7 ms·

One Thing Well – A weblog about simple, useful software

368 points by tete 12y ago

codecondo 12y ago
http://onethingwell.org/archive http://onethingwell.org/archive
state 12y ago
Sorry, but there is nothing I find more annoying than the "Never miss a post!" spam that Tumblr now inserts in to every page post acquisition. Perhaps someone could do one thing well and come up with a blogging platform for this nice project?
- grimtrigger 12y ago
  From a business perspective, if you don't subscribe your opinion is probably irrelevant. You have 0 value to the author.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    From a business perspective, that's exceptionally misguided. Annoying the fuck out of people is a good way to chase them away. Blogs work as much via reblogging and word-of-mouth as anything else. The most egregious example I can think of is the Google Blogger dynamic designs, which I find both completely frustrate any attempt to read the content presented, and which I've yet to find a way to un-do the damage via local CSS. In most cases, even Readability curls up in a corner and weeps quietly rather than present its exceptionally clean and quite preferable page design. I've appealed directly to several blog owners to chose a different site design (e.g., not the "dynamic* layouts). Generally, I close the page as soon as I open it.
  - state 12y ago
    To the author, or to Tumblr?
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  In your local CSS: #tumblr_teaser_follow { display: none; } There's a similar one I use for Wordpress.
- ergl 12y ago
  That's an option you can disable in the settings menu of tumblr, so I guess the author either didn't care or didn't know how to get rid of it
juef 12y ago
another one: http://inconsolation.wordpress.com/ http://inconsolation.wordpress.com/
tete 12y ago
Disclaimer: Not my blog, but found it today and really loved it.
fizixer 12y ago
- See also: suckless.org - An LFS build off kernel.org (the kernel) and github (the rest of userland) would be an interesting experiment.
- 616c 12y ago
  Perhaps you would be interested in Stali, the suckless linux distro, a fairly recent project considering their work. http://sta.li/ http://sta.li/ It seems pretty interesting, but very much in early stages.
Argorak 12y ago
This tumblr doesn't quite live up its name: http://onethingwell.org/post/97725615916/busybox http://onethingwell.org/post/97725615916/busybox BusyBox is great and everything, but it's definitely not subscribing to the "One Thing Well"-philosophy, quite the contrary: everything in one.
- justincormack 12y ago
  Yes, crunchgen[1] is kind of the one tool to do this for you. Although its BSD only. [1] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?format=html&query=crunchgen(1) https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?format=html&query=crunch...
nextos 12y ago
Nice site. He hasn't covered yet some well known ones, or at least I cannot find them using the search field in his site: * http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ * http://tools.suckless.org/slock/ http://tools.suckless.org/slock/ * http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html * http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind * http://notmuchmail.org/ http://notmuchmail.org/ * http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ * http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html * https://github.com/Tox/toxic https://github.com/Tox/toxic * http://mcabber.com/ http://mcabber.com/ * https://01.org/connman https://01.org/connman * https://01.org/powertop https://01.org/powertop
- LeoPanthera 12y ago
  Surely i3wm is a better choice than xmonad if you're rating them by "one thing well".
  - mapleoin 12y ago
    Surely you mean dwm.
    - 616c 12y ago
      I have tried many of them except dwm at this point. This is not because I dislike dwm (on the contrary, I love the idea and its "if you can't compile me you don't deserve me attitude), but i3wm and dwm are all derivitaves, of well, dwm user modifications that either stay dwm (with patchsets) or emerge into something different (uh, Mosca, i3wm, awesomewm for sure, and many others of the pure C variety; I am certain XMonad and others follow dwm aesthetics and philosophy in a very general sense because dwm went backwards by throwing out the kitchen sink and going for pure, raw simplicity). If you try any of the derivatives, you will notice they usually take one dwm patchset notion and focus on it, or try different window management logic (many of the new one try b-tree sorting and management of windows). But they all focus on doing one window management style or feature, and doing it well for those people (my favorite example: stumpwm/ratpoision were very much unique and popular, spawning many look-alikes by eschewing the mouse altogether). I use i3wm and really liked StumpWM (will probably return to it soon), but to make this dichotomy is to oversimplify and not realize WM systems usually focus on one-feature for the tool and do it well. Not all WMs are alike and that is why, as a StumpWM fanboy, giving control to another one arbitrarily (I think it is the only WM that totes that as a feature btw), shoes a very unique that I vainly believe lines up with mine. Just my 0.02.
templeos2 12y ago
God said mine was His official temple. I guess we see what happens, don't we.
nXqd 12y ago
This site could be named unix_hunt :D
denizozger 12y ago
I love the idea but not the implementation. Categorising software according to purpose and tech stack would be the best.
tretiy3 12y ago
Very good. Is there any way to subscribe (no count tumblr rss twitter)?
- icebraining 12y ago
  RSS + Blogtrottr?
  - tretiy3 12y ago
    Thanks!
asymmetric 12y ago
OT, but it's heartening to see a link to an RSS feed next to Twitter and G+. I find that more and more sites are abandoning this public, open source standard in favor of proprietary platforms.
- ygra 12y ago
  Wasn't tumblr the one that pops up something in the lower right, asking you to sign up so you can follow new posts¹? At least they still have RSS, as opposed to Twitter which seems to have killed it (sometimes a bit strange ... when you assume that someone never posts anything any more, but instead just their RSS feed broke or changed to another URL). _____ ¹ Yep, they were: http://hypftier.de/temp/2014-09-22_083217.png http://hypftier.de/temp/2014-09-22_083217.png
eps 12y ago
11 pages of Windows software! Who would've thought it exists :) http://onethingwell.org/tagged/windows http://onethingwell.org/tagged/windows
alanning 12y ago
Short examples would greatly enhance comprehension for me
zomg 12y ago
the original "product hunt"! :)
jeroenjanssens 12y ago
Related: http://datascienceatthecommandline.com/#tools http://datascienceatthecommandline.com/#tools
doctorpangloss 12y ago
> Simple, useful software I came expecting examples of to-do lists, mail clients, clever messaging apps, etc. There are a handful of those. Instead, the majority of apps are described by sentences where literally every word would be unfamiliar to a typical computer user. For example, "Cram is a functional testing framework for command line applications based on Mercurial’s unified test format." Simple is in the eye of the beholder.
- wtetzner 12y ago
  Simple doesn't necessarily mean familiar or easy.
- jude- 12y ago
  I think the "simple" they were going for here is "performs one well-defined, unambiguous task in as direct a way as possible."
- 1tw 12y ago
  > I came expecting examples of to-do lists, mail clients, clever messaging apps, etc. There are a handful of those. There are hundreds of posts about those sorts of applications in the archives[0], but the focus of the site tends to drift about a lot depending on what I'm up to/interested in at a given time. > Instead, the majority of apps are described by sentences where literally every word would be unfamiliar to a typical computer user. That's definitely a problem, and after chatting with some readers on Twitter recently I'm making more of an effort to 'translate' jargon and buzzwords in software descriptions. [0] See, e.g., http://onethingwell.org/tagged/todo http://onethingwell.org/tagged/todo

368 points by tete 12y ago

http://onethingwell.org/archive http://onethingwell.org/archive

state 12y ago

Sorry, but there is nothing I find more annoying than the "Never miss a post!" spam that Tumblr now inserts in to every page post acquisition. Perhaps someone could do one thing well and come up with a blogging platform for this nice project?

grimtrigger 12y ago
From a business perspective, if you don't subscribe your opinion is probably irrelevant. You have 0 value to the author.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  From a business perspective, that's exceptionally misguided. Annoying the fuck out of people is a good way to chase them away. Blogs work as much via reblogging and word-of-mouth as anything else. The most egregious example I can think of is the Google Blogger dynamic designs, which I find both completely frustrate any attempt to read the content presented, and which I've yet to find a way to un-do the damage via local CSS. In most cases, even Readability curls up in a corner and weeps quietly rather than present its exceptionally clean and quite preferable page design. I've appealed directly to several blog owners to chose a different site design (e.g., not the "dynamic* layouts). Generally, I close the page as soon as I open it.
- state 12y ago
  To the author, or to Tumblr?
dredmorbius 12y ago
In your local CSS: #tumblr_teaser_follow { display: none; } There's a similar one I use for Wordpress.
ergl 12y ago
That's an option you can disable in the settings menu of tumblr, so I guess the author either didn't care or didn't know how to get rid of it

juef 12y ago

another one: http://inconsolation.wordpress.com/ http://inconsolation.wordpress.com/

tete 12y ago

Disclaimer: Not my blog, but found it today and really loved it.

fizixer 12y ago

- See also: suckless.org - An LFS build off kernel.org (the kernel) and github (the rest of userland) would be an interesting experiment.

616c 12y ago
Perhaps you would be interested in Stali, the suckless linux distro, a fairly recent project considering their work. http://sta.li/ http://sta.li/ It seems pretty interesting, but very much in early stages.

Argorak 12y ago

This tumblr doesn't quite live up its name: http://onethingwell.org/post/97725615916/busybox http://onethingwell.org/post/97725615916/busybox BusyBox is great and everything, but it's definitely not subscribing to the "One Thing Well"-philosophy, quite the contrary: everything in one.

justincormack 12y ago
Yes, crunchgen[1] is kind of the one tool to do this for you. Although its BSD only. [1] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?format=html&query=crunchgen(1) https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?format=html&query=crunch...

nextos 12y ago

Nice site. He hasn't covered yet some well known ones, or at least I cannot find them using the search field in his site: * http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ * http://tools.suckless.org/slock/ http://tools.suckless.org/slock/ * http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html * http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind * http://notmuchmail.org/ http://notmuchmail.org/ * http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/ * http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html * https://github.com/Tox/toxic https://github.com/Tox/toxic * http://mcabber.com/ http://mcabber.com/ * https://01.org/connman https://01.org/connman * https://01.org/powertop https://01.org/powertop

LeoPanthera 12y ago
Surely i3wm is a better choice than xmonad if you're rating them by "one thing well".
- mapleoin 12y ago
  Surely you mean dwm.
  - 616c 12y ago
    I have tried many of them except dwm at this point. This is not because I dislike dwm (on the contrary, I love the idea and its "if you can't compile me you don't deserve me attitude), but i3wm and dwm are all derivitaves, of well, dwm user modifications that either stay dwm (with patchsets) or emerge into something different (uh, Mosca, i3wm, awesomewm for sure, and many others of the pure C variety; I am certain XMonad and others follow dwm aesthetics and philosophy in a very general sense because dwm went backwards by throwing out the kitchen sink and going for pure, raw simplicity). If you try any of the derivatives, you will notice they usually take one dwm patchset notion and focus on it, or try different window management logic (many of the new one try b-tree sorting and management of windows). But they all focus on doing one window management style or feature, and doing it well for those people (my favorite example: stumpwm/ratpoision were very much unique and popular, spawning many look-alikes by eschewing the mouse altogether). I use i3wm and really liked StumpWM (will probably return to it soon), but to make this dichotomy is to oversimplify and not realize WM systems usually focus on one-feature for the tool and do it well. Not all WMs are alike and that is why, as a StumpWM fanboy, giving control to another one arbitrarily (I think it is the only WM that totes that as a feature btw), shoes a very unique that I vainly believe lines up with mine. Just my 0.02.

templeos2 12y ago

God said mine was His official temple. I guess we see what happens, don't we.

nXqd 12y ago

This site could be named unix_hunt :D

denizozger 12y ago

I love the idea but not the implementation. Categorising software according to purpose and tech stack would be the best.

tretiy3 12y ago

Very good. Is there any way to subscribe (no count tumblr rss twitter)?

icebraining 12y ago
RSS + Blogtrottr?
- tretiy3 12y ago
  Thanks!

asymmetric 12y ago

OT, but it's heartening to see a link to an RSS feed next to Twitter and G+. I find that more and more sites are abandoning this public, open source standard in favor of proprietary platforms.

ygra 12y ago
Wasn't tumblr the one that pops up something in the lower right, asking you to sign up so you can follow new posts¹? At least they still have RSS, as opposed to Twitter which seems to have killed it (sometimes a bit strange ... when you assume that someone never posts anything any more, but instead just their RSS feed broke or changed to another URL). _____ ¹ Yep, they were: http://hypftier.de/temp/2014-09-22_083217.png http://hypftier.de/temp/2014-09-22_083217.png

eps 12y ago

11 pages of Windows software! Who would've thought it exists :) http://onethingwell.org/tagged/windows http://onethingwell.org/tagged/windows

alanning 12y ago

Short examples would greatly enhance comprehension for me

zomg 12y ago

the original "product hunt"! :)

jeroenjanssens 12y ago

Related: http://datascienceatthecommandline.com/#tools http://datascienceatthecommandline.com/#tools

doctorpangloss 12y ago

> Simple, useful software I came expecting examples of to-do lists, mail clients, clever messaging apps, etc. There are a handful of those. Instead, the majority of apps are described by sentences where literally every word would be unfamiliar to a typical computer user. For example, "Cram is a functional testing framework for command line applications based on Mercurial’s unified test format." Simple is in the eye of the beholder.

wtetzner 12y ago
Simple doesn't necessarily mean familiar or easy.
jude- 12y ago
I think the "simple" they were going for here is "performs one well-defined, unambiguous task in as direct a way as possible."
1tw 12y ago
> I came expecting examples of to-do lists, mail clients, clever messaging apps, etc. There are a handful of those. There are hundreds of posts about those sorts of applications in the archives[0], but the focus of the site tends to drift about a lot depending on what I'm up to/interested in at a given time. > Instead, the majority of apps are described by sentences where literally every word would be unfamiliar to a typical computer user. That's definitely a problem, and after chatting with some readers on Twitter recently I'm making more of an effort to 'translate' jargon and buzzwords in software descriptions. [0] See, e.g., http://onethingwell.org/tagged/todo http://onethingwell.org/tagged/todo