Brett’s Favorites 2022 - Personal Projects
Here’s a rundown of the personal projects I’ve focused the most on in 2022. A lot of heart and soul (and manic energy) went into these. If any of them prove useful to you, monetary support is always welcomed and appreciated!
- Bunch
- Bunch is my text-based Mac automation app. Think DOS batch files or AppleScript with simplified syntax, all launched from a handy menu bar item.
- Bunch saw a ton of updates this year. Improvements to conditional logic, tagging, heredoc support for embedded scripts, and more new features than I can mention. Check out the changelog to see all of the updates.
- doing
- Doing is my command line time tracking app that helps you remember what you were doing last, what you’ve done, and how much time you spent on it.
- Doing saw more updates than I could possibly list. It’s become a very full-fledged app at this point, with great time tracking and expansive display options. If you have doing installed, you can see all the changes from 2022 by running
doing changes --lookup "> 2.0.10"
. - Gather
- Gather is my command line tool for “markdownifying” a website, converting it to Markdown for archiving in your notes. It was a chance for me to learn more about Swift, and became an obsession for a little while. It turned into a very useful utility.
- howzit
- Howzit is a command line utility that allows you to take notes on a project in Markdown, and embed runnable commands in it. You can query your notes for a specific topic, and then run all of the commands for that topic automatically. Like a Makefile for your projects, but with better descriptions and notes.
- Howzit was originally a self-contained script, but this year saw a complete reworking of it as a Ruby gem that can be installed with
gem install howzit
. If you want to see the development progress, check out the Howzit changelog. Everything from version 1.2.0 on is the progress from this year. - na
- Not Narcotics Anonymous, but Next Action. It’s a tool for command-line interaction with TaskPaper files, allowing you to store per-project todo lists in every directory and immediately see what needs to be worked on next.
- This year saw NA packaged as a gem as well, and added the ability not just to parse and display actions, but to add and modify them. It’s now fully qualified as a way to work with TaskPaper files without ever leaving the command line.
- SearchLink
- I maintain that this is the most useful tool I’ve ever made. It allows you to write very simple syntax in a Markdown file and link text to the right web page without ever switching to your browser. It’s amazing for podcast show notes and blog link lists, but also handy any time you need to include a URL for something.
- This year saw quite a few bug fixes and updates, including support for Hookmark bookmarks.
- Marked 2
- Marked is my Mac app for previewing and converting Markdown files. It’s been my only “commercial” project for the last decade, and I’ve continued to keep it updated.
- I didn’t spend as much time on Marked this year as I have in years past, but a significant amount of time went into ensuring its compatibility with new OS releases and updating it to optimize for Apple Silicon.
- nvUltra
- You’re wondering by now where nvUltra falls into all of this. I’ve promised the update to nvALT for years now and still haven’t released it. Well, the beta is going great, and about 1500 people are using it daily. We’ve had some delays due to personal lives and their various complications, but we’re on the final stretch (still).
- If you’re just dying to try it out and sick of waiting, feel free to send an email to this address and request beta access. We’re not batch adding people from the mailing list anymore, but I add individual requests all the time.
If you’ve used/loved any of these projects, feel free to show some support or make a one-time donation: