Wednesday 19 December 2012

The Death of Keyboard Mashing

So people have been asking me about the sorts of applications I use to make my busy busy life just that touch more bearable. Yeah... ok, nobody’s asked me that, but I’m gonna tell you anyway you ungrateful shits! Seriously without these apps I think my life would be far too stressful, and by extension everyone elses lives would be more stressful. So without further ado let’s jump in, I’ll be going in order working towards what makes the most difference to my experience.

So, Rocketdock is this pretty neat custom application launcher that sit’s on your desktop and just be’s awesome all day long. The reason I picked this up is because I hate icons on the desktop, it’s a slippery slope into organisational hell and I really like looking at my wallpaper anyways. However on top of that I didn’t want to clutter my start menu with games, or have to keep opening up steam any time I wanted something. I wanted all my games to just be there in plain sight, kinda like how some consoles do it, so Rocketdock for me is a really swish video game launcher that sits at the top of my second monitor, puts everything in plain sight, stops me hunting through menus and looks great in the process. I don’t put every game up there because I have far too many, but those I play often, and those on my to do list, have a special place on my desktop.



f.lux was introduced to me by Simon, and I’ve only been using it for a few days, but I can already testify to it’s usefulness. Basically f.lux runs in the background and during the evenings when we switch to indoor lighting f.lux will automatically change the colours on your monitor to match evening light. This takes the edge off a lot of the whites, reduces the glare from your monitors and lowers the contrast between your screen and the room that can bugger your eyes and keep you up at night. When you’ve got those late night writing sessions to meet a looming deadline (which for me is every writing session) it does help tremendously to take stress off the eyes, and after a few day’s the fact that it’s running is barely noticeable. One thing that does ruin the immersion is that although it knows my location down to the street I live on, it starts to soften the colours about an hour before it really needs to, and the suns still in the sky while I’m looking at a sepia screen, maybe it’s just a winter thing though and it’ll iron itself out eventually.

No list is a list unless there’s a Chrome app on there. Auto HD For YouTube is my saving grace. Have you ever opened up a video, left it to buffer in 1080p then come back and fullscreen it only for it to start the buffer all over again because you left it in 360p you silly sausage you. Auto HD basically solves all that and adds a feature Youtube really should have as standard. the ability to set your preferred video resolution as a default. It just takes away all those small annoying experiences that eventually add up to a mental breakdown and being placed in a care home in a puddle of your own sweat at the age of 42. The one thing I will say though, is it takes a could of seconds for Auto HD to kick in, so if you’re eager to load a video, pause it, and run off, just hold your horses and make sure it is buffering in HD, most of the time though this shouldn’t be an issue.

My Razer Nostromo is seriously the most useful piece of hardware I own. Not only does it provide a QWERTY keypad so I don’t have to rebind all of my games to work with Dvorak, but when I’m not gaming it’s a useful home of all of those keyboard shortcuts programs can make use of. I can answer Skype calls, have access to all my media buttons for VLC and Youtube, and still have space for a soundboard to annoy people during Hardly a Podcast, all without touching my mouse. It takes all that Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Tab bullshit and simplifies it into a single key-press. I haven't worked out how to bind Unicode characters to it (and have it work consistently) yet, and I’m really eager to do that so I can have a ‽ key and a … key. Maybe someone who can help me out will give me some advice in the comments section. Because let’s face it, everyone needs more interrobang in their lives.

Winsplit is a tiling window manager for Windows, and has been in all honesty the most useful tool for anyone with two or more monitors. With a series of really easy and intuitive keyboard shortcuts you can align and resize your window to the four corners or four edges of your monitor, pressing the same key again offers a different option on the same theme. I have mine setup to be 50% width on the first press, 60% width on the second, and 40% width on the third, meaning that if I have two windows I want to look at side by side I can do so, either with a 50-50 split, or a 60-40 one. What this means is that when I’m working I can have all the windows I need right at the front, no hunting around for them, and they can all be neatly arranged so they’re not overlapping and everything’s visible. Then, at a moments notice, everything can be rearranged again to incorporate a new window, or a change in the focus of the work. I don’t really think I can express in words exactly what this does, so chock out the picture below to see my classic work setup. Let me just say, it’s probably the most useful tool in terms of getting work done since Microsoft Word itself, and I couldn’t recommend it enough.




So there you have it, my top programs that stop me pulling my hair out at the ineptitude of the difficult and stubborn world we live in. If you tried out any of the programs mentioned, or would like to recommend some of your own, please feel free to let us know your thought in the comments section below this post, or by finding us on Facebook or Twitter.

Man... I wish there was an app to simplify breakfast...
Jamie Out xoxoxo

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