Staci and I have been away from RVA visiting the families this past week. By visiting, I primarily mean sitting on their couches doing next to nothing, but that was the entire point really. We weren’t really keen on doing anything in particular.

Last night I went to my parent’s house for the first time in a little over a year and I came face to face with the sheer volume of accumulated stuff I have left there. We moved to this house when I was in college and my brother graduated from high school. You wouldn’t know it from the sorts of things we’ve saved. Piled in heaps and buckets and scattered across the basement floor are all number of toys spanning nearly my entire life. Things we probably should have gotten rid of, but never managed to do so.

It starts with a few beloved franchises. A box of Transformers, for instance, or old Star Wars figures. There’s no way we can just throw those out. Those are collector’s items, and positively soaking in sentimental value. But, since we’re keeping Han Solo we might as well hang on to Funshine Bear over here. I mean, there’s plenty of room here. And things pile, and pile, and pile. My parents are equally guilty of this, having their own piles of things, but it being their house they have the right.

The action figures, though, are only the least anguishing tip of the iceberg. While I certainly love many of them, they cannot compete with the towering edifice of my LEGO collection.

I have loved the LEGO brick since I was a wee lad. I still remember my first set (6364 Paramedic Unit) and that I never built it. The same Christmas I also acquired a red plastic LEGO brand carrying case and promptly dumped the set into the tub and never looked back. In time, I would end up building the model for which instructions had been provided at least once before enjoining the new parts with my ever-burgeoning collection.

It was the Star Wars sets that broke me the hardest though. I hadn’t so much as walked past the LEGO aisle in a store until an ex-girlfriend brought home the X-Wing set to which we soon added the Y-Wing and A-Wing sets. That’s when the obsession took hold and I would find myself shuffling around department stores looking for sales or making trips to outlet malls to look for deals (I’ve barely forgiven myself for letting the TECHNIC Space Shuttle slip out of my fingers).

But now we have a smaller house, we’re still thinking about moving, and I’m eager to get myself onto a budget that works so we might stop living so close to our paychecks. The question arises: What do I do with all of this that I have acquired? Can I bear to sell such a beloved collection? Might that actually give me peace of mind to let go? Neither the letting go, nor the movement of storage of my heap give me any comfort as I think about them now.

iTunes 7.0 was released yesterday. Among the flashy new extras like the Cover Flow browsing option and automatic downloading of album art is a tremendously awesome little addition that I haven’t read mentioned anywhere (yet). In the Item Information pane is a new field called Album Artist and it drastically reduces the clutter inherent in albums that have tracks with “featuring so-and-so” and “with whats-her-face.” This is endemic particularly in hip-hop albums and has caused me no end of frustration when I fire up my iPod hoping to hear the hot new track I swore I loaded the night before only to find out I missed it because it wasn’t in the same place as the rest of them.

Put simply, adding an album artist turns this:

into this:

If you’ve been raging against the scattered tracks you find with guest stars just select the album or tracks in question and press CMD I. You’ll get the improved Item Information box seen below. Type the major artist in the field and all of a sudden your iTunes library makes a lot more sense.

Rock on!

Not too long ago I became totally crushed out on Backpack, the amazingly elegant organizational tool by the mad geniuses at 37signals. Faced with the prospect of planning a wedding I got a little panicky in the part of my brain that loves to make lists.

“You’re going to forget things!” that little part yelled at me, probably while collating something or other, and continued “You really ought to put write it down; make lists; take notes. You’ll be sorry if you don’t!”

So we got a notebook and filled it with tabs and folders and paper. But, I grew out of Trapper Keepers a long time ago. This is the 21st century; shouldn’t there be a better way, possibly with lasers?

That’s where Backpack comes in, though there are sadly no lasers. It has everything I needed. It’s a to do list. It’s a place to keep notes. It stores photos and files and sends me email to remind me of things. It can be shared with Staci or anyone else on almost any computer anywhere. It can read todos, notes, and files from email. It’s just super, super keen.

Does it get any better than that? Oh trust me, dear readers, it does. The base set of Backpack tools is enough to get my organizational knickers all atwist, but it’s nothing compared to how sexy it can be when you add the magic of Quicksilver to the mix.

Quicksilver is a bit tricky to explain if you haven’t seen it in action. At its most basic level Quicksilver is little more than a search and launch app not entirely unlike Spotlight. You press a keyboard shortcut, you type, you find, you launch. Truthfully, you could use Quicksilver to do just that and you’d never understand what all the fuss is about. I initially didn’t much care for it when I first installed it. I think, perhaps, I was overwhelmed by what it could do, but underwhelmed by what I had been using it to do. Because you can do a hell of of a lot with Quicksilver.

For now though, let’s just concern ourselves with using Quicksilver to add list items, notes, pictures, and files to your Backpack pages. I realize this has already been covered elsewhere but my guide has pictures so I’m going to run it anyway. I’m going to assume that you’ve already installed Quicksilver and signed up for Backpack. You have, haven’t you?

(Note: The following screenshots have been taken with Quicksilver β49. Depending on which version you have installed your screens may look slightly different.)

Install the Backpack and Apple Mail modules. In the Plugins section of Quicksilver’s Preferences look for these two modules. You’ll be using the Apple Mail module to communicate via email with your Backpack pages. The Backpack module allows Quicksilver to see the address of all of your pages so you don’t need to remember the random email address Backpack set up for you. You don’t necessarily need to use Mail.app. So long as you’ve properly configured your favorite email app as your Default Email Reader in Mail’s preferences this will work just fine. You still need the Apple Mail module to interface with this preference, but these steps will work with anything, including GMail.

Enable Email To… (Send Directly) for Text. Once you have installed the two necessary modules you need to enable a few actions to allow Quicksilver to send your text directly to Backpack. Under Actions in the General pane select Text and find Email To… (Send Directly) in this list. You could use any of the other Email To… actions but they’re considerably slower. Make sure they’re still checked though. We’ll use them later.

Enable Email To… (Send Directly) for Files & Folders. If you have a paid Backpack account you can send files to your pages. If you don’t plan on paying for Backpack or don’t need to send images to your pages you can skip this step.

Add QSBackpackPlugInSource to your Catalog. Before Quicksilver can find any of your Backpack pages you have to tell it how to look. Go to the Custom section of your Catalog. Click the little + at the bottom of the screen and select QSBackpackPlugInSource from the drop down list.

Enter your Name and API Key. Now you’ll need to identify yourself. Enter your Backpack user name under the Contents tab of the catalog you just added. You’ll find the API Key at the bottom of your Backpack Account page. You’ll need to click the link that says “Show API.” It’ll be a long string of alphanumeric characters. Just copy and paste it into Quicksilver.

Click refresh. Once you’ve entered your username and API key you’re all set up. Click the Refresh button and a number will appear next to QSBackpackPlugInSource equal to the number of pages you’ve set up in Backpack. Once you see that number, you’re ready to go!

Send an item to your list. Okay, so now what? Now you’re ready to email content to your page, without ever opening Mail.app. Let’s start with a quick list item. Open Quicksilver and press “.” (that’s a full stop a.k.a. a period). This opens the text function. Type the word “todo” followed by two “>>” a space and your text. like so todo>> Do this here thing. Tab over to the second field and select Email To… (Send Directly). You should be able to accomplish this by simply typing “E.” Finally, tab over to the third field and select whatever Backpack page. In this example I am going to send it to my “Quicksilver + Backpack” page so I typed “QU” and waited for the Backpack logo to pop up. Press return and you’ll probably hear the Mail.app’s “whoosh” sound unless you’ve turned it off.

Send a note to your page. Sending a note is just as easy. Open Quicksilver. Press “.” Type “note” followed by “>>” a space and then your text. Like so: note>> I am typing a note. If you want to add a title to your note you can do so like so: note:title>> I am typing a note with a title. Tab over to Email To… (Send Directly). Tab over to your Backpack page and press return.

Send a file to your page. By now you should have no problem figuring out how to send a file. It works exactly the same as the previous examples, except you don’t press “.” at the first step. Find the file you want to send. If you have the iPhoto plugin installed you can browse through your Library or Albums. Alternatively you can browse through the files on your hard drive. Once you’ve found the file, tab over to Email To… (Send Directly), and then tab over to your Backpack page, and finally press return. Voila!

The results. The next time you visit your page you’ll find all the lists, notes, and files you sent waiting for you. With these two awesome apps configured thusly you need never interrupt your work to jot down an idea or task. You don’t even need to touch the mouse. A few quick keystrokes and your brilliant ideas are saved the wrath of forgetfulness!

Note: You’ll recall I said it was a good idea to leave Email To… (Compose) enabled. The reason is it makes is much easier to send multiple items to your list. If you want to add more than one thing at a time you only need to make a Textile unordered list and send it via email with the subject “todo.” You can do this with Quicksilver directly, but you’ll need to remember to put your linebreaks in with option + return (just like in many other OS X apps in which return is used as activate). You can add multiple todo items in the Quicksilver text area like so:

todo>>
* Item the First
* Item the Second
* Item the Third
* Tacos
  

If composing an email, just put “todo” on the subject line. Full instructions for adding content via email can be found on the Backpack help pages.

If you’ve been following along at home you should now have a fairly good grasp and the strength of these two apps, both together and alone. Learning to use Quicksilver with Backpack definitely helped me understand what Quicksilver can do for me much more fully, and helped me keep current with my Backpack pages. Go get one or the both of them and start playing around. You certainly can’t beat the price; Quicksilver is 100% free and Backpack only costs money if you want more. Though, if you do decide to start paying for Backpack would you be so kind as to use the link below? Backpack has a referral program whereby free Backpack can be had by spreading the word.