hardy@lso

I’m working on a couple new projects, both involving authentication via Shibboleth. A digital institutional repository, and a single-sign on module for the MERLIN library catalog. Fun times.

Lately, I’ve been playing with a cool keyboard navigation tool in Ubuntu, the Gnome Deskbar applet (more on why I’m playing with Ubuntu later). It’s kind of like the MacOS program Spotlight, which is kind of like the MacOS program QuickSilver.

My favorite of these kinds of apps, though, is Windows-only, called SlickRun. It’s like the Windows-R command (aka Start > Run), only you can add your own scripts. I like it because it’s self-contained (which makes moving the scripts to another computer easy, just copy one text file). Self-contained also means a much smaller learning curve, as you can tell it exactly what you want done. With Spotlight, Deskbar, and especially QuickSilver, you can expect a larger learning curve, and a fair amount of fiddling before you figure out how to get it to do what you want.

Some quick examples: with SlickRun, I can call it up (hit ctrl-space, user-definable), type “goto slickrun” and I’ll get a new IE window, which runs an “I’m feeling lucky” search in Google for slickrun, and sends me to: http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/. Or type “book getting things done” and I search Amazon for an item with those keywords. Or type “searchdelicious leo python” and get a list of matches in del.icio.us. It also runs any app in my path, or can navigate to any folder (typical Windows-R stuff). Oh, and with a history of what I’ve typed before, which it uses for autocompletion, SlickRun kind of “learns” what I typically do.

All of these tools make getting stuff done a little easier (and also minimize distractions along the way… kinda, once you get past the fiddling). Where they really shine is when you actually use your laptop on your lap… not having to grab a mouse, or fiddle with a touchpad… it’s great.