GreenvilleMUG

I’m a big user of Adobe software, in particular Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat but surprisingly none of those programs are in my dock. My generally strategy is to place things in my dock I either don’t use on a frequent basis but rather want to remind myself to use or something I have to use almost daily or always run as a service. As you may know both Finder and Dashboard run by default in OSX 10.4 Tiger. I also have another piece of software called Quicksilver always running in the background. On the basic level Quicksilver is “launcher” when allows me to launch certain programs quicker with key strokes. I use this to quickly launch mail, Adobe products, text editors, my news readers, etc.

After Quicksilver I run a terminal “replacement” called iTerm. iTerm allows you to enter the unix command line environment and I’m busy teaching myself quite a few of those command line skills. Two big advantages of iTerm is tabs (which I think is coming in Leopard) and also a full-screen view for that “old school” look and immersive environment.

After iTerm I keep the backup program, SuperDuper! as a reminder to always backup. Following SuperDuper! is two programs that block out distractions, One called Nocture by the same developer as Quicksilver and another program called, Noise which allows me to drown out audio distractions with white or pink noise. I’ve tried this with head phone and it does drown out background noise like other people talking and other office noises.

I’m working on teaching myself the programming language, Python and I have a neat little utility in my dock called, Learn Python which combines a html tutorial window and a command line window. Next is a very small app called Brainstorm Lite which helps me brainstorm ideas for my business and other projects. I then have a link to the OSX Image Capture utility so I can control which program is activated when I put in my digital photo memory card.

lately I have been experimenting with “micro-blogging” as a sort of “personal PR” or practicing new release writing for my business. Two of the most popular micro blogging applications are Jaiku and Twitter. I have two applications that communicate with those service respectively are Juhu and Twitterrific. BTW, I my user name is linkerjpatrick in both Twitter and Jaiku if you are interesting in what I am doing from time to time. I’m also into regular blogging big time and the desktop application I use to post to all my blogs is called Ecto. Ecto not only organizes all my blog posts in one place but also keeps copies of them offline. Finally I have an item that has to stay in my dock called AppDelete. If I want to go beyond just dragging an application to my trash can I can use AppDelete which also delete other directories associated with deleted programs which contain settings.

My philosophy is to use Quicksilver to launch applications I use on a very frequent basis and to use the dock to remind myself to use on a less frequent basis. Your way may be different but this is what works for me.