Get your desk in shape for 2007
1:48PM, December 31, 2006 - [ Permalink]
Every one likes to start a new year off right. We swear off all sorts of vices to varying degrees of success.The beginning of the new year is a good time to clean up your desk and computer. Here's a list of things to help get your desk and system(s) in order:
Clean your desk
Some people have absolutely spotless desks - most don't. Gather up all the paper on your desk and sort into two piles; keep and recycle/shred/burn/getridofit. Put things away. Dust off your monitor, computer and desk. Get a vacuum or broom under your desk and get those dust bunnies before they achieve enough mass to become sentient. Check for unused power transformers & unplug them. If there is equipment you rarely use, plug them into a separate powerbar so you can selectively turn on those devices when you need them - no point in wasting power.Organize your spare cables.
There is probably an assortment of cables for your digital camera, portable USB drive etc, cluttering up your desk. I use a few small tuperware-type containers to sort the cables (power cables in one, USB cables in another, ethernet in another - you get the idea) which makes finding the right cable easier. This is also an opportunity to thin out your cable collection. I recently pulled parallel port printer cable out of my desk - I have not had a printer that uses a parallel port in three years.Clean Keyboard and Mouse
We all know how dirty these can get, so cleaning them at least once a year isn't a bad idea. It is also a good opportunity to check the keyboard cable for physical keyloggers, if you are feeling a touch paranoid.Clean your desktop
If your desktop is anything like mine, it gets mighty full of text files, and other things I've saved to keep handy for one reason or another. Time to put them away where they belong - somewhere in your computer's Documents / My Documents folder.Make system backup
Most people don't adopt a good back up strategy until after they have lost substantial amounts of data. Now is an excellent time to start. External drives are relatively inexpensive and make you much more likely to do a back up rather than burning to CDs or DVDs. Since I switched to external drives, I back up with far more consistently.Uninstall unused applications
Look through the applications installed on the computer - I'll wager there are a few that you never use, and never will. Delete them or uninstall them (as the case may be). Mac users can just drag most applications into the Trash, or use AppZapper.Clean out your email
Let's face it; Email can get completely out of control. Stop letting email sit in your inbox for days/weeks/months at a time. When you get a new email either deal with it now, reply to it, then delete or store it for future reference. Go through your existing email and prune the stuff you store if you have not done so already. Delete emails with attachments (or use the remove attachment feature most email clients have) to reduce the size of your email mailboxes. Now that your email has been thinned out, archive the older emails for reference.Prune your iTunes collection
Or whatever way you organize and play your music. Podcasts, videopodcasts and unplayed, unenjoyed or just plain unpleasant music accumulates over the year. Podcasts/Netcasts (audio and video) can chew up prodigious amounts of drive space if you aren't careful. Clean what you want to get rid of. Unsubscribe to podcasts you don't listen to.Clean up those digital photos!
We're almost all guilty of it. You start taking digital photographs and suddenly you are sitting on 25,000 images. Certainly, it will take some time to go through all your previous photos - you don't have to do that now, but from now on, delete those out-of-focus, blurry, under-lit or otherwise poor photos right after they come in.Organize, prune or delete bookmarks.
Bookmarks can get completely out of control. Many sites I bookmark and never return to, so at the end of year, I spend some time looking at my bookmarks removing ones I don't use and making sure the remaining ones are well organized. If you are on a persistent Internet connection (DSL/cable - not dialup), this is also an opportunity to move to a web-based bookmarking service like del.icio.us.Delete Cookies
You would not believe the number of cookies that are set when you are surfing the Internets. I used to go in Safari's cookie management system and delete anything I didn't recognize as useful, but then I found Cocoa Cookies, which lets me select "good cookies" and nuke everything else. I do this regularly and it brings joy to my heart (I am easy to please, apparently). IE users can go Tools -> Temporary Internet Options -> Delete Cookies.Clean browser caches / Temporary Internet Files
Easy enough to do. Poof, gone. IE users can go Tools -> Temporary Internet Options -> Delete Files.Change insecure passwords
Over the years, my passwords have gotten stronger and stronger. These days I use a utility like the Make-A-Pass widget, but Windows users (and Mac users) can use the generator over at GRC.com. If you would rather stick to something you can remember, use a phrase from a book, poem, song you know well and use the first letter of each word. For example; "And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?" would become "Adtgyttyhfg?" Pretty strong *and* easy to remember.Windows users:
The Internet is full of nasty stuff just wanting to get its hooks into your Windows box. Spyware, viruses, trojans, just to name a few of the things that can lurk in your system. Run System Update to get the latest security patches, Update the virus definitions, run virus scans, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, Empty your recycle bin and then degragment that drive.Mac Users: Run system scripts
Use a tool like MacJanitor to run the periodic maintenance scripts that the Mac likes to have run once in a while. Heck, open up Disk Utility and run a Repair Permissions for some inexpensive geek entertainment.Have a great new year everyone! Thanks to Mishka for proofreading and some Windows-related suggestions. See her side-project Is it beer time yet?.
