Tag: productivity

Firefox add-ons: Firefox Multi-Account Containers

I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary and only browser for years now. But this particular Firefox add-on – Firefox Multi-Account Containers – makes me seriously consider switching back to Firefox again.

Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs that preserve your privacy. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple identities or accounts simultaneously.

This is pure gold for anyone who works with multiple accounts on any given site. Examples: Gmail, Facebooks, Twitter, Amazon AWS, and many more.

termtosvg – record terminal sessions as SVG animations

termtosvg (GitHub repo) is a handy little tool that makes recording animated sessions in the terminal as simple as humanly possible. Instead of generating heavy graphics or video animations, this tool creates SVG files, which are a lot smaller and easier. There is also a selection of themes to choose from.

Th resulting SVG files can be used as quick demos and guides in READMEs on GitHub, or as tutorials for your application’s website.

Lazydocker – a simple terminal UI for both docker and docker-compose

Lazydocker is a simple terminal UI for easier management of Docker. This is particularly useful for new Docker users, but can as well save plenty of keystrokes to the seasoned administrators.

Bash trick: Repeat last command until success

More and more often I come across a scenario where I need to repeat the shell command until it succeeds. Here are a couple of examples:

  • Reboot a server. Try to remotely login to it via ssh. This fails until the server actually boots up. Keep trying until connected.
  • Start an application that writes to the log file. Run “tail -f some.log” to watch the log messages. This fails if the log file does not exist yet. Keep trying until the application creates the log file and writes something into it.

Sure, I can always press the up arrow key and Enter, to repeat the last command from the history. But it is a tiny bit annoying.

Today I came across this little trick, that solves the problem. Add the following function to your .bashrc:

rpt() {
  CMD=$(fc -ln | tail -n 2 | head -n 1)
  echo "repeating until success: $CMD"
  until $CMD
  do
    sleep 1
  done
}

Now you can run “rpt” to repeat the latest command until it succeeds.

Handy!

P3.express – practical project management framework

When it comes to project management, there are many certifications, guidelines, and suggestions all over the web. But it’s often difficult to pick the right one. Some are overly complicated. Others are too simplistic and don’t cover even the whole project lifespan.

P3.express, however, looks good. It covers the project management process from the early days, when it’s not even clear if the project will proceed at all, to the tasks that need to happen after the project has been fully completed. The whole flow consists of 37 activities in 7 sections, with each one of the activities being well documented and explained.

This one is definitely worth a try. Especially if you ever felt like this: