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Tue: May 20 2008
"wanted: software junkie to fix computer"
0 comments,
Afterthought to title: Request not fulfilled by me.
Today is one of those days where I am caught between revision and inevitable procrastination. [Rant] Computer Graphics and Artificial Intelligence are fine subjects of study, except when you get tired of all the geometry and clustering algorithms. Thankfully, they do not compare at all to my torturous Compiler Design module, the exam of which I spent 2.5 hours struggling with yesterday.
So, a few months away from leaving the academic world, I was interested to come across a list of ‘dirty little secrets’ in IT (TechRepublic), seeing that it happens to be a likely career path for me. And guess what. One of the list items already applies to me:
6.) Your nontechnical co-workers will use you as personal tech support for their home PCs
Your co-workers (in addition to your friends, family, and neighbors) will view you as their personal tech support department for their home PCs and home networks. They will e-mail you, call you, and/or stop by your office to talk about how to deal with the virus that took over their home PC or the wireless router that stopped working after the last power outage and to ask you how to put their photos and videos on the Web so their grandparents in Iowa can view them. […]
Strange how, after maybe 7 years of having somewhat diverse (if simplified) academic skills at school, even at the final rung of A Levels before finding yourself climbing a new ladder called ‘higher education’, you spend 3 years doing a degree focused on one field and suddenly you are expected to be an expert in it, and to know little else. I’m sure everyone has felt irked at being shoved into a jar with a single label slapped on.
For me this was not so much an annoyance as it was a confirmation of my incompetence: friends and acquantainces asking me for help with viruses, reformatting, wireless routers, laptop recommendations, PC crashes, Windows XP tweaks, slow performance, hacking. Dear friends, if you have asked me for one of the above and I helplessly shook my head and referred you to the uni’s IT Services, it is not because I found myself doing a Computer Science degree completely by mistake - it is because they don’t teach us this stuff, and my interests in computers do not necessarily cover these things.
I have several non-IT guy friends (somehow, not girl friends) who can tell you more than I can about good figures to look for in a leaflet of the latest laptops. I learnt from them about what Alt-F4 and Shift-Del does. I am stuck in Windows XP, even though I may dream of Macs or someday getting a dual-boot Win/Linux system on my laptop. I cannot hack, build a computer, code in C (bombed that module) or even frickin’ create a Firefox plugin. What can I do, you ask? I can create websites (to some dubious level). I can tell you the significance of 1890 to the US Census Bureau. I can sort of write regular expressions. And I can explain why 1 + 1 = 10.
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Anyway, that’s another post of slacking and low self-esteem under my belt. So anyway, the last two weeks I have become a software junkie, spending much time on DonationCoder.com and Wakoopa. Everytime I get vaguely interested by some handy little application or powerful piece of software (tending towards freeware though), I must go check it out. My Firefox bookmarks have been padded up significantly lately with such items.
Some premature (as in newly downloaded, and not comprehensively tested) recommendations for those of you like-minded freeware enthusiasts  :
- Find And Run Robot (FARR) : [Storytime] For some reason I can’t get myself into Launchy. It’s cute and stuff, but for some reason it runs a little too slow for me, and I don’t find the configuration that intuitive. So for a Start Menu alternative, I’ve been happy with 8start for the past year. [The App] Discovered FARR recently though, and am liking the customization options a lot, and although it’s a little strange going back to typing things to get things running, it’s strangely satisfying to see what you want turn up in the list, knowing that it may have taken 5 seconds longer (insert generous plus-minus symbol) going through Programs from the Start Menu, or typing in the folder path on Windows Explorer.
- Screenshot Captor : [Storytime] The past few years I’ve alternated between various screen capturing programs and the simple Print Screen + MS Paint option. I can’t remember the names of any of those old programs but I do remember that none of them were flexible enough for my liking, and that the better ones were usually shareware. A couple weeks ago I discovered Cropper, which lets you select a region on your screen to capture, nice and simple, except for some reason I could not get regions bigger than 1172 x 692 pixels. So [The App] when I chanced upon Screenshot Captor, I did not turn away with the thought, “Ah, got one already”, and am glad I didn’t. I like the image browser and love the different options available for taking screenshots and after. Haven’t yet played with the editing tools though.
- FreeCommander : [Storytime] Back when I was using LiteStep and avoiding Windows Explorer, I used Turbo Navigator (TN) for my file managing. I did like TN very much, but I did miss some features - particularly thumbnail browsing, for when I’m organising newly added photos or generally looking at folders of images. I came across Directory Opus, which I had a little crush on until I realised it wasn’t freeware.
 [The App] And now for a few days I’ve been impressed with FreeCommander, with its awesome little tricks accessible via buttons and toolbars. Some alternatives? (Simplehelp)
- Ditto : Unlike the previous three applications, I did not get Ditto after some dissatisfaction with an existing piece of software doing the same thing. Yes, I have been Ctrl-C-ing and Ctrl-V-ing for years, unaware of the ease with which I could copy loads of different things before having to paste a single one of them into my browser, text editor, or image editor. I’m still getting the hang of it, but I certainly feel more secure with my clipboard nowadays with Ditto running in the background.
And some that I’ve been using for about two weeks:
- Instant Boss : A little app where you specify how long you mean to work, how long you mean to take breaks, and let it pop out at you to remind you that your break has been long enough thank you, or (more pleasantly) that you have been working so hard it’s time to take 3 minutes off. Requires self-discipline in the first place, but handy if you want to stick to a schedule of some sort over the next 2 hours.
- KeyNote, and The Guide : If you like keeping bits and pieces of things in text files via Notepad, The Guide can help you putting several of these tidbits into the same file but organised with tree structures. And if you have even more (text) information to file away and there’s just too many parent nodes in your tree to keep track of, KeyNote allows you to use tree structures as well, with extra organisation into notes/tabs. Some alternatives? (DonationCoder)
- RescueTime : This is a tracker sitting on your system tray, and RescueTime.com is where all the tagging happens. As for its use? This is explained better on the website, and with a screenshot I took when I first used it, after the first hour:
Disclaimer: I recommend these only because I have enjoyed or had a good experience using them myself personally. For the task that each burdens itself with, there are certainly alternatives (free or not) out there, probably better ones too (depending on your criteria). Yay, I get no blame now if you experience bad things with the above apps. I will feel a little bad though.
Oh and I can’t help it. A couple more recommendations:
- Kongregate.com, discovered two months ago, sadly abandoned as of late because my RescueTime goal reminds me me I cannot spend more than 0.5 hours (hah) on games per day. Flash games galore, some good, some bad, community-based, will be pure evil to you if you are partial towards games and have exams/projects coming up soon. Be warned.
- The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx (1993). I have finished this book about a week ago, but so ingrained into my head are the characters that I am still thinking about them. Beautiful yet subtle detail on its characters, settings, and scenes. From the blurb on the back: “an irrestible comedy of human life and possibility”. Purchased after reading the equally rich in detail (but less cheerful) Postcards (1992), and delighted to find that I had unknowingly picked up works of the same author behind the original Brokeback Mountain short story.
And now back to the world of applying memorized definitions and practised formulae to paper in proving my intelligence. Good luck to all of you doing the same thing.
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categories(?): books_etc, variety, fangirl, that's all :)
Tags(?): software, apps, stereotypes, IT jobs, recommendations, books, the shipping news, donationcoder, rescuetime, list
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