el peregringo

Even as a teacher, I spend a lot of time working on my computer. Of course I’m also the web master of the school where I work, so that skews the applications I need somewhat. Nonetheless, here are a few software programs that get launched shortly after logging in, and which I use virtually every day. Since I couldn’t get my work done without them, I thought I’d push back a little and get some links out there.

I use OSX as my primary OS (though I am comfortable in Windows, and for whatever reason I quite like the SuSE distribution of Gnu-Linux). Since I’m on a powerbook all the time, and only use desktop machines as servers, the landscape mode of the screen promotes putting the dock along the right side (where it was on NeXTStep, where god intended it to be). There are 26 application icons permantly in my dock. At any point in time, twenty or more of them will be running. Here they are, roughly divided into categories:

Web Site Management Related

• Opera 9.0: This has recently become my favorite all around web browser. Admittedly it took me a while to get used to it, but the speed kept bringing me back, and its flexible menu editing allowed me to mold it into the tool I wanted. It’s free, it’s fast, and it’s cross platform. The only things I really, really miss from OmniWeb is the emacs bindings in the cocoa editor, and the keychain integration.
• Omniweb 5.5b1: OmniWeb had been my favorite browser since late 1996. It’s feature rich and web pages simply look better in OmniWeb than in any other browser (though the recent switch in glyph generating engines reduced the quality in favor of speed). I love the tabs, I love the editor. I love its cocoa-lisciousness. I love its integration with the keychain. I miss the speed of Opera, though the 5.5 beta seems zippier than the 5.1 tree.
• TextMate: Quite simply a great text editor written in cocoa so it’s extremely well behaved and integrated into the OS. I do all of my raw html, php, & mysql editing in this.
• RBrowser: There is no better file transfer utility out there. RBrowser has been around since the very early NeXTStep days and shows its maturity and power. I cannot imagine having to manage files remotely without this tool.
• CSSEdit: There may be better CSS editors out there, but I haven’t found them. This has both a GUI and text-based interfaces, and has been a godsend for editing large CSS files
• SSHTunnelManager: I know, I can do all of my tunnel set ups and tear downs at the command line, and in some cases it’s even faster to do so, but the one click convenience of setting up tunnels to multiple web servers eventually brought me to the point where I left this in my dock and I use it every day.
• CocoaMySQL: What a great sql tool. Again, I can and do occasionally managing my sql databases from the command line, but this is such a great tool there is simply no reason not to. It even makes phpMySQL superfluous. The release by the original author, Lorenz Textor, is here. That version hasn’t been updated in a while and doesn’t run on Tiger. I use this version maintained by Stuart Glenn.
• MySQL Administrator: The one thing I use this app for in preference to CocoaMySQL is for backing up databases. I seem to get more realiable UTF8 files that are uploadable/restorable without odd characters creeping in.
• TimeNet: Since I run the schools’ websites, I have to keep track of the amount of time I spend doing so. This tool makes it easy to track time and report it.
• Pages: Odd, I know. But what I’ve found is that when someone gives me a file in Microsoft Word with a table in it, Pages converts that file to MUCH cleaner html than Word does. I can’t believe that Word can take a 22 line table and turn it into a 1400 line html file, but it does.

General Productivity

• iCal: simple, does all that I need.
• VoodooPad: a great way to keep track of those little snippets of information
• OmniOutliner Pro: This app is reason enough to own a Mac. I do nearly ALL of my thinking with this tool. I create all of my lesson plans as a teacher with this tool. I plan vacations. I plan web sites. I just can’t imagine the computer without it.
• NisusWriter Express: My favorite word processor for when I need to produce longer, formatted documents.
• Address Book: Simple, does what I need.
• Mesa: This spreadsheet app is another old NeXTStep tool that has lived on. Sadly, not too many people know about it, and I fear that it could dissappear should Apple decide to build their own spreadsheet, or Google’s online spreadsheet prove to be a workable alternative. Nonetheless, this is a great spreadsheet that does everything I need, and reads and writes nearly everything that Excel does. I never have to launch Excel because of this.
• Quicken: I’m pretty anal about keeping track of the very little money that I make. I spend many hours a week in Quicken, and I couldn’t manage my accounts without it.
• Terminal: I’m enough of a unix geek that Terminal gets launched at log in. For years I didn’t understand why anyone would choose to do anything at the command line if a GUI existed. Well, some things are just easier. And remote management of unix web servers is one area where Terminal is very handy.
• Calculator: after all, what good is a computer if you can’t easily add things up…

Teacher & Teaching Related

• Mesa: see above, but I use Mesa to keep track of student test scores over time and to produce charts of their progress. Very useful.
• OmniOutliner Pro: I simply couldn’t teach without this tool. All of my daily lesson plans are produced in OO, and I wouldn’t want it to be any other way.
• NisusWriter Express: Quizzes, tests, handouts, whatever.
• iPhoto: As a language teacher, I spend quite a bit of time dealing with culture, and iPhoto helps me to easily organize the hundreds and hundreds of images I use in my teaching
• iTunes: Teaching language and culture without music would be impossible, and like iPhoto, iTunes lets me organize the music and podcasts I use regularly.
• Keynote: I’m not a really big user of presenation software–my wife certainly is. She prepares a presentation for virtually ever class. Even as a geek, I prefer the whiteboard because I don’t have to dim the lights. Still, when I need a presentation, Keynote is the app of choice
• Crossword Forge: Though it doesn’t live in my dock, this app gets honorable mention. I have serious doubts that a crossword has any actual second language acquisition value, but I don’t use them for that. I use them to help level the playing field for students who are seriously challenged in language learning–those students who do work hard and really try, but just don’t quite get it. By creating spreadsheets of all of the vocabulary, I give them a way to bump up their averages.

Communications

• Mail.app: Lot’s of people complain about Mail. I use it every day and while it may be a bit quirky sometimes, I’ve yet to find anything I like any better.
• Opera: As I said above, this is the web browser I find that I use the most these days.
• Skype: I don’t use this as much as the other communication tools I have, but I do use it, and given that we’re going to be on another continent from most of our friends, I suspect it will get quite a bit of use in the near future.
• iChat: simple, effective AIM. I chat with students in Spanish and English.
• Adium: This has been a recent addition to my dock. At present I use it only for those students and others who don’t have AIM accounts and choose to keep only MSN accounts. If I knew anyone on Jabber, this is what I’d use there too.

Apps I Nearly Hate, but have to use for one reason or another

• Finder: For god’s sake re-write this in cocoa so it works and plays nice with everything else.
• Word: What a load of tripe. I hate this app. I hate looking at it. I hate using it, but I have to until NisusWriter can open and do everything that Word currently can.