I have in the past done a little bit of writing to explore and and list the software that I'm using in my computing life to keep on top of things and stay organized. What inevitably happens when I do this is that I change almost instantly afterwards to different solutions and programs. Alas.

While I don't want to jinx anything, I've recently noticed that I've been using the same programs for a couple of months now, and I'm probably at a record low for complaints and frustrations with this set up. So go figure. Here's what I'm using these days.

  • Mail.app for email. It's clearly not perfect, but I can't imagine anything better, and frankly the organization of my incoming email is such a tower of cards, that I'm reluctant to change anything.

  • `DevonThinkPRO <http://www.devon-technologies.com/>`_ for database/content management. This is an incredibly powerful program, and I continue to use it to store a lot of stuff, though I haven't been using it as much recently because I'm not in school and I, unfortunately, haven't been doing enough to get to a place where I need to use it. For the DTP geeks out there, I'm keeping everything in one database that's 1.56 GBs big, with about 1mg of synched text and RTF files.

  • `NetNewsWire <http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/>`_ and `Camino <http://www.caminobrowser.org/>`_ for web browsing and feed reading. It's how I consume the internet. I suppose I still wish that NNW would let me read f-locked LiveJournal entries (which some of the other programs do), but other than that, no complaints here.

  • `AdiumX <http://www.adiumx.com/>`_ for chatting. I've been using Adium since I switched to mac, and it's great, and I think that the program has gotten even better, particularly recently, so check it out.

  • **MarsEdit** Great program for offline editing. I find that I've taken to doing a lot of my editing in web-interfaces these days, and at least theoretically TextMate could prevent some of this, but a lot of my postings are time delayed, so that's not really a problem. And I'm checking stats on the web-pannel's anyway, so again, not a big deal. It's still great software.

  • **Pukka** for del.icio.us posting. It's small and it works great. Can't argue with that. I don't post to my del.icio.us enough, but that's another problem.

  • **VLC** for playing videos. All videos, without complaining. Great stuff.

  • Preview.app for reading PDFs, because I just don't like the other programs enough, and I figure, it's best to leave well enough alone.

  • Terminal.app for bash shell goodness. It's sort of surprising how much shell stuff I've gotten into in the past couple of months. It's been nice to be able to figure out how to do some stuff in the shell, and it's nice to have that fast interface. I wish I were a bit more hardcore about it, but I'm learning slowly.

    A couple of programs that I like and keep, but don't find myself using very much this summer. I expect that I'll get back into some of them.

  • `WriteRoom <http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/projects/writeroom>`_ for distraction free writing. It's basically a big black screen with big green lettering that auto scrolls. It's simple, yes, but I really like how this software can allow me to be productive at odd times. I have to say that

  • `Quicksliver <http://quicksilver.blacktree.com>`_ I haven't been using QS as much recently, I'm not sure why. I think that a lot of the things I have been using QS for in the past, I do with the shell anyway. Go figure.

  • `Growl <http://growl.info/>`_ for system wide notifications. I sometimes turn it off and forget to turn it back on. It's great to get notifications of what's going on on your computer so that you're aware of what's happening, and then can keep on working on what you're working on without getting caught up in checking for new IMs or Emails or download compilations, and so forth.

  • [TextMate](http://macromates.com/ "TextMate ‚Ä" The Missing Editor for Mac OS X") I use this program constantly, and it's great. I've changed a lot of things in response to this program, and I rather like it a lot. It's nice to have all this power in such an intuitive environment. The Maruku tool, in combination with text-mate, has basically become my word-processor of choice. I use it to write blog entries and to code/program the websites. I use it in my job, and I'm thinking about using it to try to do the GTD thing again, so we'll see.

My only real usage complaint at the moment is that my system of organizing text-files is more like a folder with a bunch of papers in it than an actual notebook. Maybe just opening my text-files folder as a project in TextMate will solve this, but I feel like something could be done. Also I think I'd like to be able to check my writing and whatnot into a subversion repository for backup and archiving purposes, but that's mostly a point of lazyness, not a problem as such. I'll get back to you on these points though.

Thanks for geeking out with me.

Cheers, ty