Among the bad habits listed, the worst one (that other people do) is having a cluttered desktop.  I cannot stand that.  I have, right now eight icons on my desktop, with about four of them I use on a daily basis and about four of them I use often enough to keep them on there.  For example, once a month or so, I’ll go into my dad’s desktop computer and remove all the junk from his desktop.  I don’t use a desktop manager like Stardock’s Fences, I just make a desktop folder and drop all the assorted junk into it.

I also tend to put my desktop into sleep mode when I’m going away somewhere, which is also probably bad.  Even though I do it on purpose, I should probably go ahead and shut all the way down to shave off a few watts of energy usage.  I could also stand to break my reliance on the mouse to launch my programs, while I’m at it.

Tell me, what are some of your bad computing habits?

Even today, with digital downloading on the rise, the CD is still the de rigeur format for music and looks to be this way for the foreseeable future.  Given how things are working, the CD will probably remain the physical format of choice for music until people no longer want physical copies of their purchases.  So, basically, forever.  Or at least until people start buying Blu-ray discs featuring entire musical collections from certain bands no longer recording.

If you’re looking to pick up a Blu-ray player for your home theater system, then Marantz has a deal for you.  If you pick up one of Marantz’s Blu-ray players, they’re offering a free Roku box for your purchase.  Not only will you be getting your Blu-ray and DVD on, you’ll also be able to stream content from Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, and more!  Best of all, it’s a Roku HD player, so you won’t miss out on the picture quality.

You can check out the Marantz Bly-ray player line-up here, but bear in mind that Marantz is the top of the line in BD technology.  That means you’ll be paying out a pretty penny for your Blu-ray, from $6000 to about $550 for the cheap version. That’s a nice bonus if you’re in the market for a Marantz, but otherwise, you’re putting down a lot of money that you could spend on other things.  For example, here’s some Blu-ray comparisons.

A new Roku HD box is only $99 at Amazon.  A new PS3 is $370 at Amazon.  Or, if you’re really looking to save some cash for this feature, you can get an LG BD 370 networkable Blu-ray player for $170 that both plays Blu-ray discs and streams Netflix and other on-demand video.  For $270 plus tax you could have the same setup that would cost you $550 via Marantz.  For $470, you can have the same setup with the ability to play video games.

The PS3 is supposedly still the best Blu-ray player on the market for the price, according to some guy I talked with at Best Buy this weekend, so shop wisely.

Among the more ingenious methods (that still works today) is overdrinking.  Basically before bed, you drink a bunch of liquid and in a few hours, you’ll wake up to use the bathroom (or wake up wet, depending on how heavy a sleeper you are).  I knew people in college who did that to wake up for tests and such.

Today, I have no less than five alarms to make sure that A) I wake up on time and B) I don’t just turn the alarm off and go back to bed without knowing I’ve done so.  My alarms are set for 5 AM, 6:15, 6:45, and 7:00.  Now that I’m used to get up early, waking up at 5 isn’t so hard, but it still helps to make sure I’ve got backup plans in place, just in case I can’t drag out of bed in time.  They’re all digital alarms, though; there’s not a clepsydra in the bunch!

Right now, I’m in the horrible process of looking for a house.  I imagine it’d be easier with a Realtor on my side, but I’ll get there eventually.  Right now I’m just trying to score something good for as cheaply as I can, even if it needs work.  The one good thing about that is, when it needs work, I can pretty much do whatever I want with the place.

Maybe I can take a cue from the Burntwire Brothers from the Acaeum D&D forums, who took two years and built their own epic Dungeons & Dragons room.  Just check out these images of this awesome room.  Yes, it looks cool, but that’s not the half of it.

While it looks rustic, the room is actually high tech.  The lights come on when someone enters the room via a hidden motion detector hidden behind the keyring by the door (you need the skeleton key to get out of the room).  There’s a dimmer switch.  Within those pillars, there are hidden speakers and a surround sound system in the walls.  There’s also a hidden fog machine and a strobe light to set the mood for the games.  How cool is that?!

The windows are stained glass, there are four hidden closest behind those portcullis gates, and the room is also decorated with framed D&D artwork and props from the first Dungeons and Dragons movie.  Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got the ultimate geek playground.  I’m completely green.

For starters, the iPad will be officially launched on April 3, 2010.  Preorders will start on March 12th, so this time next week it’s time to get to the Apple store, presumably early.  At least for the wifi version, anyway.  Apparently, the 3G version has been delayed by a month for some unexplained reason (probably to soak early adopters twice for the same product).  Late April is also when the rest of the world is going to get their iPads released, too. Maybe that’s got something to do with it.

Either way, now you know when you can get in line to get your hands on the next new revolutionary product from Apple.  Well, okay, not revolutionary, just next product from Cupertino.

These days, the incandescent light bulb is soon to be a thing of the past.  More and more, people are turning to LED lights and compact fluorescent lights to illuminate their home.  They use less electricity and are generally cheaper to produce.  They don’t provide the same type of light, but they’re better than candles.  Unless, of course, that candle is shaped like an incandescent bulb!

The light bulb candle comes from systemdesignstudios, a great group of designers.  The faux lightbulb is very well designed.  The wick burns on the inside of the bulb, allowing the bulb to keep its shape all the way to the bottom.  The candle’s light coming through the bulb allows it to cast light more like an actual bulb, rather than a candle.  And, of course, the bottom is screw patterned, in order to allow the bulb-candle to fit into any standard lamp.

I’m not sure how the wax would harm the lamp, but if I had a cool old lamp I couldn’t rewire, I’d definitely do this.

Full Infographic via Pingdom.

For some reason, the old-style Playstation 3 console believed 2010 was a leap year.  So when 2/28 became 3/1, the internal clock of a lot of PS3s said 2/29 which caused those Playstation 3 consoles not to connect to the Playstation Network.  It also disabled the offline game-playing abilities of a lot of other PS3 games.

The glitch was a pretty bad one for Sony, as it hit PS3 units world-wide before mysteriously correcting itself.  Why did it resolve itself?  Nobody really knows, and Sony’s not explaining matters.  They probably reset the secret Sony fail timer on the old units.

You know, it could be easy to treat this video extolling the virtues of the Creative Technology keyboard as a joke, but at the end?  This guy gets really good.  Impressively good, in fact.  As it turns out, rock and roll is easy.  Well, not for me, because I can’t play anything, but for this keyboard salesman.