There appears to be a mad rush firstly of yearly to search out methods to be extra productive. New Year’s resolutions, the itch to start out the 12 months off proper, and naturally, an “out with the old, in with the new” angle all contribute to this. And the standard spherical of suggestions is closely biased in the direction of closed supply and proprietary software program. It would not need to be that approach.
Here’s the seventh of my picks for 19 new (or new-to-you) open supply instruments that will help you be extra productive in 2019.
Roland
By the time the workday has ended, usually the one factor I need to take into consideration is hitting the sofa and taking part in the online game of the week. But despite the fact that my skilled obligations cease on the finish of the workday, I nonetheless need to handle my family. Laundry, pet care, ensuring my teenager has what he wants, and most necessary: deciding what to make for dinner.
Like many individuals, I usually undergo from decision fatigue, and I make less-than-healthy selections for dinner based mostly on pace, ease of preparation, and (fairly frankly) no matter causes me the least stress.
Roland makes planning my meals a lot simpler. Roland is a Perl software designed for tabletop role-playing video games. It picks randomly from an inventory of things, reminiscent of monsters and hirelings. In essence, Roland does the identical factor on the command line that a recreation grasp does when rolling bodily cube to search for issues in a desk from the Game Master’s Big Book of Bad Things to Do to Players.
With minor modifications, Roland can accomplish that far more. For instance, simply by including a desk, I can allow Roland to assist me select what to prepare dinner for dinner.
The first step is putting in Roland and all its dependencies.
git clone git@github.com:rjbs/Roland.git
cpan set up Getopt::Long::Descriptive Moose
namespace::autoclean List:AllUtils Games::Dice
Sort::ByInstance Data::Bucketeer Text::Autoformat
YAML::XS
cd oland
Next, I create a YAML doc named dinner and enter all our meal choices.
kind: listing
choose: 1
objects:
- "frozen pizza"
- "chipotle black beans"
- "huevos rancheros"
- "nachos"
- "pork roast"
- "15 bean soup"
- "roast chicken"
- "pot roast"
- "grilled cheese sandwiches"
Running the command bin/roland dinner will learn the file and choose one of many choices.
I wish to plan for the week forward so I can store for all my components prematurely. The choose command determines what number of objects from the listing to selected, and proper now, the choose possibility is about to 1. If I need to plan a full week’s dinner menu, I can simply change choose: 1 to choose: 7 and it’ll give me per week’s price of dinners. You may use the -m command line choice to manually enter the alternatives.
You can additionally do enjoyable issues with Roland, like including a file named 8ball with some traditional phrases.
You can create all types of information to assist with frequent choices that appear so hectic after a protracted day of labor. And even should you do not use it for that, you possibly can nonetheless use it to determine which devious entice to arrange for tonight’s recreation.