Kevin Tracy's Useful Resources!
Believe it or not, Kevin Tracy, , insists he really doesn't know everything! (We're still trying to wrap our brains around that)
Below is a list of online resources that Kevin Tracy uses on a regular basis to make his life easier.
| Catholic Answers | Faith & Theology | When you're a well known internet celebrity and Catholic, a lot of people ask a lot of questions about your faith. They not only want to know what you believe, but why you believe it. This is especially true when you don't back down from the teachings of the Catholic Church in the face of increasing ridicule and hostility from for forces of popular culture and politics. If I'm not sure about my answer, or if I can't figure out how to word my answer in a way that will make sense, I go to Catholic Answers first. |
| A Scriptural Rosary | Faith & Theology | As a Knight of Columbus, I'm supposed to pray a Rosary everyday, but sometimes my mind wanders from the mysteries I'm supposed to be meditating on. This Scriptural Rosary is insanely powerful and I love praying it. |
| Federation of American Scientists | Geopolitical | If you hear something related to national security on the news and wonder, "How do they know that?" - odds are the Federation of American Scientists has already figured it out. When I was an intelligence analyst in the US Air Force and wanted to learn more about how our systems worked than my peers, supervisors, and commanders could answer; I went looking on FAS.org and never left disappointed. This is an incredible resource if you're a national security hawk. |
| Project Geospatial | Geopolitical | I'm a map nerd. I love maps and charts. I've been this way since I was a kid. Thanks to the Internet, we now live in a golden age of mapping data! There's so many resources out there, it's difficult to keep track of. That's where Adam Simmons and Project Geospatial come in to play! Adam is an Air Force veteran with incredible connections throughout the geospatial industry, including in the government and private sectors. Even better, Adam Simmons a fellow streamer on Twitch. |
| 1440 | News Aggregator | Every morning, I check my e-mail for my daily 1440 news headlines. 1440 eliminates almost all of the bias from their news headlines and summaries, making the process of getting the real news and not opinion so much easier. 1440 broke my daily reliance on The Drudge Report after 20 years and I spend a lot less time looking through bias headlines and sources every day. 1440 is pretty great! |
| Advanced Machinery | Repair, Parts, & Restoration | These guys have bailed me out a few times! As you may know, I repair and restore old woodworking equipment as a hobby. Advanced Machinery has parts for a particularly nice but very incomplete Hegner scroll saw I discovered in 2020. With their assortment of parts, I was able to get it working again like new! |
| Vintage Machinery | Repair, Parts, & Restoration | Some of the equipment I restore is old. REALLY old. For example, my favorite scroll saw is an 80 year old Delta 40-440. When restoring vintage and antique equipment, you rarely have all the parts needed to make it work. Vintage Machinery is a network of people like me who are passionate about old machines and work really hard to find original instruction manuals and part breakdowns. They also have a ton of experience restoring their own machines and, odds are, someone has already restored the same machine you're working on. |
| Graphic Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) | Software | When it comes to editing photos or making YouTube thumbnails, I choose GIMP over Photoshop every time. GIMP handles layer adjustments without masks, making it supremely more enjoyable to work with. As long as you're not trying to draw in GIMP, it's great! And it's FREE & OPEN SOURCE! |
| MyCroft AI | Software | A Voice Activated AI to control your smarthome! It will replace Amazon Alexa at the KTracy Manor and KTracy.com HQ. We're super excited about this! We finally have an alternative to Google Home and Amazon Alexa without the spying. |
| Paint.net | Software | Paint.net is essentially MS Paint with layers, support for transparent file types, and advanced color adjustments. While Paint.net is FREE & OPEN SOURCE software, these advanced features do come at a cost: Paint.net can't draw a circle to save its life. However, when I need transparent high resolution pixel art for something I'm working on, I open Paint.net. |
| "Reactive Images" in OBS More advanced version with collaboration |
Stream Tools | This is a YouTube tutorial about how to create reactive images in OBS for talking PNG Tubers (static V-Tubers that talk). I'm thinking about using something like this when I have guests on my live streams |
| Bolor Dictionary | Translator | I'm an enormous fan of Mongolian culture, lore, and music. I've even been undertaking some Mongolian themed woodworking projects, some of which include traditional Mongolian script being cut or carved out of wood. The Bolor Dictionary is a great starting point. While the much malined Google Translate service only translates the more commonly used, modern cyrillic version of Mongolian, the Bolor Dictionary uses the traditional script and cyrillic in all translations. However, the Bolor Dictionary is as much a dictionary as it is a thesaurus. It provides many different words for each answer, many of which are not appropriate for the meaning you want to convey. I've been translating the cyrillic results back to English using Google Translate to ensure I'm not making a sign that reads "F**k" when I mean to say "Love." |
| How to Develop Themes For The Known CMS | Web Design | A long term goal of mine with KTracy.com is to introduce full MicroPub functionality to the site. While I'd prefer to find a way to do that with a basic PHP script, I may end up using the Known CMS. However, the themes available for Known are not suitable for a site as awesome as KTracy.com (they're for scrubs). If we can't find a simple PHP script to handle the MicroPub aspect of IndieWeb, installing a light-weight CMS like Known in a subdirectory and making it look like the rest of the site via a totally custom may be our best option. |
| Bulk Resize Photos | Web Design | We save our photos at full resolution. That's great for printing and archiving data. It's less good for speedy web design and limiting bandwidth. We use BulkResizePhotos.com to quickly and easily reduce the resolution and file quality to something more appropriate for 2020s web design. We simply have to drag and drop all of the gallery photos into the box on the page and, after a moment, download a ZIP file with the pictures. Right now, pictures from modern phones are saved at 25% of the original resolution and at 70% image quality. |
| My Outdoor Plans | Woodworking | My Outdoor Plans doesn't have the best plans when it comes to creating long lasting outdoor furniture. It's like they've never heard of a knee brace. However, the plans are laid out remarkably well! They break down even the most complicated projects in such simple ways that it's easy to identify the weak points in their designs and then modify them yourself. |
| Stumpy Nubs Woodworking Journal | Woodworking | Stumpy Nubs and crew have an awesome YouTube channel, but their website is a vastly underrated resource with incredible plans for sale and tons of great insight from their decades of experience making things out of wood. |
