Whoa, James chose such a good theme for this month’s Indieweb Carnival, “Tools”. What is a tool? The dictionary defines it as “a device or implement, especially one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function”.

As proven in some of my previous posts, I’m not very handy, as much as I’d want to, so the tools I usually make use of are digital ones. I’ve written about some of them extensively, even posting how I made them, so I’m leaving a list here for further reading, if anyone is interested:

• Chrome Extensions: IMDb Outlink Button, RSS Feed button, Youtube RSS Button
• Lotto Simulator
• Laser Disc Collection and IMDb ratings stats
• Hugo PHP Admin Interface

As you can see, most of the tools I write are web based or written in PHP. I’ve created several similar tools at work, that usually run under crons and perform specific tasks (usually reading from one database, processing the data and saving it somewhere else in a different format).

My website also makes use of such tools doing various things, like creating thumbnails for my website, removing location data for privacy, uploading the site to my server, and many more.

Of course, my tools sometimes rely on other tools made by someone else, either a small terminal one-liner (like the exiftool example above), or the JPEGmini tool which minimizes the size of my photos. I’ve talked about this and others in detail in a post explaining the software I install on a new Mac.

The main idea is simple. Either if you’re a carpenter, an electrician, a programmer or a musician, never be afraid to use tools. Either they were made by someone who had the same issue as you do and found a workaround for it, or you are the first to encounter the problem and have the opportunity to create something new that can benefit the world. And even if you do something that has already been done, don’t be afraid to reinvent the wheel, maybe one day you’ll make a better one.