mac geekery
Oct. 19th, 2005 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashSo I've been busy evaluating my old software environment, as I configure this new machine and re-assess all my customizations for OSX 10.4 "Tiger".
And I find myself looking at the "Deactivate Dashboard" checkbox in TinkerTool. I've randomly browsed the widgets available for Dashboard, and none of them feel like anything I need to run. It's just sitting there empty because I turned off all the default widgets, and the other ones that ship with OSX all seem just as useless to me. Most of them seem to be little interfaces to webpages, pretty single-site themed RSS headline viewers, or iTunes controllers. Does anyone actually have one that they swear by? One that's worked its way into your life and is just incredibly useful to have a quick press of f12 away?
I mean, I have little apps in place that give me some of the same functionality that the more useful widgets do, but they're hidden away in the corners of my normal screen so I can glance at them any time I like, not on a separate view that I only remember when I accidentally grey out the screen by hitting the Dashboard key...
Spotlight's not doing much for me either. I keep on wondering if it's wasting tons of space somewhere trying to index the contents of my AI source files. It doesn't have a hotkey any more because the default one kept interfering with my use of Illustrator, and I didn't feel like picking one.
And I find myself looking at the "Deactivate Dashboard" checkbox in TinkerTool. I've randomly browsed the widgets available for Dashboard, and none of them feel like anything I need to run. It's just sitting there empty because I turned off all the default widgets, and the other ones that ship with OSX all seem just as useless to me. Most of them seem to be little interfaces to webpages, pretty single-site themed RSS headline viewers, or iTunes controllers. Does anyone actually have one that they swear by? One that's worked its way into your life and is just incredibly useful to have a quick press of f12 away?
I mean, I have little apps in place that give me some of the same functionality that the more useful widgets do, but they're hidden away in the corners of my normal screen so I can glance at them any time I like, not on a separate view that I only remember when I accidentally grey out the screen by hitting the Dashboard key...
Spotlight's not doing much for me either. I keep on wondering if it's wasting tons of space somewhere trying to index the contents of my AI source files. It doesn't have a hotkey any more because the default one kept interfering with my use of Illustrator, and I didn't feel like picking one.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 05:44 pm (UTC)"Stocks", to watch my company's stock price fail to raise up to my buy-in price
"Radar In Motion", to watch weather radar
"Weather", to show a 5 day weather forecast for my area.
"RPN Calculator", because it's just useful to have a calculator.
"Air Traffic Control", to watch what WiFi access points are near.
"Marquee", to see what movies are playing locally.
"Stickies", for notes to myself.
"Package Tracker", to see where a fedex/UPS/DHL package I'm waiting for is.
"Calendar", to see the currently month's calendar.
"Countdown Calendar", to remind me how many days are left until an event.
"Capture", to take screenshots with, flexibly.
There's a few other minor things like countdown timers and stopwatches that I really didn't end up using, but which could be useful, and didn't take up much screen space. For web developers, there's various CSS and PHP cheatsheets for remembering useful stuff.
I also changed my dashboard key to Command-F12, so I couldn't hit it accidentally.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-19 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-20 07:35 am (UTC)