A Tour of my Desktop

August 20th, 2009

I think there’s something extremely compelling about taking a deep dive into how someone manages their digital life and gets things done day-to-day. Lifehacker has run a series called “Featured Desktop” for quite a while and I always enjoy taking a look. Well, I thought I’d butt into the conversation and give a tour of my desktop and discuss some of the tools I use on a regular basis.

Background

First a little background for anyone that cares to know what I do. I am a full time MBA student and I also work full time. The desktop that you’re taking a look at is from my personal laptop. Obviously, it’s a mac–a black Macbook from 2007 to be precise. Before deciding to go back to school, I used to be a technology writer for Lifehacker and a slew of other blogs (check out the About and Dugg pages if you’d like to take a look at some of my work). It used to be extremely important to have a Windows computer, a Mac, and a Linux computer available in order to do my day-to-day job. Since going back to school, I’ve been able to simplify and load all of the operating systems onto one computer.

Your Desktop is Boring!

I know, I know. But instead of calling it boring, I prefer to call it “clean” and easy to use–with a special emphasis on productivity. : )

I intentionally choose wallpapers that are very plain. I frequently visit InterfaceLIFT to find clean wallpapers. Usually, though, I just end up using a solid gray wallpaper. I find icons on the desktop to be an eyesore so I rarely keep anything on the desktop for any length of time.

Quicksilver

The single most important tool on my workstation is Quicksilver. I think Wikipedia really does the description justice.

It is essentially a graphical shell for the OS X operating system aimed at increasing user efficiency. It allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts, or sending e-mail; all typical specialties of a shell.

I use Quicksilver for just about every interaction on my computer and can’t recommend it enough. For Windows users, a comparable alternative is Launchy.

The Apps and the Dock

I prefer to keep the dock on the right-hand side to maximize the vertical screen real estate. The major downside to having a wide screen is that the web is mostly designed for vertical reading. Vertical scrolling mixed with a horizontal screen does not add up. From top to bottom, here’s some info about my frequently used apps:

Finder - Nothing I can do to get rid of this one.
Xcode - Development environment for the iPhone and Mac. Generally use this as a hobby. I’ve slowly but surely been completing the Stanford CS193P iPhone programming course through iTunes U. I just have about three lectures left.
Interface Builder - Part of the Objective-C programming environment used for developing interfaces.
iPhone Simulator - Think this one is pretty self-explanatory. : )
Firefox - My second favorite application besides Quicksilver.
Dashcode - An omni-development environment from Apple. I usually use Dashcode to write HTML, PHP, SQL, and CSS.
Safari - Usually just use Safari as a backup for testing cross-browser compatibility.
MAMP - MAMP is an open source server environment that automatically installs and configures Apache, MySQL, and PHP on a Mac. Windows users have a similar product available called WAMP. Usually, I’m lazy and just do my development work in production. When you visit this site, refresh a few times and you may be able to watch me work. : )
Eclipse - Open source Java development environment. Usually just use this as a hobby to keep my skills sharp. If you want apps that pick what you’ll have for dinner or which movie to go see, let me know and I’ll hook you up!!
Second Life - I occasionally drop into Second Life. I enjoy and highly recommend Mitch Wagner’s stuff.
VirtualBoxVM - I use Virtual Box to virtualize Windows XP. I almost never use Windows XP except for the very rare .exe that I occasionally need to run.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint - Pretty self-explanatory. I used to use NeoOffice and would still very much like to use an open source alternative, but the formatting was always so inconsistent between Office and NeoOffice that I couldn’t trust it enough for term papers.
iTunes I have a very small music library. Usually I listen to podcasts or use Pandora.
Cyberduck - I use Cyberduck for all of my FTP work. Love it!

Bootcamp

Lastly, I’ve got my hard drive partitioned and I’m running Ubuntu Linux on a 10GB slice. Unfortunately, now that I’m not doing much technology blogging, I rarely have reason to venture over to the dark side. : )

Closing

Hope you’ve found this tour to be at least interesting. If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I really like the idea of simplicity. Although I do a decent amount of development, I don’t like working on a highly customized system. If you have any questions about the apps or my setup, let me know in the comments. What does your rig look like? Thanks for your time.