Ben's Computer Tidbits

Migrating from Eudora to Thunderbird

2008-08-03T19:46:00.003-04:00

Eudora was a popular email client for quite awhile and considered by many as more secure than MS Outlook (we're talking back before webmail was popular here). Unfortunately it isn't being maintained anymore and the free version lacks some (now) pretty basic features which are nice to have (spell checker, PGP support, gmailish fancy labels). Thunderbird on the other hand is actively updated, feature rich and open source. The trouble comes in when you try to migrate your old mail to Thunderbird. The Thunderbird importer for Eudroa's data doesn't always get the read/unread status of messages correct (and can mangle some messages). The workaround for this is to use a free tool called Eudora Rescue to preprocess your mailbox files. The developers have some instructions for doing the conversion but the basic strategy is to first backup your Eudora install, then run Eudora Rescue on it (I enabled just about all the options, but the defaults probably work in most cases). You then rename your old Eudora directory and move the processed mailbox files into a new directory in place of the old Eudora directory (same name/location). Copy your attachments directory ("[EudroaDirectory]\Attached" by default) into the new. You can then install Thunderbird and let it automatically import Eudora's mail. If desired you can then put your old Eudora directory back and import your Eudora address book/settings from the Thunderbird tools menu.

If you have trouble with the address book importer (can happen depending on your Eudora version and settings) I've had good luck with allowing the Windows address book to import from Eudora and then exporting from that to a format that you can import from Thunderbird (csv works).

You can also install a Thunderbird extension called Penelope which will change Thunderbird's UI to look more like Eudora. It's a relativly new project but it does seem to work ok (read more).

Unfortunatly, I haven't found anyway to import filters from Eudora (I just copied them by hand)

X Servers for Vista

2008-02-10T23:53:00.000-05:00

I expect I'm in the minority here (How many Vista users use/want an X server?) but If you have been having trouble getting Cygwin's X servers working properly with Vista check out Xming (sf.net) (developer's website). Xming is a somewhat fancier port of Xorg to Windows systems that works quite well on Vista. You can use it with any of the Cygwin apps or probably more useful, a SSH client like PuTTY

If this hasn't become apparent already, I really don't have the time to be posting here very often so this is going to turn into a collection of quick tips like this one with only very occasional updates for the foreseeable future.

Merging PDFs with ghostscript

2007-12-11T19:28:00.000-05:00

Just a quick tip tonight, mostly for Linux/Unix users (though there is no reason the clever Windows users couldn't use this too).
As you may already be aware, ghostscript is a (free) tool for working with Adobe's pdf and postscript formats. Among the uses I have found for it is concatenating pdf files (in this case chapters of an ebook to make it easier to search the whole thing). While you can do this with Acrobat reader in Windows, it is a quick single liner on the command line using ghostscript:

gs -DBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf... fileN.pdf

If you're like me and have your source pdfs scattered around a bunch of subdirectories you can try this command (for the BASH shell)

find | grep -i pdf |xargs gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf

You might want to try the command first without the call to xargs and gs (ghostscript) to make sure only the files you want are selected.

Note: I have talked about ghostscript before

CD Burning in Vista (w/ free software)

2007-12-09T19:27:00.000-05:00

So my fancy new computer running Vista comes with a DVD burner, but no software that uses it (besides the very limited built in stuff) and I want to free up some disk space by offloading extra data to dvds; What's a geek to do?

Rather than simply use my Linux machine and the network (which is a totally reasonable solution by the way) I did some searching and came up with a nice package called InfraRecorder. InfraRecorder is a GPL2 app which burns data to DVDs and CDs quickly and easily on Windows machines (Those of you lucky users of older versions need not feel left out). It isn't Nero or K3B grade software but it has all the features a normal person needs from their burning software (and then some). It can burn arbitrary files and iso or bin/cue images to cds and dvds. It can (if the user seeks out the option under project properties) burn the common iso9660 and UDF filesystems, and even create images. The UI is fairly simple and the defaults are reasonable (though if you use multisession discs you might want to give the FAQ a look).

Read what the author has to say and download it here.

Hyperterminal

2007-09-26T17:54:00.000-04:00

Continuing where my last post on how to make Windows Vista do something that was easy on XP we have Hyperterminal. In case you don't know, Hyperterminal is a terminal emulation program that has shipped with every version of Windows since 95 (maybe earlier, I don't remember). Its most useful function at this point is sending data over RS-232 (serial ports). Unfortunately Microsoft must have decided that people don't use serial devices and modems anymore so they didn't bother to include Hyperterminal (or a similar program) with Vista (which I found out the hard way when I went looking for it during a chemistry lab today). Luckily for us Hilgraeve, the company that wrote Hyperterminal, distributes it for free (personal use only it looks like) on their website. While Vista support isn't listed it seems to work fine (you might have to run it or any other program that requires direct port access as an administrator depending on the circumstances)

If you don't like Hyperterminal there are also some alternatives available for free, but I have yet to find one I like. For example, PuTTY is a great ssh/telnet/rlogin client that marginally supports serial port access, but is missing some features that you might need depending on the protocol your serial device uses.

At least as of today we Vista users can now have video clips as our desktop backgrounds (well, Vista Ultimate anyway). Useless, but nifty (I'd rather have Hyperterminal come with Windows).
Well, I'm off to go burn a Knoppix DVD ;-) If anyone has an alternative to Hyperterminal that they like please comment.

RAW Thumbnails in Vista

2007-09-17T11:06:00.000-04:00

Its been a couple months, but in case anyone is still reading here you go:

I have recently found myself in possession of a Vista machine, which I hate to put something better on because it comes preloaded with a bunch of useful stuff (college package). One of the things that irritates me about it is that Microsoft hasn't updated the XP PowerToys that supplied functionality such as a viewer for RAW files produced by higher end digital cameras (well, unless you count the poker game that shipped over WindowsUpdate). Luckily if you have a Nikon camera then Nikon has you covered with a plugin for Vista to provide the same functionality as the XP PowerToy which you can download for free here. If you have a Canon then you can read this MSDN blog post and see if you can get this functionality or not. Most of the other major manufacturers have similar packages: Sony Olympus Pentax

For real editing I'm a fan of GIMP and UFRaw as always ;-)

Happy Picture Taking!

Free VPN Access to the Internet

2007-06-16T20:14:00.000-04:00

It has been just over a month since I last posted here; sorry about that. One of the more useful things on my backlog of things to mention is a relatively new company offering free access to the Internet over a VPN (among other things)

I'm not sure how the economics of this work, but the idea is that you use their service as a way to use the Internet in a more private fashion (not just the WWW). Granted, there is a lot of talk in the news about ISPs keeping track of what people do with the Internet, but it seems like such a service has a lot more uses that just remaining semi-anonymous while stealing music or movies (which is the first use hinted at by the website). The most obvious use being tunneling through firewalls. If you are behind a router and would rather not have to concern yourself with port forwarding, this may be a way to have things work. The downside is that since you have to connect to whatever service you are using through another server the connection isn't going to be particularly fast.

Anyway, SecureIX offers such a service as well as a 1G email account with both POP3 and IMAP and Usenet access. They also have a paid version if you need more bandwidth. The VPN uses the PPTP protocol which is fairly widely supported (they have mediocre setup instructions for Windows).

Give it a try if you have a use for an extra public IP (gaming and server testing come to mind)

You can read a little about my previous experiments with VPNs here

Ubuntu

2007-05-12T21:00:00.000-04:00

Ubuntu seems to be the current fad in computing, probably because of Vista's problems. For those who don't know, Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based off Debian which has been made more user friendly. Even Dell is going to start offering Ubuntu preinstalled on a few of their computers soon. Being a fairly long time Linux user myself, I'm all for the extra attention Ubuntu has been netting the Linux world since it turns up lots of useful tips on various blogs. Take for example, this ExtremeTech article. The first few pages are pretty boring to anyone who has used Gnome before but the subsequent pages are full of useful tips for Gnome and BASH users, both new and more experienced.

If you haven't already tried Ubuntu and want to get in on the action there are a bunch of ways to give it a try. You could just download the CD or DVD (or order a CD for free in the mail) which has a limited Ubuntu system which you can install to an extra hard drive. You could also try out "Wubi" which will install Ubuntu in Windows (I haven't personally tied it yet, since I have Linux installed anyway, but Lifehacker liked it). Or, as I have suggested before, try out the Knoppix LiveCD (or DVD). Knoppix is also based on Debian but is intended to be used exclusively as a boot disc and has a huge amount of software installed for you to try out.

Skype: Free Calling on Mother's Day

2007-05-08T18:20:00.000-04:00

If you aren't a regular Skype user, you may not know that they are offering 200 minutes of free calling (per computer) on mother's day (5-13) this year. This could be a great opportunity to give Skype a try, though I would recommend setting up Skype on both ends and just talking over the Internet (maybe even get a webcam going).

You can download the Skype client here for most popular operating systems. If you prefer something a bit more open (and no free calling) try Gizmo or FWD.

College

2007-04-28T17:58:00.000-04:00

It's been a little over a month... I just wanted to have something new up.

I have been busy researching/deciding on a college (Any thoughts on RPI, UofRochester or SUNY Binghamton? please post in the comments!) and getting ready for APs in a couple weeks. Hopefully I will have more time in a few weeks.

While we are on the topic of colleges I thought I would share some links with you that I have found helpful. I should be back to my usual topics next time.

RateMyProfessors.com: Allows current students to rate their teachers on a variety of criteria. Unfortunately there aren't always that many reviews, but most professors have a few. Most of the above colleges have pretty mixed reviews (as can be expected) but I would think that if a college you are looking at has mostly bad reviews that might be pretty telling. RateAProf.com and PickAProf.com advertise similar things but have almost no reviews compared to RateMyProfessors

StudentsReview.com: Offers statistics, ratings and (most importantly) comments from current students and alumni. Like the above sites, there aren't too many reviews but I found there are enough to get some idea from the comments. The UI could use some improvement, however. Type your college in the search box on the top, and then choose it from the list of results. On the resulting page you should see a pie chart of students who would vs those who would not return. Under that chart click the link labeled "click here to find out why" to read the individual student comments.

FastWeb.com: Probably everyone already knows about FastWeb, but I think they are worth a mention anyway. FastWeb offers a scholarship search. All you have to do is fill out their incredibly long, tedious survey and you will be matched with scholarships (and banner ads). They also offer some mildly interesting articles from time to time. There are a huge number of other scholarship search engines as well, but despite all the advertising I have found FastWeb to be the most usable.

USNews: America's Best Colleges: Perhaps not as useful as the others, but It does give you an idea of how a given college stacks up to others in the US. They also have a scholarship search and other information.

CollegeBoard.com: The CollegeBoard publishes the SAT and AP tests, among others. Their website has all you need to know about their tests as well as some (basic) college comparison tools, a scholarship search engine and financial calculators. They also run the CSS profile required by some financial aid offices.

CommonApp.org: Home of the Common Application for US colleges. Fill out one form over the internet (or print and mail) to apply to a bunch of different colleges. Enough Said!

FAFSA: Online application for Federal Financial Aid.

Anyone have any other suggestions? Please comment!

Edit: Heading to RPI in the fall.

Linux and the Samsung ML-2510

2007-03-14T17:58:00.000-04:00

This post will probably only affect a small number of people, but it might be useful anyway (if only to remind me next time). Anyway, I found myself setting up a Samsung ML-2510 ( a cheap 25ppm b&w laser printer) on a Gentoo Linux machine yesterday, and was somewhat surprised to find that Samsung supports a good number of their printers and scanners on Linux with a unified driver kit available here (their website doesn't seem to work too well on firefox/flash9 for Linux). The driver comes with a fancy installer (just run the "autorun" binary after you extract it) which works perfectly except that, at least on Gentoo, it puts the cups filters in the wrong directory. So, the trick is to copy/symlink the contents of /usr/lib/cups/filter/ to /usr/libexec/cups/filter/
and adjust the port cups thinks the printer is connected to and things should work well. Good job Samsung for at least trying to provide support, a few of us do appreciate it! (Actually there are open source drivers for printers that speak Samsung's language as well, but I couldn't get them working easily).

If people are interested in a more detailed Linux printing help using CUPS, google around or check out LinuxPrinting.org

EDIT (4-10-07): Fixed model number typo.
RE: Commenter #1: Gentoo's cups start script is /etc/init.d/cupsd. I don't think the installer is necessarily broken, it is just not putting things in the correct places for Gentoo's setup (not sure if it is standardized or not). Another thing to try is to delete the printer the Samsung driver installer made for you (cups web interface) and re-do it using the usb device (/dev/usb/lp0 on my machine) that is associated with your printer instead of the default Samsung path (use the cups web interface: http://localhost:613). The official Samsung driver should be in the list of selectable drivers (I forget what it is under, should be obvious) when you add the new printer through the cups web interface. If you are still having trouble, feel free to email me or try asking on the Gentoo forums.

Debian Package of the Day

2007-03-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post to prove I'm alive ;-)

Apparently some Debian developers have started a "package of the day" project to help introduce people to some of the software available in the Debian repositories. I imagine this could be very useful to people just starting out using Linux (I'm sure there will be more of those, now that Vista is out). They also have a Ubuntu version but I'm not sure how much difference there is between the Debian and Ubuntu repositories anyway, so you might just want to keep track of both. (via ./)

Being a Gentoo user, I find that the Gentoo online package database is also very good for this. Either browse by category or check out what has been updated recently.

There are also some handy list of Windows programs and their open source/Linux equivalents, such as the one offered by the Linux Equivalent Project or this list (which seems a little out of date to me)

Vista

2007-02-25T19:17:00.000-05:00

So, you want to try Microsoft's latest and greatest? It seems like they still don't have all the bugs worked out yet, so read up before buying... Here are some links to get you started:

Tom's Hardware thread on Supported Hardware
Partial list of Vista Drivers (via /.)
Software Compatibility list (via dailycupoftech)
The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
The Microsoft TechNet Hardware Compatibility list (seems to be dead right now)

VLC

2007-02-16T17:06:00.000-05:00

At last, time to post something exciting!

VLC is a free and open source media player with streaming and transcoding capabilities.

Besides being an easy way to play nearly any video format, VLC's streaming capability makes it really easy to stream a video from one computer to another over the network. For a dvd quality video, you should be able to get away with a 54Mbit wireless connection, maybe less. You will also need a reasonably fast computer hosting the video, particularly if you are transcoding it. If you have a decent, wireless Pocket PC that might make a good client computer to watch your video on. So, now you're wondering how...

Step 1: download and install VLC from www.videolan.org for whatever operating system(s) you are using. I will be using Windows and Linux for this tutorial, but the idea is basically the same whatever you do.

Step 2: Open whatever it is you want to play or stream using the options in the file menu. The dialog that comes up should be pretty self explanatory pick your media, and check the save/stream box near the bottom. Then click the settings button next to the stream checkbox.

The next dialog allows you to choose protocol and transcoding settings. I recommend you check the "play locally" box and the "udp" box, because the udp protocol seems to work well. In the address box next to udp enter the ip address of the computer you are streaming to (in windows you can find it by typing ipconfig in a command prompt). If your original file is already in a reasonably compressed format you can skip down to setting up the client. Otherwise you need to pick a codec to use for recompression (so you don't need as much bandwidth). If you have a fast enough CPU i find mpeg4 works well, even over slow networks. Check out the screenshot below for settings to get you started. Experiment to find a good trade off between quality, bandwidth consumption and cpu usage. The bitrates you use will depend on the size of the video you are streaming and the codec you use. Smaller bitrates need less bandwidth to stream, but are lower quality.

If you are streaming though a router of some sort, you may need to increase the time to live (ttl) value.

After you pick some settings you like, click ok to both dialogs. Your clip should begin to play.

On your client computer, open up VLC and choose open network stream. Assuming you are following along with this tutorial, choose UDP/RTP and leave everything else at the default settings. Click OK and your video should start streaming.

I have simplified this process quite a bit. VLC is really quite powerful so I would recommend you look through the documentation on videolan.org or google it for some more tutorials. Hopefully everything made sense. Try it between two computers first, then experiment with any mobile devices you may have. If you have a something on your tv that can support streaming video, chances are VLC can stream to it. You will just need to setup the correct format and protocol.

Have fun, and feel free to leave questions in the comments.

Gmail for all!

2007-02-14T17:23:00.000-05:00

Well except those in the UK, GoogleMail for you ;-)

Google has made it possible to sign up for a Gmail account without having to use a cell phone or get an invite. All you have to do is go to Gmail.com and click sign up. Highly recommended, the UI is great once you get used to it, and if you don't like it you can always use a pop3 client. If for no other reason, you can't beat a 2+ gb mail account for free (well maybe, but Gmail is still better)

You can also add Encryption and various other features using Greasemonkey scripts.

Read the Official Announcement here! and don't for get to check out the hilarious video.

Only one question though: what do I do with my remaining 68 invites?

Long time, No post

2007-02-12T20:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry that I haven't been posting lately. I have been very busy with school and other things. This is just a quick post to let you know that I should be back this weekend if not before.

Free Commercial Software, Update on Online Courses

2007-01-31T19:43:00.000-05:00

First off, I would like to thank whoever just commented on my AP Courses post, pointing out www.courserepository.org which has a bunch more free material for a variety of online classes. If anyone else has any other similar sites they like I would love to hear about them, please comment on my original post.

Second, I have been reading a lot about a new site called Giveaway of the Day over the last couple weeks. Giveaway of the Day gives away a free commercial software package every day (fully licensed) . I'm really not sure how the economics of this are supposed to work, but they do occasionally give away interesting software. There is also a Game specific page. You can read a little more about it here, but I'm still not sure what the catch is. It at least might be worth looking into. I'll let you know how it works if I ever happen to notice they have something I want while it's still free.

Windows based Debian Installer

2007-01-28T14:40:00.000-05:00

For people who have been wanting to try to install Linux for awhile but haven't known how to start or don't have a bootable CD drive, etc Debian has a Windows based installer. All you have to do is go to goodby-microsoft.com and run the Windows executable. The installer then downloads what you need and sets you up with the main Debian installer. Apparently, there is also a similar program for Ubuntu.
I haven't tried either of these yet, but it seems like a good idea. Great for an old Windows machine without a CD burner (last time I checked a Debian disc set was a couple DVDs or half a dozen CDs).

I would recommend you start with knoppix or some other livecd (Internet Freedom Disc if you prefer) first, to get used to Linux though.

Misc. News

2007-01-22T20:16:00.000-05:00

I don't have too much for you tonight, just a couple news items.

First off: Gaim2-beta6 is out Get it here. The Xfire plugin has also been updated.

Lifehacker linked an excellent looking book that teaches the open source 3D drawing/animation program Blender (mentioned here a number of times). I used an older version to learn the basics quite awhile ago and it was fairly well written. Get the book here. (pdf here)

A couple weeks ago, Daily Cup of Tech released a tool kit for fixing Windows computers that fits on a 32M flash drive. Might be handy. UBCD is also great for doing repairs.

GIMP vs. Photoshop

2007-01-17T16:28:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile, sorry (stupid midyear stuff).

Anyway, just a quick post to mention this article comparing the GIMP to Photoshop (Thanks Lifehacker).
I've been a long time GIMP user, and it works very well for most things (particularly the most recent versions). The article states that RAW formats aren't supported, if you want RAW support in the GIMP I suggest you check out UFRaw. UFRaw works well with most brands of camera (I have had very good luck with Nikon's RAW format).

Happy GIMPing ;-)

New PBS Science show

2007-01-08T20:47:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Slashdot to pointing out that PBS has pilot episodes of three possible new Science shows up on their website. I'm all for any sort of interesting new science programming (even the beloved Mythbusters has been going downhill a bit lately with more theatrics and less science). The Wired Science was decent, though didn't contain anything particularly new to me anyway. I haven't had a chance to look at the others yet. At any rate, if you have the time head over to pbs, watch the shows and give them some feedback. Hopefully we will see one or more of the shows on broadcast tv sometime (though I wouldn't mind seeing them stay on the net either, our tv seems to always be on the food channel). You will need Quicktime or Windows Media Player (Totem and mplayerplug-in seem to work also).

On a completely different note, if you are looking for a little light amusement, this clip has been the topic of the day among my friends today and just needs mentioning.

Template Tweaks

2007-01-07T20:30:00.000-05:00

If any of you use blogger, you may have noticed that they are trying to get us to use a new format for the site "template". The new way is easier to edit with no knowledge of the underlaying technology but messes up a lot of existing templates. I finally took the plunge today, so let me know if you notice any problems. I will be putting all the missing widgets back shortly.

Edit1: Anyone else using Feedburner may find the second post in this thread helpful.

Online AP Courses

2007-01-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

If your in high school anticipating college (or just plain bored) you may know that the College Board offers tests that act as transfer credit at many colleges. Unfortunately many schools don't offer the classes associated with these tests. This doesn't mean you can't take the tests. I came across a bunch of flash based AP lessons on archive.org the other day, which seem really good (at least the physics one I did). So if anyone else is taking AP tests without the class (or just needs some extra help) look here.

It looks like they are done by the Monterey Institute of Tech & Education. (Anyone heard of them before?).

In addition to physics, they have calculus, US history, US Gov. and environmental science.

End of 2006

2006-12-30T21:50:00.000-05:00

Every year the blogosphere has a bunch of interesting articles and end of year collections. Since I'm not going to be home tomorrow, I figured I would post a little early and list some of them.

To start off, Google has their annual end of year Zeitgeist data up, showing social trends through searches, as well as a bit on how the data was compiled.

Wired has a bunch of interesting articles, like their annual Vaporware roundup and their "Foot-in-Mouth" awards, also very funny.

BBC has a "100 things we didn't know last year" with many things I didn't know this year.

Bad Astronomy has a Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006 with some very nice images (thanks /.)

Reuters has a news year in review section with most read articles, best pictures, etc.

JibJab has one of their excellent flash clips reviewing 2006 (politically).

A new version of Knoppix (the excellent Linux LiveCD/DVD) has just been released. Among other improvements, it now contains beryl a nifty 3D compositing window manager. Fun to play with for those of you with decent 3D accelerators (just about everyone now). Torrents available on the Knoppix Tracker.

Mashable has a social networking awards (ie myspace, etc) (via Qwerky)

Digital Photography School has updated their How To Photography Fireworks article in preparation for any New Year's festivities

The Google Earth blog has a round up of 10 GE animations for those of you with a recent GE4 beta. They also have a listing of GE Games (see their next post for more on "Mars Sucks")

If anything exciting happens in the next couple days I'll try to add it, but for now Happy Surfing (oh, and Happy New Year ;-)

Merry Christmas

2006-12-24T19:58:00.000-05:00

So maybe I'm jumping the gun a little here, but I figure people might be interested in how the internet is celebrating.

For example, both NORAD and Google have their Santa trackers going. (NORAD Google)

Digital Photography School has some tips on taking good pictures at any festivities you may be having, though the best pictures I took at my families little get together today were of some feathered friends enjoying my grandparent's bird feeder.

You may also be interested in this guide to photographing the lights that seem to be lighting up many towns these days. It looks like the trick is to take the pictures before it's completely dark.

Don't forget to check out Google's annual Holiday cartoon, if you haven't already noticed it (click the Google logo). Some of the old ones are still available too, just change the number in the end of the above link (ie: doodle12.html becomes doodle10.html)

Enjoy Your Holidays (if you are looking for an alternative)

A couple of my Holiday photos (NY weather is odd this year...)

Zudeo

2006-12-20T17:28:00.000-05:00

I saw on Slashdot today that BBC will be releasing some of their old shows on the Azureus network. Maybe I've had my head in the sand lately (I have been busy with other things) but I thought Azureus was a Java based bittorrent client. Turns out that Zuedo is a website hosting torrents of various videos. They show a screenshot of a "Zuedo" client on the homepage, but it is just a copy of Azureus 2.5 (despite the fact that the site is "powered by Azureus 3.0", which I don't think is out yet). This could be because I'm using Linux though, maybe you get something different on a Windows machine. Anyway, they have a bunch of video available right now, mostly trailers and open source films but it looks like there should be more soon. It does work pretty well, the torrents are automatically loaded into Azureus using javascript (On my machine Azureus has to be running when I click the link). You might as well give it a try, and hopefully we will see more content soon. I guess if this one got past me, it probably got past everyone else as well.

Digitizing old Music

2006-12-18T21:12:00.000-05:00

Since I don't have time to write much of my own these days, I thought you might be interested in Lifehacker's short guide to digitizing cassette tapes. This basic method also works for records, though you may need some extra hardware and an amplifier. I found that with my nforce2 motherboard's integrated sound I can wire an unamplified record player directly into line in and just up the volume with software while maintaining reasonable quality. It would be better to use an amplifier (even better, one that can take out all the noise associated with records so you don't have to do it with software). You should be able to get everything you need at your local RadioShack or equivalent. Audacity, which Lifehacker suggests is a great app, but if your using Linux, I suggest you also look at Rezound which has some nice filters to try and reduce the noise a bit. You may also be able to get mplayer/mencoder to clean up your audio for you, but I haven't tried it (look at mplayer -af help)

At any rate, this is a good rainy day project (seems like it never snows anymore). Anyone have any other suggestions for fairly automated filtering software to cleanup audio from older sources?

Santa in Google Earth

2006-12-13T19:54:00.000-05:00

It looks like Google is outdoing last year. As announced awhile ago, they are including a 12 day scavenger hunt as well as the usual Santa tracking. Even if your not into the whole Christmas thing (do people forget that there are non Christians around?) it is always fun to explore the earth. All you have to do is install Google Earth (if you don't already have it) and download the kml found on this page. If you happen to have trouble finding today's "present" try zooming out a bit. If you type the location in the search box it zooms in to the point were the 3d model is off screen.

Have fun!

VLC

2006-12-13T18:33:00.000-05:00

Looking for a new media player?

A new version of VLC was released yesterday, which makes this a great time to bring it up. If you haven't already heard about it, VLC is a media player that can also stream video. In other words, if you have a fairly fast computer, you can play a DVD in one computer using VLC and watch it on another, also using VLC. VLC also has the advantage of being able to play most audio and video formats. Go check it out here, and if you want to try out the streaming feature look here.

XFire Plugin for Gaim2-beta5

2006-12-09T15:09:00.000-05:00

If you are a user of the XFire plugin for gaim that I mentioned back in October, you might be interested to know that there is now a pre-release build for the latest gaim beta (5). Get it here.

Open Source Cookbook

2006-12-03T19:12:00.000-05:00

One of the great things about the internet is that you can find information about anything with it, for example how to make food. It came to my attention that my family didn't know about the Open Source Cookbook, so I thought I might as well mention it here. Having some dietary restrictions I haven't actually tried any of the recipes, but the introductory info seems sound. There are two versions available right now. The newer one is much shorter, so I would look at both. I'm not sure if the "preview" version is only some of the content, or is just shorter due to formatting changes (it seems like everything is there).

If you would prefer something written even more for the "Geek" crowd, I would suggest you look at Cooking For Engineers

Flickr "Camera Finder"

2006-12-03T18:11:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of things to consider when shopping for a digital camera. Once you decide what type you want go to a store and try some different models then read reviews on the ones you like. If you still need some more help, you can look to the world at large and see which cameras seem to be most popular. This is were the Flickr Camera Finder can help. It shows the popularity of all the cameras used by Flickr users (which should cover just about any model made recently I would think). You can see the most popular from each class of camera (phone, point&shoot, DSLR) as well as the most popular brand. You can also search for a specific model and see some pictures taken with that camera. This is very useful, since it allows you to get an idea of real world image quality. If every picture taken with a certain camera is blurry or discolored, it might be a good one to avoid. Unfortunately Flickr doesn't allow you to zoom the pictures to see the fine details, but its better than nothing.
It does seem to me like the Flickr is a bit biased toward DSLRs (maybe because they produce better images, overall) Even so the Camera Finder is at least an interesting and possibly useful tool. Try it here.

Editors for Web Programming

2006-11-27T18:57:00.000-05:00

When doing web development (or any development without an IDE) you need a good text editor. Many people might think of MS Word when I say text editor, but that is a word processor. While it can serve as an adequate WYSIWYG editor for creating websites it isn't intended to be used to do real programming (most html tags are "misspelled"). With more interest in web development in my family lately I have gone though my Gnome applications list and have some editors to suggest...

For WYSIWYG editors, Word actually does an ok job, as does OpenOffice but something specifically intended for web development might be better. If you have some money to spend there are plenty of great alternatives, but if not you might want to look at NVU. Unfortunately NVU's development has been slower lately, but has all the features you need to do basic (or even more complex) web development. Something it doesn't do is close tags in the source editor, but you can't have everything. There is an unofficial bugfix/fork of NVU called KompoZer available too, but I haven't tried it yet. Another choice, is the integrated editor in the Mozilla suite (now called SeaMonkey). It is very similar to NVU but with some features missing. You can open the Mozilla composer by clicking this button:

While any of these also offer a source editing mode, a dedicated source editing package might be better for those that know some of the web development languages and html. The best (free) editor of this type that I have found in my short quest is Bluefish. Bluefish supports a variety of languages for syntax highlighting and will automatically complete html tags (as well as a few other types). For some reason these features aren't on by default and need to be enabled on a per document basis from the Document menu. The big disadvantage of Bluefish is it's sketchy Windows support. There is a Windows port available here, but I'm not sure if its any good.

If you want a more generic text editor you can't go wrong with vim (VI Improved for anyone familiar with vi). Unfortunately it does have a fairly steep learning curve (hint press i to insert/append text, escape + :w + enter to save, escape + :hardcopy to print, escape + d + arrowkey to delete a character, etc). vim will do color syntax highlighting on just about any language (including the web ones). You can get a copy here, along with a nice GUI. Windows users may prefer a copy of Programmer's notepad, which is a bit easier to learn and has some of the same features.

Of course, this is no where near a complete list, though it should get you started. Anyone have a favorite editor not listed? Unix people may also like things such as nano, pico, joe, etc but this is for a more general audience. Once you get an editor you like, check out webmonkey and start learning to build websites.

Well back to my homework, believe it or not this was a quick post (if not short) so feel free to complain if something doesn't make sense ;-)

Bad Year for Sony

2006-11-24T17:38:00.000-05:00

As noted by Y! and Slashdot, it might be a good idea to keep track of your Sony digital camera since they are having trouble with some model's LCDs. No news on which models are affected though. If you do have problems, I guess your best bet would be to contact Sony Support. Also be sure to make sure any laptop batteries you may have are ok (check with your laptop manufacturer) .

Read All About it.

If you ask me most Sony cameras don't have much going for them anyway, with their proprietary and expensive memory cards. They do make some cool DSLRs though, their self cleaning sensors are nice.

Happy Turkey Day!

2006-11-23T16:43:00.001-05:00

Timezone Change

2006-11-15T18:42:00.000-05:00

For some reason earlier this year the powers at be decided to change how daylight savings time is done here in the US. This of course causes problems for any computer that tries to deal with daylight savings by its self. According to Microsoft patches for Windows XP and 2003 should be out for the December round of patches, anyone using something older is out of luck ;-(. I expect Linux users will also get patches as you normally do (depends on your distro, I think Gentoo has had a patch for quite awhile, not sure about the others).

If you run a Windows CE or Pocket PC (Windows Mobile) device things are a little more exciting. You need to patch the registry. Microsoft has an inf which you can compress into a .cab and install or you can use this one (WARNING: Only works with Windows Mobile, look here for CE) that someone was kind enough to post (thanks PocketPCThoughts).

It will be awhile before this is a problem, but I thought I'd mention it while I was thinking about it from the PPCThoughts article. Vista will ship with the new settings.

Geography Quiz in Google Earth

2006-11-14T16:50:00.000-05:00

As seen on the Google blog, Google and National Geographic have an African geography quiz for Google Earth, as well as some other interesting information about Africa. So, if you looking for something to do, install Google Earth 4 beta and try out the quiz. They also added some neat old maps under "feature content" the other day. Note that these require the very latest version of Google Earth.

Edit: I thought maybe a screenshot would be good here.

Combat SPAM in Gmail

2006-11-13T19:40:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting tip brought to my attention by my latest Maximum PC magazine. It is well documented that Gmail ignores any extra "." s added to the username portion of an email address (example: me@gmail.com is the same as m.e@gmail.com). These extra dots are, however kept when the mail is delivered and can be used as criteria for a filter. In this way if you give a company your email address with some pattern of extra .'s you can find out if they are the ones putting you on a SPAM list or simply filter for their email.

Handy!

Black Friday

2006-11-11T21:24:00.001-05:00

Black Friday (the busiest shopping day of the year, the Friday after thanksgiving) is approaching, and ad scans are already being posted. If you plan to try to get a deal on Black Friday you may want to check out this year's Black Friday site as well as shopping forums like fatwallet.com

Some of the scans are pretty bad, so you may want to download them and open them in a real image editor. A good unsharp mask in Photoshop or GIMP can help a lot.

Just be prepared to get up early. Sometimes you can order online and have your purchase reserved in store, getting the discount without having to be the first one to the store.

Old Movies

2006-11-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

Quick post tonight (haven't been many lately, sorry),
Anyway,

If you have a lot more time than I do you and a fast Internet connection you might want to look into watching some old movies. Very old movies have run out of copyright, and are now freely available on the net (like the Project Gutenberg books). One way is to get them from the Public Domain Movie torrents site. This site has a number of old movies available using bittorrent (to save the server bandwidth). You can also find a huge amount of old video on Archive.org (Check out their whole moving pictures section or skip right to the Prelinger Archives for the old stuff).

Perfect for long trips if you have a Pocket PC or recent Palm.

Comment SPAM ;-(

2006-11-06T07:19:00.000-05:00

Well, It looks like this blog has been getting hit with comment spam lately (mostly on older posts for some reason). I turned on comment moderation, so your comments may not show up as quickly, sorry. That said, feel free to comment away, just no more ads for skincare products please ;-)

I'll try for a real post later today, I have been busy lately (as usual)

Firefox 2.0, Options

2006-10-29T13:55:00.000-05:00

As many probably already know, Firefox 2 came out the other day. It has some improvements, but takes a step back in some ways too. Luckily for us, it is very configurable. To change settings beyond the most basic, navigate to about:config. To search for a specific key type the first part of its name in the filter box on the top of the page. To get you started, you can look at this Lifehacker article, but there may be some other changes you want to make as well. For example, there have been some privacy concerns recently about the phishing filter, which you can disable by making browser.safebrowsing.enabled false.
If you are curious about what an option does, you can look it up in the MozillaZine knowledge base (or usually just google it)

Googlebombing

2006-10-26T15:43:00.000-04:00

As many are probably already aware it is possible to manipulate google's search index to promote a particular site. Their algorithm counts the number of other sites linking a site to try to determine its importance, the more links the higher it is in the search results. Apparently, this trick is becoming political. Now that it has been brought up, I thought I'd point out that this isn't new; all we need is another miserable failure in the government. Of course, us Americans can't be given all the credit for bad politics, looks like the UK gets the liars. To be fair, I guess you can be both a miserable failure and a great president. Want to pick on your own countries leader? Check out this Wikipedia article (near the bottom) for some more fun searches ;-)

Flash 9 Beta For Linux! (and others)

2006-10-23T19:39:00.001-04:00

It has been too long since Adobe/Macromedia has released an update to Flash for Linux. Many sites require version 8, but only seven existed, until very recently. It turns out that Adobe has a publicly available beta of Flash 9 for Linux available here. I can't think of any sites that specifically require >=flash 8 off the top of my head, but the new version does seem to work quite well with google video and the like.

Not a Linux user? Still want to try out the latest and greatest? There are also versions for Windows and Mac at the same site.

DRM

2006-10-20T20:34:00.000-04:00

DRM or Digital Rights Management has gotten a bad reputation lately, and rightfully so. Music/Movie/Game companies putting unreasonable restrictions on their products such that they become unusable to the rightful purchaser. Technology such as FairPlay which serves only to annoy legitimate purchasers, but doesn't actually stop determined people from copying music (see PlayFair, now QTFairUse) .

Anyway, the real point of this post is to point out a particularly creative approach to DRM, education. Weird Al's "Don't Download This Song".

Of course, If you haven't already, some of his other songs are good too.

Happy Watching /Listening, and Remember: No Stealing Music!

Beagles!

2006-10-19T20:05:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not talking about one of these.

As seen on Slashdot, Charles Darwin's works have been scanned and put on the web (if only I had the time to read them). Anyway, if you are interested, you can find them here, both the scans and the (easier to read) text. You can also check out the Slashdot page for some "discussion" of Darwin's theories.

(If you're wondering about the title, Darwin's ship was called the HMS Beagle, when he went exploring to learn about some finches and other animals, see the wikipedia article)

IE7

2006-10-19T19:56:00.000-04:00

If anyone is keeping track of Microsoft, it is worth noting that they released the final (if it can be called that) version of IE7 to the public. I have only used the version incorporated into Vista, but it is a vast improvement over IE6 (came out during the Win98 era after all). IE7 does most of the things Mozilla and Opera have been doing for years; the most significant? tabbed browsing. It also handles RSS and keeps track of some phishing sites. So, if you must use IE, I would go get IE7 here. If not, check out Firefox or Opera, or SeaMonkey, or any of the many other good browsers, and ditch IE6.

Blogger Beta

2006-10-14T18:39:00.000-04:00

I've been seeing traffic from beta.blogger.com lately and I got curious (I usually post by email) so I logged into blogger and found out a little about the new program. The big feature they added is the ability to label or categorize your posts, which I am going to try to start doing, though I'm not sure if I will be able to do it over email or not yet. If you want to upgrade to the beta version (assuming you have a blogger blog) you will need or need to get a google account (you have one if you use gmail, or can get on during the conversion process). Then you log into blogger and there should be a banner on the right side of the page to do the conversion and tie your blogger account to your google account. After that you post from beta.blogger.com, not much too it. The new beta version seems to work very well so far, so I would go for it (I particularly like the new spell checker).

Eudora

2006-10-14T14:11:00.000-04:00

If you use Microsoft Outlook for email, you should probably look into some of the alternatives. Because most people use Outlook, it is quite often attacked and has a reputation for security flaws. Other clients also have some more/better features. One popular client is Eudora, which currently is free with either limited features or advertisements but is going open source. Hopefully the new open source version will continue to support the old mailbox files, since it is apparently a complete rewrite based on the Thunderbird codebase. Thunderbird its self is a good client with a number of available plugins and good built in spam filtering.

If you are a current Eudora user, Wired has some further commentary and Qualcomm has an official announcement on their site.

Online Board Games

2006-10-10T15:54:00.000-04:00

I may have posted about this before, but its cool so I'll do it again.

Hasbro (the UK branch) has an online version of the board game Monopoly using taxi drivers in London as the game pieces. They also (as of recently) have a version of Clue, which I haven't tried, but may also be interesting. Well, if you have the time, give both a try (Monopoly Clue), I thought the Monopoly idea was a good one, though not the most exciting game to play. Someone else will have to comment about Clue, since I have other things I have to do.

Enjoy your afternoon (just thought I'd mention this since they emailed me about the new game)

XFire

2006-10-06T18:19:00.000-04:00

Xfire is (besides being a name for the technology ATI uses for Multi-GPU setups) another instant messenger which has the interesting feature of keeping track of many common games. It allows you to see what games and what servers your friends are playing on in addition to providing normal IM and VoIP services. It also tracks game patches and does a few other nifty things. That being said, if you, like me, happen to be a Linux user with friends that seem to use Xfire almost exclusively for instant messaging you may be interested to know that there is a gaim plugin. The plugin, called Gfire can be found here, and integrates Xfire's instant messaging into gaim and displays what your friend is playing and on what server if you hover your mouse over their name. If you just don't like the Xfire client, there is also a build for the Windows version of gaim.

Just what the world needs, another IM protocol, but the gaim plugin is handy if you need it. Get it here.

Distributed Computing

2006-10-02T22:05:00.000-04:00

As seen around the web over the last couple hours, Folding@home has released a client to model proteins using your ATI graphics processor (X1900). Unfortunately, it seems like its only a very early release, requiring a specific driver version and sub-version of directx 9.0c. This is a great idea though, whatever the implementation problems, since the GPU is a very powerful math processor that sits largely unused unless you are playing games. AnandTech has a good summary of the Folding@home project and the new GPU project if you want to read more, but basically the idea is that the more complex proteins (very long chains of peptides) bunch up or "fold" into very complex shapes due to the interaction of the atoms ( hydrogen bonds, etc). If you put the protein under an environmental stress (change its temperature, ph, etc) the interaction of these forces will change and the protein will "unfold". Depending on the protein, it may or may not "fold" again when its environment returns to normal (some may also require interaction with other molecules to fold). Since many (most?) of the human body's functions require on proteins (particularly enzymes) the hope is that with some study and modeling scientists will be able to figure out exactly how some common proteins work and prevent or cure problems.

Anyway, enough bio, if you want to help out and have an ATI X9100 take a look at the ATI FAQ here.If you don't have an ATI video board (NVidia has better Linux support), you can get a client for your CPU here (be sure to run two copies if you have a dual core processor). Once running, you shouldn't really notice the client since it runs at a low processor priority.

If you don't like Folding@home, there are plenty of other options if you are looking to put your CPU to work, among the more well known ones:

SETI@home (find aliens)
ChessBrain
Electric Sheep (Screensaver Generator)
GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search)
University of Oxford "Screensaver Lifesaver"

Some more can be found on this list

Happy Computing,

(and feel free to correct me if I've forgotten too much Bio already)

Dosbox

2006-10-01T17:18:00.000-04:00

Do you have some old dos software you wish you could still use, but no computer with dos (the Windows XP command prompt doesn't count)? I find that some of the old dos games are still some of the best (as far as play goes, maybe not graphics). To solve this problem, and use your old software you can use a handy emulator called dosbox. Dosbox comes with many Linux distributions, but for people who don't already have it installed, you can get it here.The Windows version puts a icon on the start menu, people using other OSes can run "dosbox" from the command line. Once you get it running, you will need to mount a drive to place your files on. Make a directory and within dosbox run "mount c /path/to/dir" or (for windows users) "mount c drive:\path" (substitute with the actual path). Then you can change directory to your newly mounted drive (cd c:) and start installing software. You may want to unzip and place setup files in the directory you are using for dosbox from your main OS to make things easier.

Once you get your software installed, if it behaves slowly try pressing control+F12 to increase the amount of cpu given to dosbox or control+f8 to decrease it. When you find the optimal settings for your system you can setup a config file with the z:\config.com utility within dosbox and then run dosbox with the -conf flag (see the readme). Note that you will need a reasonably fast computer to even get the speed of a 486 in dosbox, since it emulates the entire system. It also supports CD drive emulation and some other things, so you might want to check out the readme.

I find that dosbox runs the old (great) Apogee/3DRealms games very well. There is also a list of other games on the dosbox site.

NASA World Wind

2006-09-27T19:41:00.000-04:00

While I'm all for Google Earth (if you don't have it, go get it!), NASA, in a case of Your Tax Dollars at work, (yes, the organization that seems to keep messing up on a huge scale) has an interesting alternative called World Wind. World Wind is free to download, but only for Windows (point GEarth). The initial setup file is about 60M but since you basically need broadband to use it anyway, this shouldn't be a big deal. One huge advantage World Wind has over GEarth in this respect is that if you want to you can download Data Packs so you don't have to stream from the net. These files are huge, but would be great if you have a friend with a fast Internet connection but don't have one yourself. You can download World Wind data here (Scroll down past the archive.org ads). As if it weren't enough to have great imagery of the Earth, World Wind also comes with a Mars version and a Moon version in addition to the normal Earth version and a "Sky Survey" program. You can also view a number of other planets from the File menu (Jupiter, Venus) Google Earth has more high-res pictures (in the areas I checked) and has wider support for 3D models and roads, but that is where it's advantages end. World Wind has a lot of options, including those to turn on or off Lat/Long lines, the compass and various markers. It can also import .kml files from Google Earth. World Wind displays the current Cloud Cover (also possible with GEarth beta4 with a .kml). The feature that I think really sets World Wind apart from the alternatives is the wide variety of maps available. You can view imagery from a variety of different cameras simply by clicking their buttons (to turn them on and off, data can be layered), including various cameras on the LandSat7. One option I really like is the option to replace the images with USGS topographic maps. These maps are good scans and look very good. They can be zoomed to some extent (as you zoom different resolution maps are displayed) and look very good though they take some time to load. If you want them, there are also a number of Scientific options that I haven't had a chance to play with yet.

At any rate, I recommend you try both Google Earth and World Wind. Both work very well and are great for a variety of uses, though each has some distinctive advantages. If you want some KML files to play with check out the Google Earth Community site and the Google Earth blog.

On a side note, I have been noticing that NBC has been using Google Earth from time to time while reporting, so it must be good ;-)

Enjoy your evening and Happy Mapping

Free Education (Online)

2006-09-25T22:46:00.000-04:00

Just a quick link tonight, browsing before going to bed I noticed that Lifehacker has a collection of free courses available on college websites and around the web. Worth looking into further when/if I have some spare time. If your bored, take a look here and comment if you find anything interesting. I know there at least used to be some lectures from various colleges on Google Video as well.

Wikimapia

2006-09-17T18:23:00.000-04:00

I stumbled on the Wikimapia website today, while looking for a map of a local map, and thought it an interesting idea. The basic idea is a cross between Google Maps and a Wiki. The page is a simple fullscreen interface to Google Map data which allows you to simply label interesting places, either on the satellite imagery or on the road map. There are some buttons on the top right hand corner of the page, which I found slightly hard to find at first to label places. Labels show up as boxes which provide information when you click them.

This could be very handy if your looking for someplace to go in a specific area, and is definitely another interesting page to show your friends

ScanR

2006-09-14T20:19:00.000-04:00

ScanR is an interesting new service. They have a couple email addresses which you can send images to, either from a cell phone or a digital camera (computer). They then send you an activation code (the first time you use the service). You enter that activation code on their website and set an address to send the results too. They then convert your image into a pdf and do some sort of OCR, making text serachable. The pdf is sent to the email you specify when enter your activation code on the website. The service requires a 1 megapixel phone/camera to work. With my quick test, it seems to work fairly well.

Neat!

Windows Slowdowns

2006-09-12T07:24:00.000-04:00

Almost all windows programs place data in places that cause an OS slowdown. Many also run all the time, or have "quicklaunchers" that load part of the program in ram, so that it starts faster, but slows the system down. Lifehacker has linked an interesting article testing the effects of a number of different, popular programs, so if your computer is slow and you know spyware isn't a problem (a difficult assumption to make) take a look at this article.

RAM Testing

2006-09-10T12:19:00.000-04:00

As with most things, when buying RAM (memory) you sometimes get some that turns out to be defective. If the problem is fairly minor, this can cause general system instability and crashes. To help diagnose memory problems, there are a few tools available. The two most poplar are Memtest86+ and the Windows Memory Diagnostic. Both are free downloads which can be burned to cd or (if you still have one) a floppy. You then boot them and allow them to run awhile. If any problems are found they will be displayed and you can visit the company who made your memory's website and have it replaced (though you should check your that your bios is set correctly first).

Download:

Memtest86+
Windows Memory Diagnostic

Ultimate Boot CD (contains all these tools and many more)

Last.fm

2006-09-06T19:49:00.000-04:00

It has been awhile since my last post, again. My summer job just ended, so hopefully I will have a little more time to post (and ideas for topics).
Anyway, This should be a good one for any music lovers looking for something new to listen to.

Last.fm is a music recommendation service. You download their client or use a supported music player. It then keeps track of what you listen to, like and dislike and comes up with a "recommendation radio" station. The client then streams music it thinks you will like to your computer. You can also get a stream based on a tag or set of tags you give the client. In addition, there is a social aspect, but not being very social I haven't tried it out, and the service works fine even if you don't register any friends.
You can sign up at last.fm (not sure when the .fm top level domain came to be, but it does seem to work) if you want to give it a try. The service is free, though if you send them money you can get some extra features.

Google Joins Gutenburg

2006-08-31T19:33:00.000-04:00

If you are in search of free Ebooks, now Google has joined the likes of Project Gutenberg, so you have no excuse to go without your out of print classics. Or if you prefer, you could always get them as audiobooks.

Edit: Spelling Error Fixed, Thanks Ferenc
(Time to change the batteries in the keyboard again)

"Terrorism" in the WoW Forums

2006-08-27T11:23:00.000-04:00

This is a bit pathetic, but funny. (Ipod == bomb, who knew?).

Anyway, Enjoy, and Hopefully I will have something a little more directly computer related in a bit.

WoW Fourms
The Ottawa Citizen
Slashdot

Bryce 5

2006-08-23T19:20:00.000-04:00

I have posted about several free 3D Modeling/animation Packages (specifically Blender and Sketchup) before. Well, If you don't like one of those, I saw on techbargains that you can get a copy of Bryce 5 for free from Download.com for a couple weeks. Check it out Here.

Google Checkout -> Discounts!

2006-08-21T19:40:00.000-04:00

If you have been waiting for an excuse to try out Google Checkout, they have some coupon codes for $10 off 30 on back to school purchases from several stores, as officially posted by Google here. Get the codes here.

Happy shopping (if shopping can be happy)

Portable Apps

2006-08-19T21:31:00.000-04:00

If you have a flash drive or some other type of rewritable, removable storage that you don't know what to do with, you might want to check out PortableApps.com. PortableApps started out with Portable Firefox, a distribution of Mozilla Firefox that could be run off a flash drive and left almost no residue on the host computer, allowing you to bring your browser and browser settings with you. That project has since been expanded to include some of the other popular open source projects like The Gimp and OpenOffice. Very handy if you want to use one of these packages without installing, or keep the same settings across multiple (Windows) computers.

Click Here for more info...

AllPeers

2006-08-15T22:47:00.000-04:00

I can't remember if I have posted about this before or not, but its been awhile since I have posted (been busy) so I'll do it anyway.

At any rate, AllPeers is an interesting new Firefox extension that allows you to easily share files with friends through your browser. I just got an activation code, though I last looked at it months ago. If it sounds like something you're interested in, you can try to get an invite here. I'll try to remember to post some more info when I have some friends invited to really try it out.

Curve Fitting

2006-08-10T20:08:00.000-04:00

For those of you mathematical people, I found an interesting site at work the other day. ZunZun.com allows you to enter data as a space delimited matrix and can fit it to a 2 or 3 dimensional curve. The sever even crunches the numbers (very handy if you have a slower computer). Depending on your data and settings, it may take a few minutes to do the math, but it seems to do a good job. Next time you want to fit a curve to some data give it a try.

Windows Live

2006-08-08T19:21:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure any regular readers have noticed, I am fond of Google Earth, but Microsoft's answer has some unique features making it worth a mention. Windows Live Local is completely web based, so you don't have to download anything, but the interface isn't as quick/nice. The big feature that sets it apart from Google's offering is the "Bird's Eye View" which gives you amazingly good, high resolution images, like you might take from a low flying plane.

If you haven't already, give both services a try!

Speech "Recognition"

2006-08-06T19:46:00.000-04:00

Getting a computer to communicate and understand vocally has long been a goal of programmers. Microsoft has had software built into Windows and Office to achieve this for quite awhile, but you had to be pretty lucky to get it to work. I guess they must have thought they had it worked out for their upcoming OS, Vista but that's not what their demo showed.

Watch and learn the meaning of "beta"...

Google Spreadsheets/Writely Invites

2006-08-05T14:44:00.000-04:00

I don't know how this works, but this site is claiming to be giving out free invites to these two online office services. Give it a try or try some invite free alternatives here.

PuTTY

2006-08-03T20:38:00.000-04:00

Next time you are in need or a Telnet or SSH client, give PuTTY a try. If you want to access a computer remotely with the command line, then SSH is the way to go, and PuTTY is a great client. It even handles some of the more advanced (and useful) SSH features like tunneling. Of course, for the majority of people who don't have a SSH server they want to connect to, PuTTY is still handy for connecting to clear text Telnet servers (like MUDs or Multi-User Dungeons for you non-gamers).

You can get a copy of PuTTY here, as well as some other useful SSH/Telnet/Rlogin utilities.

Just one more free utility everyone should know about ;-)

10 Kodak Photo Tips

2006-08-01T05:56:00.000-04:00

If you are better with computers than with cameras, but you still want some good pictures, Kodak has a bunch of basic tips to get you started, complete with flash based "cameras" so you can try them out on some canned pictures. Check it out here.

If you are above Kodak's site, give the Digital Photography School a try.

The better the source picture, the more you can do with image manipulation software when you get back to your computer...

"Encarta Instant Answers"

2006-07-31T19:49:00.000-04:00

I came across this the other day, visiting some of the Microsoft Vista sites, so I don't know if you need a beta version of Messenger or not, but if you use MSN messenger you should be able to add " encarta@botmetro.net" to your buddy list. If you send this bot a message, you will be able to search and get basic encyclopedia information over messenger. If you ask it something with any depth it will try to launch Encarta on your machine though (works well with gaim on linux, not). Might be handy, so give it a try.

Free WinRAR

2006-07-30T12:57:00.000-04:00

As seen on Techbargains, WinRAR is giving away free keys today. The site is pretty swamped, so it might take some luck to get one, but its worth a look, not that you see RARs too often these days.

Get a key here.

WGA

2006-07-20T20:26:00.000-04:00

Windows Genuine Advantage has been in the (tech) news a lot lately, for being less than advantageous. There have been rumors that Microsoft can shutdown your computer and is spying on you with the WGA patches, which probably is mostly not true (though WGA does call home from time to time). That said, it has come to my attention that there are some advantages to running WGA...

Microsoft has a whole bunch of software for free here, if you verify that you have a legal copy of windows (with the WGA patches). Check it out, maybe there is something that you will find useful (they won't let me, apparently Linux isn't genuine ;-) )

While we are on the topic of free Microsoft software, MSN has recently put in a test "sandbox" of prerelease web stuff for you to play with, though there is very little that Google and Yahoo don't already have.

Repeat after me... Control, Alt, Delete! (enjoy your Microsoft Software)

World Firefox Day

2006-07-16T22:43:00.000-04:00

Well, I don't know how I missed it, but it it looks like yesterday was "World Firefox Day".

Apparently, they are asking people to refer a friend to Firefox (its a great web browser if you didn't already know). If the friend downloads Firefox, then both of you get your names on the "Firefox friends wall". Go here for more information. (more about Firefox here). Of course, if you want the full kit, you could go with regular old Mozilla, or its replacement, SeaMonkey.

Or if you want something else, Opera is another good browser, and Great on Pocket PCs.

And speaking of Pocket PCs, while it still has some bugs (and is a resource hog) Mozilla Minimo is also worth a look if you have a web compatible PocketPC (don't forget ftxpbroswer either)

Or if you want to try something a little more light weight, look at dillo (UNIX only), links and lynx.

I'll bet you didn't know there were that many quality browsers (actually, there are many more, like Konqueror, Epiphany and Galeon)

Happy Browsing, and try something new!

PodCasting Awards

2006-07-14T20:22:00.000-04:00

I have been seeing ads for PodCast awards around the net lately, the site seems to be here if you want to check it out. If you aren't already aware, a pod cast is a sort of radio show over the computer, distributed through RSS and the other XML based protocols usually. The intent is that you download the podcast and put it on your (i)pod to listen. NPR (National Public Radio) has some good ones, but other than that I am fairly new to podcasting. I would be interested in hearing what people like (particularly in science/technology topics) so go check out the contest and/or comment below (I listen to NPR's "Science Friday" sometimes, but that's about it).

Online Reference

2006-07-11T22:28:00.000-04:00

Many people use the Internet (particularly the World Wide Web) to find information on a specific subject. Usually a quick search will get you what you want, but there are some handy reference sites that may help you find it faster. For example, I find dictionary.com very helpful. As I'm sure you can guess, dictionary.com is an online dictionary, but it also has a thesaurus and a relatively new encyclopedia function (which only seems to search wikipedia). Dictionary.com searches a few online dictionaries, and usually gives you a variety of possible definitions. If you don't like Dictionary.com, you could also use Merriam-Webster's site (m-w.com) which includes a dictionary and thesaurus that will pronounce words for you.

As far as encyclopedias go, many people like Wikipedia, although you run the risk of inaccurate data/vandalism because it is written by the community (though with a conventional encyclopedia, you don't know if the editor/writer knows what he/she is talking about either). If you prefer a more closed encyclopedia, you might want to try MSN Encarta, though it does cost some money to get full articles sometimes.

These are some good/popular resources to get you started, but what do you like? feel free to comment ;-)

Flash Based Whiteboard

2006-07-10T10:10:00.000-04:00

GE has a nifty whiteboard written in flash that works quite well. Beside simple drawing, you can invite people to share your whiteboard with you through email or IM (looks like AIM only right now) and use a variety of pens/stamps/shapes, etc. [via lifehacker]

Reminds me of some of the functionality of Microsoft NetMeeting (when it actually worked). If you want to experiment with NetMeeting and it's whiteboard function as well, try going to Start -> Run and entering "conf.exe" (w/o the "s) on WinXP (not sure if its just pro or not, give it a try and post in the comments, I don't have a windows install handy right now). You can also fiddle with NetMeeting's eventual replacement, Portrait, (download it here) but I find that it doesn't work much better.

Flash!

2006-07-09T16:23:00.000-04:00

I got back yesterday (very tired), but I have a few links for you.

Occasionally you hear about animation, usually done in flash, that is good enough to catch the attention of enough people to be of interest to the mainstream media. Most recently, JibJab did this with their mocking of US politics. While JibJab has a few great clips, they aren't the only producers of amusing animations. Another (relatively) well known clip is the Viking Kittens song (getting to be a bit old at this point, actually). The people who produced the Viking Kittens clip have also have some more (increasingly odd) animations on rathergood.com. Be sure to check out some of the older ones. You may also be familiar with the Badger song, produced by someone going by the name of weebl. Weebl's website also had a bunch of good (also odd) clips, that you may enjoy next time you are bored. Of course, No survey of flash animation sites can be complete without mentioning AlbinoBlackSheep which is a blog/website collecting animations from a variety of animators. Be sure to check out their most popular and classics sections (at the bottom of this page).One of the animators that is occasionally seen on AlbinoBlackSheep currently goes by "Lemon Demon" and has some particularly good/popular songs. His site is here.

As with everything on the Internet, there are a bunch of other animators and indexing sites, but the above covers most of the bigger/better ones.

Happy Watching!

( and Google IS a verb!)

Happy 4Th of July!

2006-07-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be away from computers (surprising, I know) for a few days, so I (obviously) won't be posting. Meantime, enjoy the 4th of July celebrations (in the US anyway) and check out Wired's "Geek Fireworks Guide". The various photo suggestions worked very well for me (see below).

(Taken with my Nikon D50, 3sec@F16)

Online (Tech) TV

2006-07-02T18:40:00.000-04:00

If you remember TechTV, before it became G4, and wish for some of the old, decent shows, you might be able to find something on the web. Some of the old TechTV personalities have online (IPTV) shows. DigitalLifeTV, for example, is a good tech news show, freely downloadable from dl.tv. Kevin Rose, one of the later hosts of The Screensavers has also been involved with several shows and podcasts lately. Currently he does an occasional show for "systm" and several podcasts on revision3. He also did a short series called thebroken on the "shady" side of computers.

All worth checking out, next time you have time and bandwidth to spare.

Server Testing

2006-06-30T20:06:00.000-04:00

If you happen to run some sort of server on your computer (running your own FTP server or SSH server is a very handy way of transferring files) you probably already know how hard it can be to tell if everything is working, without someone helping you. Routers and port forwarding further complicate things, making it almost impossible to know if you have a working setup or not. hq42.net has some tools to help you test the most common servers (web, ssh, ftp, mail, dns,etc). All you have to do is pick the appropriate tester, and enter your server's address. Depending on the protocol, you will get some of the homepage or a welcome message of some sort (dependant on your server's setup) if all goes well. If you are ever setting up a server, go here and click "Networking Tools"

Ultimate Boot CD

2006-06-28T20:34:00.000-04:00

I have been meaning to try it out for some time, and Ultimate Boot CD has so far held up to its name. If you haven't already heard of it, Ultimate Boot CD is a free boot cd that includes a collection of many other boot cds and floppies. It includes the utilities that come with most hard drives, several boot loaders, all the major memory test programs, a small linux distro, a NT password editor, some virus scanners, and some other useful odds and ends, in under 200M. If you ever fix computers or have problems with your own, this might be a good disc to have laying around. If it doesn't include something you want it to, there is also an option to add more images. You can get a copy of Ultimate Boot CD (just unzip and burn the .iso image) here.

RSS Owl

2006-06-27T20:06:00.000-04:00

If you are looking for a good RSS reader, or a way to collect up content from all the many websites you check daily (or if your just curious about RSS/Atom/XML feeds) then RSS Owl is a good program to check out. RSS Owl is a fairly powerful, yet usable RSS newsreader for most operating systems (java based). Typically, all you have to do is go to the tools menu and "Discover Newsfeeds on a website" and enter the URL of the website in question (assuming it has a discoverable RSS feed). RSS Owl also has a nice tutorial to get you started. When you get all your sites entered in, you end up with a nice list of posts from each site, usually in a cleaned up form (no backgrounds/ads/flash/junk), similar to reading email. This can save a lot of time if you check a lot of sites. If you own a PocketPC or other mobile device, you may want to look into a RSS reader for it as well (simply export from your desktop to an opml file) so you can read your feeds on the go. If you aren't already using RSS, you should really give it a try, especially since many sites are providing feeds at this point.

If anyone else has a favorite RSS reader, I would be interested to hear about it, feel free to post in the comments. I normally use Liferea, but it is Linux only, so I have also used RSS Owl and usually recommend it to friends.

Find Airplanes in Google Earth

2006-06-26T19:55:00.000-04:00

As many of you already know, Google Earth is a very cool program with satellite images of the world. Some people in the Google Earth Community have started a database of planes, caught in flight by Google's imagery. Chances are you can just click here, to have the planes marked for you, but if not (depends on your OS and configuration) you can import it by going to Add => Network Link from Google Earth. For more information about the planes, and another link to a pair of planes doing an in-flight refuel, take a look at this post on the Google Earth Blog.

Neat Stuff!

Windows Activation

2006-06-26T12:15:00.000-04:00

Microsoft is irritating about activations. One of my friends had to reinstall Windows XP today and call Microsoft to reactivate, so I thought I would share this tip. If you backup C:\windows\system32\wpa.dbl and c:\windows\system32\wpa.bak you can copy these backups back after a reinstall, from "minimal" safemode, and windows will be reactivated without the fuss.

Commercial Videos on Google Video for Free

2006-06-23T19:15:00.000-04:00

Google is testing a new advertising model on their video site today (and hopefully for awhile), offering some of their commercial clips (shows) for free, with ads. They have an ok selection today, if you want to check it out click here.

Blogs, Vacations

2006-06-22T22:27:00.000-04:00

Its been a couple days since my last post, sorry about that. On that note, if there are any other bloggers reading this, I saw an interesting article linked by LifeHacker about time away from your blog. I'm not sure how many of the tips can be carried out on a blogger blog, but it is worth a quick look. Hopefully I will get a chance to post for real tomorrow, though I have a LAN Party to go to, and some other things to do.

Links

2006-06-17T21:38:00.000-04:00

I am currently working on a list of some of my favorite/the best/most useful websites, if anyone wants to check it out. Still a work in progress, but maybe worth a look.

Gmail and SSL

2006-06-17T20:47:00.000-04:00

This was news to me, when I heard about it, but it's probably documented someplace (sorry if you already knew).

Anyway, if you use Gmail you can get the web based interface with SSL encryption. Just use https://mail.google.com instead of the usual http://.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, SSL encrypts data between your computer and the server. This helps to keep people out of your account, but it doesn't make your emails any more private, since email is sent as plain text (unless, you use PGP or something similar). Still, it can't hurt to secure one more part of the process (unless you have a very, very slow CPU).

Soccer World Cup, in ASCII?

2006-06-16T18:23:00.000-04:00

If you are a soccer fan, and a computer geek this just might be for you. I saw this post while idly sorting through my rss feeds this afternoon, and found it interesting, if a bit weird. It looks like you can watch the world cup, live, in ASCII over telnet from ascii-wm.net if you are so inclined. Right now, there is simply a message saying that the feed starts 10 minutes before a game (whenever that is). If you aren't familiar with ASCII, take a look at the Wikipedia Page, but basically its a simple standard for representing letters. If you are new to telnet, you can just type "telnet ascii-wm.net 2006" at a command prompt on most operating systems. If you use Windows, PuTTY might give you a better experience (enter ascii-wm.net as the host, 2006 as the port and select telnet as the protocol).

If you are looking for some more fun with ASCII art, check out

StarWars
ASCII Art Generators, such as this one
Wikipedia

Webby Awards

2006-06-15T17:26:00.000-04:00

I'm catching up on old news a bit here (from May). Anyway, If you are looking for some new websites, every year the best websites are nominated and voted on by webbyawards.com and a list is published. The 2006 list came out back in mid May. There are a whole bunch of categories this year, so there should be something for everyone. If you haven't already, you can take a look here.

Google Earth, For Linux!

2006-06-14T07:19:00.000-04:00

It's about time! It looks like Google has finally released Google Earth for Linux, ( and some other updates for other operating systems). I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but the Google Earth thread on the Gentoo fourms has some limited discussion.

NeroVision and Quicktime

2006-06-11T20:19:00.000-04:00

I have been busy with (among other things) a video project this weekend. I have a collection of quicktime movies off a digital camera, and have been putting together a little slideshow/video clip collection using Windows Movie Maker and NeroVision. It has taken an unreasonable amount of struggle to get everything to cooperate, so I figured I might as well share my experience. It turns out that NeroVision (6 and 7 demo), while it will import quicktime (.mov) without complaint, quicktime causes it to become seriously unstable. Nero was locking on me every couple minutes, so I ended up converting all my quicktime files to DV files, and everything has been going smoothly since.

I have read that another common cause is bad video drivers, if you are also having this problem.

The moral of this story, don't use .MOV with NeroVision even though it is a "supported" format ;-)

Anyway, tomorrow is the last full day of school for the summer so I should have more time to post, and less ideas, so feel free to email me if you have something you want me to mention (no promises, but I'll see what I can do)

Looking for Something?

2006-06-08T16:27:00.000-04:00

Usually the top three search engines (MSN, Google and Yahoo, last time I checked) are good enough, and you can find what you need right off the bat. Sometimes something different is useful though. For example, if you are looking for info on something a bit less known, that you don't get very many results for on your favorite engine you might want to try ProFusion. ProFusion searches most of the major engines, and some lesser known ones, and compiles results (though it can take a few minutes to do it). On the other hand, if you are getting too many results, you might want to try out an engine like Clusty, which groups results into clusters (categories). You might also find a socially driven search engine, like Seekum useful. Seekum allows users to vote on whether or not a website is related to a certain keyword ("tag"). If you are a heavy shopper at Amazon, you might want to check out A9. If you log into A9, and use it frequently, Amazon will give you a 1.5% discount. A9 also has some specialized search functions, a bookmarking function and a "diary". If you are looking for something on a specific type of website (forums, blog, etc) you might want to check out Whonu. Whonu lets you search for specific categories of things, on specific types of websites. If you are a bit of a "geek", enjoy command line interfaces, and are looking for a more interesting search engine, check out YubNub. YubNub can do a huge number of things based on what command you type in the box (search, etc), even including a couple basic games. You can look at some of the commands here and here or just type "ls" in the search box (just like UNIX).

On a side note (news), If you use the Google Toolbar for Firefox, they released an update today, as well as another extension to sync your Firefox settings between computers (announcement).
If anyone is interested, Microsoft also released a public beta of Vista (the next version of Windows) today (actually, lateish last night), you can get it here but the server is having trouble keeping up with demand right now. This beta times out next June.

Qwerky

2006-06-06T21:02:00.000-04:00

It's been a few days, sorry about that. I'm busy with testing, and other things, so I only have a quick link for you tonight. Qwerky, is a blog that talks about the reasons behind the naming of some of the new "Web 2.0" sites (I mean, flickr? or how about the completely useless beggr). The naming aspect really isn't the interesting part though. If you go through Qwerky's archives, you can find posts about many different, useful sites. Next time your bored it is a good way to find new sites to visit (or you could just go waste time at Pogo or Popcap).

Anyway, Qwerky is one of those sites to check out, then add to an rss reader, and keep track of until they mention some site that interests you.

Hopefully more posts from me soon ;-)

Mazda contest

2006-06-03T21:34:00.000-04:00

If you are looking for something to do, Mazda has a scavenger hunt on Google Earth (giving away a car and some other things). All you have to do is install Google Earth, and go to this page. Then you will be given a hint in Google Earth, you are looking for a small yellowish X under 5000'. If you need more hints, you can look here. The first 3 are fairly easy, but they get hard after that. It may help to take screenshots during the videos (alt+printscrn, then paste into something in Windows).

Good luck.

Update Mozilla

2006-06-02T18:24:00.000-04:00

It has been a couple days, I have been busy preparing for the end of school/ more tests. Anyway, quick post today.

If you haven't already, you should update Firefox and Thunderbird if you use them. For most systems this should happen automatically, but if not (or if you still haven't tried Firefox) you can get the updates from the Mozilla.com (new site I guess)

Off topic, but if you are looking for something to read, check out this article on Wired. It's sad, but paranoia really is hindering education significantly.

Wifi Dangerous?

2006-05-30T19:20:00.000-04:00

I saw this on MobilitySite today, and thought it was interesting. Apparently, people are becoming concerned that Wifi (wireless networking) is causing people health problems. It is somewhat hard to test, because access points seem to be popping up everywhere (entire cities are covered). This reminds me of the concern over brain damage by cell phones, though that seems to have died down recently. Of course, microwave ovens run on a similar frequency (a lot more power though), makes you wonder if we are cooking ourselves ;-)

Anyway, check out the article, and see what you think.