Don's Patch #62 from http://www.don-guitar.com January 15, 2007 First word, from Don: Ok, we have a new web host and I'll find occasion to brag about them later. For now I'm just glad to once again be able to edit, alter, and update our website. It's probably going to be tomorrow before we get our Personal news page updated but for the benefit of those who read it; calm down you two, it's on the way. hasta luego Don Don's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Lisa's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/lfefo.html Our personal news page. http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar Don's blog. http://blog.myspace.com/donguitar Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549 Lisa's blog. http://blog.myspace.com/81825549 ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Excellent advice on how to be the perfect boyfriend. http://snipurl.com/17134 And how to be the perfect girlfriend. http://snipurl.com/1714h One of the better tech humor sites. http://www.bbspot.com/ World-wide weather. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ A children's novel featuring bug societies. http://www.banph.com/ The BBC's A-through-Z of space. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A642160 PixelToolbox offers the standard set of painting tools along with a few filters and features not found in other software. http://www.axiomx.com/PixelToolbox/ Rediscover cartoons from your past, or discover some you may have missed. http://www.toontracker.com/ Ever need the lyrics to a Beatles song? They're all here. http://snipurl.com/17166 My favorite news source. http://www.theonion.com/content/index Tons of costless stuff. http://best-of-web.com/index.shtml Resources for job seekers and business professionals. http://www.beyond.com/ David De Groot's site, Bluefive Software, is full of interesting goodies. http://bluefive.pair.com/index.html A useful CSS resource. http://bluerobot.com/ Online service that lets you test single pages of web content. http://webxact.watchfire.com/ An introduction to HTML, from Boston University. http://www.bu.edu/webcentral/learning/html/basics/ Encyclopedia of plants and gardening. http://www.botany.com/ A commercial company with information about building stone. http://www.bourgetbros.com/ ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª This publication is only mailed to verified double opt-in subscribers, and is brought to you by me, Don Crowder, my wife, Lisa Miller, and http://www.freelists.org ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Sheet music and more. http://www.8notes.com/ I went looking for an accounting application for Linux for a friend's business requirements. http://www.gnucash.org/ http://www.sql-ledger.org/ Yin & yang. http://christian.net/ http://exchristian.net/ Fighting evil with information. http://www.cexx.org/ Eclectic costless apps from Dexidine. http://www.dexadine.com/free.html If you're patient and you have enough hard drive space, you can have it all. http://www.w3schools.com/downloadwww.htm A resource for guitarists. http://www.guitargeek.com/ If you have a handle on the large and confusing array of formats for sound files and a need to convert from one to another you'll find this app to be useful. http://www.germanixsoft.de/ Help and assistance with Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Chat, as well as computing in general and free utilities to augment your ability to work with messaging and your computer. http://www.helpbytes.co.uk/ Murphy's Law, the rest of the story. http://membres.lycos.fr/TheWalrus/murphy.html Check the "(costless) Tools" link on Iconico's dark blue navigation bar. http://www.iconico.com/index.aspx Interactive mathematics miscellany and puzzles. http://www.cut-the-knot.org/index.shtml Joe Jackson is a singer/songwriter. Megan, who created this site, is one of his fans. http://www.mondaypapers.com/ The Diaries of John Quincy Adams. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/ Through this website, and others like it, the internet is creating a revolution in music. http://www.last.fm/ An education-related blog. http://barkingowl.com/learning/ The U.S. Library of Congress is always worth another mention. Whatever your interests, there's days of reading matter here. http://www.loc.gov/index.html Nice resources for new, and experienced, Linux users. http://www.linuxreality.com/ http://www.linuxcommand.org/ The tourist map of literature http://www.literature-map.com/ The Gimp is a (costless app) for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. http://www.gimp.org/ The Gimp for OS X. http://www.macgimp.org/ The Gimp for Windows. http://www.wingimp.org/ The Gimp for Photoshop users. http://www.gimpshop.net/ ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª At the time this issue was posted, the current subscriber count for this publication was 340. ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª This issue's collection of news/magazine/informational sites (these are chosen for maximum diversity regardless of "spin" ). http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/ http://www.firstlist.com/ http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/genx.php?name=home http://www.gaslamp.org/ http://www.pctalent.com/geeks/index.htm http://www.gendercide.org/gwmain.html http://www.girl.com.au/ http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.php http://www.macminute.com/ http://www.macsonly.com/ http://www.townhall.com/ http://www.treehugger.com/index.php http://www.tuxmagazine.com/ ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª This graphic artist is a part of your life. http://snipurl.com/178mv http://www.impawards.com/designers/saul_bass.html Connect to independent music. http://www.broadjam.com/ A comprehensive guide to help you improve your web site and avoid some common pitfalls. http://webtips.dan.info/ tools, information and resources for web surfers and webmasters. http://www.cryer.co.uk/ A portal for game sites. http://snipurl.com/178a1 In my opinion, the best seed catalog. http://www.burpee.com/ Web-dev resource. http://builder.com.com/ Design buttons for your website. Please note that this is linkware. http://www.coolarchive.com/buttonmaker.php Calculators and online tools. http://snipurl.com/178m4 Costless printable calendar. http://www.myfreecalendarmaker.com/index.jsp Canada's native peoples. http://snipurl.com/8pz9 The best car show ever. http://www.cartalk.com/ The photography of Caroline Moore. http://www.sixhours.net/ A giant of early television, Jackie Gleason was a multi- talented artist who "lived large". http://snipurl.com/178nd Cool video of a choreographed number on treadmills. http://snipurl.com/178ng Cascade DTP, a new kind of web page composition. http://www.price-media.demon.co.uk/cascade.html Program to put on your CDs that will present the user with a list of buttons to run software or open files on your CD. http://snipurl.com/ayng ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª If you'd like to help promote this non-commercial publication, please forward this ezine to anyone you know who might appreciate it. To spare them the forwarding carets (>>>>these things) I suggest you copy/paste the ezine to a new email window, or save the ezine as a text file to be inserted, or copy/pasted to a new email. If you've received this publication as a forward and wish to subscribe you may easily do so from online forms in these two locations: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html http://www.freelists.org/list/donspatch ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Fighting the bad guys. http://www.malwarebytes.org/ I've you've a compulsion for organization and a penchant for color, here's a tool you'll enjoy. http://www.foldermarker.com/ Microbiology. http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/ Who wants to make a video post card? http://movavi.com/videomessage/index.html An eclectic bit of computer lore and history. http://www.multicians.org/ Online unit conversions. http://www.asknumbers.com/ Online stopwatch and other stuff. http://tools.arantius.com/ Open source apps for Mac. http://www.opensourcemac.org/ Applications you can carry with you on, for example, a thumb-drive. http://portableapps.com/ WindowsCare. http://www.iobit.com/ Donations optional. http://optionalreaction.com/software/ File renaming tool. http://www3.telus.net/pfrank/ Too geeky for me. http://www.mikeswanson.com/swf2xaml/ A small CD playing app. http://www.firetongue.com/cd-player.html Security is a monster issue these days and good security requires strong passwords. This is a mini-feature on passwords. Passwords can be generated by online engines. http://passnerd.com/ http://www.goodpassword.com/ http://www.hashapass.com/ http://www.multicians.org/thvv/gpw.html http://www.linuxbuilt.com/password-generator.php http://mistupid.com/computers/passwordgen.htm http://tools.arantius.com/password http://www.randpass.com/ http://www.mytsoftware.com/dailyproject/PassGen/PassGen.html https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm http://www.angel.net/~nic/passwd.html http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/ http://javascript.internet.com/passwords/password-generator.html http://www.thebitmill.com/tools/password.html http://geodsoft.com/cgi-bin/password.pl http://www.webcogs.com/passwordgenerator.aspx Passwords can be generated by browser add-ons. Firefox/Mozilla: http://www.angel.net/~nic/passwdlet.html https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/874/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/135/ Opera: http://widgets.opera.com/widget/3849 Passwords can be created by applications. Windows: http://www.wincatalog.com/pasgen.html http://www.helpbytes.co.uk/passgen.php http://www.quickysoftware.com/passwordgenerator.html http://www.programming.de/freeware_windows.php (10th item) http://www.roboform.com/ Mac: http://macpasswordgenerator.com/password_generator http://www.webcogs.com/passwordgenerator_widget.aspx Linux: http://gnome-password.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwgen/ ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Our feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html We welcome all comments, suggestions, or criticism. The form doesn't access your email client (it's a CGI form), so your privacy is assured. If you know of a website that would be a good candidate for this ezine, please pass it on via our online feedback form (link above). ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª The Chemical Thesaurus; chemical interactions, reactions and processes. http://www.chemthes.com/overview.html A well-done site about the Chessington zoo, near London, UK. http://www.chessington.co.uk/default.asp?css=2 All about chicken, including recipes! http://www.randomchicken.com/ A theory of civilization. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/index.htm History of the Big Apple. http://pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/index-flash.html CNN's weather site. http://www.cnn.com/WEATHER/ Convert standard RGB values into a hexadecimal triplet that can be used for the background and text colors in Web browsers and other software. http://users.senet.com.au/~u3a/softtut3/cewel.htm ZipX converts Zip files to self-extracting executables. Look for it about halfway down this page. http://www.cognitronix.com/ Dale Dauten, business consultant, is a good writer and a Zen-like attitude. http://www.dauten.com/index.html Loads of computer help. http://ctctv.org/CTCComputer_Help.html Overview of all relevant data on a stock on a single page. http://www.toteboard.net/Models/company_overview.htm News and views for the progressive community. http://www.commondreams.org/ Technology trends and tools. http://www.computeruser.com/index.html The computer-user high-tech dictionary. http://www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/ site dedicated to competitive cooking and recipe contests. http://www.recipecontests.com/ Shareware and costless goodies. http://members.aol.com/contplus4/allprod.htm Consumer World. http://www.consumerworld.org/ Design your own logo without being or hiring a designer. http://cooltext.com/ ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Archives for this ezine are available online here: http://www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/ The current issue is also available on our website. http://www.don-guitar.com/currentissue.html RSS feed is available via this link. http://www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/feed.rss ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª h2g2 is an unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/ Paul Elliot's site should appeal to anyone with an interest in Linux. http://www.io.com/~pelliott/pme/ Practical Persuasion. http://www.healthyinfluence.com/Primer/primer.htm PHP applications from Howard Yeend. http://www.puremango.co.uk/cm_home_2.php Geeky but (costless) apps. http://www.ranish.com/ A highly rated flash game. http://www.samorost.net/samorost2/ Enjoyed the game, hated the sound. http://www.webcogs.com/batandball.aspx An assortment of internet radio stations. http://www.sky.fm/ An interesting recipe site. http://www.snacksby.com/ A wordpress weblog with attitude. http://www.spamhuntress.com/ A Mac user's blog. http://the.taoofmac.com/space/ Forums for security correction, repair, or prevention. http://www.dknoppix.com/ The Discovery of the Electron. http://www.aip.org/history/electron/ More here. http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits.html The (Virtually, Costless) Country. http://www.thefreecountry.com/ Costless) Windows stuff from Theorica. http://www.theorica.net/ http://www.theorica.net/autorun.htm http://www.theorica.net/gamexp.htm ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Websites everyone should know about. These aren't sponsors, they're the best of Internet publications and we highly recommend them all. http://askTCL.com http://luem42.com http://www.langa.com http://windowssecrets.com/ http://www.lockergnome.com http://www.scotsnewsletter.com http://www.tricksandtrinkets.com http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Imagemaking without attitude, JPG magazine. http://www.jpgmag.com/ Generic display system for realtime alarms, monitoring and instant messaging. http://membres.lycos.fr/coolticker/ Copycat and restaurant recipes. http://www.allbaking.net/copycat.html http://www.copykat.com/ This browser claims to be the most stable tabbed browser available. http://www.crazybrowser.com/index.htm Lots of information on this commercial site. http://www.creativepro.com/front/home An interesting-looking editor. http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ These pages illustrate the need to learn and use CSS. http://www.tantek.com/CSS/Examples/index.html http://www.pmob.co.uk/faqcss/index.htm http://snipurl.com/17etl This is *just* too odd. http://snipurl.com/17d3z And this is a hoot but *not* family-friendly. http://snipurl.com/16nhj Travel diaries; over 50 adventures. http://www.cyber-adventures.com/ An online news association. http://www.cyberjournalist.net/resources/index.php Web design news and info. http://www.zeldman.com/ The Dean of Science Fiction writers. http://www.wegrokit.com/ Projects for amateur astronomers. http://astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/ Costless apps and a well-designed site. http://www.freeware-alternative.uni.cc/index.htm ============== Humor ============= From reader BH in Oz. A man goes into a bar and seats himself on a stool The bartender looks at him and says, "What'll it be buddy?" The man says, "Set me up with seven whiskey shots and make them doubles." The bartender does this and watches the man slug one down, then the next, then the next, and so on until all seven are gone almost as quickly as they were served. Staring in disbelief, the bartender asks "Why so fast?" "You'd drink them this fast too if you had what I have." The bartender hastily asks, "What do you have pal?" The man quickly replies, "I have a dollar." ============== Tips =============== Tech news and support for Mac. http://www.osxfaq.com/radio/ Windows tips. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips Fix all the things that annoy you about Windows. http://www.annoyances.org/ ======== Reader Contributions ========= Links from readers are always welcome and you can even write your own link descriptions if you like. Guidelines are available here: http://www.don-guitar.com/descriptivetext.html ================================= From our friend Foggy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Not everyone is happy about Windows Vista. http://badvista.fsf.org/ gNewSense is a GNU/Linux project. http://www.gnewsense.org/ Utoto is a multilingual Linux distribution. https://www.ututo.org/www/?country=ENGLISH Editor's Note: This site, like many other Linux sites, triggered a security alert on my Windows computer. I don't presume to know why this happens but, in my experience, security warnings triggered by websites which promote Open Source applications and/or Operating Systems often seem to be exaggerated and/or uncalled for. ================================= From our friend Irving Stein. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Protonic tech support. http://www.protonic.com/ Diigo seems to be a sort of context dependant wiki/blog thingy. http://diigo.com/ Lisa and I were very touched by this story. http://cjcphoto.com/can/ Gizmo Richard's top picks of the best utilities and tech resources. http://www.techsupportalert.com/ This looks to be a useful DIY resource. http://www.tellmehowto.net/ ================================= From our web sibling Jo-Ann Burton. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A cool place for cat-lovers to hang out. http://www.infinitecat.com/movies.html Hungry blogs. http://www.thefoodsection.com/ http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/ http://chocolateandzucchini.com/ http://www.toomanychefs.com/ http://www.obsessionwithfood.com/ http://www.sliceny.com/ http://orangette.blogspot.com/ What dirty job suits you? http://snipurl.com/17gp0 Everything you ever wanted to know about tying knots. http://www.animatedknots.com/ History of Wisconsin. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/ A portal for coin collectors. http://www.numislinks.com/ The Academy of Achievement brings students face-to-face with the extraordinary leaders, thinkers and pioneers who have shaped our world. http://www.achievement.org/ ================================= From our web sibling John Lepse. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Link descriptions (mostly) written by John. An incredible animation and laugh out loud funny. http://minuscule.tv/ Secunia offers an online scan for insecure software, including Microsoft patches, and points you to necessary updates. http://secunia.com/software_inspector I know you enjoy meaningless internet quizzes, and I do too. http://www.blogthings.com/newquizzes/ I'm always on the lookout for (costless) images I can use as wallpaper. http://www.everystockphoto.com/ http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ ================================= From our friend Lewis Demyan. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A new take on a famous Abbott and Costello gag. http://snipurl.com/17hix ================================= From our friend Mark L. Donaldson. http://luem42.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Game Giveaway of the day. http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/ Giveaway of the day. http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ Mark says these giveaways can be great deal, giving you (costless) access to otherwise costly apps but take note: If the zip file contains "activate.exe", they can be archived (saved for later installation) but must otherwise be installed immediately." This is geeky, complicated stuff but the more intimidated by things like this you are, the more likely you are to be the very person who most needs it. http://www.opendns.com/ These guys have to be watched closely but if you're patient and research carefully, bargains can be had. http://www.surpluscomputers.com/store/main.aspx ================================= From our web sibling Patrick Barden. http://rrwbushangel.blogspot.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A nice RSS reader. http://abilon.en.softonic.com/ie/29223 BGEye displays a lot of system information, much of which is customizable, on your desktop. http://optionalreaction.com/software/bgeye/ An interesting image viewer. http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay The Freedom Writers Foundation. http://www.freedomwritersfoundation.org/ Thank you Foggy, Irv, Jo, John, Lewis, Mark and Patrick. ================================= Last word, from Lisa: Have you ever tried keeping a journal? It's an interesting exercise. Once, quite some time ago, Don encouraged me to write a blog or at least some kind of journal. He's always enjoyed writing and thought I would too. When I asked him how to start, he answered, "Just start, you'll know what to do." So I did. I write for myself, to myself, print the entries and sent them as a letter to my mother once a week, and occasionally post to my blog but not often enough. What I've found is that in your working memory, the stuff you're using right now, you forget the little details of life; the days that were 3 days long, the days that sped by in a blur, the days you'd rather forget and the ones you need to remember. I like to go back and read about days that make me wonder, "How did I do that?" The answer is, of course, that it was what needed to be done or I wanted to do so it got done. After this past week, I'm wondering how we got the ezine done, but we did. It's what we really wanted to do. 'Til next time, Lisa Lisa's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/lfefo.html Don's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549 Lisa's blog. http://blog.myspace.com/81825549 Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar Don's blog. http://blog.myspace.com/donguitar Our personal news page. http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html Don Crowder and Lisa Miller Sunday, January 14, 2006 7:30 PM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA Served by the U.S. Post Office in Tow (rhymes-with-cow), Texas ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª Privacy: We will never share, sell, or otherwise compromise your email address. Privacy Policy on our website. http://www.don-guitar.com/privacy.html Freelists.org Privacy Policy. http://www.freelists.org/privacy.html ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª The most important people on the Internet, for you and I as computer users, are software developers. The world's coolest computer, without software, is like a car without fuel. It might look great, but what can it do? It doesn't matter who produces the software you love and use regularly, the developers of that software need your support. A bit of advice from Internet veteran Bayard J. Fox: New computer users are often in awe of the things you can get without cost on the Internet. There can be hidden costs for the unwary. Use a "throw away" email address to register, and be constantly on guard against giving away personal information. Use a firewall, and provide only the barest minimum of information on questionnaires. ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª ___________________________________________________________ Subscription management for this publication is available online here: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html or here: http://www.freelists.org/list/donspatch