// Holy Shit Tools

Rands Holy Shit List has become a synonym of great personal discoveries for a nerd. I can not relate to many Holy Shit moments in my life other than the obvious ones minus and Windows 95.

I’m a latecomer to the Apple hype, having resisted the bane of the iPod for years until fall 2008. Same with Mac OS.
After the Amstrad, C64, and subsequent C128 and Amiga, my parents became less progressive and their Olivetti 486SX(1) probably still graces my father desk. This computer became my first nerd victim when I installed 386BSD on it and connected with the real world, the internet.

Being a full time online nerd already, I totally missed out on Windows 95 and still think that Windows 3.11 an awesome tool(2) was. Until early 1997, I was asked if I could install a fax driver on Windows NT4.0. What I thought would not be hard became a 2 day job, but at the end of this period not only was the connected fax operational, also were the 8 other computers linked up as Windows NT 4.0 clients. My first real network. And I had never played with Windows since the days that MS Word 6.0 was released. WOW!

But this list will not deal with my Holy Shit moments, but with the Holy Shit Tools I daily use as a web nerd.

WordPress

WordPress has become the blogging platform by choice, not in the least helped by it’s huge community and free availability. Although my blogging days have been more exciting and financially rewarding, I love having a blog and being able to tinker with my WP install.
WP is highly customizable and probably one of the more interesting, polyvalent and easier CMS platforms.

Dropbox

If there has been one online Holy Shit moment in the last two years, it certainly was Dropbox. Not only helped Dropbox my procrastination(3), more even Dropbox eased my non-profit IT support. Never has it been easier to set up a file server for small organizations without having to explain IT n00bs a single thing!

Twitter

My relationship with Twitter is the specimen of a Love-Hate relationship. I love to say I was part of the first ones(4) and also having pioneered the Twitterloo. But just as with my blog my Twitter habits vary highly: from the old-fashioned What are you doing oversharing to nowadays wannabe joker.

Twitter you might have been one of the best things in time, but I would love to leave you. Now. Yesterday already actually.

Today I actually think that Twitter, more favrd even is the end stage in the evolution of most bloggers: personal oversharer, lurker at pro-blogs, paid blogger, professional blogger, new influencer and last but not least… pro-Twitterer.

I will continue to update this list with time as time allows me and I can think of other tools. No, not you!

  1. With CPU slot for Pentium upgrade nevertheless [↩]
  2. Yes, tool in THAT sense [↩]
  3. Over are the days of setting up sync rules on various computers, just install DropBox and link the computer [↩]
  4. My initial account was among the 5000 first users [↩]