Notes - Tag - Gene.Tech

A Toolbox I Actually Reopen

gene.liu@live.com (Gene Liu) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every few months I dump a folder of saved links into a post like this. Some entries are battle-tested; others are “I used this once and it saved a weekend.” I dropped EssayKiller_V2 from my draft list – it was a fun GPT-2-era experiment, but in 2026 you already have better options on your desk.

Bookmark the page, steal what you need, ignore the rest.

Translation & language

DeepL – Still the translator I reach for when Google feels too literal and ChatGPT feels too chatty.
pinyin-pro – Pinyin conversion and matching for Chinese text in apps and scripts.

Homelab & network

dynip.dev – Dynamic DNS that actually updates in about a minute, with RFC 2136 TSIG for routers and a generous free tier. Homelab DNS without the 30-minute stale-record ritual.
dnspeep – Spy on DNS queries your machine is making. Julia Evans wrote a nice walkthrough when it launched; the repo is the thing to install.
HTTP Toolkit – Intercept, inspect, and mock HTTP(S) traffic without wrestling mitmproxy config every time.

Terminal & remote access

sshx – Share a live terminal in the browser. Fast, collaborative, surprisingly handy for “can you see this error?”
termpair – View and control a terminal from a browser with end-to-end encryption.
webssh – Web-based SSH client when you cannot install a native client but still need a shell.

PDF & documents

Stirling-PDF – Self-hosted PDF toolkit: merge, split, compress, OCR, the usual suspects. Run it at home if you do not want files on a random website.
PDFReal – Fast online PDF utilities when you need something quick and do not want to spin up a container.

Cloud native & observability

awesome-cloud-native – Rootsongjc’s curated list of cloud-native projects. Good starting point when you are lost in the CNCF catalog.
Netdata – Real-time monitoring with minimal setup. Nice on a single node or a small cluster.

Data & databases

DBeaver – Universal database client. Not pretty at 2 a.m., but it opens everything.

Shell & scripting

pure-bash-bible – Bash snippets you will grep more than you expect.
Bash-Oneliner – Another solid collection of one-liners and small scripts.
ShellCheck – Lint your shell scripts before they lint you.

Security, crypto, and regex pain

CyberChef – The “what encoding is this?” Swiss Army knife from GCHQ.
regex-vis – Visualize and debug regexes when your eyes glaze over at ^(?=(.*[a-z])).

Comments (lightweight)

Cusdis – Lightweight, privacy-friendly comment widget. The author’s free hosted service is gone; self-host or embed on your own site. Still beats loading Disqus on a personal blog.

IoT & casting

Arkadiko (Docker) – Docker image related to the Arkadiko IoT/game stack; useful if you are poking at that ecosystem.
catt – Cast audio and video to Chromecast from the command line. catt cast beats opening another GUI.

Music, scores, and MIDI

Kunst der Fuge – Classical MIDI files and scores. A rabbit hole if you like reading music on a screen.
pianoplayer – Play along with a MIDI keyboard; visual feedback on what to press next.
中华古籍资源库 – National Library of China digitized ancient books and related resources. Serious archive, not a quick click.

Chinese classics & text

ctext.org – Chinese Text Project: classical Chinese texts with search and parallel editions.
copybook-generator – Generate Chinese copybook practice sheets (字帖).

Math, code, and learning

awesome-math – Curated math learning resources.
Blockly – Visual block programming; still useful for teaching and quick prototypes.
PathPlanning – Path planning algorithms with visual demos.

Fitness, handwriting, and doodles

Darebee workouts – No-equipment workout cards. Print one, do it, move on.
Calligrapher.ai – Generate realistic handwriting from typed text. Fun for labels and mockups.
smooth-signature – Smooth signature pad for web apps.

Games & Go

OGS: Learn to Play Go (Atari to Side) – Interactive lessons on online-go.com (OGS). Work through tactics from atari to side connections, then play in the same browser.

Weather

ultra-weather – Actionable, human-readable weather forecasts in a clean UI.

Reading & ebooks

bibi – EPUB reader you can embed on a website.
DeDRM_tools – Tools for managing DRM on ebooks you already own. Legal territory varies by country; use only on content you have the right to back up.

Last updated: 2026-08-02. Send me a link if something here rotted or if I missed your favorite wrench.

Notes on 'The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself'

gene.liu@live.com (Gene Liu) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some highlights and notes from my reading of The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself.

Chapter 15: The Path of Unconditional Happiness

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. You have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it’s not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It’s really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.

Notes on 'The Man's Guide to Women'

gene.liu@live.com (Gene Liu) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some highlights and notes from my reading of The Man’s Guide to Women: Scientifically Proven Secrets from the Love Lab About What Women Really Want.

01 What Do Women Really Want? Understanding a Woman’s Heart

In the process of men and women interacting, the behaviors that make women feel you are trustworthy are as follows: keeping your promises, being consistent in your words and actions, being reliable, having a sense of responsibility, and being able to truthfully show who you are.

Use wget to Download a List of Files

gene.liu@live.com (Gene Liu) — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Use wget to download a list of files:

wget -x -P /data/temp/files --no-host-directories -i /data/temp/file.txt

Setup Harbor with Self-Signed Certificates

gene.liu@live.com (Gene Liu) — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I previously had a docker-registry setup for images and a simple httpd service for a Helm chart repo. It worked as expected most of the time until we found that a layered (aka prefix) chart does not work. The solution is to replace the above two services with Harbor (2.0+). Harbor is an OCI-compliant registry capable of serving OCI-compliant artifacts, including Helm charts (requires Helm 3.0+).

The general setup should work with other Ingress controllers like Nginx/nginx-ingress.