the tools i use

I spend a lot of time routinely tweaking various tools and configurations on my desktop environment. Frankly, I think those of us who spend our days in front of a computer owe it to ourselves to make it a pleasant experience. I tend to write about various tricks here, but feeling inspired by merlin’s desktop tour, I may try to do so more regularly. Here’s a quick rundown of the apps I’ve added lately:

• 1Password has had the most impact in terms of daily use. Fix your password habits. Seriously.
• To stay focused, I’ve been using using a combination of SpritedAway and Isolator - the former hides apps I’m not currently using, while the latter let’s me focus on a single app (usually writing a document).
• I’ve been keeping an eye on noisy fans and run-away processes with iStat menus (hat tip: @jjeff).
• Mail is probably my biggest area of tinkering… I’ll try to write up my current setup in more detail, but MailActOn 2 and DockStar are working well for me.

Probably my biggest change recently, is to switch back to much heavier use of emacs… more on that later ;-)

How about you? What are you using to make your (computer) life a little bit better?