Before I start, a disclaimer: if you’re a PC user, I’ve got nothing for you. I am mac only. Other than one PC I tried back in the dark days of the mid-90s, I’ve had nothing but macs in my life from my Apple IIGS in the 80s to my iMac today. Unapologetic fangirl, here. Deal with it.

Sad, but true. So, so true.

OK, that being said, I am about as annoyingly neat-freaky about my computer as I am about everything else. In fact, my approach to files is identical to my approach to emails: inbox zero is mirrored by desktop zero. Whenever files come in or are created, they are immediately moved to their home. This is what my desktop looks like:

The wallpaper is a pic I took of cobbles in Paris. Makes it 1000% classier, doesn’t it?

Once inside the documents folder, I maintain the same rigid organization. Within UMW, I have five folders organized by color (notice how they are the same as those on my dock, and in the same order, of course!) In teaching, I keep each year separately so that I can easily toggle between different iterations. Any folder I use a great deal is on the sidebar. Whenever a semester or project is done, I remove the folder from the sidebar.

That’s it. Basically, it’s like weeding. If you do it regularly, it’s easy. If you don’t, hello back pain (or in this case wrist pain? You get the idea.) Not to mention unsightly dandelions or jumbled files.

Though there is one advantage to weeding: Machete! But then, I don’t think this translates to file-weeding.

I know what you’re thinking: I’ve got a problem with organization. Judge me all you want. For me, this works. It has significantly reduced my time looking for documents. It has all but guaranteed I’m not mistakenly using an old version of something, or miss a supporting doc.

“OCD” might be overstating it, but the pic above? Can’t handle it.

Pretty poster, but you should really know all these already.

Alfred. If you don’t use it already, I only have one question for you: why not?!? Alfred is free and makes finding stuff on your computer lightning-fast. Launching any app for me starts with option-space, followed by two to three letters and enter. That’s it. It can search through folders and contacts, too. If you’re willing to pay (I’m too cheap) it can apparently do a lot more.

Unclutter. This is a $5 app from the app store. It does three things: 1- keeps notes. 2- keep recent cut/copied items. 3- serve as a temporary home for files. To activate it, mouse over the menubar and scroll down. That’s it. It’s not revolutionary, but it helps keeps things, well, uncluttered.

Path Finder. I got this as part of a bundle, so it wasn’t too expensive. On its own, it’s pricey. It’s not always super user-friendly, either. BUT! It allows you to fine-tune the way you interact with the finder. For instance, it allows for double finder windows, can give you lots of additional info about folders, can keep a terminal window open, etc. I’ll be honest: for me, it’s definitely more than what I need. But I still like it, for the double-finder option if nothing else.

Organization can be beautiful. One day, if I’m very lucky, I can behold a masterpiece of organization like the Studley Tool Chest. In the meantime, organizing all my files does give me some satisfaction. Maybe I should tackle my closet next…

The Studley Tool Chest. Admit it. You think it’s sexy too.

After you’ve taken classes but before you’re allowed to embark on your dissertation, you have to take an exam that covers, well, everything. That exam is usually called “comps” or “quals” for short, because “exam that will make you regret all the decisions you’ve made in your life leading to this event” is too long to use in a sentence. Every school and every program has a unique, special brand of comps hell. In my own program, this took the form of a 72 hour, 4 question, open book extravaganza of unpleasantness. Seriously, academic programs should not actively encourage not bathing (takes too long) or sleeping (ditto) for extended periods of time. It’s gross.

Never have I hated a question mark so much.

My reaction to the mac screen of death. Luke’s got nothing on me.

This story has a happy ending: I worked my butt off, got my materials more-or-less in shape, and did pass my comps. I even showered during the 72 hours. Didn’t sleep much, though.

A reenactment of me post-comps. Except I was smellier and much less adorable.

Since my epic scream of comps agony (I think the entire eastern seaboard heard it) I have been serious about backing up. I’ve done all the trial and error so you don’t have to. Below are some of my recommendations to get it all backed up once and for all.

A great place to start is the old back up hard drive. Macs have time machine to make real-time backup painless. I’m pretty sure there are equivalents for PCs. I will caution you, however: a backup hard drive is not a guarantee. For one, if it’s sitting right next to your computer, as mine does, it could be damaged or stolen right along with your computer. Furthermore, I’ve had more than a half dozen of these suckers fail on me. So this is only the first step, not the only step.

Cloud backup is the real lifeline. In fact, it’s more than that these days. Since my stuff is all in the cloud as well as on my computer, I don’t have to keep anything locally on my iPad, for instance. Whenever I need a document, I just download it from the cloud, do whatever I need to do, and re-upload it. Of course, there are a million tools for cloud storage. So let’s go over a few.

Dropbox is the granddaddy of them all. Everyone uses it. Every platform has a dropbox app. I use it too, but only at the free level. It’s where I keep documents and files that I need shared. So if it’s on my website, it’s stored on dropbox. If it’s a project I’m working on with someone else, it’s on dropbox. But dropbox has one downside I can’t handle: you need to put everything in a dropbox folder. I’m much too much of a neat freak to be OK with that. My computer is organized in exactly the way I want, and no app is gonna be the boss of me!

Enter: sugarsync. It has apps for every major platform, and is pretty competitive in terms of pricing. The real killer feature, though, is that you can designate a folder to be backed up without moving it. Just click: “back this up to sugarsync” and it’s done. Your hard-won organization isn’t ruined in the process. This is my real backup option. Everything but music, photos and videos is backed up here. It’s not the best for sharing, but that’s fine: that’s what dropbox is for.

In terms of photos and video, I’ve tried it all. Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, you name it. In fact, I still have pics on pretty much all of these platforms. But it’s not what I depend on. I depend on Picturelife. First, the downside: it’s expensive. Seven bucks a month. But then again, for me it’s meant complete peace of mind for the most important stuff I have: pics and videos of my kid. Picturelife automatically updates from everywhere: smartphone camera, iPhoto, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, etc. It then brings all these pics together. That’s it. In other words, I don’t have to remember to do anything. ALL the pics/videos I take are automatically backed up. Plus, the software is gorgeous and has mobile versions. Try it for free, see if you like it.

You really don’t need to spend any money on backup options if you don’t want to. All cloud services have a free level somewhere in the 2-5 gig range. If you’re cheap (sorry, I mean frugal), you can simply spread your data to multiple services. Personally I find paying for sugarsync and picturelife worth the peace of mind, especially considering the mounds of data I have. Wither way you approach the problem, do yourself a favor and backup. You don’t want a pathetic story like mine.

OK, but a calendar app is only part of the battle. You also need a good GTD (“get things done”) app AKA a “To Do” app. This has been a surprisingly difficult thing for me to find. So, today, please let me complain about it. Yes, yes, #firstworldproblems, I know. But it is annoying, and I am easily annoyed.

When iPhones first started getting GTD apps, I got 2Do. For a while, I loved it. It was attractive, it had lots of features, it helped me stay organized. However, a few things soured the relationship. Chief among them: feature creep. The million (mostly unused) features in the app made it harder to use, and cluttered to boot. Plus, sync was slooooooooooowwwww. I gave it a while to get faster, but nope. Didn’t happen.

Feature creep: just *try* to cut a box open with this, without injuring yourself. Not possible. May as well just use your keys.

Next I tried Orchestra. In many ways, it’s the opposite of 2Do: free (yay!), uncluttered, fast sync. But, again, all was not well: Orchestra doesn’t have an iPad app (grr), orders the tasks upside-down (those due the latest are on top. Why? Who knows. Drove me NUTS) and, worst of all, the app has been abandoned by the developers. To be fair, they abandoned it for Mailbox, another great app I use every day, but still.

After that, I floundered a little. Tried Wunderlist. No go: its date chooser doesn’t have the day of the week for some unknown reason. Looked at a bunch of others, too, but most didn’t have what I wanted: easy add, a good date chooser with day of the week, uncluttered interface, sync with iPad and web/desktop.

And then I discovered Astrid. It wasn’t love at first sight: interface was a little busy for my taste, adding tasks with due date took too many steps, but it had some killer features. First, it was free. SWEET. It also had an iPhone app, iPad app, and web interface. SUPER SWEET. Sync was pretty much instantaneous. SOLD.

But then, yesterday, Astrid was sold to Yahoo!, which means it’s going bye-bye. DAMMIT.

Cutest. Icon. Evar.

So, back to the drawing board. I think that I have now learned my lesson: free GTD apps are heartbreak waiting to happen. Meanwhile, though, most other GTD apps are ridiculously expensive and have too many bells and whistles for me. I don’t need special commands for emails, location-based stuff, sharing info, etc. I don’t need to be able to take a picture in-app. I don’t need sub-tasks or lists. I use clear for that. (It’s made packing and grocery shopping actually pleasant.)

Anyway, the newest app I’m trying is due. It does cost a little money, so that may be a deal-breaker for some, but after my experiences, I take it as a plus. The snooze function looks neat. I don’t think the interface is gorgeous, but then again it’s simple, so that’s fine. Sync, so far, has been ultra fast. Most of all, it’s super easy to input tasks. Technically, it isn’t really a GTD app but just a quick reminder app. However, it does just about what I want: keep a list, in chronological order, of what I have to do, with reminders.

I’m hoping my search for a GTD app is done for a good long while. Only time will tell. I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, I’ve got my ipad plugged into my seat, wifi connecting me to the internets – albeit very slowly – and the rising sun lighting up DC through my train window. In other words, it’s a lovely setup.

I’m working on the GameCamp I’ll be co-leading next week. One of the items on the agenda is for Mary and I to introduce ourselves and our gaming background. Like everyone else, I’m not exactly enthusiastic about powerpoints. I thought I’d try mixing it up so it would be more interesting. I could do a Jeopardy! setup (there are a million templates available online) but that feels too gimmicky and contrived. Instead, I thought I would use this as as excuse to learn a new presentation app. There are lots of them on the iPad App Store, many of them free. Prezi is a well-known alternative, and I might go with that. Haiku Deck is another option. For now, I think I’m going to try Flowboard. My favorite part about it: it works seamlessly with hyperlinks and videos, not that I have any for my presentation (though come to think of it, why not?!)

I don’t think this will come to replace Keynote, my presentation app of choice, but it’s nice to mix it up sometimes. I’m hoping that the unfamiliar dynamics in writing the presentation and in transitions between slides – or in this case, “cards” – will make me more creative by osmosis. In fact, this is often something I do to try to shake loose the cobwebs and get my creativity in gear (hello mixed metaphors!) You might want to consider it too: next time you have to do something that involves design (presentation, poster, website, etc.) try a new app for part or all of it. It may give you new ideas.

BTW: if you’re a design newbie and need to make a simple poster, there are great apps to make you look like a pro. Phoster has a big catalogue of hipster-approved designs. You could use them for invites to a speakeasy outing or for a screening of a Disney movie (ironically, of course) on VHS, or you could just as well use them for a department function. Another great option is simply using Pages, which has lots of built in templates and many more available online. The advantage there: seamless transition from ipad to desktop.

* I am a transportation planner, so I do understand why my train ticket is so grossly overpriced. I hope you appreciate it, train riders not on the northeast corridor. I’m subsidizing YOU. You’re welcome.

Is this really fun? Really? Answer: from the evidence in the leaderboard, yes it is.

Anyway, check out the brand spanking new gamecamp website. Ideas for relevant games? Let me know! Ideas for books, let me know that too. Wanna discuss gamification? bring it on. Gamification isn’t a panacea. But I do think it makes teaching tough and/or dry material much more effective. There is real satisfaction in leveling up, much more so than in understanding section 106, for instance. So to mix metaphors, why not add this to the toolbox? Or the medical satchel. That’s better. I get the completed metaphor badge!

Admit it! You want it too.