Gabe's 2007 Review of Stuff

I do this every year. This one is a bit smaller than previous ones, and I try not to duplicate too much from things I've already talked about. Regardless, here is my review of things and stuff involved with me in 2007. I'd love to go through and hyperlink all these things for you, but it's really a lot of work, and I'm lazy. So if you're at all interested, and you probably aren't, just go ahead and google it.

{=html}▼{=html} OS X Software

I've come across a ton of great apps this year that run on my Mac.

{=html}▼{=html} MoodBlast

{=html}•{=html} This lets me update statuses on Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Aidum and Tumblr all at once. It's also scriptable. So I wrote an applescript that's triggered by MarcoPolo to auto update when I move around to/from work.

{=html}▼{=html} Hazel

{=html}•{=html} My theory on the desktop for myself was "if you can't use it responsibly, you can't use it at all." So I don't. I've disabled icons on my OS X desktop completely. However the folder named "Desktop" is still my dropbox for all my crap. Let me introduce you to Hazel. I create rules and hazel moves stuff around for me. Sorts them into subfolders, adds to iPhoto or iTunes, deletes old files, archives to an external drive.. anything I want. This makes my life sooo much easier to find stuff. If I just downloaded a video I know exactly where to find it because I know Hazel will move it there.

{=html}•{=html} For instance, here's a shot of my Documents folder. How clean!

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{=html}▼{=html} Joost

{=html}•{=html} I don't have cable tv. Any tv in fact. And I don't need it. With Joost I have plenty of entertainment streamed into my machine at any time, and on demand. It's also for Windows if you're into that.

{=html}▼{=html} X Torrent

{=html}•{=html} Again how I get content. I download a lot of movies on bittorrent trackers via searching and downloading with XTorrent.

{=html}▼{=html} DEVONThink

{=html}•{=html} I used this a ton through my divorce. It let me keep everything all password protected in a database that I could search through at any time. Worked great with all the pdfs I had to deal with.

{=html}▼{=html} iPhoto

{=html}•{=html} Nothing special here, but I have a ton of photos this has let me keep in one place. Helps keep them all organized. The addition of "Events" in iLife '08 is really nice.

{=html}▼{=html} MarcoPolo

{=html}•{=html} Using fuzzy logic it makes decisions on where I am in the world, and then performs actions based on that. When I'm at work it changes my screensaver timeout to 5min and kicks off other things I request of it. When I get home it sets my timeout to 60min, starts up my torrent apps, etc.

{=html}▼{=html} TVShows

{=html}•{=html} A little app that runs in the background and monitors RSS feeds for torrents of tv shows. I usually get tv shows downloaded the same night they air thanks to this little app.

{=html}▼{=html} VLC

{=html}•{=html} How I watch all the content I download. It's a cross platform app that will play almost any kind of video file.

{=html}▼{=html} Windows Software

{=html}•{=html} Honestly I can't really think of anything new or really all that important this year that I've used on Windows.

{=html}•{=html} I use PuTTY all the time, does that count? I'd be sad if I lost that.

{=html}▼{=html} Hardware

{=html}•{=html} My Macbook Pro. Nuff said, really.

{=html}▼{=html} AppleTV

{=html}•{=html} It's really sweet. But I don't have a tv. Oh well. It's really cool, though.

{=html}▼{=html} Music www.last.fm—charts

Nothing too life changing on the music discovery front this year. But it was far from stagnant either. Click the last.fm link above to get a full list of music that I listened to this year.

{=html}▼{=html} The Go! Team

{=html}•{=html} Just started listening to them a few months ago. High energy plain ol' fun music. It's sample heavy and they use two drummers in concert.

{=html}▼{=html} Nine Inch Nails

{=html}•{=html} Dude. Year Zero is possibly the album of the year. Amazing. It's like Trent Reznor said "Gabe really likes NIN, but what would make him like it more? Oh yeah, more drum machines and synths." He did, and now I do. I won't even go into the awesome ARG that he had around the release, and the remix album, and the downloadable master tracks...

{=html}▼{=html} Ladytron

{=html}•{=html} Were they on my list last year? Probably. Nothing new here. I love em.

{=html}▼{=html} Basement Jaxx

{=html}•{=html} Nothing new, but I found new love in listening to more of them again this year. Sometimes you forget how much you enjoy certain music.

{=html}▼{=html} Ghostland Observatory

{=html}•{=html} New band I've got into this year thanks to Frank inviting me to one of their shows. Then I saw them again at the palooza. They put on an amazing live show and the album is pretty good too.

{=html}▼{=html} !!!

{=html}•{=html} New album from the folks over at !!! this year, and it's as good as I hoped. "must be the moon" and "heart of hearts" are some kickin tracks.

{=html}▼{=html} Daft Punk

{=html}•{=html} Daft Punk at Lollapalooza was bar none the most amazing live audio performance ever in my life. I've gone to some really, really good concerts before, but this was an multimedia extravaganza. Those robots are something else.

{=html}▼{=html} Services or Web Sites

{=html}▼{=html} iTunes

{=html}•{=html} I don't buy music from iTunes, but I do buy tv shows from them. It's faster and easier than dealing with torrents, but they don't have everything. It usually works like so: if it's the day of airing, i'll get it via torrents. It's brand new and it should download quick. If I can't find it on torrents, i'll get it on iTunes, or if I can't get it fast enough via a torrent it's off to iTunes. Often times I just don't feel like playing the torrent game and i'll get it from iTunes right when I see it up.

{=html}▼{=html} Facebook/MySpace/et al

{=html}•{=html} Whatever. Shut up. Yeah they suck. But they've helped me with the whole friends thing this past year, and friends are pretty important since I've been single. I've been able to reconnect with long lost friends and keep connected with new ones.

{=html}▼{=html} Pandora & Last.FM

{=html}•{=html} Not having to think about what music I want to listen to is a great thing. I just put one of these on wherever I am and there's instant music that I love.

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