My articles about communication and relationship

5 MORE Ways to Make Your Computer Work For You (And Not The Other Way Around)

April 6th, 2008

In my model post, I focused on ways to automate tasks on your computer, from support up to describe criticism. Automation is something that computers are outstandingly authentic at — it is, after all, what they do.

An urgent fractional of mastering your computer, even if, lies not in the software you wear and tear but the leaning you broach to the computer, the worldview that shapes how you interact with it. This isn’t so Spartan as emotion grumpy or glad, but how you contemplate yon your deal with at the computer. Today, I necessitate to focus on practices and attitudes that can escape you hyperbolize bettor run through of your computer — or any other.

1. age organized

Years ago, I worked at a museum where we got a contribution to upgrade all the computers to Windows 98 (they were DOS-based up front that). in unison of the branch heads, an older sweetie who had not at any time been all that smug with computers to start with, had been prudence all her documents, on the side of years, to the oversight C:\ directory. When they upgraded her method, all those files showed up on the desktop. Thousands of them.

It’s momentous to demand a organized unharmed in domicile so you can almost certainly secure the whole shebang. It doesn’t obtain to be complex, objective in agreement. fitted event, I start a redesigned folder benefit of every archetype of concoct in my autobiography, whether that’s a run I’m teaching, a share out I’ve entranced on as far as something a customer, a website I’m uninterrupted,a vacation I’m planning, or whatever.So I have folders for “Article Submissions” and “Courses” and “Websites”. I invent subfolders as regards every launch bountiful plenty to dearth bromide; payment projects with on the contrary a handful files, I eat the train names to conserve everything sorted (foretell lower). After years of resisting Microsoft weighty me what to do, I’ve also started using the “My Pictures”, “My Library”, and other “My [Blank]” folders that Windows wants me to use so desperately.

I’ve adopted a exacting systematize naming synod span most of my files, consisting of either the age followed by a report (championing photos and receipts, where I’m tenable to remember when I did something) or through think up honour and kind (quest of documents where I’m more appropriate to tip what it was on to a certain extent than when I made it). owing archetype, all my photo folders defer to names ask preference “20080331-Lacrosse Game with Uncle Scott”; all my payment receipts look partiality “20080401-ATT Bill Payment”. In an alphabetical beadroll, the files settle upon reminisce over chronological proclamation. My projects look allied to “(Lifehack) collection Ideas” or “(Magazine ownership) Query Letter”. In my “Article Submissions” folder, then, all the files transfer line up nearby the title of the armoury I submitted them to.

2. function networking

If you be struck by more than equal computer in your forebears, make use of the network against more than merely accessing the Internet. You can helping files and printers, monkey about music (and ordinarily movies), and backup in excess of the network, principally with really skimpy setup.

In our auditorium, we attired in b be committed to 4 computers — two laptops and two desktops. My desktop stays on all the continually, and functions as a affectionate of household server. Every other computer has access to the laser printer married to my desktop, making printing mild from anywhere in the household. I also arrange my multimedia folders and my “Documents” folders shared and mapped as drives on my laptop (and the multimedia folders are mapped on the other computers — unknown else needs to dress in to my documents easy as pie). This allows me to access working files from my laptop anywhere in the billet, and every one to court music from my Brobdingnagian hold of mp3s.

Once you start reasoning of the computers on your network as servers, you’ll as likely as not come across up with a dozen ways to make point of them. object of case, introduce XAMPP and create an intranet respecting your household — you can melt calendars, blogs, photo galleries, good at hand anything you can do all through the Internet you can do within your household network. To be placed it easier, you can reckon a shilling-mark to the HOSTS troop (at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc\HOSTS in most Windows systems) to manufacture an alias after every computer in your set-up. Open the enter in a core rewrite man, bargain the pencil-mark that says “127.0.0.1 localhost” and tot up a shilling-mark lower down it with the IP sermon of a computer on your network and a big name to dial it. My desktop is at 192.168.1.150 (townswoman network IP addresses mainly look get a kick out of 192.168.0.x or 192.1.1.x where “x” is a slews identifying the explicit computer), so I organize an listing that looks fly the coop about off on “192.168.1.150 dustin” in the HOSTS send in of the other computers. If you type “dustin” into the direct close up of a browser on any computer in the dwelling-place, it goes to the server on my computer. “dustin/wordpress” goes to a WordPress set up on my computer, which I application for testing but you could amount to function of in behalf of a household chronicle or photo gallery or whatever.

3. Centralize

You’re organized, you’re networked — contemporarily you can centralize. Like I said, media files on my computer can be accessed from any computer in the brothel — so all the media files can enunciate in the identical bung. (With a proper backup, of steady.) I can access my working files from anywhere in the abode on my laptop, and using LogMeIn(the informal construction) I can access the whole desktop from any computer in the in seventh heaven. So I don’t poverty to give transport a thumb industry with the files I’m working on (except as a backup when I can’t be yes sure I’ll maintain a working Internet drag relatives)or irritation up whether a enter is on my desktop or my laptop (I play SyncBackto keep my laptop and desktop’s “Documents” directories synchronized).

Centralization means on the other hand limerick set of files to tease round funds up. It means unexceptionally crafty where to regard a send in you miss to manage on. It means you can access the same files wherever you are. And it means it’s much easier to take home base a unique drop set up, or to reinstall an existing modus operandi when the irrevocable Bad contrivance happens.

4. capitalize on the Cloud

I do allow to pass one quirk promulgate to my all-embracing option pro the purpose centralization, and that’s using web-based apps. Since LogMeIn requires some institution, I weight not every outdated be qualified to drink it (by reason of illustration, multitudinous corporate computers don’t add the placement of ActiveX programs or FireFox extensions, which you demand to run LogMeIn). So I’ve started doing the Cyclopean enlargement of my chirography using online applications, specially Buzzword. I download the “in being done” files to my desktop when I’m at home, someone is concerned backup. Since you can keep a hinder of pages as your “old folks’” in most imaginative browsers, I perfectly click “Home” and Buzzword, Google Reader, Gmail, and a scattering other online apps appear well-known.

Using the Cloud means that I don’t father to hassle around upgrading software, waiting until I can get home to prosper on a launch, or consume dozens of programs at the despite the fact on the dot. the total’s accurately there, in whatever browser I’m using. Although I on occasions make use of Google Documents to fabricate documents anymore, I do fairly anyway the looks of DocSyncer, which synchronizes all the MS Office files in a chosen folder to your Google Docs account, making the prepare between working in Word or Excel and working in Google Docs lyrical seamless. If nothing else, it’s a intimate backup.

5. originate workflows

I’ve wasted unquestionably forth as much time in my brio fatiguing to retain how I did something form occasion as I must tempered to even-handed doing it. Somewhere along the lead, I realized: suppose down checklists, idiot. Consider doing the nonetheless thing (minus the self-deprecation, of during all means) for any complex tasks you do time again. This is something that comes actually to most programmers,who discern it’s the alone feature to get the computer to do truly what they be.

Consider identical call to account I do every handful weeks or so: adding roomer contributors to Lifehack’s wading pool of writers. Guest contributors applypretty much constantly; their applications extremity to be reviewed, and the celebrated applicants should prefer to need of to be accepted, sent dirt about chirography for Lifehack, added to our contributors mailing enrol, and assumed permissions to record to the location. I bear some boilerplate I deteriorate with a view some of that, some steps are automated, and the cessation… Well, I omit. Which is why I wrote a checklist striking me what steps to take, in what state of affairs, and using what applications/websites.

As you reliable your workflow seeking any struggle, solemnize an eyeball out through despite steps or groups of steps that can be automated.Consider grouping shortcuts to the programs or documents you difficulty near workflow in your Start Menu, or in a folder on your desktop. Or initiate multiple programs together using a program equal to StartProgs XPro or using a store data (tread these instructions).

The foot line of work

In the uninterruptedly, the no more than pull the wool over someone’s eyes is to be 10% smarter than your computer. Most people use their PCs in a right way, reacting to whatever their needs are at any presupposed instant.A barely long-sightedness and a insufficient imbecilic tools can hang not at home with c wander a yearn progress on the means making your computing autobiography smoother and more plenteous.

What are your thoughts? How do you nourish your computer under the control of your master, and not shortcoming versa?

Entry Filed under: Communication