I love technology. I really do. I was born with a keyboard in my hands, grew up along simple, yet memorable PC games, watching them on a black and white CRT screen, almost lost my hearing from the god-awful dial-up noise when the Internet first started catching up and witnessed the painful transition from floppy discs to USB sticks. The reason I’m remembering my tech history is the fact that a few days ago I tried to explain to someone my daily routine and noticed the amount of technological/magical devices and its software that I use on a daily basis and could probably not imagine a life without. So I’ve decided to write down my daily technological routine and the essential tools that make my life so much easier in newly information-driven world.
Early Morning – Home
The first tech item that I pick up after I wake up is my always trusty iPod Touch. Well, that’s not entirely true. The real first device that I touch is my alarm clock, and I don’t necessarily touch it as I actually slam it to shut the fuck up. Yes, I’m really grumpy in the morning. Anyway, there are four major applications that I run right off the bat. My RSS reader, e-mail app, Twitter app (TweetDeck) and my main notepad app (Evernote) that I use for To-Do lists. After I gain all the important information I need, I am a fresh man, eager to go on and do business. After I tidy myself up I snatch my laptop bag, place my Touch in my pocket and listen to some fine podcasts while on my way to campus.
Morning/Noon/Afternoon – College
This is where my laptop gets its share of attention and where most of my work gets done, either for college or my personal matters. After re-syncing with the world again with the help of the Mozilla’s family line of programs – Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird, I re-cheek new tweets on the desktop version of TweetDeck and yet again check my obligations in Evernote. After any work is produced, any significant piece of data is automatically processed by my all favorite application that is Dropbox. If you haven’t heard of it, Dropbox is basically a simple program that acts as synchronizer of all your important files and also stores them on a web cloud. For instance, I create a new image/word file and place it in my Dropbox Folder. The file is then uploaded to the Dropbox cloud servers and when I turn on my desktop PC, the file is automatically downloaded to the Dropbox folder on the PC and voila! Instant synchronization. Dropbox has proved itself extremely useful to someone like me, since I use a large array of devices and I even have a version of it on my iPod Touch.
Speaking of synchronization and magical applications, there’s the previously mentioned Evernote. It works on the same concept as Dropbox, but everything occurs inside the application itself. As suggested in the title, it’s all about notes. I’ve grown very fond of Evernote, since I can create simple To-Do lists that I can view on my Touch later on or simply write down notes when I’m at class or studying and then even further organize them with tags or even e-mail them to others within the application itself. Madness! Later on I’m going to experiment with audio and video notes. Truly, this must be the future people spoke of in the 1960s.
Lastly, there’s my iPod’s synchronization with iTunes that I have installed on my laptop. The only bad thing that iTunes does is make me wish I had a Macbook. I don’t use it for music playing though, that spot will always be reserved for Winamp. Classic theme for life!
Late Afternoon/Evening – Home
After returning to my shrine at home, I usually turn on my desktop PC. My PC synchronizes with everything and so do I. I primarily use my PC for the heavy lifting, meaning I edit videos on it (Sony Vegas) and tinker with my photography and graphical work (Photoshop). My PC is also the place where I keep all of my media, like ripped movies, which I stream to my PS3 and much more. Also it’s a gaming machine, since I treat my laptop really nicely and have an almost monk-like rule of no gaming on my laptop to increase its overall performance and lifetime. There are no significant applications on my PC that I haven’t already mentioned. Perhaps Steam is the most important one on the PC, globally and personally. I mean, digital distribution is another thing of the advanced future that is featured in the year 2010, right? Finally, if there’s some serious work to be done I usually use my laptop instead of my PC. For instance, I’m writing this on it as we speak.
Night/Really Early Morning – Home
If it’s not Friday or Saturday, which equal as party days, then I’m more or less likely to be finishing up on some notes in Evernote or generally doing work for college, which is primarily programing in Eclipse, a really chubby programing editor, that covers a lot of things that needs to be handled if coding in Java. Sometimes I tend to use Notepad++, just for the heck of it. When it’s actually bed time, I tend to dust off my PSP and play whatever needs to be played until I become really sleepy or feel that I accomplished what I intended to do. I’ve been mostly playing GTA: Chinatown Wars, since the missions are short and I can progress through it slowly every night before I fall asleep.
Lately I’ve been thinking of acquiring a Kindle, but those snob bastards at Amazon have yet to recognized my country as a worthy consumer of their magical e-ink device. Until that happens, I guess it’s only RSS feeds for me, since I don’t really like the physical form of books or librarians.
And the online services that I use? Well, besides Twitter I also enjoy using Flickr (losing battle), Twitpic, Instapaper (simple, yet amazing!!), Facebook and YouTube. And everything from Google. Those bastards really know how to hook you in onto their products. Must be some voodoo-shaman crap!
The Conclusion
There isn’t really one. If I spend a lot of time pondering on how technology has rapidly progressed through the course of my existence or our overall existence, I’d be a fool, since in that period of pondering, Steve Jobs or anyone else would whoop out a new and innovative product that would push technology even further. That’s why I only take a brief second, think of all the glorious tech products I’ve experienced, enjoy the ones I have now and look forward to the ones that are coming in the near future. It’s a never ending cycle, really. A cycle that I’ll be part of for the rest of my life most likely, unless I experience some hardcore spiritual conversion that bans all technological products and makes me go live in a cave on a mountain or something.
Also, perhaps you’ve noticed I didn’t mention my phone at all. That’s because I use my phone as a fucking phone. And not as a professional camera, gaming device, mp3 player, microwave, vibrator and much more, like most people do.
