As I am knee-deep in proofreading my thesis, today I let a picture speak. This is my absolute favourite right now, and as a wallpaper on my desktop it reminds me of holidays, total relaxation and the sheer luck of being in the moment – maybe it does the same for you?
Archive for July, 2007
May I introduce to you – my menu bar. I thought it might be nice to share what I put up there, what it does, and where you can get it.
The setup varies from time to time, some items are new, some have been there for a long time… anyway: Let’s get to details!
- Coconut WiFi: Tells you at a glance if there is free WiFi around. Great for the connection-seeking traveller. Here at home it is my FON-hotspot that makes the light green. Just got a major update, which caused me to try it again. Free.
- Plazer: Propagates your current location on plazer.com and lets you keep track of the places you go (and go online). They recently released a facebook plugin, too. My profile is here. Free.
- DesktopManager: I can’t live without it anymore: Virtual desktops on my mac. Currently I have five of them, through which I can scroll via shortcut or mouseclick. Great to avoid window-cluttering and seperating tools for different workflows. Freeware.
- Twitterific: Desktop application for Twitter, the mini-blogging site. Automatically shows you incoming messages from friends and people you follow and allows you to quickly twitter news yourself. Freeware. Me on twitter (used rarely)
- AudioScrobbler (last.fm client version): Connects to iTunes and sends the songs you listen to to last.fm – you can see my most recently played music on the sidebar right on this page! Freeware.
- Mozy: Online backup, see this post. The agent automatically keeps your online backup up to date. Sign up with this link for a free account, and we both get 256 MB free storage extra!
- Aurora: Sophisticated alarm clock for the mac. You can set multiple alarms, play iTunes playlists, set fade-in, sleep, recurrency, etc. – I love waking up to it rather than some annoying beep. Freeware.
- YouControl Tunes: Control iTunes from everywhere. A dropdown menu lets you quickly manipulate what is played, lets you rate songs, look through your whole iTunes library and more.
- SlimBatteryMonitor: More options and flexibility than the system setting’s battery monitor. Freeware.
- Quicksilver: One of THE most useful tools on the mac. I use it mostly as fast application starter, but you can do real voodoo with this gem. Free.
- Menu Meters: Great set of dials that give you important data. Somehow I do feel better when my mac does not respond and I have visual confirmation that the CPU is maxing out. Bandwith monitor another must for me.
- Scripts Menu: Does anyone know how I can get rid of this?
- OSX System settings: I use the keychain menu to quickly enable the screensaver with password when I leave my computer unattended for a moment with other people around, the rest should be known to you.
While spending almost all my wake time in the PC lab of university, finishing the thesis, I still had time to complain about my not-existent flat tummy. This complaining got me some sympathy from my girlfriend… and a training plan.
So now I am having lots of fruit and vegetables instead of cookies and chocolate-filled everything, and I have been jogging yesterday… AND today. You hear me right. Second day, still going strong. Maybe I should try the Seinfeld way: Don’t break the chain!
What are your tips for sticking to new habits?
After the last post of “software that can save your ass“, I do have some additions to make. Today: Online backup.
Your backup chain is not complete if you do only have backups on-site. An external harddrive is great if your main computer’s disk crashes – but it is no good if your apartment burns down. For this matter, you need to store at least crucial data off-site. Of course, you can burn DVDs and send them to friends every week. Or use an external drive and store it in a bank locker. But… would you really stick to that? Reliably? I wouldn’t, and for people like me, there are services like mozy.
mozy is doing what it says: Backing up your crucial data (means: Stuff that has value for you, i.e. photos, music, documents, financial data, your thesis, etc.) offsite. It does so without getting in your way, with high encryption and reliably. Data retrieval is via download or you can order a DVD with Fedex (though I think this is US only right now). Free account has 2GB, unlimited storage costs 5 bucks per month. Software is available for Windows and Mac (beta).
This is a great addition to on-site backup (which you have, don’t you?). It is not meant to backup your entire drive (system data, program files), so it is not used as sole backup method (plus retrieval of massive data will take some time, depending on your connection). The first upload of data takes some time, might even be days, but then it will upload only changed data and thus be up to date without great delays.
Disclaimer: The link (the mozy logo) carries my referral ID – with every referral I get more space on my free account, but you will also get more space, so I guess it is a fair deal)
As was pointed out to me by Marc from bluebulgaria.com, comments were broken due to the email subscription script – the “send” buttons got mixed up. So now I have a simple link if you want to sign up for floho.com via email – the process is the same from then on.
Also updated: My profile on claimID. There you can find links to all the (social) networking sites where I have a profile and some more stuff (pics, qypes, bookmarks…). Old rule still stands though: Contacts in virtual life should hold up to the definition of contact in real life. Means: Don’t add me if you do not want to be IN CONTACT with me 