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Rig Talk: What I Use

by Krishna on July 7, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Posted In: Mac, News

The Setup website is one of my daily web trawls. I’m fascinated by the tech that other people use to get things done. Towards that end, it’s been almost two years since I’ve recapped my hardware and software setup so I thought I’d share a little behind-the-scenes on what I use to “get it done”.

desktop screenshot 7-7-12

Hardware

My main rig is an early 2008 Mac Pro tower with 14GB of RAM, a 120GB OWC Solid State drive (for apps and OS), and a 1 Terabyte drive that houses all my data. I have two separate drives (both internal) that I use for backing those drives up.

I’m a firm believer in data redundancy (because I’m paranoid like that), so I also use Backblaze for off-site backups.

Software

My Mac Pro runs the latest flavor of Mac OS X (10.7.4). Below are a few of the apps that I find to be indispensable:

Trickster 2.0: this little app (formerly Blast!, which I reviewed on the site some time back) is great for keeping track of the files most recently used on your Mac, making them available from the menubar.

MarsEdit 3.0: My de-facto app for blogging on the desktop. It makes logging into WordPress’s control panel to craft a blog post seem positively antiquated by comparison.

Alfred: Alfred has replaced LaunchBar as my app launcher. It’s fast, it’s easy on the eyes, and its powerful features are easily accessible.

Dropbox: It’s the way I share files between all my computers. Plus, I have access to all my files from any machine connected to the Internet thanks to Dropbox’s excellent web user interface.

Typinator 5.0: Simply the fastest text expanding, auto-correcting, gun-slinging app on the market. Whether its used for creating lengthy boiler-plate text, or auto-correcting spelling mistakes on the fly, Typinator does what it does in a simple and elegant fashion.

Divvy: This little app makes managing window sizes a breeze, without having to manually adjust them each and every time. As a bonus, it’s also available for Windows.

Fantastical: It’s true to its billing, as “the Mac calendar you’ll actually enjoy using”. I use it for organizing my schedule – it synchs across my Macs and my iPhone. And I never even need to launch iCal.

Hazel: I’m a late adopter of Hazel, but now I find that I can’t live without it. Hazel lets you set up rules and automatically takes care of routine tasks on your computer. For example, with Hazel, I can create a rule to automatically move all screenshot PNG files from my desktop into a folder on another drive, and then empty them into the Trash after 3 hours. I can then set a rule to empty the trash. With Hazel, I can even automatically upload the latest PC Weenies comic immediately after it’s saved out as a JPEG file. Every computer should have Hazel – it’s THAT good.

Wunderlist: The best To-Do app on the market. It works across Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS platforms and let’s you sync your To-Do list across all devices. Without Wunderlist, I would go insane trying to manage my daily tasks. Best of all, it’s FREE.

For creating my comics, I use a combo of Adobe Photoshop CS6, Sketchbook Pro and Manga Studio Pro EX 4. My workflow has shifted a bit recently, and I hope to cover that in an upcoming blog post.

Apps that I No Longer Use

Corel Painter X, LaunchBar, and Default Folder fall into that category. My needs with Sketchbook Pro and Manga Studio Pro have more than fulfilled my need to stick with Corel Painter. Default Folder has been superseded by Trickster and the Mac OS X Finder sidebar. LaunchBar has been replaced with Alfred. I’ve also eliminated iStat, favoring GeekTool instead.

What About You?

What apps do you rely on for getting your work done? Mac / Windows / Linux: tell me a little about what apps you can’t live without in the comments below.

-Krishna

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Adding a Rocket to a Dinosaur: The Mac Pro Solid State Drive Rebuild

by Krishna on May 6, 2012 at 11:45 am
Posted In: Mac, News

Two weeks ago, shortly after I wrote my blog post entitled “Mac Spring Cleaning: Rethinking How I Organize My Data”, I ordered myself a shiny new 120GB Other World Computing Mercury Electra 6G solid state drive for my Mac Pro.

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I’m no stranger to solid state drives; I’ve been using them with both my Macs for almost two years now. SSDs have given a new lease on life for both my machines, which are over 4 years old (ancient by computing standards).

Three factors influenced my latest SSD purchase.

  • My 40GB OWC SSD was no longer cutting it for all my apps / OS.
  • The prices on larger SSDs have come down within the past 3 months. (I paid $150 for my 120GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G.)
  • I wanted to perform a complete rebuild of my Mac Pro as a performance tune-up.

Rebuilding an OS and apps is like moving into a new house: it takes time to move your stuff (installing apps) and it takes a little longer to settle in (adjusting all your apps settings the way you like). It’s tedious, but in the end, you have a clean, organized place you really like coming home to.

Carrying the moving analogy, not everything made it into the new “house”. First and foremost, Corel Painter X didn’t make the cut. While Painter is a good program for what it does, I can do everything I need to do illustration-wise with Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop.

Setting up most of my apps was pretty easy. Ironically, the apps that weren’t as easy to reconfigure were iTunes and iPhoto. I manage all of my media and photo data on a separate internal drive; it took some Googling on my part to properly configure both apps to find their content.

Side note: iTunes is in desperate need of a make-over. My suggestion would be for Apple to split up iTunes into separate apps to manage music, movies, etc.

With the new 120GB drive, performance screams. Part of it is because of the extra head-room on the SSD. Sketchbook Pro, Photoshop, etc. all make use of the extra fast scratch disk space on the drive.

Furthermore, reinstalling Photoshop cleared up some wonky behavior (such as the delay encountered when typing text using the Text tool) and allowed me to modify, remove and optimize a few of my workflow actions / scripts. Sketchbook Pro runs like butter now: super fast with no lagging whatsoever.

In the end, while rebuilding the OS and apps was a bit tedious, the expended effort was totally worth it.

-Krishna

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Mac Spring Cleaning: Rethinking How I Organize my Data

by Krishna on April 15, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Posted In: Mac, News

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I’ve been thinking a lot about file structure and folder organization lately, particularly when it comes to managing and accessing data across multiple Macs. While I’m accustomed to my current folder structures, I feel that I’m not managing and organizing my data as efficiently as I could.

To that end, I feel that I need to overhaul my approach.

Here’s my proposal:

First off, I plan on moving all my current projects and data files from both laptop and desktop Macs over to Dropbox. Doing so will let me access these files from either machine I happen to be working from. Having these files on Dropbox will also permit me to access them from any other machine, so long as the computer I’m sitting at has a connection to the ‘net.

Older projects and data files that I rarely access will be archived onto a NAS device, which will, in turn, back up to both a secondary hard drive as well as a remote server (via Backblaze).

Furthermore, my plan is to add a larger capacity SSD to my Mac Pro (120 GB) for housing all my apps and the OS. I will also dedicate a separate hard drive to exclusively house all my music and movie files. I think I’ll also have a separate drive dedicated to photos, as well.

Of course, I’m looking for thoughts and feedback on my proposal. On paper, it seems like my new methodology could work, but I want to make sure I’m not overlooking something significant. How do you organize and share your data across multiple machines? Sound off in the comments below.

-Krishna

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