Tools I added to my toolbox in 2022 🧰

I really like trying out different tools and thinking about creative ways to use them to solve problems. I test out many things that go nowhere. In this post, I capture a few of the coolest tools I added to my tech toolbox in 2022.

The tools I grew to love in 2022 are:

• Datasette
  • Datasette is an open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data. Learn more at datasette.io or on Simon Willison’s blog.
  • This year, I used Datasette to create a heatmap of Pittsburgh’s city steps. Thank you to the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center for a beautiful dataset.
  • This year, I built a site to collect TIL (“today I learned”) snippets of cool things I learned with Datasette.
  • This year, I used Datasette for a Web interface to ripgrep searches on the Enron dataset. I wrote this TIL snippet about the setup.
  • Datasette is useful for exploring, analyzing, visualizing and publishing all kinds of data. Datasette works best with an SQLite database. Tools abound for converting CSVs to SQLite.
• Google Cloud Run
  • Google Cloud Run is a fully managed compute platform that automatically scales containers. Learn more at cloud.google.com/run.
  • This year, I deployed the HTTP Status Cats site to Google Cloud Run. A project that’s still in closed alpha will be deployed there as well. Google Cloud Run is fantastic for Flask apps. Flask is a favorite tool of mine but it’s not new in 2022.
• gron
  • The gron utility transforms JSON into discrete assignments to make it easier to grep for what you want and see the absolute ‘path’ to it.
  • I find gron super useful for quickly getting to what I want in a JSON file. For me, it’s much quicker than jq.
• hurl
  • The hurl utility is a command line tool that runs HTTP requests defined in a simple plain text format. Learn more at hurl.dev.
  • 🚀 Get started today with my sample hurl project.
  • This year, I wrote the Automate HTTP Testing with hurl: Generate HTML and JUnit reports via GitLab CI blog post about my experience getting started with hurl.
• jless
  • The jless tool is a command-line JSON viewer designed for reading, exploring, and searching through JSON data.
• jqplay
  • The jqplay site is a playground for jq 1.6. Give it a go at jqplay.org.
  • I find jqplay useful for testing jq filters on non-sensitive JSON data. The ability to create a permalink and share snippets is a very nice feature. ✨
• MkDocs
  • MkDocs is a fast, simple and downright gorgeous static site generator that’s geared towards building project documentation. Learn more at mkdocs.org.
  • This year, I deployed 🔖 bookmarks.brie.dev using MkDocs to deploy my Markdown based notes to static HTML deployed with GitLab Pages. Fork the starter project that I forked to get your own site.
• r2devops
  • r2devops.io is a collaborative hub of CI & CD jobs which helps you to quickly build powerful pipelines for your projects.
  • In 2022, I started integrating some of these templates into my personal projects.
• Tailwind and friends!
  • Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center and rotate-90 that can be composed to build any design, directly in your markup. Learn more at tailwindcss.com.
  • Tailwind is great but the things that you can build on top of it are amazing! I especially recommend these friends of Tailwind:
    • Flowbite is a free and open-source library of over 450+ UI components, sections, and pages built with the utility classes from Tailwind CSS and designed in Figma.
    • Tailwind Color Palette is a click-to-copy Tailwind color palette. Click a color and get the corresponding hex, RGB, HSL or Tailwind class.
    • Wicked Blocks is a free collection of over 120 fully responsive Tailwind blocks & components you can copy paste into your Tailwind projects.

Be well! 👋

The image atop this post is a photograph that I took of a sunflower that I grew in 2022. I have more sunflower photos available in HELIANTHUS, my sunflower photo gallery at sunflower.gallery.