Technology Book Generator

Working in technology can be stressful, and every once in a while it's nice to brighten up things with some humor. One way is to create silly O'Reilly Book Covers.

If your not familiar with O'Reily Books - they are known technology books with some animals on the cover. They cover just about every possible technology segment and have been around for years.

Website Description

https://dev.to/rly

Sample Books

Inkatlas

Google Maps are great, but it isn't helpful if you want to draw and showcase areas around a location. That's what makes inkatlas so great. You can draw and print out maps.

Description from Website

https://inkatlas.com/create/

Sample Map

Sample Map created with InkAtlas

Markdown Table Generator

Markdown formating is becoming really popular. Cool apps like Notion is making is easy to copy/paste data. Markdown is also very popular in the Wiki community.

One of the challenges of Markdown is making tables. Thankfully sites like Table Generator makes it easy to create table. Simply define the number of rows and columns - and presto you have a working Markdown template to fill in.

Description from Website

https://www.tablesgenerator.com/markdown_tables

Sample Output

Sample seven-day table.

|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |

Xicon

Creating .ico can be complex, but Xicon makes it easy. You can easily create icons from any size image. There are some tools that help remove the background and add additional touch-ups

Website Description

http://www.xiconeditor.com/

Five Things I learned about Xicon Editor

• The site launched on October 28, 2010 by Microsoft.
• You can import any size image to convert to an ico icon.
• Using the paint bucket you can easily remove the background.
• The final image isn't compressed, and the site offers some suggestions to help compress the image.
• The preview is a good way to preview the icon as a bookmark, Window's dock icon, and in the tool bar.

Ranking of Weather around the World

Ever had one of those days where it felt like it was the hottest place on Earth? Or perhaps it's freezing outside and your thinking it must be the cold place on the planet?

Well now you can check it out from ogimet.com. You can see the Hottest Temps, Coldest Temp, Rainest and Windest place on earth. Not just right now, but anytime in the last 20 years!

You can find out what the extreme Temps at the time someone was born in the past 20 years.

Description from Website

http://www.ogimet.com/ranking.phtml.en

This is a free service, and there is a time limit on how many history searches can be performed. (I believe it's one query for every 1 minute.)

LCD Generator

Using an LCD generator to display text is one way to make your message stand out. What's nice about avtanski.net solution is that there are so many ways to quickly generate a custom LCD screen. Simply drag/drop the graphic to Slack so that everyone knows.

The LCD Generator is a unique way to display your phone number on your website or business card.

Website Description

http://avtanski.net/projects/lcd/

Examples

Facebook Design — Devices

There are a lot of services/solutions to creating mock-up and a quick Google search for "iPhone Mockups" produce about 50,800,000 results. Yikes! How can one find good quality Mockups to use in Photoshop, Sketch or Affinity Photo?

Facebook!

Facebook? Yes, that Facebook. They have a developer area where you can download all sorts of device design ideas which you can download and use as mockups.

Website description

https://facebook.design/devices

Sample Design

Using the iPhone XS Max, and Dell XPS design I created the sample layout in Affinity Designer:

Text to ASCII Art

Ascii Art is a popular way to highlight text. In the 80s and 90s it was popular to show Ascii art in popular chat rooms at Delphi Internet or Compuserv. Nowadays, Ascii art is used for terminal login headlines.

Patorjk's Text to ASCII Art tool is a great way to create all sorts of Ascii art.

Website Description

http://patorjk.com/software/taag

Five things I Learned

There are 174 fonts in four categories: 53 Feature FIGlet Fonts, 10 ANSI FIGlet Fonts, 75 Regular FIGlet Fonts and 36 AOL Macro Fonts.

The "Test All" is a good way to look at your text in all the fonts!

You can't cut/paste the output into Slack. The best way to display in Slack is to use a screenshot

If you use like the Text to Ascii Art tool, there is a Chrome Extension. Now you can easily create Ascii Art whenever you need it.

There is an Ascii Art Web Ring where you can find other sites that offer Ascii arts.

Sample Output

  ___ _ __ _   _  __ _ _ __    ___ ___  _ __ ___  
 / __| '__| | | |/ _` | '_   / __/ _ | '_ ` _  
| (__| |  | |_| | (_| | | | || (_| (_) | | | | | |
 ___|_|   __, |__,_|_| |_(_)______/|_| |_| |_|
           |___/                                             

Iconizer

Icons are useful in folders and applications. Finding good icons can be a tough task using Google or Bing.

Thankfully someone created a service that not only makes finding icons easy but also creating an icon from images. Iconizer is a great resource for finding and creating icons.

Simple Website Description

This is not just a search.
It's an icon GENERATOR

https://icons8.com/iconizer/

Things I learned about the Iconizer

There are a lot of great icons in the database. They are great to add to Slack.

There are great Facebook, Bing and Hard Drive icons.

This is a good resource if your using Notion.so As you can find useful page icons.

I had a problem creating an icon from an upload. When I uploaded a small PNG file, the image would never show up in the editor.

WhereFor

Everyone needs a vacation from the daily routine. Certainly, Disney World or Hawaii would be great places to go. But what if you didn't have enough money to go there - but you still want to get away for a quick vacation.

You could always ask your Facebook friends on where to go. You would get all sorts of interesting places.

WhereFor has a better way. Simply set your budget and your departing City and WhereFor will tell you all the places you can afford to go to.

Website Description

https://play.wherefor.com/

The service is still in Beta. The Google Maps still says "For development purposes only" and the Facebook sign-in shows this message: "App Not Setup: This app is still in development mode, and you don't have access to it. Switch to a registered test user or ask an app admin for permissions."

Destroy the Web Game

Sometimes you need to have a break from all the craziness at work. Spending all day searching information on stackoverflow.com can be boring.

Why not spice it up the website with a game? That's what kickassapp.com is for. Simply drag the link to your bookmark bar and then when your tired of a site, simply click on the link and play the game.

Website Information

Kick Ass started as a hobby project by a young developer named Erik Rothoff Andersson. The first iteration of Kick-Ass came about when he wanted to destroy his ex-girlfriend's blog. He put up Kick-Ass on Reddit, showing off his programming ninja skills and shortly after it exploded on the internet.

The internet was abuzz with Kick Ass-fever. Many ad agencies modified Kick-Ass to promote brands like M&M, the movie Thor, Axe and many more. Erik was later invited to Denmark to receive the Danish Internet Award for his excellence, also free beer.

https://kickassapp.com/

Fun Times

You can create your own ships on Kick Ass website. Simply go to the Designer Page and create your ship.

Website owners can support Kick-Ass by removing ads from the game. It's a way to make a website a bit more entertaining for a certain segment of the internet market. (Subscription is $99 a year)

I recall another app that offered a similar functionality but Website developers were able to add a shield to prevent the site from being destroyed. (I am searching for that site - if you know leave a comment below!)

As of today, the default ship has been played 4,841,459 times. (That's a lot of free time.)

Password Generator

Secure Passwords is the way to go. No more simple passwords like password. Today you need a good encrypted password.

That's where sites like passwordsgenerator.net come in handy. You can create a nice secure password without having to worry about it being discovered.

https://passwordsgenerator.net

The Secure Password Generator also offers 39 tips to better protect your password.

Personal Recommendation: For better security, change up the password suggested by the site. Add an extra character or number.

New Blog Post

PixelPrivacy posted a new article about the dangers of reusing passwords. It's an informative read about the real dangers of reusing passwords - a definite must read. Check it out!

Slack emojify

Slack is a great company communication tool. One cool aspect is responding to comments with any emoji. Users can comment with a funny emoji about the topic - for example angry Trump.

Every once in a while you may find the need to add your own emoji. That’s where emojify comes in handy - you can easily transform any image to the right size for Slack.

Website Description

Quickly create custom Slack emojis! Just add an image and our emojibot will do the rest.

https://emojify.cool/

Sample Emojis

Here are a few example Emojis that were created using the Emojify tool.

Mockuper

Graphical mockups are useful when to put a screenshot or photo into perspective. Simply adding a screenshot in a release note or on social media can look a bit blah and may not generate the number of likes that you want. A mockup can make the boring shot stand out.

Mockuper is an awesome site that offers a lot of interesting design choices and if you can't find the perfect layout - allow you to create your own mockup. How awesome is that! The best part is that the site is free.

Website Description

https://www.mockuper.net

Sample Mockups