Some people call me the Space cowboy
Others simply call me Scott. But regardless, they are both right. I’ll answer to my given name and will also proudly spin my head around, Exorcist style, when someone mentions my other name of Space Cowboy.
I mean, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to optimize their productivity and workflow by keeping their desktop clean? A fool, that’s who. Perhaps even a damned fool. Yeah, I said it.
I’ll start this sordid tale by revealing to you that I come from a Unix background – not at first though – for several years I supplemented my income by writing software for Windows and selling it online. Then, being the geek I am, I started playing with Linux, learning over IRC as so many of us did back then.
Soon enough though, I managed to find gainful employment in LA – I worked in the Linux world during the dotcom days with a company that managed to actually ship retail Linux software, to actual stores…with doors and windows and customers and all that stuff. Pretty heady stuff for a company that existed for the sole purpose of supplying the CEO with a string of hot employees he could harass and later send investor checks to.
Moving on though – as a heavy Linux user, I quickly grew fond of having workspaces available to focus my work. A browser here, mail over there, a terminal up there and my ide at the bottom. Quick, easy, mouse or keyboard powered gestures to get stuff done.
When I left LA and headed back to Georgia, I went back to a job working with PCs and Macs – getting them online in a fledgling DSL business. My Mac yearning came back to me big-time, and just around the time OSX was coming into its own. When I saw the Unix underpinnings and the possibilities of working like I was used to, I jumped ship again.I bought a lightly used iBook g4 and was off and running – I’ve been a full time Mac user ever since, and everyday I celebrate the fact that I have two choices:
I can tinker and play and configure the hell out of my system, or I can push it all aside and get some work done.I typically opt for the first, but the second does rear its ugly head for several hours a day, between my commutes.
But what makes it easy for me to play is the tinkering I do. First and foremost are the apps I use, which I wrote about here. Next up is my desktop layout. I use Spaces like no ones business. I’m quick like a bunny when it comes to switching to the proper desktop for the task at hand. I can have something copied from a browser and pasted into a Fusion powered Word document in about half a second. I know where every app is running, and I know I can launch it and 2 second later have it sitting in a space waiting to be used.
This is how (in the vernacular of the young people) I roll.
Start with Spaces (System preferences). Add several with a minimum of 4 – the maximum is your call, but only the most severely OCD choose more than 8…I’m just sayin’.
Choose an app – for instance Firefox – and bind it to a desktop. Then bind iTunes onto another. Then Fusion to number 4…you get the point.
What’s going to happen now is that whenever those apps are running, they are going to stay in that spot. You will always know where that app lives and that hitting the right keystroke or slamming your mouse over and up is going to get you where you need to be.
Binding is only one part of it though. When Spaces is active, you can re-arrange windows by simply dragging them to another Space. Hell, you can drag an entire Space and reposition it if you are so inclined!
Now, to take advantage of the entire system as if it were pawns in your evil plan to take over the world, you need one more thing: QuickSilver, which was mentioned yesterday. By binding apps to Spaces, especially smaller ones like xPad or System Preferences), you can perform this action to open Coda in Space 3 while you work on other things:
apple-space > type coda > enter >go work elsewhere > come back to Space 3 and start working in the background opened Coda.
Tell me you can’t fall in love with that, and I will give you your money back, I swear.
So tell me, kids, do you use Spaces? How many do you have? How many of those Spaces have apps bound to them? Talk to me – don’t be afraid of the Space Cowboy!
