An American In Taiwan

So, I’ve been rather busy lately. The new quarter starts today and I’ll be taking a Linguistics class. I’m doing this for three reasons:

1. It’s an introductory class and therefore easy.
2. I have to take credit hours during the quarter I graduate (lame).
3. It’s part of a four-course series to get my TOEFL this summer, and taking this one now will let me get it out of the way.

I’ve also been messing around with changing over from Outlook 2007 to Google Calendar and Remember the Milk. I switched up my desktop so I’m now using Rainmeter, Rainlendar, RocketDock and CAD. It looks badass. Very Minority Report.

I’m doing a partial GA this quarter with the Supplemental Instruction department at the university. Yes, that means I’ll have, basically, two jobs. Not including getting all my papers done. Not including this class I’m actually taking.

I’m a busy boy.

Hence my recent obsession with productivity aides. I thought others might benefit from knowing about these, so I’ve gathered together a little post about them.

Rainmeter

Think of Rainmeter as a sort of desktop-wide Vista sidebar. Right now I’ve got the G4 The Feed news blog RSS feed on the desktop, my RTM task list, and the Lifehacker feed. Also, a clock, displays of the free space on all 3 of my hard drives, temperatures of my graphics card, hard drive and both processors (via a Speedfan plugin), the day, date, the weather for four days, instructions on how to construct RTM emails properly, stats on CPU, RAM, and power usage… and another clock. Did I mention there’s a Gmail notifier right on the desktop?

Intense, right? Sounds like it’d be cluttered up, but it’s not. It’s all rather elegant. The Enigma skin makes for a very visually pleasing, minimalistic desktop. It’s quite nice.

Rainlendar

Highly customizable, skinnable, includes an To-Do list and Events list. I ignore the To-Do list (at least, I will until someone makes a sync for RTM and Rainlendar) and just use the calendar display and the Events list. Rainlendar syncs with Google Calendar via GCALDaemon (a very powerful little program). So, I’ve got a calendar at the bottom of my screen with a horizontal list of the days of the month, with different colors for different states (nothing that day, something that day, weekend, etc). Very cool.

RocketDock

I hate Macs. I’ve said that before. But, when moving to Rainmeter and getting rid of my Vista sidebar, I was out a launcher. I found RocketDock and the Lucid icon set that matches almost perfectly with the Rainmeter Enigma skin. In otherwords, perfect integration. Oh, the I-hate-Macs thing. Right.

See, RocketDock is a lot like the Mac docking station at the bottom of the screen. It’s a line of icons that pop up when you mouseover them. You can connect them to files, directories, programs, websites, whatever. The Lucid icon set makes it look less Mac-y, which I like.

CD Art Display

I listen to a lot of music. MediaMonkey has been a real help, since my collection is rather large. However, I didn’t like the Mini- or Micro-players and I didn’t want MM to be open all the time on the desktop. But, I like seeing the CD covers. I also like having lyrics displayed. Enter CD Art Display.

I now have, on the desktop in a very unobtrusive, 3D display, the art work for whatever song is being played in MM. Just to the right is the track title, artist and album, along with the remaining time. The “case” the artwork is displayed in also has a progress bar and basic controls.

But here’s the best part. I use MiniLyrics to search and store song lyrics locally. CAD takes those and displays them on the desktop in such a way (that I’ve customized, obviously) that it blends in seamlessly with the Enigma skin!

It’s like a dance, it really is.

Google Calendar

I like desktop applications. I can’t help it. I like the GUIs. Still, I can’t use Outlook when I’m at work. I also know that, at some point, I’ll have a data and messaging plan on my phone and I’ll be able to Sync it from anywhere. What’s the point of using software that’s only on one computer when I’m hardly ever there?

So, I switched. Gcal, here I come. I’ve had my email forwarded to Gmail, my Rainlendar syncs with Gcal, and my Remember the Milk is integrated into the Gmail page and the Gcal. Oh, and I sync my Gmail contacts with my Outlook contacts (two-way sync) so if I change something in my phone, sync it to my computer, it automatically updated in my Gmail.

Remember the Milk

I used to use Outlook Tasks. Well, kinda pointless to keep using the software for just one aspect of it when you’ve changed everything else, already. RTM is an extremely powerful To Do list manager, web based. You can email tasks, send them via Twitter, add them from Gmail or Gcal, or just go to the webpage and do it there.

Smart.fm

Haven’t found a better online study tool than this one. Smart.fm combines lists with memory drills with flashcards and all on a web flash platform, making it accessable from anywhere. I’m using it for studying Chinese and it’s really nice. It’s like Anki but better.

Bonus: Ubiquity

Quite possibly the single greatest Web 2.0 (3.0?) plugin available. I’ll let you see for yourself. Spend time with it. Snuggle down with it. You’ll love it. Apparently Mozilla is adding it to Firefox officially in the 3.2 or 3.5 release, which means much better support. Nice.

This is what geeking out looks like. As the Ubiquity developers mention, the web is disconnected. This is my attempt at connecting everything.

Tags: gal, GTD, productivity, rainlendar, rainmeter, remember the milk, rtm, software, ubiquity

This entry was posted by 美國人 on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 21:11 and is filed under Chinese Language, Daily Life, Non-Taiwan Related, Science, Technology, Etc., Taiwan Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.