[donspatch] 2007-08-15

Don's Patch #76 from http://www.don-guitar.com August 15, 2007

First word, from Don:

I have always had a problem getting enough sleep when there are
unread books in the house but until now the problem has always
been self limiting.  I read Fantasy and Science Fiction, can't afford
new books, there isn't a good used book store near here and there
aren't usually very many F&SF books to be found in thrift stores,
flea markets or garage sales.  I'm accustomed to finding two or
three books at a time, three or four times a year.  So three, maybe
four, times a year I'd run a little short of sleep for a few days until
I "ran out" of books again...
All that changed when I discovered online book-swapping.  I found
several book-swap websites, divided my books into an equal number
of stacks and registered with all of them, listing a different stack of
books with each, and waited for results.  With most of them there
weren't any results but paperbackswap.com kept me busy from
day one.  By now I've removed my listings with the other sites and
listed all my books with paperbackswap.  For the first time in my
life I've got plenty of unread books in the house and I'm wondering
if I'll ever catch up on sleep?  Like to read?  Check 'em out.
http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php

Lisa and I have become pretty good at finding things on the web
and we really enjoy the challenge.  If you're looking for products,
services or information on the web, feel free to ask us for help.

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://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/

Lisa at myspace.com.  http://www.myspace.com/81825549
Lisa's blog.  http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/dirtgoddess


Section One by Don.

A mostly-commercial digital media site with some interesting
content.   http://mediadesigner.digitalmedianet.com/

A film-making resource.   http://www.filmmaking.net/

HTML forums.   http://www.htmlforums.com/

Tutorials for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Corel DRAW!, Paint
Shop Pro and Xara Xtreme Pro.   http://www.grafx-design.com/

Photoshop plugins aren't just for Photoshop anymore.  Most of the
web's more popular, costless, image editors, like Irfanview or XnView,
can use them as well and plenty of them are available without cost if
you're willing to do a little research.   http://thepluginsite.com/

Would you like to have your blog rated for content?
http://mingle2.com/blog-rating

Convert nearly anything to anything else.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/

How to ask questions the smart way.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Music from outer space.   http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/

Reaction to the DRM clause in GPLv3.
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/gplv3-drm

Gizmodo, the gadget guide.    http://gizmodo.com/

Much to explore on Michael Herf's site.   http://www.stereopsis.com/

The WebKit open source project.   http://webkit.org/

Useful goodies for Windows users.
http://www.opensourcewindows.org/
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/

Open Source for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
http://www.opensourcelist.org/

Before you unload your old computer, clean up after yourself.
http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/

KeePass is an open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use password
manager.   http://keepass.info/

End of Section One.


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


Section Two by Lisa

Do what you love for a living?  Maybe not.
http://lovework.notlong.com

Some nice apps from PrimaSoft.
http://www.primasoft.com/index1.htm

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
http://www.astrosociety.org/about.html

Research and education about technological and artistic
contributions Jews have made to civilization.
http://www.hebrewhistory.info/index.htm

"Personal development for smart people" is a commercial
site, but it has some interesting views and ideas
for the self-motivated.   http://www.stevepavlina.com/

Father Guido Sarducci is still around, with commentary
and opinions about the world we live in.
http://www.fathersarducci.com/

Sustainable houses, growing in popularity.
http://sustainablehouses.notlong.com

Easy-to-use utility for batch resizing images.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/49294

Justin and Dave, bacontrepreneurs, believe everything
should taste like bacon.   I agree, thanks guys.
http://www.baconsalt.com/

Think you've had a hideous housemate?  Take a look
at Marcus.   http://dysmedia.com/Words/Marcus.htm

Amazing info on color and its uses.
http://www.colormatters.com/entercolormatters.html

The use of color and design on the web.
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/

A good site for HTML help.   http://www.htmlhelp.com/

Costless e-books to download about holistic agriculture,
health and self-sufficient homestead living.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/

Do you have Internet Addiction?  According to this,
we don't, but it's a close thing...
http://allpsych.com/journal/internetaddiction.html

Loads of info for web developers, and the rest of us.
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/

Image viewer with simple editing functions for
Mac OS X.   http://toyviewer.notlong.com

End of Section Two.


At the time this issue was posted,
the current subscriber count for
this publication was 391.


This issue's collection of news,
magazine, and/or informational
sites (chosen for maximum
diversity regardless of "spin" ).
http://www.spamula.net/
http://literatureandlatte.com/
http://www.dumblittleman.com/
http://www.newint.org/
http://www.digitaljournal.com/
http://www.canadianhomeworkshop.com/home.shtml
http://arstechnica.com/index.ars
http://womensenews.org/index.cfm
http://www.exposay.com/
http://www.missoulian.com/
http://www.uncontrolledairspace.com/
http://www.artistwd.com/joyzine/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Section Three by Don.

Here's a costless firewall which I had a recent occasion to try on a
Win2K system and I was very pleased with its performance.
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

You can have AIM, Yahoo IM, ICQ and MSN IM, or, you can have one
app that handles them all, and more besides.   http://pidgin.im/

Windows XP (and Vista I assume) comes with a built in zip utility but
it's only good for zip files.  Older versions of Windows don't even have
that and zip, per se, isn't the only, or even the best, file compression
format available.  Here's a better option.   http://www.7-zip.org/

Here's a very popular and versatile sound recording/processing tool.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

The FTP client Lisa and I use to upload pages to our website.
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

Stand in one spot and carefully rotate your body, taking photographs
every few degrees, then stitch the images into a panorama with
hugin.   http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

Here's a very affordable way to create PDF documents.
http://www.pdfforge.org/

Our favorite editor, which we use to write this ezine and create
our web pages, is NoteTab Light.  http://www.notetab.com/ntl.php
(I bought us each a copy of NoteTab Std just to show our support
and Lisa uses it but I still prefer NoteTab Light).  There are many
other excellent editors available on the web.  Here are a selected
few of them.   http://www.pnotepad.org/
http://www.scribus.net/
http://www.movsd.com/thegun.htm
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
http://newpad.notlong.com (freewarehome.com)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/edxor.htm
http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/SciTE.html
If you're thinking "more, more!" you'll find a few here:
http://www.don-guitar.com/donspick.html#texteditors

Could you use a really awesome calendar app?
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

A plethora of geeky PHP information.
http://www.firepages.com.au/

Marc Landau's site is fairly eclectic and the artwork in his gallery
seems to require a "break in period" to appreciate but I got a big
laugh about of some of his navigation links.
http://home.bway.net/lgrime/home1.html

A gaming site  [Disclaimer:  Not recommended for persons
who're over 30 years of age].   http://www.destructoid.com/

The phrase "Busman's holiday" keeps going through my mind.
http://www.doubledeckerbuses.org/blog/

End of Section Three.


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Section Four by Lisa.

Online web calendar hosting.   http://www.calendars.net/

Help and support for owners of small businesses.
http://www.smallbusiness.com/index.php/Main_Page

Rural living, principle and practice.
http://www.homestead.org/

Tips on web page design, HTML and graphics.
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/

Games, puzzles, activities, more for kids.
http://www.worldkids.net/

James Michener, a prolific and brilliant writer,
came from the humblest beginnings.  His first novel,
published at the age of 40, won a Pulitzer prize.
He gave away most of the money he earned in his lifetime,
and remained a humble man to his end, 90 years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Michener

A seniors' online magazine.
http://www.grandtimes.com/index.html

Avant Browser is another good browser that uses IE
dlls.   http://www.avantbrowser.com/

A utility designed to analyze and benchmark
your computer system.
http://www.freshdevices.com/freshdiag.html

We like Terry Gross, with Fresh Air on NPR.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13

For amateur bakers and artisan bread
enthusiasts.   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/

Useful information for web-designers and
web-developers.   http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Working toward a smoke-free England.
http://www.smokefreeengland.co.uk/

A fresh start for children with physical
deformities.   http://www.freshstart.org/

The Museum of Web Art.   http://www.mowa.org/

Notes from a recovering Microsoft addict.
http://afreshcup.com/

Everything you need to know about apricots,
and a very attractive site, as well.
http://www.califapricot.com/

Helping women begin new lives.
http://www.wehelpwomen.com/default.htm

End of Section Four.


Our feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html

We welcome all comments,
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Section Five by Don.

Every now and then you need to know stuff about what's inside your
Windows computers.  http://www.gtopala.com/

These sites can really bug you.
http://bugguide.net/
http://www.americanarachnology.org/
http://arachnophiliac.info/burrow/home.htm

Paul Nylander is interested in all sorts of cool things.
http://www.bugman123.com/index.html

Life on earth.   http://earthlifestory.com/

An ecological information source.   http://www.ecology.com/

A little provincial but interesting.
http://phenixrising.typepad.com/the_armadillo_podcast/

A noble idea but not the best website design I've seen (not even
in the top 1000).   http://www.livingcosmos.com/

Tim Jones seems to be interested in archaeology, anthropology
and a few more 'ologies' as well.  This is his blog.
http://remotecentral.blogspot.com/

Dr Martin Rundkvist's archaeology blog.
http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/

Desert fishes, who knew?   http://www.desertfishes.org/

Information on U.S. states.   http://www.netstate.com/states/

Do you have a computing job which requires a Super Computer?
Here you go.   http://www.powua.com/

Talk about poor fuel economy and "sky high" operating costs,
check this out.   http://www.moller.com/skyc.htm

Hard drive troubleshooting.
http://www.techadvice.com/tech/H/HardDriveTS.htm
Useful hard drive and/or system tools.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hddperf/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wet-hdd/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/atacommunicator/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gotbenchmark/

End of Section Five.


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

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Section Six by Lisa.

Theories, philosophy, and help in de-cluttering your life.
http://www.its-not-about-your-stuff.com/

The world of a bibliophile.
http://novelworld.squarespace.com/

The Huffington Post; news and opinion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Plan and receive the care you need as you age.
http://www.agingwithdignity.org/

The online version of the one of the best woodworking
magazines, Fine Woodworking.
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/

YouTube video of Billy Preston and Eric Clapton
doing George Harrison's "Isn't it a Pity?".
http://billyeric.notlong.com
and a ten-year-old Billy Preston performing with
Nat King Cole on his TV show in 1957.
http://billyat10.notlong.com

Resources for RVers.   http://www.workersonwheels.com/

World Cafe at NPR, spotlighting new trends in music.
http://worldcafe.notlong.com

Worst-Case Scenarios.
http://www.worstcasescenarios.com/mainpage.htm

English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows.
http://wordweb.info/

Personal site of web designer/developer and
color enthusiast Janet Lynn Ford.  Excellent!
http://www.worqx.com/

A museum of living history, the Academy of Achievement.
http://www.achievement.org/

This Firefox Add-on is appropriately named,
it's very addictive!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2828

An attractive, orderly, highly informative site
to promote communications and offer resources for
scholars in economic history and related fields.
http://eh.net/about

Choosing a career or vocational school.
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/services/votech.shtm

The online version of Home Power Magazine.
http://www.homepower.com/

End of Section Six.


The Linux Corner.

Tips and Tricks in using and administering Linux.
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/

From Windows to a Debian GNU/Linux desktop, sans
the geekness.   http://www.debiantutorials.org/

Beginner's Guide to Debian Etch.
http://www.free-bees.co.uk/articles/debianetchguide/
There's much more interesting information on the site too.
http://www.free-bees.co.uk/

The Debian Social Contract.   http://www.debian.org/social_contract

Debian User Forums.   http://forums.debian.net/

Mysterious Linux forums site (I think) with no "About" or "Mission"
pages (as I write this at least).   http://debcentral.org/

An online Debian news homepage.   http://debianhomepage.com/

Debian help.   http://www.debianhelp.org/

How to install Irfanview on Linux.
http://www.computechgroup.com/?p=333

The Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide.   http://www.linuxnewbieguide.org/

An unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into
the Linux world with a single click.   http://wubi-installer.org/

I've mentioned this before but I think it bears repeating.  The easiest
way to get into Linux is to purchase an inexpensive used computer,
just the "tower" (main box), without a keyboard, monitor or mouse, to
install Linux on, and a KVM switch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch
KVM switches are easy to install, easy to use, and inexpensive.
http://newegg-KVM.notlong.com  (KVM search @ newegg.com)

This is a commercial product but it's also very cool.
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Hands_on_with_the_ASUS_Eee/

A Little Humor.

This piece, by Brian Sorrel, is lengthy but very entertaining.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/13/213613.php

Tips for This Issue.

Optimize Guides (Windows).
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/index.html

http://www.tipsdr.com/

http://www.annoyances.org/


Contributions From Our Readers.
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 web sibling Patrick Barden.
( http://rrwbushangel.blogspot.com/ )

If you're one of those types who loves measurements
and seeing things in scale, this is the mother lode.
http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/discovery/universcale/

The original Virtual Cave.
http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/virtcave/virtcave.html


From our web sibling Jo-Ann (Jo) Burton:
( Jo's site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/ )

Company names:  The most boring example is that Dell Computer
was named after it's founder, Michael Dell, but they get better.
http://blogspot-companynames.notlong.com

American Mensa.   http://www.us.mensa.org/

Online articles on many topics.   http://www.essortment.com/

College and university home pages.
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html

Once upon a time there was a little desktop kitty named Felix
http://www.don-guitar.com/dltoys.html
who got a gig with Purina.
http://www.catslikefelix.co.uk/index.asp

"Felix the Cat
 The wonderful, wonderful cat
 Whenever he gets into a fix he reaches
  into his bag of tricks."

"Felix the Cat
 The wonderful, wonderful cat
 You laugh so much, your sides will ache,
 Watching Felix, the wonderful cat."

  The Real and Original Felix the Cat
  http://www.felixthecat.com/
  http://felix.goldenagecartoons.com/
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_the_Cat
  http://www.everwonder.com/david/felixthecat/
  http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/5463/Felix.html
  http://www.toonopedia.com/felix.htm
  http://www.toontracker.com/felix/felix.htm


From our web sibling Vinette (Vi) DePhillipe:
( Vi's site: http://360.yahoo.com/vinette1 )
Vi sent this in an email but we liked it so I found it on a web page.
http://www.barefootsworld.net/installinglove.html


From our web sibling John Lepse.
( John's blog: http://hucknjim.blogspot.com/ )

Katrina, the untold story.
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/people/katrina

Certified Nursing Assistant.   http://beingacna.blogspot.com/

Abandoned but not forgotten.
http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/


Our friend Jon Reed sent us a link to this nice online conversion
calculator.   http://www.worldwidemetric.com/Measurements.html


Our web sibling Randi Simon-Serey sent this poem she wrote.

The Oldest Face

Today in the hospital she gave me power of attorney over everything. She
willingly gave it to me, with great relief, she who has been in control and
aspired to greater control for all the decades I've known her.

She also reached for my hand and held it tightly for a long time.

Yesterday she told me she was afraid. In all the decades she has never said
she was afraid.

When she fell asleep, holding my hand, a little smile on her face, I gazed
onto her face. It was the most familiar face in my life, more familiar than
my own. The long rays of the afternoon sun beamed onto her cheeks like the
fatherly arms of Ra. I felt stirrings of ancient memories. I felt the future
slipping into the past.

My mother.


Thank you Patrick, Jo, Vi, Jon, John and Randi.


Last word, from Lisa:

Lately I've been corresponding with a friend nearly
every day.  He's a veteran 'journaler' and I'm a recent
one.  He says most of his friends "keep their
messages looking like a western union telegram".  We
had been discussing the fact that so few people write,
perhaps because they feel they have nothing valuable to
say.

Ordinary life is extraordinary.  Write about one
experience you had today and send it to a friend.  You
may be surprised at the results.  Write for yourself and
to stay or become close to someone else.  It's a great
way to relax, put the day in perspective and then move
on.

'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://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/dirtgoddess

Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar
Don's blog.  http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/

Our personal news page.
http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html

Don Crowder and Lisa Miller
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
12:15 AM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA
Served by the U.S. Post Office in Tow (rhymes-with-cow), Texas


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