Each engineering specialty makes use of certain software packages. For instance, in my area of automatic controls, just about everyone uses Matlab; those studying other disciplines make use of other topic-specific packages. However, certain tools (software and otherwise) will prove beneficial to just about any engineering grad student who must carry out research and produce a dissertation at the conclusion of their studies. However, these tools are rarely mentioned as key technologies for surviving as an engineering grad student. Over the next several posts, I will identify some tools that I had to discover on my own as I marched toward a PhD degree. Today’s category is desktop search.
You will undoubtedly collect a lot of information on your computer as a grad student. This will include papers, notes, programs, and presentations. Regardless of the software you use to produce or store such information, a good search program will help you quickly access data when you need it. During the course of my research, I have stored thousands of documents in various file formats. Often times I can remember an author’s name, or a keyword, but cannot recall which document contains a particular quote or data item. A search program allows you to quickly identify the information you need, regardless of where it is located on your computer’s hard drive.
An admitted Luddite, I still use Windows XP as my operating system, so I can’t speak to whether Linux, Mac, Vista, or Windows7 users require an external search program. I’ve had good luck with X1 Search, which I started using back in 2004, when this program was named Yahoo! Desktop Search. Then, in 2006, the association with Yahoo! was terminated, but a free version of X1 remained available as X1 Client. Sadly, the last free version (5.6.3, Build 3453) is becoming difficult to find on the web anymore. Although X1 is no longer free, there are other free options in the desktop search category that should work just as well. Regardless of which desktop search program works best for your situation, you will save significant amounts of time by being able to rapidly search through your research documents and retrieve key bits of data.
Although I wasn’t surprised at my need to search journal articles, I have been amazed at how often I need to go back to find a section of software code that I had previously written. Over the course of the past several years, I’ve created thousands of lines of Matlab code, and I occasionally realize that I’m starting to rewrite an algorithm that I’ve already sorted out. So I open up my desktop search program, limit my search to Matlab files, and start typing in relevant keywords. I’m almost always guaranteed to find the needed code within a few minutes. If you’re an engineering grad student, you’ll likely get good use out of a desktop search client.
2 replies on “Secret Tools of the Engineering Grad Student, Part 1: Desktop Search”
Have you looked at Evernote? You can store your scripts in it labeled, etc.
Evernote looks interesting, but it seems that I would have to store all my info in it, as I often don’t know in advance which documents will turn out to be useful. I thought it easier just to store everything on my own computer, and then run a local search.