Very much not a professional user, but thanks to Photopea I have had no need to have Photoshop/Gimp/forget-what-else-I've-used for a few years now and I like it that way!
I always, always recommend Photopea for those who can't install programs like adobe or free ones like firealpaca/paint dot net. It's extremely powerful.
Every Noise At Once: Recommend this website to find new music that suits your tastes. Play around with the options at the top, best way to see what they do.
Just keep in mind chatgpt has not as much knack for context than language rules, so it has a potential for giving syntacticcally correct but logically iffy answers.
I am sure it's fairly known around here but at my work we regularly use https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ to generate faces for social media mock-ups.
12ft.io, because the sheer amount of nagwalls are getting absurd. I gladly subscribe to newspapers I frequently read, but without being able to check them out I wouldn't sub to any (or very few) of them.
Also tosdr.org . Not bad to have an idea what terms you're accepting...
What's the difference between scihub and arvix? I have heavily used arvix for my thesis and this is the first time I hear about scihub.
LE: apparently I cannot spell arxiv right
I rarely use windows these days, but when I do, I always visit ninite.com when setting a new windows installation to install several common apps in a single go. Very handy.
The Internet Archive ( archive.org ) is extremely useful, not just for its Wayback Machine which allows you to see historical copies of a huge chunk of the internet (very useful when the web page you attempt to visit is no longer exist), but it also host a large collection of old media and softwares. Need to install an old copy of Windows XP to run an old software? You can find Windows XP installer there. Need to borrow digital book? They even have a huge digital book library there. If you find the service useful, please donate them some money if you can because the Internet Archive is extremely important to the modern internet and could use all the money it can get.
Great post. The Internet Archive is a wonderful resource; I particularly enjoy browsing their vintage gaming magazine/fanzine collections, and reading old copies of High Times!
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It may not have the bs, but I've looked at wikivoyage for some places I'm familiar with and the recommendations are really weird or sub-par for the most part, especially for food and drink.
As a DIYer I tend to use YouTube first for all my home repairs (appliances, electronics, etc). There tends to always be someone who is in my shoes before me so I can find the tutorials pretty quickly.
codewars.com to practice coding algorithms codecademy.com to learn to code chat.openai.com is an absolute game changer for getting pointed in the right direction when it comes to trying to understand concepts
Super specific, but one that saves my life for programming tasks on my job almost on the daily is https://curlconverter.com/
It translates a REST API call from any one language to another. Thanks to this site, if you know, for example, the curl command for a REST request, you know how to do it in Python Requests, Ansible, Javascript, you name it. And of course it works the other way around as well.
Seconding ChatGPT; I do a lot of fantasy worldbuilding and run a few Pathfinder games, so having a semi-limitless sounding board for my ideas is a godsend.
https://search.marginalia.nu/ is a great little search engine for research. It favors results that would most likely be buried in the larger engines, excellent for finding lesser known sources.
Also the “random” button is a lot of fun, and fairly nostalgic if you remember the late 90s-early 00s web. Lots of geocities style personal websites still out there apparently.
It's Microsoft's take on ChatGPT powered search and as an example, I asked it what it was for you - this is the output:
Hello, this is Bing. Bing Chat is a new feature for Bing’s search engine that lets you talk to an AI chatbot rather than simply filling out search queries. You can ask questions, get answers, and create content using natural language. Bing Chat is powered by ChatGPT, an AI system that can generate realistic and engaging conversations.
It's now my go-to if I get stuck on anything and as another example, I asked it:
write me a program that says helllo Hikyuri in different colours in sinclair basic.
here's what it spat out:
I’ll try to create that. Here is a possible program that says hello Hikyuri in different colors in Sinclair BASIC:
10 REM This program prints hello Hikyuri in different colors
20 FOR C = 0 TO 7
30 INK C
40 PRINT "Hello Hikyuri"
50 NEXT C
60 END
It really is clever. Google also have Bard to do the same but it doesn't seem as good which is a first for me
It's uses ChatGPT to work out which news stories are the most significant so it can show only the important ones. It's great and has been my main source of world news since I started using it a few weeks ago.
Not necessarily useful but really cool and I'd love a digital watch face that does this. https://sunclock.net/
Essentially it's just a 24 hour analog clock's hour hand over colors representing what the sun is doing. It really helps me understand when the sun is going to set so much more than a number.
I believe analog clocks are more useful for understanding the flow of time than digital clocks. Digital clocks have this thing where a few.minutes before the top of the hour can still feel like an hour (or at least somewhat) before the hour. Meanwhile with an analog clock it just looks really close. Heck, you might even misread it as being past the hour mark. So take all of that brilliant fuzziness and overlay it on a graphic representing what the sun is doing and it all just really comes together into a beautiful tool.
https://www.timeanddate.com/ is one I keep going back to. Lots of useful tools everywhere, for scheduling events across timezones, get the twilight time instead of sunset to plan activities in the evening, eclipses, moon phases and so much more!
mynoise.net
It's got a huge list of generators for all sorta of sounds, from soundscape and environmental noise like coffee shops, to musical instruments, to white/grey/pink noise, and all sort of other things.
There's nothing better for when my tinitis is acting up and I want to play some tonal drones, or I just want to get into a mood by mixing some Tibetan singing bowls and a rainforest, or maybe just play noise-blockers to help me focus.