Ten for Ten: Steve Ruiz

For the end of 2010, Art or Idiocy? has invited ten guests to each contribute a list of ten items. Top tens, worst of's, specific subjects, sprawling samplings, join us each week as a new list is published. First is Steve Ruiz.

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Steve Ruiz is an artist and writer living in and around Chicago.
He makes paintings and writes about art, mostly at Chicago Art Review.
> ART
> REVIEW


Ten Things to Download

Like a lot of people, I spend a good amount of my day working on my computer. To make this time more pleasurable, I like to keep an eye out for software that lets me do things easier, faster, or just better. Here are ten applications which are nice to have around. Note that most of these are for Windows, but some are for Mac too.

Everything http://www.voidtools.com/
This tiny application delivers nearly instant results when searching for files on your computer.

Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
While Notepad++ is most useful as a tool for writing code, it's also open enough that you can use it as a very customized word-processing or note-taking application.

Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/
Dropbox is probably the most useful application I've ever used. It creates a local folder which is synced between all of your computers or devices - including phones - allowing you to pretty much re-gift your USB jump drives.

VLC Player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
VLC does it all for video, covering almost every file type, and allowing as many display options as you can think of.

LibreOffice http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/
Windows Office is great, but if you want a free, constantly improving alternative, go for LibreOffice.

HoeKey http://www.bcheck.net/apps/hoe.htm
HoeKey lets you bind custom actions to any key-strokes, so it's great for reducing common, multi-step actions to a quick command, like opening a new e-mail with Control+Shift+E.

WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/
WinDirStat lets you see at a glance exactly where and how all of the space on your hard drive is being used up. Great for deleting big things you've forgotten about.

MP3Tag http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html
OCD about your music? MP3Tag makes editing ID3 tags on your music a breeze.

GIMP http://www.gimp.org
Everyone loves a good cracked copy of Photoshop, but if you're at work and need to do some visual editing, go for GIMP.

Google Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome
Fast, stable, secure, and very expandable browser. There's no going back!