325. Scientist’s gadgets: desktop software
Uncategorized — By Dmitry Podolsky on March 28, 2009 at 12:05 pm
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Desktop software? What is this supposed to mean? – you may ask.
Well 
if you are a fellow scientist – theoretician, to be more precise – you know very well how much time we usually spend in front of our computers. Once upon a time I have tried to make a personal estimation in my particular case and found something like 14 hours including work and various useless crap like reading SPAM. This is ridiculous. It is in our very best interests to maximally optimize this time spent in front of a computer, so that we don’t repetitively deal with meaningless tasks, finish meaningful work as early as possible and enjoy the company of our wives/girlfriends (as well as other family members ).
One thing which, as I noticed, is rarely used/acknowledged by geeks like us is the desktop. Actually, my desktop was completely empty for several years – I just couldn’t get the slightest idea what can it be used for. I even removed Recycle Bin icon using Windows Registry I tried Mac (actually, we bought Mac Mini home – that’s now Ganna’s computer) and found that Mac’s desktop is absolutely same useless kind of crap.
The situation changed this year, when I applied for BumpTop private beta and was one of the lucky ones who were approved. The change is drastic – in fact, right now I keep all my projects I am currently working on right on the desktop and find it rather convenient, definitely saving lots and lots of my time.
The reason is that it adds physics to your desktop. Here is excerpt from the New York Times review of BumpTop:
…icons behave a lot more like actual sheets and bundles of paper. As you drag them around the screen, they tumble and pile up. They collide with other icons, tumbling and shoving them pell-mell out of the way.
You can drag a dotted line around a group of icons to stack them into piles, which you can then click through, flip through, or spread out like a deck of cards. You can then add another icon to a pile by tossing it with your mouse, and grinning as it flies to the top of the pile as though you have perfect aim.
You can make an especially important icon bigger by dragging it; once it’s bigger, it’s also heavier, so that it pushes other icons out of the way. You can even crease and fold icons, as though to dogear them. You can even crumple icons up and toss them into a corner of the screen.
The desktop, meanwhile, looks like the inside of a box?and you can actually pin things up on the walls of it, or make shelves.
If you want to take a look at this physics yourselves, here is the TED talk by Anand Agarawala, creator of BumpTop, which nicely demonstrates almost all incorporated features:
What else to say? BumpTop is especially good on Tablets, since it was initially written for them (see this somewhat outdated video from 2006):
Surprisingly, after all these years of development BumpTop is still in the Private Beta stage. If you want to play/work with it, you can get your invitation code by applying at bumptop.com – which means that you will have to wait for several months as it was in my case.
Alternatively, if you want to try BumpTop and are not willing to wait too long, you can do the following Currently, I have two invite codes for BumpTop left. If you subscribe to NEQNET email updates and express your wish to get into BumpTop private beta in comments to this post, you will enter a mini-contest. On Wednesday, I’ll check out the list of my subscribers and people who left comments after this post, Ganna – run a little random integer generator and two winners – get my invite codes by email.
If you are already subscribed and want to enter, just leave a comment to the post. Finally, RSS subscription will not do since I need your email to enter it into BumpTop form.
In the mean time, if you cannot wait to get a nice science desktop, here is another nice one for you (by the way, I currently use it together with BumpTop ) Just click on the picture to get a larger (1024×768) version:
Via Michael Anissimov.
22 Comments
Hi Dmitry,
It would be great if I could get one of the invite codes! Bumptop looks really cool, and I want to try it on my tablet pc
Thanks!
Hi TM,
you are in
Cheers,
Dmitry.
I think the next logical step in organizing large amount of information is moving away from any model of organization that includes hiding away things in neatly organized folders, or in this case the desktop. This manual organization is pretty primitive, and always time consuming. Rather, if files are tagged efficiently enough, searching for them becomes the easiest way to access them. The current OS X seems to do that pretty efficiently (though it can still be improved) – if you want to access a certain file, it is fastest to search for it using spotlight, even if you know exactly where it is.
Hi Moshe
I thought this way for almost a year but one should be practical, shouldn’t one? To make a search, you need to know the part of the answer, that is – key phrase or key word
Unfortunately, way too often I, say, download seemingly interesting papers from Arxiv to read them later or at least to quickly go through. The total amount of papers per day in this category is about 10-20 (from different Arxiv subcategories). It is virtually impossible for me to remember their titles/abstracts (except maybe 2-5 most interesting ones) on the same evening or the next morning. I should admit that I have a very bad memory. So, Spotlight or Google Desktop Search will not help me much in this situation.
The trivial solution is to download them on the Desktop
Another thing which I keep on my Desktop is my current work project and related papers I attach to it. There are usually many of them (say, all papers to be included into bibliography), and again I may forget a title/abstract/the bare fact that I need to acknowledge a given paper in the bibliography.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Looks like a great way to organize all the massive information that gets collected on my Desktop (since I don’t know where else to functionally put it, ha!).
Greg
There you go, Dmitry!
You are in, Greg
Alright, different people, different tastes. I think if I found a thousand unsorted files on my desktop (especially when I’m looking for something) I’d conclude there has been some virus attack and I need to reinstall the OS.
I’ve seen it 3 years ago or so and it’s pretty as a game.
But let me admit, I am probably as conservative as Moshe. There are only 20 icons on my PC desktop, most of which are reminders to do something.
So my attempts are actually to organize the real desktop on my desk according to the old-fashioned Windows Vista desktop where things don’t pile and crash into each other.
But maybe it’s the way to go. But I happen to go in the opposite direction. For example, I began to use keyboard shortcuts extensively for all kinds of programs, keywords in Chrome for all kinds of search engines and individual pages, etc.
For opening programs and finding files I use Quicksilver. You can run any application with a second or two and can jump into folders just as fast.
These days I organise my papers with Papers (wonderful program, terrible name!): mekentosj.com/papers. Great piece of software, the only problem currently being that the initial setup can take a little while (things may become more automatic in the next version). Perhaps I invested an hour or two, but it’s absolutely worth it for the flexibility it allows you in the end.
For tracking my productivity I downloaded rescuetime, which is a nice little app that lets you know how much time your spending/wasting on useful/useless applications.
The other indispensable application (other than the ones I actually use to do my work) is dropbox, which allows me to sync the files I’m working on in the office with those I’m working on with my laptop at home.
J
Hi Jon,
thanks for sharing your experience, I heavily use Quicksilver on our Mac, even decided to install its equivalent for Windows (called Launchy) on my Tablet and never regretted that.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Lubos, I’m not sure “conservative” is the right adjective for this, but I have no icons whatsoever on my desktop (I usually have rotating display of some art, so the desktop is not completely useless). There are much better ways to remind myself of things, or to be able to access them quickly, than cluttering my space. You may also guess correctly that my actual desk is not cluttered with actual paper.
I second Jonathan’s enthusiasm for “papers”, and let me add “NoteTaker”, which already looks like an optimal solution for organizing notes, papers, and any other piece of information, in any way you find convenient.
Dear Lubos and Moshe,
My desktop was in the same form for a very long time as I explained in the post – but that’s just because I did not really understand what is it for and how to use it
Yes, that’s the root of the difference – because my actual desk is always way too loaded, and BumpTop just allows me to resemble it on my Tablet
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Looking for news from Bumptop release this winter, I stumbled upon this – stunning-do-not-miss
TED Demo from Jeff HAN
“Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design”
Enjoy!
I pretty much understand different points here.
I’ll have a try! Saw Bumptop in the winter and was looking forward to get a chance, since…
I too always end up forgetting file names, but very visual me rarely forgets the ‘where’ in whereabouts.
Also, I suggest you guys all check on stunning TED demo from Jeff Han Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/t.....creen.html
Something about it…
Dear Un nuage d’ecole,
you are in and thanks for the link!
Dmitry.
Is there a good place to read about quicksilver? I’m new to the macworld, but from the little I’ve seen this seems to the kind of thing I could use.
http://docs.blacktree.com/quic.....uicksilver – the thing is even free. You can also take a look at tutorials section there.
hi Dmitry,
Count me in
Dear Instanton,
you are in.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
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