Under the Hood With Gina Trapani
In Interviews by Skellie
This week, Gina Trapani (Lifehacker.com editor and author of the lifehacker’s essential guidebook Upgrade Your Life
“My full-time computer is a 15-inch MacBook Pro, hooked up to a widescreen monitor and a few FireWire drives when I’m at my desk. I dual boot and virtualize Windows XP and Vista on it with Boot Camp and VMware Fusion, so I can test and use software downloads we cover at Lifehacker easily on one machine.
“I spend most of my day in web applications like Gmail, Google Reader, and Movable Type–using Firefox of course, with a few key extensions: Foxmarks, AutoCopy, DownThemAll, CoLT, No Squint, and Chris Pederick’s Web Developer extension.
“I back up all my files online with Mozy (the occasional Growl notification that the backup is complete warms my paranoid heart).
“I take screenshots for Lifehacker using InstantShot, use tons of TextExpander (and Texter on Windows) abbreviations to automatically fill in repetitive phrases and post HTML for me.
“Quicksilver resizes images, launches documents and applications, and lets me keep a clear Desktop and Dock, which I love. Finally, I keep my to-do list in a text file, pinned to my Desktop so it’s always staring at me, using GeekTool.
Links:
January 27th, 2008
Wow, was that English?
January 27th, 2008
@ Captain: It’s called Geek English — I love it! :-).
January 27th, 2008
I love the “what’s on my computer” lists. One suggestion for the writers amongst us: tell us what word-processor you use. I use the Mac side of my iMac for 99 percent of the time, but when I need heavy-duty, no worry writing, I find myself dual booting into XP for Microsoft Word 2007. (I have Parallels, but find it sluggish.) I’ll probably have to buy Office 2008 so I can use Word on the Mac side.
So the question is: Is there a free alternative to Word for Mac users?
January 27th, 2008
Firefox with Google apps. is the way to go. (I feel like I have said that before). The only problem is that she is using Movable Type rather then using any Freeware out there. (e.g. Wordpress) Sure I’m a fan boy because of the its cost vs. functionality ratio, nothing beats free and tweakable software.
January 27th, 2008
Ahhh I see.
I can speak Czenglish fluently and I have a couple of friends who understand Chinglish and Engrish, but I think this is the first time I’ve come across such thickly accented Geek English. Geenglish?
Good ruck wissem broggies!
January 27th, 2008
@ Ed Sutherland: NeoOffice.org is the best loved. Check it out and let me know what you think:-).
@ Boring Market: I suspect the Gawker Media overlords lay down the dosh for Moveable type ;-).
@ Captain Oddsocks: Cheers — I think ;-).
January 27th, 2008
I never knew about Texter, now that’ll save me some time.
January 27th, 2008
So, does she type anything? Or does all of her work look like ims and texting? I am seriously underproductive based on this.
January 28th, 2008
Uh-oh. Didn’t look geekish at all to me.. that can’t be good..
docs.google.com if I absolutely have to use a (ugh) word processor, but otherwise.. vi (technically vim) for everything. You don’t need Texter or anything like it if you can use a real editor.
Someday y’all are going to understand that content needs to be separate from presentation and that plain text is the proper way to create anything from email to web pages.. presentation is applied later.
January 28th, 2008
@Skellie : You know what they say you have to spend Dosh to get Dosh.
January 29th, 2008
mozy is the way to go for backing stuff up… 2 bad i had to learn the hard way and lost a ton of work related info when my hard drive burned up :/
January 29th, 2008
I have to disagree a little bit about Mozy. Mozy (or any other third party network backup) is a reasonable PART of any backup and Disaster Recovery plan, but it shouldn’t be your ONLY backup.
I use Mozy. I also use network backups that all land on my Mac and that in turn backs up to another disk with Time Machine.
Further, once a week, everything (everything!) gets backed up to a Linux box and that in turn backs up to removable media.. I keep 5 sets of that media so I can go back a full month if necessary. I also rotate one set out yearly.. this also has the effect of bringing in fresh media..
You cannot have too much backup.