Kaelri
Clouds (Desktop 27)
I am, paradoxically, posting this desktop both despite and because of the fact that my setup has not changed in any meaningful way for several months now. "Despite," in that I feel bad about not posting more often. Most of my spare time has been annexed by another large creative project, and I miss the unbroken hours of Rainmeter tweaking I used to do. "Because," in that there is still some value in taking stock of this setup: it has proven itself as a highly practical, unobstrusive, and all-around great arrangement. I just love it the way it is, and like all the best designs, it makes me feel like I want to use my notebook, and that it's going to do exactly what I want it to do.
For the first time since Lightning Sunset, I'm going to go through my entire arsenal of core applications and detail how they're being used and why.
(By the way, there's another reason why I feel like showing off my computer today: I just received a RAM upgrade, from 1 GB to 2 GB. I swear, it's halfway to a brand new computer. Even with all of the stuff below - every single one, running simultaneously - I don't break a 50% memory load. It is geekily glorious.)
- - - - - - -
As anyone who follows my desktops knows, I go through wallpapers pretty rapidly, while having a few favorites that I regularly return to. This has become one of them. I love the style of having a single crisp, asymmetrical object surrounded by a simple, subtle gradient. It's a great synthesis of the functional and the aesthetic; fresh and stimulating, without being distracting or gaudy. (Via cain.)
- - - - - - -
I really love this visual style for XP; it's become one of lassekongo83's most popular, and deservedly so. Its most distinguishing feature, one which is inexplicably rare among Windows shell themes, is that it inverts the colors, giving Explorer, Notepad, etc. a dark-gray background against light-gray text. It is wonderfully soft on the eyes, especially late at night.
Of equal importance, it also finally makes Windows itself match the light-on-dark theme common to my Rainmeter, Firefox, et al. I think it was nitzua who pointed out that some of the most carefully-crafted desktop themes are shattered the minute you open the start menu. So it's a real pleasure to have a genuinely customized work environment, not just the illusion of one.
Aside from those, I'm just enamored of its simple grays. Lakrits is a legitimately minimalist VS, and I'll miss it muchly when I make the jump to Windows 7.
- - - - - - -
Startups
- Start Killer.
- D-Color.
These really haven't changed since the Lightning Sunset days. I wrote an individual paragraph for each of them before I realized that I was just repeating myself from 16 months ago. The common thread here is that they're all tiny apps which enhance the taskbar and the desktop in extremely logical, intuitive, "I can't believe it didn't do this by itself" ways.
- - - - - - -
Virtual Shell
- Autohotkey.
- Rainmeter. Skins: Enigma 2.6, customized.
It's these three apps which really change the way I use my notebook. As you probably know, I use Autohotkey to
- Launch core apps, documents and settings with universal hotkeys. (Firefox is Win+F, Thunderbird is Win+T, Notepad is Win+N, Google Wave is Win+W, etc.) In addition, the other two get very prominent hotkeys as befits their status: I can start up Launchy with Win+F11, and Rainmeter with Win+F12.
- Adjust the transparency of the active window and taskbar.
- Minimize, maximize, restore, and Alt+Tab using only the Alt key and the mouse.
- Control iTunes with universal hotkeys.
- Send certain commonly-used phrases when triggered, ala Texter.
Launchy, meanwhile, does pretty much everything else. My devout adoration of Launchy has never wavered. Summoning any app, folder, document, control panel module, song, picture, video, theme, log, and search engine in less than ten keystrokes? Win. (And I still use Calcy all the time, too.)
Rainmeter, by now, speaks for itself. See the notes for more details. The only thing that deserves specific mention is that Rainmeter no longer requires assistance from a third-party app like Desktop Coral to reserve space at the edge of the screen. You can now redefine the coordinates of Windows' desktop work area in your theme file. Basically, I used to require three apps - Rainmeter, CD Art Display, and Desktop Coral - to achieve this effect. Now I can do it in one.
- - - - - - -
With my new RAM upgrade (and please accept my half-hearted apology for going on about it), it really costs me nothing to keep this light, attractive three-dimensional desktop manager running at all times. It activates when the mouse enters either bottom corner, so the overall perception is one of physically rotating the cube - very intuitive, I've found.
- - - - - - -
Trillian
Trillian, like Launchy, may as well be a startup app. I keep it running all the time, even when playing games or watching movies. I can't stand being out of digital contact; it's like living without a phone. These days, I use Trillian to connect to Skype and Twitter, as well, which only reaffirms its value to me: the more tasks a single app can cover, the more I love it.
The reason I can't abide Miranda or Pidgin is that neither (as far as I can tell) is capable storing logs in a plaintext, single-file format. This is a necessity for me, since I'm constantly looking up messages from old conversations, even months or years later, and nothing beats bringing it up in three strokes with Launchy and searching directly in Notepad.
- - - - - - -
Dropbox
I've tried a lot of synchronization and backup services in the past. Before Dropbox, I was a big fan of a Firefox extension (I can't remember the name) which let you upload files directly to your Gmail account space. My desire for this genre can be summed up as "a USB stick in the cloud," and Dropbox is the first one that I've kept and used for over a year. It's perfect, and as the storage capacity increases over time, so does my loyalty.
- - - - - - -
iTunes & Last.fm
I know you all hate iTunes. I don't blame you, I'm just convinced that we're not actually using the same program. I don't know what I'm doing differently, but on my laptop, iTunes and its library (3500+ songs now) load in under 5 seconds, handle just as smoothly as Firefox, and do virtually everything I want a media player to do. I keep trying alternatives - I actually haven't yet uninstalled Songbird after trying the new version last week - but as long as iTunes ain't broken, I have no desire to fix it.
Last.fm, on the other hand, is an experiment. I'm simply interested in keeping track of my music listening habits and comparing them with others'. The scrobbler does its thing and never interferes with my work in any way, so for the moment I'm happy to give it a home. It loads automatically with iTunes, too, which is nice - one less thing to worry about.
- - - - - - -
Thunderbird 2.0
I have not upgraded to Thunderbird 3. I kept trying it with each beta release, and then the final version, and I was quite disappointed each time. As it stands, the interface is quite bulky, the folder labels are inexplicably verbose. The "Smart Folders" really bulk up the "unread" view, too, which is pretty ironic, since I've always relied on it to serve as my condensed, consolidated reading list. As if that wasn't enough, it also insists on synchronizing virtually all of my email, including the spam folders - which also appear in the "unread" view. I admit, I'd like to be able to view flash applets without having to open feed items in Firefox, but it's just not enough to beat the cons.
So I'm sticking with 2.0 for the time being. Like iTunes, Thunderbird simply meets all my requirements. It is my consummate message center: all five of my email accounts synchronized via IMAP, plus my RSS feeds, all together in one simple view. I use exactly one extension: Minimize to Tray, which lets me keep Thunderbird available at all times without taking up valuable taskbar space.
At some point, I do hope to have Thunderbird (email/RSS), Trillian (IM/IRC/Twitter) and Google Wave integrated into a single elegant client. I'm sure the day is coming. But for now, I feel I've brought them together on my system in the most efficient way available to me.
- - - - - - -
Until Thunderbird or Trillian get a Wave plugin, I can't say no to this lovely little tray app. Like Last.fm, it does its job and minds its own business, and it does both so damn well that it passed my stringent filters with surprising ease.
- - - - - - -
Firefox
My Firefox is still pretty much as seen here: just a box with an address bar. I use keyboard shortcuts to toggle my bookmarks and menubar, and, naturally, back/forward. Additionally, I use keywords to access search engines - for example, to Google "Lifehacker," I just type "g lifehacker". Once you get used to it, it saves an awful lot of time.
While I did jump on the Awesome Bar bandwagon for the first few months, I'm now trying to bookmark more aggressively. This is because, when my history and cache are clear, Firefox loads in under one second. It beats Chrome on my system. You just can't beat that.
I do want to mention something to users of Lazarus Form Recovery, an extension that I heartily recommend. It's saved me, on numerous occasions, from losing hours and hours of writing. However, 99% of the time, it's something I'd written just minutes prior, and lost due to a crash; I've never needed to recover something days or weeks after the fact. So I strongly recommend clearing your Lazarus cache (which is kept separately from the main Firefox cache) and setting it to purge saved forms if they're older than a week or so. Before I realized this, Firefox sometimes took up to a minute and a half to load, no matter what else I tried to speed it up. Now, as I mentioned, it freaking beats Chrome at its own game.
- - - - - - -
I am currently running virtually all of these apps. Firefox has a dozen tabs, I've got four conversations in Trillian, and iTunes is playing the score of The Thin Red Line. And I'm clocking in at a whopping 40% memory use. RAM is cool.
- - - - - - -
Merry Christmas. :)
Clouds (Desktop 27)
I am, paradoxically, posting this desktop both despite and because of the fact that my setup has not changed in any meaningful way for several months now. "Despite," in that I feel bad about not posting more often. Most of my spare time has been annexed by another large creative project, and I miss the unbroken hours of Rainmeter tweaking I used to do. "Because," in that there is still some value in taking stock of this setup: it has proven itself as a highly practical, unobstrusive, and all-around great arrangement. I just love it the way it is, and like all the best designs, it makes me feel like I want to use my notebook, and that it's going to do exactly what I want it to do.
For the first time since Lightning Sunset, I'm going to go through my entire arsenal of core applications and detail how they're being used and why.
(By the way, there's another reason why I feel like showing off my computer today: I just received a RAM upgrade, from 1 GB to 2 GB. I swear, it's halfway to a brand new computer. Even with all of the stuff below - every single one, running simultaneously - I don't break a 50% memory load. It is geekily glorious.)
- - - - - - -
As anyone who follows my desktops knows, I go through wallpapers pretty rapidly, while having a few favorites that I regularly return to. This has become one of them. I love the style of having a single crisp, asymmetrical object surrounded by a simple, subtle gradient. It's a great synthesis of the functional and the aesthetic; fresh and stimulating, without being distracting or gaudy. (Via cain.)
- - - - - - -
I really love this visual style for XP; it's become one of lassekongo83's most popular, and deservedly so. Its most distinguishing feature, one which is inexplicably rare among Windows shell themes, is that it inverts the colors, giving Explorer, Notepad, etc. a dark-gray background against light-gray text. It is wonderfully soft on the eyes, especially late at night.
Of equal importance, it also finally makes Windows itself match the light-on-dark theme common to my Rainmeter, Firefox, et al. I think it was nitzua who pointed out that some of the most carefully-crafted desktop themes are shattered the minute you open the start menu. So it's a real pleasure to have a genuinely customized work environment, not just the illusion of one.
Aside from those, I'm just enamored of its simple grays. Lakrits is a legitimately minimalist VS, and I'll miss it muchly when I make the jump to Windows 7.
- - - - - - -
Startups
- Start Killer.
- D-Color.
These really haven't changed since the Lightning Sunset days. I wrote an individual paragraph for each of them before I realized that I was just repeating myself from 16 months ago. The common thread here is that they're all tiny apps which enhance the taskbar and the desktop in extremely logical, intuitive, "I can't believe it didn't do this by itself" ways.
- - - - - - -
Virtual Shell
- Autohotkey.
- Rainmeter. Skins: Enigma 2.6, customized.
It's these three apps which really change the way I use my notebook. As you probably know, I use Autohotkey to
- Launch core apps, documents and settings with universal hotkeys. (Firefox is Win+F, Thunderbird is Win+T, Notepad is Win+N, Google Wave is Win+W, etc.) In addition, the other two get very prominent hotkeys as befits their status: I can start up Launchy with Win+F11, and Rainmeter with Win+F12.
- Adjust the transparency of the active window and taskbar.
- Minimize, maximize, restore, and Alt+Tab using only the Alt key and the mouse.
- Control iTunes with universal hotkeys.
- Send certain commonly-used phrases when triggered, ala Texter.
Launchy, meanwhile, does pretty much everything else. My devout adoration of Launchy has never wavered. Summoning any app, folder, document, control panel module, song, picture, video, theme, log, and search engine in less than ten keystrokes? Win. (And I still use Calcy all the time, too.)
Rainmeter, by now, speaks for itself. See the notes for more details. The only thing that deserves specific mention is that Rainmeter no longer requires assistance from a third-party app like Desktop Coral to reserve space at the edge of the screen. You can now redefine the coordinates of Windows' desktop work area in your theme file. Basically, I used to require three apps - Rainmeter, CD Art Display, and Desktop Coral - to achieve this effect. Now I can do it in one.
- - - - - - -
With my new RAM upgrade (and please accept my half-hearted apology for going on about it), it really costs me nothing to keep this light, attractive three-dimensional desktop manager running at all times. It activates when the mouse enters either bottom corner, so the overall perception is one of physically rotating the cube - very intuitive, I've found.
- - - - - - -
Trillian
Trillian, like Launchy, may as well be a startup app. I keep it running all the time, even when playing games or watching movies. I can't stand being out of digital contact; it's like living without a phone. These days, I use Trillian to connect to Skype and Twitter, as well, which only reaffirms its value to me: the more tasks a single app can cover, the more I love it.
The reason I can't abide Miranda or Pidgin is that neither (as far as I can tell) is capable storing logs in a plaintext, single-file format. This is a necessity for me, since I'm constantly looking up messages from old conversations, even months or years later, and nothing beats bringing it up in three strokes with Launchy and searching directly in Notepad.
- - - - - - -
Dropbox
I've tried a lot of synchronization and backup services in the past. Before Dropbox, I was a big fan of a Firefox extension (I can't remember the name) which let you upload files directly to your Gmail account space. My desire for this genre can be summed up as "a USB stick in the cloud," and Dropbox is the first one that I've kept and used for over a year. It's perfect, and as the storage capacity increases over time, so does my loyalty.
- - - - - - -
iTunes & Last.fm
I know you all hate iTunes. I don't blame you, I'm just convinced that we're not actually using the same program. I don't know what I'm doing differently, but on my laptop, iTunes and its library (3500+ songs now) load in under 5 seconds, handle just as smoothly as Firefox, and do virtually everything I want a media player to do. I keep trying alternatives - I actually haven't yet uninstalled Songbird after trying the new version last week - but as long as iTunes ain't broken, I have no desire to fix it.
Last.fm, on the other hand, is an experiment. I'm simply interested in keeping track of my music listening habits and comparing them with others'. The scrobbler does its thing and never interferes with my work in any way, so for the moment I'm happy to give it a home. It loads automatically with iTunes, too, which is nice - one less thing to worry about.
- - - - - - -
Thunderbird 2.0
I have not upgraded to Thunderbird 3. I kept trying it with each beta release, and then the final version, and I was quite disappointed each time. As it stands, the interface is quite bulky, the folder labels are inexplicably verbose. The "Smart Folders" really bulk up the "unread" view, too, which is pretty ironic, since I've always relied on it to serve as my condensed, consolidated reading list. As if that wasn't enough, it also insists on synchronizing virtually all of my email, including the spam folders - which also appear in the "unread" view. I admit, I'd like to be able to view flash applets without having to open feed items in Firefox, but it's just not enough to beat the cons.
So I'm sticking with 2.0 for the time being. Like iTunes, Thunderbird simply meets all my requirements. It is my consummate message center: all five of my email accounts synchronized via IMAP, plus my RSS feeds, all together in one simple view. I use exactly one extension: Minimize to Tray, which lets me keep Thunderbird available at all times without taking up valuable taskbar space.
At some point, I do hope to have Thunderbird (email/RSS), Trillian (IM/IRC/Twitter) and Google Wave integrated into a single elegant client. I'm sure the day is coming. But for now, I feel I've brought them together on my system in the most efficient way available to me.
- - - - - - -
Until Thunderbird or Trillian get a Wave plugin, I can't say no to this lovely little tray app. Like Last.fm, it does its job and minds its own business, and it does both so damn well that it passed my stringent filters with surprising ease.
- - - - - - -
Firefox
My Firefox is still pretty much as seen here: just a box with an address bar. I use keyboard shortcuts to toggle my bookmarks and menubar, and, naturally, back/forward. Additionally, I use keywords to access search engines - for example, to Google "Lifehacker," I just type "g lifehacker". Once you get used to it, it saves an awful lot of time.
While I did jump on the Awesome Bar bandwagon for the first few months, I'm now trying to bookmark more aggressively. This is because, when my history and cache are clear, Firefox loads in under one second. It beats Chrome on my system. You just can't beat that.
I do want to mention something to users of Lazarus Form Recovery, an extension that I heartily recommend. It's saved me, on numerous occasions, from losing hours and hours of writing. However, 99% of the time, it's something I'd written just minutes prior, and lost due to a crash; I've never needed to recover something days or weeks after the fact. So I strongly recommend clearing your Lazarus cache (which is kept separately from the main Firefox cache) and setting it to purge saved forms if they're older than a week or so. Before I realized this, Firefox sometimes took up to a minute and a half to load, no matter what else I tried to speed it up. Now, as I mentioned, it freaking beats Chrome at its own game.
- - - - - - -
I am currently running virtually all of these apps. Firefox has a dozen tabs, I've got four conversations in Trillian, and iTunes is playing the score of The Thin Red Line. And I'm clocking in at a whopping 40% memory use. RAM is cool.
- - - - - - -
Merry Christmas. :)