetings with up to 300 attendees), Slack by Salesforce (free use is limited to 90 days message retention and 1-1 video calls), WhatsApp by Meta (free), Chime by Amazon, and Zoom (free use is limited to 40 minute meetings).

    A good messaging app is key to reduce unnecessary email exchanges while providing a threaded way to reference previous conversations.

    Slack: stands for (“Searching Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”) has good potential but the free version limits to 90 days.
    Teams Free . Slack for Desktop. Huddles in Slack. Mattermost is an interesting open-source alternative to Slack but requires hosting.

    WhatsApp for Desktop makes it easier to bulk manage messaging, and exchange attachments.³²

24. Email: Email is relentless.³³. Ensure you have efficient email tools that you enjoy using. I use eMClient: £50 (one-time, no subscription), desktop and mobile, license valid across 3 devices, handles unlimited email accounts. The longer I have used it the more I like it over the years spent putting up with Outlook’s broken search function and massive proprietary PST files, hoping that Thunderbird would overcome it’s ideological developer wars and deliver meaningful usability and launch a mobile App, and chafing at Gmail’s clunky browser interface.
    eMClient: What’s to like?
    1. Fast email search, sensible threaded views.
    2. Two license formats: Free (still quite functional) or one-time forever purchase (importantly, it is not a subscription)
    3. Absolutely seamless migration and configuration – a few clicks, and all my emails were imported, connected, and ready to go.
    4. A pretty decent mobile app – frugal, easy to operate, fast
    5. Great usability — all the handy features I’ve come to expect in high efficiency email management, in a clean, elegant interface.
    6. Safe, secure handling of multiple server accounts without the danger of cross-polluting contacts, mails, notes, etc.
    7. Seamlessly works with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, as well as Thunderbird, and Outlook servers.

    Some tips³⁴

    Outlook: defects/workarounds.³⁵
    Thunderbird: defects/workarounds.³⁶.
    Others: ³⁷, ³⁸

25. Video conferencing. Here again a lot of active choice. Three stable stand-outs are Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Amazon Chime. Brave, Firefox, and Google each have video chat enabled through their respective browsers, which may be suitable for individuals, but is less corporate-ready than the big three listed.

26. For a distributed version control system (DVCS), you will typically be choosing between Git/GitHub or Mercurial (Hg). Both have user friendly Tortoise front-ends: TortoiseGit and TortoiseHg.³⁹ Both will do just fine unless you’re Facebook’s size (60+ million lines of code c. 2018), in which case Mercurial may be your better choice. But you should be aware of the differences and why Git won the first round of the DVCS wars. Hint: the winning factor was GitHub. A little history. GitHub has generous terms for private hosting. Download: Git | TortoiseGit | GitHub for Desktop | GitHub online. Setting up Git/TortoiseGit/GitHub.⁴⁰
27. Defect Management system – FogBugz : The light-weight name belies a beautifully designed issue tracking collaborative development system that incorporates the insights of software development guru Joel Spolsky (his company, his product, his design). Comparisons with Bugzilla, Jira (Atlassian), Asana, Trello, Bootcamp, and others. Principles behind FogBugz (called Manuscript for about a year c.2017). FogBugz has been acquired by IgniteTech to ensure a long-term stable future. Discussion on FogBugz vs. Altassian’s JIRA.
28. Lightweight Wiki – PmWiki
29. Gantt Project: lightweight, free, Gantt chart creator utility. Imports/Exports with Microsoft Project. Exports / Publishes to HTML, PNG, CSV. Can customize logos and branding by replacing stock images with your own.
30. Painless Remote Desktop options. The original one-click product was FogCreek Copilot which launched in 2007 and truly was easy. (It is now an enterprise product with no resemblance to the original.) TeamViewer takes its place as an easy, quick, painless option to help fix / troubleshoot someone’s computer problems from far away, and free for personal use.
    

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    C. Mathematics & Statistics (9): Mathematical Computing, Computer Algebra, Data Science, Visualization

31. R for Statistical Computing (Open Source S-Plus)
    – useful for statistics, graphing, data visualization, and various types of analysis (including financial, signal processing, fuzzy logic, cluster analysis, and many of the areas discussed in the article Knowledge Engineering. Has many packages (extensions) for specialized applications. In 2010 was already an academic standard in Statistics, Plotting, Signal Processing, Data Analysis; rapidly gaining mindshare in industry as well.⁴¹

32. Python (see below under programming)
33. Big Data / Business Intelligence & Visualization: Tableau, Superset (Apache), Grafana, Metabase, RAW Graphs and Gephie. Tableau has been front-runner, but the open source alternatives are catching up and in some cases pushing further more quickly. There are many “no-code” data pipelines for your data warehouse that use AWS/Cloud resources to do the analytics and provide the reporting (e.g. Hevo)
34. GIS Visualization, Mapping, and Geospatial Analytics: ArcGIS, QGIS (Quantum GIS), GRASS. ArcGIS has been front-runner, but the open source alternatives are quite capable, and some rival commercial offerings. Python, R, and BI/Visualization tools also have geospatial analytics and mapping capabilities, as do Google Maps and Google Earth.
35. Drive Time Radius Maps in UK
36. Octave (Open Source Matlab). Useful for matrix algebra, computation, data visualization, and various types of applied mathematical and engineering analysis. Plenty of toolbox extensions for additional computational libraries. Matrix Computations, Signal Processing, Wavelets, and much more.⁴²
37. Maxima (Open Source Mathematica / Maple) – useful for symbolical mathematics done in closed form, as opposed to numerical methods of R and Octave. Includes facilities for symbolical algebra, calculus, differential equations. This article below gives you everything you need to get started on Windows, Linux, or Mac, including download links, reference sheets, and application notes. Read the Maxima article…
38. Sage Math – also for symbolical mathematics done in closed form. Runs under Microsoft’s built-in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
39. GeoGebra (Open Source Geometer’s Sketchpad) : – a platform for ruler and compass Euclidean geometry. Plane Geometry and Algebra Visualization and Exploration toolbox. Excellent learning companion for school students and teachers. GeoGebra is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
40. GraphViz (AT&T Research) – sophisticated graph and network theoretic engine for the planar layout and visualization of complex 2D graphs and networks. Open source tool for automatically rendering complex graphs and networks in a planar layout. Network structure is captured in an elegant plain text markup language. Excellent for network diagrams, and complex software design diagrams. GraphViz is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
41. GSL (Gnu Scientific Library) : free, open source, high-quality numerical libraries for everything offered by Numerical Recipies, and more. With bindings from a variety of systems and rapid scripting languages including Ruby, Python and Perl.
42. HEXelon MAX : Flexible scientific, mathematical, electrical engineering calculator with the most comprehensive presentation of unit conversions I have seen in a stand-alone desktop application.
    

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    D. Engineering (29): Software & Hardware/CAD (incl. Circuits, Embedded Systems, Databases)

    C1. Scripting Languages

43. Shell scripting. On Windows: Batch files, Windows Scripting Host, ActiveX, or Powershell. On UNIX: any of the shell scripting languages (BASH, Bourne, etc.) Batch file for common tasks are included in the TC Expansion Pack.
    

    C2. Dynamic Languages⁴³

44. Python (recommended). From amongst the general purpose dynamic languages including Ruby and Perl, Python is arguably the most useful of the three especially if your interest is in quantitative, data science, machine-learning, or AI applications. Google and Academia have largely consolidated around Python. Twitter chose Ruby. Facebook chose PHP. Booking.com chose Perl (as do CPanel, and others). The trend towards Python started to become clear by 2011 and has accelerated since. I use both Python and Ruby. Ruby is especially useful for regex/parsing/munging/OLE automation tasks that I would formerly have used Perl for. Python is capable of taking all of these use cases comfortably. See the endnotes for Why Python?⁴⁴ Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in the TC Expansion Pack.
    

    C3. Text manipulation, Automation, Databases, Other

45. Perl has been around for over 30 years (1987-present). Why Perl?, or Why Perl in the 2020s? Modern Perl 4e (5.22, 2016) On Windows, you have the choice of Strawberry Perl (recommended, free) and Active State Perl (commercial).⁴⁵ Booking.com Engineering is a Perl shop, and has been funding Perl5 development since 2008, and funding Dave Mitchell since 2013 to improve the Perl runtime performance (starting from 5.20) one small step at a time.⁴⁶ You can get any Perl all the way back to 4.036 (Feb 1993) at Perl 5’s GitHub. Stay with Perl 5. On Perl 5 vs. Perl 6⁴⁷ What DOSBox emulates. DOSBox Manual. vDosPlus and DOSBox are included in the TC Expansion Pack..
46. DOS-DEBUG – this is a surprisingly powerful little tool for exploring x86 assembly language. You can get the original ms-debug (for NT or Win98), or the bug fixed and improved modern version Debug v2.01 from FreeDOS (RECOMMENDED!) (project page).⁴⁸ still work well. Full instructions are here⁴⁹
47. Scroll Screen Tracer (SST) terminal for direct memory access and inspection for peripherals attached to x86 chips. (SST’s history)
    

    C4. Hardware, CAD

48. EasyEDA – web layout software (free), also offline desktop client (Std is fine, 75MB, v.6.5.40). Start a design online rightaway in the editor. Best part is the massive parts library. Wikipedia info
49. TinyCAD – small footprint (20MB) schematic design/layout.
50. KiCAD – open source schematics professional grade pcb design/layout, gerber file export for pcb production, Windows download
51. SolidWorks – 3D CAD
52. MentorGraphics PADS – trace routing software
53. Digital Works – digital circuit design / simulation for non-advanced users – see the article Learning for Embedded Systems Development for download links and discussion. – for designing digital circuits from logic gates, capable of building up ICs and an entire ALU from first principles. An online option is Logic.ly. Digital Works is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
54. Arduino Nano for an easy to develop with, low cost, high power 8-bit microcontroller
55. Arduino IDE for programming Atmel chips in C
56. PC/104, PC/104+ (a world of embedded capability for rapid integration)
57. RealTerm, billed as “an engineer’s terminal program specially designed for capturing, controlling and debugging binary and other difficult data streams. It is the best tool for debugging comms.” Essential for tethered development and rapid development/debugging. Command line startup My settings: baud=9600 display=2 half port=6 for Hex(space) with Half Duplex on COM port 6 running at 9600baud.
58. Ultra VNC : (freeware) – powerful and flexible VNC client. RealTerm and UltraVNC are included in the TC Expansion Pack.
    

    C5. Utilities

59. Hex editors/Binary file viewers: HxD and JujuEdit. JujuEdit and HxD are included in the TC Expansion Pack.
60. Calculators & Hex/Binary/Decimal Conversion: For rapid calculation on the fly, I use Calcute as my basic calculator in Windows. Extensive capabilities in a small form factor that sits in the corner of your desktop.
    Calcute commands (automatic/default/max 12 sig digits shown):

    pi  e  sin(pi)  asin(0.5)  ^3 or ***  sqrt  curt  ln  log  % or pct
    1.6e3  ; 1600
    inv(x)  ; 1/x
    hex'0FFFE   ; displays decimal value
    255 to hex  ; converts decimal to hex
    11 to bin   ; bin'1011
    43 to oct   ; oct'053
    ^3
    sqrt ; sqrt
    curt ; cube root
    

    For involved Hex/decimal/binary conversion, I use the NPPCalc plugin for Notepad++. (Instructions: Write expression. Select. Alt+Enter. NppCalc puts the answer on the next line.) Example commands (there are many more).

    hex(255)
    0xFF
    bin(255)
    0b11111111
    

    Calcute, NPPCalc plugin for Notepad++ are included in the TC Expansion Pack.

61. Install Forge, install maker Install Forge is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
62. System Path Commander, for setting and inspecting path variables. System Path Commander is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
63. Windows Power Toys for Windows 11 – some very handy utilities (check out Crop & Lock as an example of some real innovation in usability!). Source code on Github.
64. Icon Utilities: IconSushi (included in TC Expansion Pack), or TC Plugin GraphConv (Alt+F5, Select plugin, GraphConv, Configure…) included in TC Expansion Pack, or Icons to Icon DLL using Windows tools (included in TC Expansion Pack)
65. Network Diagnostics.⁵⁰
    

    ---

    E. Knowledge Engineering / AI Assistants / Generative AI / ChatGPT

66. AI PDF Summarizer: free
67. Industry Statistics: Statista.com (free basic account is already powerful)
    (Oct 2023). 2023 will be remembered as the year in which AI agents and Models were released to the public:

68. ChatGPT (OpenAI) – has launched a GPT store / builder platform – Explore the GPT store
    1. Extract handwriting from text
69. Copilot and Bing (Microsoft)
70. Bard and Brain (Google)
71. Q (Amazon), powered by AWS Bedrock, using Anthropic’s Claude 2.1 while working on it’s own Titan model.
72. Llama 2 model (Meta)
73. Quora has built in AI into its responses.
74. Brave has built in Leo AI into each webpage (using Llama 2 model)
75. Poe – this is a convenient front end for free collections of interactive AI agents that work just like a search prompt. Here’s an example of what it can do: ask a question, explain so an 8-year old can understand, explain in 1 paragraph, explain in a poem | Stable Diffusion creating graphics from text prompts
76. AI Assisted Image Creation: AI Playground (free).
77. Logo AI
78. AI-assisted coding, example
    

    ---

    F. Multi-media (8): Graphics, Images, Video, Audio

    Stubborn default mappings. Setting default files is painful in windows. Option 1: Right click > Open with > Choose from PC > Select Always. Option 2: Settings > Default Apps. If neither of these works, then Option 3: Right click > Properties > General > Open With … Change…. Finally Option 4 (nuclear): In Registry. Search NoOpenWith. Use F3 to advance to other instances until you come to AppX. Delete the key. In my registry, I had to do this for 5 APPX entries. Now go back to the file. Option 1 should now have Select Always available.

79. MPC-HC – universal media player, improvement over bloatware VLC, Windows Media Player, and others. MPC-HC is included in the TC Expansion Pack.

80. IrfanView : free, powerful software in a light-weight container. Avoids clunky image viewers. Works with all standard formats. (To view HEIC images e.g. from iPhones, install CopyTrans HEIC.) Once you use IrfanView, you avoid having to drop into slow-loading, proprietary graphics applications for many common imaging transformations. IrfanView does effective Batch resizing of images. (Previously I used: Image Resizer PowerToy for Windows 7 or Vista, 32- or 64-bit with my own Ruby wrapper to iterate through all images in a sub-tree of current folder), then I wrote my own resizer using FFMPEG. Now IrfanView means no need for the heavy FFMPEG installation to resize images in a folder. IrfanView is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
81. Microsoft Paint : available on every windows computer, useful for quick manipulation/poor man’s whiteboard. For Windows 7, mspaint received a facelift that made it better: full undo/redo stack, selection of brush styles. It received another (but worse!) facelift for Windows 11 (2024), including Co-Pilot AI drawing integration. To install the Win7 Classic Paint onto Win11, see this writeup by WinAero, and install ClassicPaint from here.
    Need something with more capability? PaintShopPro £70.

82. Color Pickers / Colour Pickers: Just Color Picker (JCP), (EXCELLENT). Older utilities: Color Selector by KOY Software (great, but the dynamic pixel picker has a calibration issue on Win11 in both X and Y axis), or Colour Picker by Chunting Network (good, but dynamic pixel picker has a calibration issue on Win11 in X axis).
83. Image Compare: A Graphical Diff Utility
84. ScreenRuler : a free, versatile way of measuring separation distances on screen, in pixels, millimeters, centimeters, inches. Image Compare is included in the TC Expansion Pack.
85. Audacity: Audio Editor / Studio Recorder for Sound Recording, Effects, Editing. Professional quality audio editor and recorder allowing the recording of multiple tracks, with professional grade metronome, the availability of a variety of convincing distortion effects, filtering, and, best of all, export to MP3 format.
86. FFMPEG – an outstanding open-source tool for automated video editing, splitting, concatenating, making videos from stills, merging separately produced video and audio, etc. (I first started using this on Aug 26, 2012, likely part of version 1.x — version 2.1 didn’t get released till Oct 28, 2013, 14 months later. Version history starts at v2.1). Windows Downloads (4.4.1 as of Jan 2, 2020) available from Zeranoe’s site
87. Bulk Image Transfer from iPhone to PC without requiring iTunes: (1) In Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock > set to Never (required to prevent iPhone lock screen from activating and cutting off transfer in progress). (2) In Settings > Transfer to Mac or PC > select Keep Originals (required to prevent iPhone from hanging during transfer due to running out of conversion space). Note: this will transfer images in HEIC format. See IrfanView for HEIC codec to download to view on Windows.

Endnotes

0. Octave quickstart notes
% comment
[1,2] % row vector, display
[1,2]; % suppress output
[1,2]’ % col vector = transposed column vector
[1;2] % col vector entered directly
u=[2;5]; % assignment
function retval = avg (v)
retval = sum (v) / length (v);
endfunction

Packages:
pkg load symbolic

Plotting in Octave) | Multiple Plots in Same Window | Aspect Ratio
daspect([1,1])
axis tight normal

00. Tabstops in Word document that are frugal on space and work for both code and text.



Tabstops (frugal) that work also for code indentation

debug < scan.scp > scan.asm