Friday, April 24, 2009

RocketDock

RocketDock is a freeware program that does the same thing as the dock on Mac.  It comes with the previously reviewed Vista Inspirat or you can get it on its own here.  Here’s a screenshot of my desktop running RocketDock:

 

image

The bar at the top with icons is RocketDock.  My desktop is Stream of Light by –kol, from DeviantArt.  The blue thing is the Gmail Icon for Google Sidebar.

 

On a side note, I think this post has the most links of all my posts.

M&M’s Premiums

These are slick little dudes.  Imagine high quality chocolate.  That tastes really good.  As an M&M.  I personally recommend the Mint Chocolate version – sort of like a Thin Mint flavor but all chocolate.  I don’t know how much they cost or where to get them (I got them as a gift) but here’s a pic:
Food Premium M&MS

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

DIY

DIY (Do It Yourself) is epic.  Totally, way, incredibly awesome.  For ideas and projects, I recommend Instructables and LifeHacker.  Have fun making awesome things.

Cord Control

If you’re like me, your laptop connects with a power cord, a speaker cord, an external disk drive… some of these I don’t use all the time but want easy access to.  What I did was got a bunch of binder clips and took off one of the silver things that you push on to open the binder clip.  I stuck the cord into aforementioned silver thing and then put the silver thing back into the binder clip and then hooked the binder clip onto the edge of my desk.  Et voila! Best of all, the cord can still slide through the binder clip and so I just grab the end that goes into my computer and slide it out ‘till it’s long enough.  So there you have it.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

PhotoScape

PhotoScape is a freeware program for editing and enhancing photos and images.  It’s got an easy to use user interface, lot of different capabilities, and it’s free.  Here is the link to the PhotoScape official website and here is the link to the Cnet download page for PhotoScape.

Photoscape

Here’s a screenshot of the startup window for PhotoScape (I’ve got PhotoScape v3.3, the latest version, I think)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Irregular Webcomic

Irregular Webcomic is a webcomic (well ,duh) made entirely out of legos.  Tons of different themes, from Space to Star Wars to Nigerian Finance Minister to Death (they’re specialized… there’s Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs, Death of Being Sat On By A Giant Frog, Death of Inhaling Hatmaking Chemicals, etc).  Check it here, http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/.  On the day I wrote this post, the author was up to comic #2276.

Oops!

In my post, The Great Browser War, I talked about 'Opera 4 beta'. That should have been Safari 4 beta. Sorry! Thanks to sircoolguy99, who pointed this out.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Chairs

There are TONS of chairs out there.  Office chairs, swivel chairs, backless chairs, normal chairs, bizarre-looking chairs…

The most comfortable, most fun chair I have found is an exercise ball.  I’m sure you’ve seen them in the exercise section of your local store – they look like giant bouncy balls, usually the box has a picture of someone draped over the ball.  It turns out they’re nice to sit on.  So there you have it.

Friday, April 17, 2009

GnuPG

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) was used as a email encryption program – but now it’s no longer freeware.  I recommend GnuPG, which does the same thing but is free.  This site will lay out how to download and use GnuPG4win, which is GnuPG that works on Windows.  Here is the link for Mac users, and here is the list of all supported systems.  If you don’t trust my links, you can go to http://gnupg.org to check it out.

Oops!

In my very recent post about meebo, I forgot to put in meebo’s website.  Here it is:

http://www.meebo.com

I also forgot to mention that you will have to sign up for meebo to access its services, but it’s totally free.

A shameless bit of self-promotion and a real post

Hey.  If you like my blog, please pass it on to your friends!  Just tell ‘em to go to http://ramblings-robert.blogspot.com, mmkay?

 

Anyways

 

Wanted to put in a bit about meebo.com.  For those of you who have never used or heard of meebo, I highly recommend it.  What it does is it allows you to connect to all your IM services at once – no more extra windows cause one of your friends refuses to use anything but yahoo or something.  Supported IM services are:

  • MSN (Windows Live Messenger)
  • AIM
  • Yahoo! Messenger
  • MySpace Chat
  • Google Talk
  • ICQ
  • Jabber
  • Are You Interested
  • Aujourd Hui
  • dotblu chat
  • Footytube
  • GGL
  • ibeatyou
  • ImageChef
  • JacketFlap
  • MingleVille
  • MixPod
  • MyWorkster
  • Piczo
  • Playfire
  • RedeParede
  • Sparkteens
  • Wadja
  • Wixi
  • Yonja
  • Zorpia
  • Facebook chat

So there you have it.  Thanks for reading!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

AxCrypt

AxCrypt is a freeware program that lets you easily encrypt any file or folder on your computer.  You can choose a password or use a passkey file.  It also has a really easy-to-use user interface –
right-click the file or folder you want to encrypt, hover over the ‘AxCrypt’ option, then choose ‘Encrypt’.

Only for Windows

Get it here:  http://www.axantum.com/axcrypt/

Sunday, April 12, 2009

AWESOME program

It's called Vista Inspirat (http://www.crystalxp.net/galerie/en.id.130.htm). What it does is alters some system files so that your computer looks like it's running Vista - but it's still running XP. (It only works for Windows XP, as far as I know). It gives you the toolbar, the transparent window tops, the works. Also, it gives you a bunch of themes so you can get Vista in blue, or in black, or green, or Aero (another style - it's basically a white-color Vista)... It's pretty awesome. Best of all, it's a free download!

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Great Browser War

I’ve tried out many different web browsers in an attempt to find one that’s perfect.  *note:  I’m running Windows XP on the MSI Wind Netbook with the BricoPack Vista Inspirat installed (my computer looks like Vista, but isn’t)* Here are my results:

Internet Explorer
Pros:
- Standard
- Trusted Company
Cons
- Slow

- Boring
- Kinda ugly

Opera 4 Beta for Windows
Pros:
 
- Looks nice
- Tabs are at the top
- Really fast 
- Nice download manager
Cons:
- Won’t let me set as my default browser.  I’ve tried everything, trust me.
- The minimize, maximize, and close buttons sometimes get smushed together.
- The only Opera I found for Windows, but it’s a beta so it’s kinda buggy.

Mozilla Firefox
Pros:
-
Sets as default
- Skins!
- Totally open-source (I think)
- Nice downloads manager
- Great interface (for getting add-ons, finding help, general browsing, etc.)
Cons:
- The top’s a little chubby
- The bar with File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, and Help won’t go away.
- No ‘InPrivate’ or ‘Private Browsing’ or such.

Google Chrome
Pros:
- REALLY nice
- Fast
- Looks pretty good
- Made by google.  Some people think they’re evil, but all I know is they have the (in my opinion) best search engine, best email, and generally good programs
Cons:
- Won’t work on my netbook. :’(

So there you have it.  I like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox the best, but only Firefox works on my computer, so.