[donspatch] 2006-04-01
- From: "Don Guitar" <don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Don's Patch" <donspatch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 01:59:26 -0600
Don's Patch Issue #2006-04-01 from http://www.don-guitar.com
First words, from Don:
I'm still learning about Linux and having fun with it but it's really
pushing my geek-envelope at times.
I don't expect to be switching Linux distros very often but we've
switched our Linux box to PCLinuxOS and are very pleased
with it. http://www.pclinuxos.com/
I may have a slightly better than average understanding of
computers but until yesterday I'd certainly never had occasion
to partition a hard drive and while I'm in no particular hurry to
do it again, if it happens that I must, please give me Linux
tools to do it, don't ask me to do it in DOS. I'm not going there.
I'll say more about that in the personal news for those who're
interested. Let's get started.
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
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Who wants to study up on skeeters? http://whyfiles.org/016skeeter/
If you need to write something "fancy" and don't have a decent
word processor on your computer you should consider Abiword
http://www.abisource.com/
but if you don't have hard disk space for any more software or
don't figure you'll need another nice looking document any time
soon, don't despair. You can prepare your document online.
http://www.ajaxwrite.com/
This one's just a search engine but it looks familiar enough to make
me wonder what happened to Jeeves? http://www.ask.com/
I noticed a little app that's supposed to tell you what's under the
asterisks (in password windows) mentioned in Lockergnome this
morning and it seemed to me I'd seen several such utilities so
google and I did some scouting. As usual, I found what I was
seeking and a little more besides.
http://lastbit.com/discoverit/default.asp
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html
http://www.oxid.it/projects.html
http://snipurl.com/odhg
http://snipurl.com/odhj
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/asteriskkey.html
lastly, passwords are but one incidental feature of this
awesome little tool which no Windows user who's got
even a small geek streak should be without.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/gtopala/about_siw.html
Here's a costless desktop enhancement.
http://avedesk.needlemen.com/
Fred Langa mentioned this site with a strong qualifier. It's
of interest if and only if, you have a strong hobby interest in
Windows 95, 98, or ME. http://www.mdgx.com/
What if you had a bunch of stuff you found on the beach?
http://www.beachcombers.org/index.html
This is the black hole of the web so don't go here ok?
http://www.ravenna.com/blackhole.cgi
Another place you can get your own blog. http://www.bloglines.com/
A really good classical music resource. http://www.classiccat.net/
The British Library. http://www.bl.uk/index.shtml
The online archives of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the
Research Councils. http://epubs.cclrc.ac.uk/
Civil Rights in Mississippi. http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/
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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 //www.freelists.org
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On occasion, you absolutely need a throwaway email address. Here are
some that passed the beginner (Lisa) test for ease-of-use and reliability.
These are quickie throwaways, anonymous.
http://www.pookmail.com/
http://www.mailinator.com/
http://www.maileater.com/
This is a forwarding service AND is a Firefox extension.
http://www.jetable.org/en/index
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=587
Bugmenot (that's Bug-me-not) has a good reliable service and just reading
their pages is a good education in email security. http://www.bugmenot.com/
Art too bad to be ignored.
http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/portraiture-1.html
One of the greatest benefactors of humanity.
http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Louis_Pasteur.html
If you haven't heard of Scalable Vector Graphics or
would like to know more, here's a great start.
http://www.itk.ilstu.edu/faculty/javila/SVG/index.htm
Costless audio books.
http://www.librivox.org/
http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp
Here's some fun. Where dead politicians are buried.
http://politicalgraveyard.com/index.html
An unusual cemetery.
http://snipurl.com/ofy6
A human-powered search engine.
http://www.prefound.com/how_to.php
Substance-abuse prevention for young people.
http://www.projectalert.best.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1
A simple CAD system for everyone, and all OSs.
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html
Richard S. Crawford's world.
http://www.mossroot.com/
Google's into philanthropy? Yes, it is.
http://snipurl.com/og4h
Interface your email client to webmail
or use it for an RSS aggregator (and more).
http://www.freepops.org/en/
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At the time this issue was posted, the current
subscriber count for this publication was 294.
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This issue's collection of news/magazine/informational sites
(these are chosen for maximum diversity regardless of "spin" ).
http://www.activewin.com/awin/default.asp
http://www.cbronline.com/home.asp
http://www.dnaindia.com/
http://www.daypop.com/news/
http://europa.eu.int/press_room/index_en.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/
http://news.google.com/
http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
http://www.kingsburgrecorder.com/
http://komotv.com/news/
http://www.kotv.com/main/home/main.asp
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A collection of Classical music in midi files.
http://www.kotv.com/main/home/main.asp
More midi files.
http://www.classicalmidiconnection.com/cmc/index.html
http://www.jayp.net/jukebox/
Lotsa comics. http://www.comicalert.com/
This site's name says it all. http://www.cuteoverload.com/
Here's an interesting article about man-eating giant squid.
http://deeperblue.net/article.php/696/%200/0
Keeping up with "what's hot" in the Linux world.
http://distrowatch.com/
Answers to Linux questions.
http://justlinux.com/
Linux documentation.
http://en.tldp.org/
http://linuxforum.com/linux_sites.php
Have you tried a Linux live CD yet. Knoppix was the first
Linux distro available on a live CD.
http://knoppix.wikiverse.org/
A computer in a lunch box.
http://www.louddata.com/minihog.html
In my estimation, Jeremy Kerr is a high-level computer geek
who's arcane sciences escape me entirely but some of his
writing and most of his photos make his site worth visiting.
http://ozlabs.org/~jk/ Jeremy is a member of the ozlabs
team and if you're in a mood to explore you can check
them out here. http://ozlabs.org/
Why is it that most gaming sites are totally chock full of
slow-loading, media-intensive, bells-and-whistles, when
some fair to middlin graphics and a few links could
serve just as well? http://www.ea.com/language.jsp
One of history's most incredible people.
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/
More to see and read from the American Institute of Physics.
http://www.aip.org/
An outspoken young man named Eric S. Raymond.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/
What sort of stuff do you have to share?
http://www.esnips.com/signin/index.jsp
Or would you rather just store some stuff.
http://mystuff.ask.com/
How to do stuff. http://www.extremehowto.com/
A festival directory. http://www.festivals.com/
Anodizing, plating, powder coating and the related
surface finishing arts. http://www.finishing.com/index.html
Eben Moglen is a lot more than just a lawyer. This is his blog.
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/blog
Free Pint is an ezine and web community loosely based in the
UK dedicated to, more than anything else, knowledge itself.
http://www.freepint.com/
Can you actually cook and egg with two cellphones?
http://snipurl.com/odol
A risky sort of commercial site. http://www.gloriamundi.org/
I'm not sure how this works exactly but if you have a web
domain this might be an email option for you.
https://www.google.com/hosted
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Linux live CDs allow you to try a Linux Operating System
with no changes to your computer. We have tried several
and these are our favorites. In our experience, not every
live CD works on every computer, but you're sure to
like at least one of these.
http://slax.linux-live.org/
http://www.watsky.net/
http://www.pclinuxos.com/page.php?6
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1
If you have no idea what Linux OS to try, take this test to
help find out what's right for you.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
The Open CD Project. Cost-free, OpenSource software
for Windows. http://www.theopencd.org/Welcome
Tom's RTBT is a tiny Linux distro that fits on a floppy.
http://www.toms.net/
Social cognition archive.
http://www.indiana.edu/~soccog/scarch.html
Daily Sudoku puzzle from Newsweek.
http://www.uclick.com/client/nwk/nwdoc/
Copying, moving, and synchronization of different
directories for Windows XP.
http://snipurl.com/og4w
Costless PC-to-PC calling.
http://shop2deal.com/pop.aspx?refcode=gorillanation
Ever wonder why?
http://whyfiles.org/
Investigate the nature of things.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/
Three Mile Island Alert.
http://www.tmia.com/
Tiny Apps. Small is beautiful.
http://www.tinyapps.org/
Top 10 Linux tips.
http://snipurl.com/og65
Useless and trivial facts.
http://www.jayp.net/trivia/index.htm
Interested in the paranormal?
http://www.classicalmidi.co.uk/ufo/page3.htm
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My feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html
I 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).
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I guess computers aren't the only things one can "hack".
http://www.hackaday.com/
Handymanlyness. http://www.hammerzone.com/
To my American eyes, this site is about foreign money.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/index.cfm
My friend Bob wants wireless internet access in his
guesthouse without the expense of an extra connection
but it won't quite work with conventional in-house wireless
equipment so I built two directional high-gain antennas and
connected them together with a short piece of coaxial cable
to make what is called a "passive repeater". I don't know if
it's going to work but it wasn't hard to make.
http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html
Some HTML resources.
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/
http://www.htmldog.com/
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/index.html
and my favorite CSS resource.
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/
Who's watching the, um, well, those guys?
http://www.hgalert.org/
Humorous page. http://www.jayp.net/humor/index.htm
NerdTV. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/
A windows thingy. http://icolorfolder.sourceforge.net/
I think this is the second time a third party has offered
a patch for a Windows problem. What's up with that?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1943687,00.asp
Money questions answered (yeah, right).
http://www.investopedia.com/
How about a small but nifty word app?
http://www.jarte.com/index.html
This JAVA applet (if supported by your browser)
is a plot in 3-dimensions showing the position of
some 500 satellites.
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html
Web portals are simply collections of links. A portal can
be wide open and comprehensive, like dmoz
http://dmoz.org/
or small and specific, like this portal to sites of interest
to Queensland lawyers. http://www.lexscripta.com/
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Archives for this ezine are available online here:
//www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/
The current issue is also available on my website.
http://www.don-guitar.com/currentissue.html
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Why every city needs at least one geek. This is
funny, y'all. http://snipurl.com/ohi8
Here's Google's new web-based word processor.
http://www2.writely.com/info/WritelyOverflowWelcome.htm
Women in architecture.
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/IAWA/
Open-context textbooks that you can edit.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
We can see who you are.
http://www.jayp.net/seeyou.htm
Visual anthropology review.
http://etext.virginia.edu/VAR/
The Vietnam Project at Texas Tech University.
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/
Global movement to stop violence against women
and girls. http://www.vday.org/main.html
For Unix Admins, By Unix Admins.
http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?I=ugu.home
The Anagram site.
http://www.anagramgenius.com/
A few nice game sites.
http://clevermedia.com/
http://www.coffeebreakarcade.com/
http://gamespotter.com/
The toughest word game on the web.
http://www.etymologic.com/
Music-based fantasy game.
http://fantasymusicleague.com/
An unusual game from Google.
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/
Costless tools and utilities.
http://www.tenmilesoftware.com/freedownloads.html
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Websites everyone should know about.
These aren't sponsors, they're the best of Internet
publications and I highly recommend them all.
http://askTCL.com
http://www.langa.com
http://www.tourbus.com
http://www.lockergnome.com
http://www.neatnettricks.com
http://www.scotsnewsletter.com
http://www.tricksandtrinkets.com
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
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Maewest at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School
of Oceanography. http://eddy.gso.uri.edu/
Magical resources. http://allmagic.com/magictheater/
Intended to be a small decentralized verifiable Identity code
but it's still more of a notion than a reality. http://microid.org/
Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run
.NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac
OS X, Windows, and Unix. http://www.mono-project.com/
MusicMoz is a comprehensive directory of all things music,
edited by volunteers. http://musicmoz.org/
Translate your name to Hawaiian.
http://www.alohafriendsluau.com/names.html
Netvibes is like a personalized start page, like you can
get from Yahoo, MyWay, or ICQ but without the advertising.
http://www.netvibes.com/
Newbie web tips. http://www.lionsgrip.com/newbie.html
(U.S.) National History Day. http://www.nationalhistoryday.org/
NX-DOS for those with serious geek inclinations.
http://nxdos.sourceforge.net/
Open Access is to documents what Open Source is to
applications. http://www.doaj.org/
How about a Linux desktop for your Windows computer?
http://opensource.region-stuttgart.de/test_linux_desktop.php
The Proceedings of the 20th World Congress of Philosophy.
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/PaidArch.html
An email publication for people interested in patents.
http://www.patentalert.com/
The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive.
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/seenet/piers/
If you have the right software and a fast connection, podcasts
are interesting. http://www.podcast.net/
Which software you ask? I've been using my Mega Codec Pack.
http://www.codecguide.com/
============== Humor =============
How do you decide who to marry?
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like,
if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she
should just keep the chips and dip coming
- - - Alan, age 10
No person really decides before they grow up who they're
going to marry. God decides way before, and you get to find
out later who you're stuck with.
- - - Kirsten, age 10
What is the right age to get married?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person
forever by then.
- - - Camille, age 10
No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to
get married.
- - - Freddie, age 6
============== Tips ===============
Photo techniques and suggestions.
http://www.danheller.com/techfaq.html
PC Lube and Tune. http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt/
Pick a category. http://www.pcstats.com/
======== Reader Contributions =========
Here's a couple of links from reader Gmail George.
GMail Drive shell extension.
http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm
Yahoo's new Photomail.
http://photomail.mail.yahoo.com/
Irving Stein is a subscriber and regular contributor to our ezine,
a friend when he's not driving me nuts, and he's one of the online
computer experts at http://www.allexperts.com where his
identity is "Irving S".
You might also enjoy his thought provoking website:
http://www.irvings-info-page.cityslide.com
Here are a few sites that Irving sent me:
Repair XP. http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
An interesting portal. http://www.route53.com/
A helpful tool for sending large files.
http://www.mailbigfile.com/
SendToAny is a versatile shell extension.
http://optionalreaction.com/software/sendtoany/
AssessTree scans disk (disc) drives for large folders (directories)
and generates reports based on the gathered data.
http://optionalreaction.com/software/assesstree/
Odd little films. http://sheepfilms.co.uk/
Jo-Ann Burton is a wonderful friend. We didn't grow up together,
and we've never met in person but she's my sister. I harvest
links that she posts to her Yahoo group (to which I belong).
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/
Here's a few, from Jo-Ann:
Martin Waugh's Liquid Sculpture.
http://www2.liquidsculpture.com/
Recipes with Popcorn.
http://www.popcorn.org/nutrition/recipes/index.cfm
Seasons and celebrations ideas from Michaels arts and crafts.
http://www.michaels.com/art/online/static?page=seasonscelebrations
On the art of being prepared from folks who really know what they're
talking about. http://www.72hours.org/index.html
http://www.equipped.com/fm21-76.htm
Don Adams, born Donald James Yarmy, (April 13, 1923 - September
25, 2005) was an American actor best known for his role as Maxwell
Smart. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Adams
http://www.wouldyoubelieve.com/
Pro football Hall of Fame. http://www.profootballhof.com/
The upsidedown map page. http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/
Game and Fish magazine. http://www.gameandfishmag.com/
A glossary of technical theatre terms.
http://www.theatrecrafts.com/glossary/glossary.shtml
A good news blog. http://www.goodnewsblog.com/
A podcast and videocast search engine. http://loomia.com/
61 optical illusions & visual phenomena. http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/
News from the fringe. http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2006/
Good stuff from Marylaine Block.
http://marylaine.com/myword/empathy.html
Time tales. http://www.timetales.com/
Earlier in this issue I asked "What happened to Jeeves". Jo-Ann
provided the answer. http://snipurl.com/oea6
Who want's better gas mileage? http://snipurl.com/i0mh
This issue's contributions from
reader and friend John Lepse.
John is addicted to reading. He says he can't live without cable TV
because he can't live without this channel. http://www.booktv.org/
John says the Cook's Thesaurus lists plenty of substitutions for persons
with food sensitivities (like Lisa). http://www.foodsubs.com/
Sometimes you just want to talk to a real person instead of a machine.
http://www.gethuman.com/us/
A forum for all topics related to the culture of science in fiction and
fact.
http://www.lablit.com/home
What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer's disease? This
tour explains how the brain works and how Alzheimer's affects it.
http://www.alz.org/brain/overview.asp
Thank you George, Irv, Jo and John.
=================================
Last words, from Lisa:
Spring has sprung here in Central Texas and once again
I have spring fever. For me this means collecting plants
and rocks for landscaping, and trying very hard to remember
how hot and dry it is here because in August, everything will
need to be watered, often. Even so, this is a beautiful
corner of the universe and hopefully it will be a little
nicer because I was here. Just this afternoon a friend
offered me as many King Humbert Cannas as I can dig up.
Where's my shovel?
Lisa's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/lfefo.html
Don's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html
Our personal news page.
http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html
Don Crowder and Lisa Miller
Saturday, April 1, 2006
1:58 AM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA
Served by the U.S. Post Office in Tow (rhymes-with-cow), Texas
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