mamamusings: January 15, 2005

how i used quicksilver today

A few colleagues have asked me what makes Quicksilver better than other launcher programs that they already use (besides the fact that it’s free). I thought I’d keep some notes today about how I used the software so that the day-to-day value was more obvious.

1. After turning on the computer, I wanted to go to the comments moderation page for my blog. I’ve got a bookmark in Firefox called “comments,” so I invoked Quicksilver and typed “comm”. Quicksilver immediately suggested the comments bookmark, so I pressed enter. Firefox launched and went right to the page I wanted.
2. I wanted to listen to Sarah McLachlan’s Afterglow album while I worked, so I invoked Quicksilver and typed Browse. I arrowed down to “Browse Albums,” then used right arrow to see my list of albums. I typed “Afterglow” and pressed enter. iTunes launched and started playing the album.
3. Today’s grading day. I use an excel spreadsheet to store student names and URLs, and to record marks for individual components of the assignment. I invoked QS and typed “409-042 grades” to find the spreadsheet (409 is the course number, 042 is the current quarter; I use this naming convention for all course-related materials), and enter to launch it in Excel.
4. My dock icon for Adium started jumping to tell me I had an incoming IM. I invoked QS and typed “ad” to bring up Adium, and pressed enter to make it the active application.
5. While grading, I had to send out an advising alert for a student who hadn’t turned in an assignment. I have a bookmark for the Advising system, so I invoked QS and typed “advising” to find the bookmark and then enter to open it in Firefox.
6. I noticed that there was still a PDF article that I’d downloaded yesterday sitting on my desktop. I invoked QS, typed the name of the document (well, the first few characters, actually). Then I pressed tab and typed “move”, and tab again and typed the name of the research folder that the document belonged in. Pressing enter resulted in the document disappearing from the desktop and magically being relocated to the appropriate folder.
7. I remembered that I’d promised a family member that I’d get some information from a mutual friend, so I invoked QS and typed the friend’s name. When her entry from my address book appeared, I pressed tab and typed “mail” to find the “Email” command. I selected it with the down arrow, then pressed enter. Mail became the active application (it was already open in the background; otherwise it would have been launched), opened a new message addressed to the friend.

And that’s just an hour or two of computer use. There are lots of other nifty tricks that you can use once you master the tool. I highly recommend reading 43 Folders for ongoing ideas and tricks.

rochester hotspots

The list of people providing free wifi in Rochester is growing, and it’s getting harder and harder to decide where to go when I have to grade!

My latest discovery is Paradigm Cafe, which is only a few miles from my house (it’s at the corner of Lehigh Station and East Henrietta Roads, for those locals who want to find it quickly; there used to be a used bookstore and coffeehouse at the same spot called Blue Sunday, but it closed last year).

They serve excellent coffee—Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters brand, which is excellent. The music is good, the atmosphere is nice (only one couch, though…they need more soft-and-comfy seating, I think), and the prices are low. All in all, I’m impressed…and will probably be back on a regular basis.

rochester weblogger meetup

The Rochester-area weblog meetup group has been sort of…well…dead. It’s never reached the critical mass for a meeting, alas. But I’ve volunteered to be the organizer for the group, and hope I can coax some local webloggers to show up. It would be nice meet more blog-savvy folks in the area.

If you’re interested, go to the Rochester Webloggers Meetup site, and RSVP for this Wednesday’s kick-off meeting, which will be at Panera Bread on Hylan Drive (across from Marketplace Mall) at 7pm.