Thanks Brookter; I knew some of it. I’d tried changing the default Spotlight key in the Keyboard preferences, but it didn’t work … it didn’t occur to me that I needed to use the Spotlight preferences to do so. I’ll try using my new ^s shortcut plus the name of the app if it’s not in the dock — the long one is going to be Chronos vs Chronosync!
I tend not to have multiple windows open in Apps. For web browsing, I’m now using Vivaldi, by an off-shoot of the Opera team, based on Chronos but with graphical side-tabs like OmniWeb … it’s still early days of development, but I don’t know if they’re planning workspaces and snapshots like OmniWeb, but since OW6 just won’t run on this MBA at the moment, it’s a reasonable and fast substitute.
I’ve also learned the other Finder shortcuts, apart from Cmd-N, Shift-Cmd-N, Shift-Cmd-A and Shift-Cmd-U, to open windows on Downloads for instance. I’ll experiment with Cmd-Tab.
I’m a bit of a neat freak with regards to my desktop and dock, but I approach it differently; I hate having the icons lined up in an arbitrary order, so I add them to the dock so that they’re all lined up the way I like them. The ones I only use occasionally are always where I expect to find them, which is handy because when my brain’s a bit foggy, I forget the names of programs. I’ve always had trouble holding on to one textual/verbal thought while trying to remember another word/phrase, so I often am wondering if I saved any useful articles on orbital mechanics while I go in search of the [mental picture of green elephant head] program to check. Having that icon in it’s spot near where I’ve pinned Scrivener, Scapple, Curio, and Aeon Timeline (which all exist in my mind at that point as non-verbally identified pictograms), I can always find it without losing my train of thought.
I recognise that feeling! That’s exactly what I meant with “not remembering my apps”. I am doing something, realise that I seem to remember an app that should be useful for this, called … eehhh, aahh, ffssmmvvggg… Shit, something with E, or V, or… And then I have to start searching, the launchpad and when I find it I have forgotten what I thought I would use it for.
With the Icons it is usually sufficient to remember that “it was sort of yellowish…?”.
I hate to admit this, especially in here, but I recently was about to start structuring a project idea, and… just couldn’t think of a smart way to do this, and then I suddenly saw the Scapple icon in the dock, and thought “Oh, stupid me, of course…” And started working.
With an empty dock I would probably still have been wondering how to do it.
I can understand you both; we are all different in the way our minds and memories work — thank heavens! — and, fortunately or unfortunately, I know what I’ve got to do what, knowing them by name; and as I’ve said in another thread, all I want of an icon is that it should be distinctive, so that I can see from a glance at my dock if it is running or if I need to load it. I even keep up-to-date downloads of apps that I haven’t needed to use for years stored on an external drive, just in case I might have occasion to need them. So my minimalism suits me.
When I was running a language school in Bangkok in the '70s, one of our clients for a while was Ford Motors. When I went to visit the Personnel Manager — they were still called that in those days! — an expat, he apologised for the untidy state of his office … it was immaculate with no papers or anything on any surface, apart from the silver-framed photo of his family, pen tray, calendar on his desk; the only thing out of place, in any sense of the word, was the blotter, which was at an angle rather than square on to the edge of the desk. I did not warm to him, though.
For most of my life, I have lived in ordered chaos, surrounded by piles of papers, books, things … I always knew exactly where everything was, unless my cleaning-lady in China, or my wife when I was in the UK, moved it. But that week of living without any of it round me taught me how much of my energy was being sapped by all the clutter. I am nowhere nearly as organised or automated as Ioa, but retirement has allowed me to achieve an almost paperless state in my personal affairs. And then, I make no pretensions to be a ‘real creative genius’, and I am not trying to write the 'New Tolkien", to the surprise of many who think they know me; anything I wrote would be utterly derivative … helping with Chinese-English or English-Chinese translation gives me enough as a form of vicarious creativity.
