Learning why the Quake palette is the way it is, is fascinating. I was curious why some colours are fullbrighting - obvious in hindsight.

This tidbit is funny:

It is important that the latter 8 palette rows are "backwards" (light-to-dark instead of dark-to-light). It appears that the ID artists did this for no good reason in the original Quake palette, and the engine programmers were forced to add a hack to accommodate it (along with the comment "the artists made some backwards ranges. sigh")" - https://quakewiki.org/wiki/Quake_palette



slimelia
@slimelia

i love software i love tools i love utilities. show me your favourite free and/or open-source software that people might not have heard of that you love


slimelia
@slimelia
NameDescription
Chris Titus Tech's Windows UtilityTweak Windows settings, install/update a wide range of useful software from a single screen (including some software featured on this list), run O&O Shutup directly, and has a feature to create super-small Win11 ISOs (which didn't work last time I tried it lol). Runs directly from a single command in PowerShell.
CondutionTask management software with all the standard features you expect from a modern To-Do list application.
DeblurVery fun tool to deblur a blurred image. Not particularly useful as it cannot do so accurately, but fun!
EverythingVery fast filesearch for Windows.
JERNCommand-line journaling tool, intended to be used on a USB drive. Encrypted using AES-128 encryption.
JetUMLFast, simple, free UML diagram designer.
jPDFtweak"Swiss Army Knife" for PDF files. Has a lot of incredibly useful PDF utilities.
JRNLA cute daily journaling tool with fun themes and options for daily notifications.
KDE ConnectConnect your PC to your phone - share files, links, clipboard data, notifications, remote control input, run commands, and more.
magic-wormholeCommand-line tool to send files from one machine to another by providing human-pronouncable keywords.
NiniteInstall and update all your programs at once. Chris Titus' Winutils has a similar feature & includes more software, but this is far more beginner-friendly. No command lines here! Also not that useful if you know how to install software using Winget/Scoop/Chocolatey, but again - beginner-friendly and idiot-proof!
O&O Shutup10++Windows tweaks - primarily disabling telemetry and unwanted bloat from Microsoft. Lets you switch off all the AI bullshit in Win11! This tool can also be opened from within Chris Titus' Winutils.
PlayniteGames library for your games libraries - consolidate GOG, Steam, Itch, and just about everything into one application where you can search & filter your library.
QOwnNotesMarkdown note-taking software. Simple and lightweight without the overload of bloat and features competitors like Obsidian or Notion have.
QTodoTxt To-do manager - a GUI frontend for the todo.txt plaintext format.
RetroSharePeer-to-peer chat, file sharing, mail, forums, channels, boards, and more - almost like a self-contained peer-to-peer social network.
StacherGUI frontend for yt-dlp - a downloader for YouTube videos and also many many other websites. (I use it to get Twitter videos!)
tldr pagesCommand-line tool for simple manual pages - has basic usage and examples for many popular CLI applications.
Winaero TweakerAllows you to make various miscellaneous changed to Windows
Zim - A Desktop WikiPersonal Wiki software with ability to publish files to HTML. Can be minimalist or feature-rich depending on how many plugins you enable.

i have more installed on my home desktop PC that i'm surely forgetting but it was 33°C yesterday so i was NOTTTT turning that computer on

edit: 2024-08-13 @539 - added Winaero Tweaker, O&O Shutup, CTT Winutils, Ninite and Stacher


DigitalBeast
@DigitalBeast

Great post! Never heard of WinUtils before, that's staying in the toolbox.

My go-to software is pretty simple:

Firefox: Browser. Worried about them though.
Dropbox (begrudgingly): Part of work file share.
KeePassXC: Passwords/Vault info. Because paying for password managers is silly.
7zip: The best.
Steam: Work and Play.
Discord (begrudgingly): Work/Friend comms.
FastStone Viewer: Multitool for images.
Notepad++: 99% of gamedev.
ShareX : Easy screen capture for GIF and videos.
Everything: Search everything on your system, fast.

All of the above can be gotten via "winget" in Windows 10 command line, which makes reinstalling after a format a breeze. "winget install 7.zip.7zip" for example. To find the right vendor, "winget search ".

The only hyper specific tools I use are:

PureRef: The best tool for when you need to handle a lot of images, arrange, collage, compare, etc. It's an infinite canvas you can drop images into, and it's ability to recover from source files being moved/changed is great.