PAUSE for thought.

In terms of media playback (movies, indexed DVDs, music, and you-name-it) the program VLC media player is hard to beat. It can’t be beaten on price – it’s completely free. For the number of file formats handles easily, again it is hard to top. Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms? It doesn’t care either, since it caters for all.

PLAY on VLC.

Want to play a file? VLC will get the job done, with no faffing about.

STOP here.

Well if your desktop is even slightly similar you’ve probably got your email open right now too, or perhaps some other software programs. Each is vying for space on your monitor screen. Working on multiple tasks means switching dancing between these windows. Minimize, maximize, shuffle, shuffle, and close.

What if you could have all your communications (email, Skype, etc) on one screen, your work on another, and your you-know-what on yet another? You would just need to swap between screens rather than multiple applications.Virtual desktops enable this ability, and I’ve tried a few over the years. They are very useful to group together related programs according to task. Perhaps one desktop for researching information, one for designing, another for gaming, etc.

One such program is Dexpot for Windows operating systems (OS) and is entirely free for individual use.

After installing (there’s a portable version if you don’t want to install) you can increase the effective area of your monitor by 400% by default, right up to 20 times – that’s a whopping 2000% increase in monitor size! Worth the price of a quick download for those extra inches.

This is about the latter scenario in regard to accessing your files on a computer.

Despite that sensible backup plan you have place ( you do have one don’t you? OK then, this article may help…) your computer has given up on sharing any of your information with you. Perhaps there’s a buggy driver, malware such as a virus, whatever the cause you just can’t get at your files and information. Maybe the computer is crashing while starting up as well?

How do you get at that gold nugget of information when your computer’s mineshaft of access has collapsed? Hmmm, perhaps a USB drive boot disk could provide a solution?

It is a USB drive that you are able to plug in and boot your computer from, thereby bypassing the problematic hard drive. Once started up you are then able to (hopefully) access the troublesome drive and extract any of your files. Once you have your files safe and sound you could wipe the drive and reinstall the entire operating system (OS) to start afresh.

There are articles on the Net of how to setup such a disk, and some guides are not for the techy fearful. Though in terms of usefulness for when things go pear-shaped and Mr Hard-drive turns into villainous Mr No-access it can be an information lifesaver.

I keep a Windows OS USB boot disk for potential hiccups, and a Unix OS USB boot disk for messy cases where ‘potential hiccups’ would seem like a good thing to have.

Many programs can be run entirely from a universal serial bus (USB) drive (“memory stick”, or “pen drive” are other common monikers). This has the benefit that it doesn’t install any files, or change any settings, of the host computer it is plugged into. Particularly useful if you are sharing a computer and want your files kept separate.

There are many types of software that fit this category. Some programs are released in different versions, with one version being a USB drive version that is more portable (and sometimes of smaller file size with equal functionality than its installable counterpart).

So you can read / reply to emails from your familiar email program whilst using a public computer without putting files on the public machine, for example. Essentially you are just using the host computer for processing power, not to store your files or software.

Some popular sites that maintain listings of such programs are pendriveapps and portableapps.

A method for doing this is to use software to compress files. The one I use, and recommend as part of the Life hack series, is 7-Zip.

It is open source (for the most part) and entirely free to use. It has great compression ratios compared to other similar software, and is one of the first programs I install on a personal computer (PC).

As well as saving space on the hard disk, it also greatly saves bandwidth when transferring files, so indirectly lowering the users carbon footprint.

When I initially started the Christ On Disk (COD) project back in 2002 I was surprised I couldn’t download a free Bible viewer that was small in size. Most Bible viewing programs were about 6Mb in size, some much more. So I set about learning how to create one. (With the problems challenges in its creation I later realised why I hadn’t been able to download such a program

The unique aspects of the COD are that it is able to display all 1189 chapters of the entire Bible, and still be able to run from a floppy disk, being only 1.29Mb in size. It does all of this without needing to be installed in any way.

How is it possible to introduce such organisation without the tediousness of manually renaming each file?

Enter “THE Rename” by Hervé Thouzard. It allows files to be renamed in batches. It is highly flexible, with many options such as pre-pending, post-pending, incrementing, replacing, etc. It even allows certain file meta data to be modified.

I was very impressed when I came across TheGun word editor. I had limited computing resources at the time and this perfectly fitted the bill of what I was looking for. It also highlights the programming inefficiencies of major software companies.

This editor can handle any size file, it has full drag and drop support. It is built for speed and basic text editing.

It is 6144 bytes in size (yes only 6Kb), and entirely free! Amazing work!

Huh? Did I just move backwards in terms of technology, or is there a counter-intuitive reason that actually makes this a practical way of moving forwards?With the wonderfully advanced smart phone it consumed more time in configuring, and having a large feature set meant it wasn’t specifically designed to be the best at any of those features. It could do them, but when an emergency arose and it needed to do them quickly and perfectly it often disappointed.

High technology doesn’t always equate with being highly useful.

After some research I set upon acquiring an old 8300 series Blackberry. The keyboard and usability of the device is fantastic, even better than the later models. For example, putting on number lock by pressing the shift and alt key together is almost impossible to do when typing with one hand on the newer models. It focusses on the core activities of being a phone with good personal digital assistant (PDA) support.

The first of these is MyLifeOrganized (MLO) task management software. OK great, but what does it do?

It enables synchronization of task management between windows devices, including windows mobile.

Recent work has joined the Research In Motion (RIM) company’s Blackberry, and Apple’s iphone devices to the platforms of use, making it easier to manage tasks on the move with a wide range of devices.
The software allows practically infinite depth for subtasks. Something many competitor applications seem to lack.
Being very flexible, it can convert between several task management software formats.

The to-do list allows the specification of contexts, and filtering to display the to-dos according to their context, such as listing to-dos according to your current location.
It also can output a pocket mod to Microsoft Word document.  This has been found to be very useful for checking off the list of Life hacks posted.

All in all a very useful software programme, and highly recommended for outlining plans.