Useful Softwares

So if you are in the grad school you like to use softwares for everything you do (at least its true for me). Sometimes takes me more time to learn how to use a new software for the first time (and also second time ...) than just do the thing manually. You will get to the balance someday. I had professor back at University of Tehran and he had an idea that your work will be more useful if you could make a software out of it (and also sell it). Another great lesson I had was from Prof. Kim at NC State. The notion was: it would be great if you could make policies out of the results of your ideas and works. Its a long road, I know. But, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" (Lao-tzu). 

As a student I like free softwares. Being free doesn't mean that the software is not alive (I mean something like the costumer service the commercial ones have). A good example is R. It has a huge community and contributers that support and develop the software and its packages. As yet, I never encountered a method or program which I couldn't find a package of it in R's website (or something very similar to that). 

I gathered a list of useful softwares that I'm using often. Please let me know if you have any other recommended software you like to be added to this list.

MathType	Math Text Formatting (Office and EPS files)	Student or .edu	http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/
CutePDF	PDF Writer	.edu or .gov	http://www.cutepdf.com/
Crimson Editor / Emerald Editor TeamViewer	Text Manipulation Remote Desktop	Free Free	http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx
MATLAB Octave	Matrix Manipulation - Test Platform Like Matlab but free (with almost similar syntax)	Student or .edu Free	http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/ http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
PuTTy	SSH	MIT (Open Source)	http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
X-Win 32	X Windows Environment for Remote Access	Student or .edu	http://www.starnet.com/products/xwin32/
Notepad++	Text Manipulation	Free	http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
WinSCP	FTP Access	Free	http://winscp.net/eng/index.php
Julia Firefox Foxitreader blender ImageJ AeroVis Freemind Lightworks TeXnicCenter CCleaner	Programming Language Web browser PDF reader Creating 3D graphics Image Processing Program Complex multi-dimensional visualization software Mind mapping application Video and Audio editing system LaTeX editor Cleans temporary and potentially unwanted files	Free Free Free Free Free .edu Free Free Free Free	http://julialang.org/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/ http://www.blender.org http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/ http://reed.cee.cornell.edu/index.php/Resources http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.lwks.com http://www.texniccenter.org http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

t / i \ m e

If you are organized person, you have a big advantage in graduate school. Other aspect of being successful is getting the most out of your time. Many of us are doing research and usually if you are a little bit curious, you will be end up two hours of online searching for things that are not have strong correlation with what you really start to search for! I'm totally agree that your point of view got broaden, however, you are loosing time on other aspects that might be more important.

The first thing you can say is, OK, so what you are doing here. You are writing here which means you are spending too much time that might not used in your research!?!

My answer would be: You got me, call it even! OK!

Not really! I think if you document your online searches and readings from all non-sense, you are getting something. At least you can track your improvement in "online time spending". 

If you are in Engineering school the first thing may come to your mind would be: how can I build a tool to help me. 
Other than having a notepad and google calendar and other nice software, you can use workrave. Its a very simple and effective software for keep focus on work (and free).

Many grad students are using headphones to keep their concentration. If you are listening to an old music and you know already all the words its helpful but if you are listening and trying to know the meaning of each word, I think you would loose some of your concentrations (this is just my experience . You can use some Binaural bits, especially the Gamma ones. Because the Alpha and Betta frequencies make many people feel sleepy.

Find out you are a morning or afternoon person (your prime time). In this way you can concentrate on hard things you need to do in the time your body is more ready. In addition, planning the day just before going to bed is great. Many times I don't even write what I'm suppose to do. I just think about things I need to do tomorrow and feel good about them. Easy haa!

Also having scheduled meal and sleep will help you to get the most out of your time.