Time for some house-cleaning. Help yourself, but bring your own boxes for haul-offs.
More Mozilla
Mozilla's Email client has recently been released at Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 level.
Since it's not yet at Release Candidate (RC) status, I'm holding off converting my current version (1.0.5.9) over to it just yet, but I am looking very much to do so. I have downloaded it and set it up, but not with my current builds and not with an email service, so I can't really say how the client works, but overall I am very impressed with the polish it shows.
Like Mario Brothers for the Nintendo? How about a theme for Firefox for it? Super Mario Bros 3
Take a look at the preview to take it all in. Someone worked very hard on this thing! It's a bit too busy for daily use for me, but I can see where some retro-fans would love it. More details over on CyberNet News.
Finding images for your blog
The images I use on my blog are for the most part screen-captures. I do use some anime themed ones, and I try hard to seek permission from content owners whose material I highlight in the side-bar. They have always been very gracious in granting me reasonable permission for usage.
However, sometimes it can be hard to find a fair-use photo or image to add some punch to your post.
Lifehacker posted a great resource list for those bloggers looking to add some public-domain friendly images: Geek to Live: 6 ways to find reusable media
Highlights from their recommendations:
Creative Commons' recently released tabbed search interface
Just be sure to read the fine print for what you are and are not allowed to do. Play nice.
Apple Mac Goodness
The weekly struggle I deal with regarding Apples is trying to find Pink Ladies in the produce section (Lavie's favorites). However, there are quite a few Windows users out there who are working on adjusting to life on the other side. Here are some nice helps for them:
Mac Central: Mac Keyboard Shortcuts - more sweet keyboard tips than you can cover an Apple with caramel.
Hack Attack: A guide for switching to a Mac - covers keyboarding, shortcuts, startup management, application installations, hard drive organization, and the Dock. Very nice.
Top 30 mistakes made by new Mac users -via The Warne Account. Doh!
Vista bits
Robert McLaws: Understanding the Windows Vista Family Discount - I'm not planning on putting Vista on either of our XP systems in the near-term. However, I am likely to take advantage of a special offer by Microsoft and will pick up some upgrade versions early to take advantage of the family discount program that is being offered for a limited time. Robert explores.
Scott Hanselman is a programming wizard. He also seems to like hacking around for fun. One of Vista goodies is the Vista Sidebar. So Scott has a network camera on the baby. He has a Vista install with a sidebar asking for enhancement. What to do? Well, if you're brilliant like Scott, you write a program to display almost streaming images from ZenBabyCam in the sidebar. Very cool!
XP still rolls on...
I posted this link the other day, but it is still useful...Windows XP Embedded Team: Tweaking settings – Part2. This post contains a number of useful registry tweaks it is good to keep in mind.
While we are on an XP tweaking topic, don't forget to keep Kelly's Korner bookmarked....you never know when you will need an arcane XP registry fix, script, utility, or A to Z tip. Kelly Theriot is a Microsoft-MVP and pretty darn awesome.
And now the Apps of the Week
Here is a collection of fun software finds I've encountered this week.
RumShot is a free screen-capture utility. I love FastStone's FSCapture for my daily clipping needs, but this one does have a neat trick: it adds frames, borders and other mosaic-style images around your picture to enhance it. You can download the main program and an "expansion pack" of additional images to use with it. It is very cool. Only, their web-site is down right now. Bummer. (It is back up again!) Hop on over to CyberNet News and check out their review: Get a Taste of RumShot, a Free Screen Capture Program. I kinda-sorta used it to make the post image above. Fun!
When it comes to Zipping and Unzipping file archives, my daily tool is the one embedded in freeCommander. It's a breeze to use and it is always there when I need it. For a beefier backup I rely upon ZipGenius. Then when I want to travel "light" I use the can-opening wonder 7-Zip. But now there is a new cute kid threatening the flock. Its name? ALZip from ESTsoft. It can open up 35 different compression formats, open ISO and BIN files, retrieve passwords, make a self-extracting archive file. Pretty nice toy. These are all free for home users. Can't beat that! And it has a cute egg-looking dude for the mascot!
My IP Address Lookup and IP Locater - Not really an application as a fun web-tool. It looks up your IP address and shows you where your ISP node is located on Google Maps. Kinda neat and fun; via DownloadSquad.
Floppy Office - a jam-packed collection of no-install freeware office tools and utilities. Put it on your stick.
Security Tutorial of the Week
Malware Analysis Quiz 7 - Results. ISC-SANS posted a quiz a while ago challenging it's readers to analyze a live-malware file. Respondents were asked to answer several tough analysis questions. Pedro Bueno, the ISC-SANS handler then selected the top entry and three other runners-up. They are all very fascinating glimpses into the world of malware packaging and the techniques used by the hunters always after them. Something very fascinating was how one user used "rootkit" technology to analyze the file, and another shows how to get it to run in a virtual machine--even though the malware had code to keep it from doing so. I learned a lot of tricks!
Finally, Claus's Pick for the "It's too pretty to pee on" category
Ubergizmo had a post regarding a waterless urinal. Yep. And it's gorgeous!
The artist, Clark Sorensen creates stunning fired-porcelain works of art that function as urinals. When I first saw them, I would have sworn they were blown glass and not carefully sculpted and colored porcelain. Wow! Lavie might let me have one in our next house...but I would have to sell a car to afford one.
When I first saw them, I was so excited I wanted to, well, you know.....
See you in the skies,
--Claus
1 comment:
I saw those urinals a while back (it was, I think, jwz who linked to them -- he'll link to anything bizarro). They *are* beautiful. Too beautiful for... you know.
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