Tag: productivity

Tidy Desktop, Tidy Mind.

.Reading time 1 minute.

When I started working from home back in March, I never knew just how long it would be for. Eight months later and I’m still not fully adjusted. I do have a couple of desk plants now.

So to help me focus, and cut down distractions, I recently decided to clean up my busy Windows desktop with a fresh interface using Rainmeter. After checking out a couple of video tutorials, and browsing some plugins and skins over at DeviantArt & the Rainmeter Reddit group, this is what I came up with.

A clutter free, eye pleasing backdrop with Work on the left, and Play on the right.

I used Silmera Dock for the left and right hidden bars, whilst Vecto provides the date, clock and song info (which is linked to Spotify). I chose to centralise & autohide the main taskbar with Taskbar X, and the tiny weather widget comes from Soniq. (Its one of the few that still work). Finally I chose Visbubble for the Equaliser.

The icons used within the left and right docks were mainly sourced from Icons8, then coloured in Photoshop.

Finally, the slick background art is by a highly talented redditor by the name of u/dankosaurus__rex. You can see more of their work over at r/Gundam.

Social Exposure & Digital Housekeeping

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Why is it such a pain to remove old URLs?

When it comes to leaving a social media platform, some websites make it incredibly difficult to actually delete your account. When leaving Facebook, it’s purposely awkward procedures would only allow me to initially “deactivate” my profile first, and would not permanently scrub me from their databanks until 90 days of inactivity had passed.

So I was pleasantly surprised at the relative ease of erasing my Instagram account by comparison.

Yes, I’ve done it. A couple of days after requesting my export link, the email dropped in my inbox. Once I’d safely downloaded all of my images, the deletion process was very straightforward. A couple of clicks, another to re-confirm my intentions despite a desperate plea bargain to stay, and I was gone for good. Ahh…

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Curb Your Procrastination

.Reading time 6 minutes.

Is it me, or have the number of ads on Instagram shot up in the past few months? I swear it’s getting to the point where half my feed is sponsored, and they’re not just your usual gaming or corporate posts. It’s also the paid-for promoted content from other users that are starting to aggressively infiltrate my feed. I’m certainly not enjoying my time with the platform as much as I used to. I’m contemplating deleting my account and leaving the site altogether (as I did with Facebook several years ago), especially now that more of the dubious targeting practices seem to be gradually working their way into its architecture. It’s also contributed to what’s become a personal routine of procrastination. Something I desire to drastically change.

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