48-Hour Days

Last night Bridget and I got to talking about some of our favorite things on OS X. The conversation came around to Spaces, as I think it usually does when you are talking about Leopard. Spaces and I have had an on-and-off relationship ever since the first developer’s seed hit my hard drive. I’m very anal and the idea of organizing the vast number of windows I have open appealed to me.

When I first gave Spaces a go I was really excited. I had briefly tried a few free apps, but they had some bugs and it wasn’t feeling right. Spaces was quick, smooth, and cool. But I think I approached it in the wrong way. I started putting apps in their own space so that I wouldn’t be distracted. Pretty soon, I found myself flying around trying to figure out where the hell I put that text editor. That was when I threw up my hands and gave up.

It is a year or so later and I’ve been reading The Productive Programmer, which extols the virtues of virtual desktops. I wasn’t totally convinced, but I gave it another go. This time, though, I thought about how I wanted to use Spaces before I actually set it up. So far, it is working out pretty well. There are a few more features I’d like to see in Spaces to help round things out, but I think I’ll stick with it for a bit.

The trick seems to be to really think about how you work and figure out what tasks belong with others. Some things—like checking e-mail, instant messaging, and Twitter—naturally go together. I’ve got a “space” designated for communication and it includes Mail.app for work e-mail, Gmail (a Fluid app) for personal e-mail, Syrinx, and NetNewsWire. Growl lets me know, briefly, what’s coming in so I can either ignore it or respond to it. To make that process even easier, I’ve added all of my work contacts to Address Book with photos. Now, when Growl pops up to tell me there’s an e-mail, I know at a glance if the message is from my boss or from a co-worker who only forwards jokes.

Coding is something that I much prefer to isolate from everything else. So, TextMate gets its own space. The only other things allowed in that space are a Fluid app that I use to browse internal documentation, AppKiDo, and Preview with PDF documentation.

Testing gets a space as well. There I have a saved configuration of Terminal windows that I use to upload, compile, and watch logs. I also have Firefox here because I’m testing web applications.

The testing space is located directly below the coding space, so it is really simple to bounce between the two. I thought moving back and forth would bother me, but it really doesn’t. These are actually two different states of mind for me, so having a visual change is good.

Another space is designated for research. This is where I keep EagleFiler and Safari.

I have six spaces configured altogether. One of the last two spaces has Curio with brainstorming and test scripts (really more checklists) and the last one is just a utility one. Usually, I put Photoshop and InDesign there when I’m working on graphics.

I highly recommend using the Preference Pane for Spaces and specifically assigning applications to individual spaces. I also highly recommend that you make some applications available in all of the spaces. I have both Finder and Adium in all spaces. I originally put Adium in the communications space, but I found it annoying to have to “carry” a chat window with me when I switched around.

You should also learn the keyboard shortcuts. You can use the defaults or change them, but whatever you do use them. Using that little menu-bar thing to switch is just not productive.

So far, this is all working out pretty well. I have noticed some applications don’t play too well with Spaces and that can get annoying. I don’t know if that is a problem with the apps or with Spaces, though. But, on the whole it is working well.

There are two things that I am really, really hoping for in Snow Leopard. First, the ability to name spaces. I’d like to see those names pop up briefly as I’m switching between spaces, and when I view all of my spaces. I’d also like to be able to set different desktop backgrounds for different spaces. Even if it is just different colors, so I know coding is blue and communications is green, etc.

One feature I really dislike and wish I could turn off is the diagonal navigation. If I’m in the top left-hand space and I accidentally hit the ctrl-left arrow, it will swoosh me to the bottom, right-hand space. This is confusing and annoying. I’d much prefer that it just didn’t switch at all, like it does if you are on the top row and you hit ctrl-up arrow.

Spaces and I are still working on our relationship, but this time around things seem to be going well.

I know you thought you’d never hear from me about this again, but I have finally Named My App. Thanks again to all for the great suggestions. They were so much better than I could have come up with.

And the winner is…

Moviesaurus Rex from Brendan Cullen.

I really liked every suggestion, but as soon as I saw this one I pictured a fat purple dinosaur with big googly eyes tossing DVDs down his gullet with abandon.

Thanks, Brendan! You have won…absolutely nothing! Well, not true. Your idea of a name will go on, your name will forever appear in the credits for the application, and you will have my eternal gratitude. Sorry I can’t afford a real prize.

Now, don’t anyone expect this thing to show up anytime soon. My husband (for some reason) insists that I get paid work done before I work on my personal project. Hmph. Need I lament again about how hard it is to fit my job (well, the one I actually get dough for doing) done?

BUT, that doesn’t mean that this will sit around forever. And I really doubt anyone else will have much interest in it anyway. I’d actually be surprised if there is anyone even reading this far. If you are, here are the features I plan to include.

• Track movie collection (DVDs, VHS, digital downloads for when I get an iPod that will handle video)
• Print filtered/unfiltered shopping list
• Print filtered/unfiltered wish lists
• Track movies I want to see
• Track movie release dates (iCal/Google Calendar integration?)
• UPC/ISBN entry of inventory (lookup through Amazon?)
• AIR app
• E-mail reminders (movie release dates)
• Track movies loaned to people (Address Book/Gmail contact integration?)
• Track purchase price and provide total investment reports
• Provide net worth based on median price on Half.com and Amazon Marketplace
• Updates on wish list items available at Amazon, eBay, and/or Half.com
• Wish list import from Amazon and Half.com
• Multiple users
• Pretty pie charts by genre, price, format (useless eye candy)
• Search by title, format, keyword, actor
• Personal ratings and reviews/comments
• Critic information from Rotten Tomato
• Ratings from Amazon
• Images (hosted on Flickr or picasa)
• Suggest movies to friends or warn them of duds
• Look up title at library and place a hold
• Share wish lists with others to provide gift suggestions
• Series movies linked together somehow
• Similar movie suggestions

This is not a definite list by any means; just the result of brainstorming and a lot of “Gee, I wish there was an app that would do that” and “Wow! I could use the API to do this” kind of things. As you can see, this is quickly growing bigger than simply tracking what DVDs I have. I’m hoping to track a lot of things. For me it will be really helpful to be able to take a list of movies that I want to see with me to the video store, or a list of movies I have on VHS and I want to get on DVD to Half Price Books. I think there are lots of opportunities here to integrate with other applications and services out there, too. I can’t wait to get started.

I ran into a rather annoying problem with my virtual PCs tonight. I am trying to test a web application running on my staging box in the office. I’m connected to the corporate network via VPN and using the dev box’s private URL. This all works great, until I tried to get there from PC in Parallels.

When I was running my own DNS server, I didn’t have this problem, because I just copied the corporate domain into mine and served as a secondary provider. However, I got tired of updating it manually and started using OpenDNS (which is great, BTW). Now when I fire up the craptastic IE 6 and type in the dev box’s URL, it goes right to OpenDNS’s “not loading” error page. Damn.

I had nightmarish visions of messing with registry entries to wrangle the DNS server order into something that would work. Or rebooting my MacBook Pro repeatedly until the PC’s NIC got a connection (anyone familiar with that fun little bug?). However, the fix turned out to be exceedingly simple: edit the hosts file on the PC. I added an entry for the dev box and voila! I can now run tests in the favorite of all favorite browsers (known in our office as Stupid IE).