Don's Patch #83, December 01, 2007 from http://www.don-guitar.com First word, from Don: I'm typing this on the same computer I've been using for the last two years but there has been a change. Last week its Operating System was Windows 2000 Pro; this week its operating system is Debian Etch. I bought a used XP machine on eBay. I can't very well give up using Windows when most of our readers are still using it, but I'm making Windows my secondary computer and Debian Etch (Linux) will become my primary Operating System. I was awfully tempted to go with PCLinuxOS because it would run wonderfully on this computer and doesn't require any geeky post- install tweaking, it's pretty much plug-and-play, but Etch is, by now, a dear and trusted friend who's earned my loyalty. That was geek-speak by the way, so let me give you the behind-the-pretty-words analysis. 1. In apples-to-apples performance tests PCLinuxOS and Debian Etch ran at the same speed. 2. No other distro offers the range of software choices available in Debian. PCLinuxOS has newer versions of most applications but most serious computer users know that "newest" doesn't always equal "best". Nuff said. 3. The relatively minor amount of geeky tweaking required by Etch is my personal substitute for alcohol, tobacco and recreational drugs. I enjoy every moment of it. Another thing I enjoy every moment of is reading the rare but precious email we get from our thoughtful, insightful and very erudite readers. Have we heard from you lately? Don Our feedback form (goes to both of us): http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Our personal news page. http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar Don's blogs. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/ http://don-guitar.blogspot.com/ Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549 Lisa's blog. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/dirtgoddess Section One by Don. Olive is 108 years old and I've mentioned her before but I find myself visiting her blog often because it's good reading. http://www.allaboutolive.com.au/ Making fun of English. http://www.innocentenglish.com/ Get the word out. http://messagebot.com/ Obsolete computer museum. http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/ What's the best time to call your web friends other countries? http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html Talk about your evil-bad stuff on the web. http://www.malwarecomplaints.info/ A Central U.S. Genealogy resource. http://www.looktothepast.com/ Need a wiki for your club, organization, social group, school or business? http://www.socialtext.net/open/index.cgi An interesting keyboard customization. The videos wouldn't play on my Linux system but the images are sufficient for demonstration. http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard.shtml If you threw "Show and Tell" into a blender along with MySpace and the Library of Congress I think it'd all come out looking like the LibraryThing. http://www.librarything.com/ Seems to me like comic strips aren't quite as good as they used to be but there's certainly a lot more of them out there now. Note: While I screened these for content, you may not see the same strip I did. http://www.starslipcrisis.com/ http://www.beaverandsteve.com/ http://www.tangentine.com/index.php?go=zoo http://www.digitalstrips.com/ http://www.patrickgreyonline.com/ http://www.hatesong.com/ http://www.moderntales.com/comics/almamater.php http://www.headinjurytheater.com/ http://www.scenelanguage.com/ I found this site when I lost sound on my Win2K system. It didn't help me any and the sound is fine now that the computer is Debian Etch but maybe it'll help someone else. http://www.nosystemsounds.com/ Crafts, recipes, games, health, holidays, parenting, and more. http://www.kaboose.com/ 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 //www.freelists.org Section Two by Lisa Well, 'tis the season to send out cards and *some* of us don't know how to print envelopes in Open Office. Once again, I've found that Solveig Haugland, Open Office instructor, has come through with the best tutorial I've seen. http://Ooenvelopes.notlong.com As an added bonus, to get a hint on the most likely orientation for envelope-printing for your printer, check under the paper on the tray itself. Sometimes there are little icons stamped on the tray itself that includes envelopes. Reference library for reading and writing PNGs. http://www.libpng.org/ Would you like to learn how to podcast? http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/index.htm http://www.wise-women.org/tutorials/podcast/ Remember the Bitter Beer Face commercials? Perhaps I'm easily amused. http://bitterbeer.notlong.com Web site tutorials, tips and resources. http://websitetips.com/ and even more; http://webdesignfromscratch.com/ A wonderful illustrator, Alex Dukal. http://www.circografico.com.ar/ Simple, genuine site for wine lovers. http://corkd.com/ Very nice resource for Photoshop tutorials. http://tutorialmad.com/ Being allergic to all corn products, I can only have sodas that are still made with real sugar, not corn syrup. Here are some of my favorites. http://mexicoke.notlong.com http://www.dublindrpepper.com/ http://www.novamex.com/jarritos.sstg http://www.jonessoda.com/ This commercial site has lots of interesting info about alternative energy. http://home.altenergystore.com/ Will Harris is a talented, literate web maven. Beautiful site, too. http://www.will-harris.com/index.html Find your favorite famous person. http://www.who2.com/ Radio Hall of Fame Inductees. Find your old heroes. http://www.museum.tv/rhofsection.php End of Section Two. At the time this issue was posted, the current subscriber count for this publication was 386. This issue's collection of news, magazine, and/or informational sites (chosen for maximum diversity regardless of "spin" ). http://thispublicaddress.com/ http://gnuhaus.com/iblog/index.html http://www.paradoxicallystrange.co.uk/index.asp http://www.townhall.com/ http://www.fresnobeehive.com/ http://www.online-information.co.uk/index.html http://www.reviewforreligious.org/new.html http://www.hollowear.com/ http://www.nimblespirit.com/index.htm http://www.therevealer.org/ http://www.christiananswers.net/ http://www.cssr.org/ http://www.somareview.com/ (here's a cool video I found on the last site) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvB3FWk8Xss Section Three by Don. I was researching free web space and I found some sources... http://www.freewebspace.com/ http://www.150m.com/ http://members.freewebs.com/ but nothing like the list they keep at thefreesite.com: http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Web_Space/ The war to end all wars. http://www.firstworldwar.com/ I'm an animal-lover, how about you? http://www.bestfriends.org/ This is just another take on link-collecting; content collecting. Some of the things listed aren't the least bit family-friendly so tread lightly. http://www.clipmarks.com/ Share your expertise. http://www.answerbag.com/ http://wiki.answers.com/ Folks chipping in. http://www.ephilanthropy.org/site/PageServer Everybody wants in on the video market now don't they? Here's a good one from myspace. http://myspacetv-cats.notlong.com I had a guitar moment a couple of days ago and had to go googling. http://www.johngoldie.co.uk/home.html http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8902201048813633160 http://www.donalder.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vocEYP0NsI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPISjNvBuo4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35vLDWE50I http://www.rogerwang.net/ I have a friend who's link to the web is with a glorified cellphone. He's got no keyboard and typing is a tedious endeavor so he uses all sorts of odd spellings, abbreviations and acronyms. I'm often forced to refer to netlingo in order to "translate" his email. http://www.netlingo.com/inframes.cfm I'm pleased by the fact that most of my childhood heroes, like superman... http://members.tripod.com/~davidschutz/supermanmusic.htm ...keep coming back, again and again. http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news.php Here's a midi collection of movie theme music. My Linux computer won't play midi files, I think I need a particular software app from the repository but don't know which one it is and haven't googled for it yet. *grin* I don't like midi music anyway. http://www.elite.net/~gurpal/movie1.htm If you're one of those Windows users who says "I'd use Firefox but IE is just faster, this is for you. https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffpreloader/ If you've seen Linux users who have a cool little system performance meter/monitor thingy on their desktop and felt envious, here you go. http://www.tiler.com/freemeter/ I love digital clocks. No single piece of technology liberated me more that ten dollar Casio watches. I have trouble reading an analog clock. Weird, but true, still, if you like them, this is for you. http://clocx.php5.cz/ This is a totally unacceptable security risk to me but a total must- have for some folks. https://www.logmein.com/ End of Section Three. 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 //www.freelists.org/list/donspatch Section Four by Lisa. State of Entropy web graphics. http://www.state-of-entropy.com/home.htm Useful, costless software from Serif. http://freeserifsoftware.com/ Here's a cool toy! Man-in-the-Dark; pull him around with your mouse, click to make new men and neat patterns. http://www.maninthedark.com/ Ever wonder which Content Management Systems CMS would fit you or your company best? Here's a way to test-drive the best of Open-Source CMS apps. http://opensourcecms.com/ Make your own giant-size poster from your image with this app. http://www.posteriza.com/es/index.php?lang=en_US Mark McIntyre offers his web album generator, website builder and musical alarm clock. Thanks, Mark. http://www.ornj.net/ Our friend Dean Hamack (http://www.bushidodesigns.net/) sent us this link, stating this site is invaluable for learning about web design. http://www.sitepoint.com/ I enjoyed this site. The author tells you how he became interested in frugal living, the hard way. http://www.thesimpledollar.com/ Lost your password? Google can find it for you, yikes! http://lostyourpassword.notlong.com ZenCart is the OpenSource (costless) shopping cart application for your commercial website. http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php The average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail each year. Reclaim your mailbox. http://www.41pounds.org/ Wouldn't it be cool to borrow almost anything? http://neighborrow.com/index.html Thousands of great costless fonts. http://www.dafont.com/ I've heard a lot of good things about this costless web site development site for beginners. http://www.1stsitefree.com/ Resources for teachers and parents. http://www.teach-nology.com/ One of the best costless blogging platforms, used by everyone from major corporations to political campaigners to personal bloggers. http://www.movabletype.com/ Need a legal form of any kind? Bet you can find it here. http://www.ilrg.com/forms/ It's estimated that up to 10% of computer users have disabilities, so designing and maintaining a site for accessibility is crucial, for business and personal applications. Here's a costless e-book addressing the subject. http://diveintoaccessibility.org/ End of Section Four. 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). Section Five by Don. Most of us eventually learn, usually the hard way, to back up the files which are most important to us. A catastrophic computer crash can, and probably will, wipe out all of our most precious files and there's no good reason why we should have to experience such a traumatic event. There are just too many good ways to avoid such problems. If you have a CD or DVD burner on your computer, there are many software solutions for backing up your valuable data. For example, read through at least the first page of alternatives offered by majorgeeks.com (many are without cost). http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads3.html XP has built in CD burning capabilities, if you happen to have a CDRW drive, but it's not very user friendly so the Ultimate CD/DVD Burner is a nice little utility you can add to your toolbox. There's not a worthwhile information page on this one so here's the actual download link. http://www.mispbo.com/burner30.zip If you'd rather get to it via their circuitous navigation, start on this page. http://www.mispbo.com/index.htm Lisa and I have purchased three USB drives which each hold two (2) Gigabytes of data. We periodically back up our most important files to these drives as well as burning CDs. There are several brands of these available and they can be purchased in about any office product, variety chain, or electronics store but we bought ours online at newegg. http://www.newegg.com/ Just lately, since I've been swapping from one computer to another, I've been using a great plug-in called Foxmarks http://www.foxmarks.com/ Even if you only have one computer, there are plenty of places where you can store your browser favorites/bookmarks and in most cases you can "visit" them from just about any computer. http://www.mybookmarks.com/ http://del.icio.us/ http://www.linkagogo.com/ http://www.frech.ch/online-bookmarks/ http://www.spurl.net/ http://www.myvmarks.com/ http://www.backflip.com/ http://murl.com/splash/ http://www.myhq.com/ http://www.netvouz.com/ http://www.zoogim.com/ http://www.onlinebookmarkmanager.com/ http://www.startaid.com/ http://google-bookmarks.notlong.com http://sitebar.org/ http://www.finety.com/index.php?lang=uk (language challenged) http://www.easybm.com/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/scuttle/ Do you need a social network for your social networks? http://www.flock.com/ End of Section Five. Archives for this ezine are available online here: //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. //www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/feed.rss Section Six by Lisa. Dilbert's Unified Theory of Everything Financial. No joke. http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2006/10/dilberts_unifie.html Thirdage, a magazine for our Third Age. http://www.thirdage.com/ This is just the time of year to think about knitting. http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/ Do you know your online rights? http://www.chillingeffects.org/index.cgi Biography of James Garfield, the twentieth President of the United States (1881). http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jg20.html Dwayne Melancon's s lifehacks, tips, opinion, and information. http://www.genuinecuriosity.com/ News about the heart/mind connection. http://www.thegoodheart.com/ A smart treatise on stupidity. http://gandalf.it/stupid/home.htm The whole site is intriguing. http://gandalf.it/home_en.htm Relatively new MRSA (methillicin-resistant S. areus) staph infection has been a concern for some time in the medical community, now the rest of us need to know more about it. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_public.html Play Hangman while learning the Table of Elements. This is fun! http://education.jlab.org/elementhangman/prob221.html The Audio section of Salon.com has lots of free music in "Song of the Day". http://dir.salon.com/topics/audio/ There are many occupations that can be second or third careers. http://www.discovernursing.com/ http://chronicle.com/jobs/2004/08/2004081101c.htm http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/success/20021008-richards.html http://secondcareer.notlong.com If you can't find your favorite list of bests here, write your own and send it in. http://www.listsofbests.com/ Gearlog, gadgets by geeks, for geeks. http://www.gearlog.com/ End of Section Six. The Linux Corner. Linux still doesn't have much of the desktop market but the IT industry loves them. http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9821140-16.html Most Linux applications come with a manual which is accessible from a command line terminal. They're referred to as "Man" pages and many of them are also available online. http://linux.die.net/man/ http://www.penguin-soft.com/penguin/manpages.jsp The Linux Foundation. http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Main_Page Linux self-help. http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/ One of my favorite Linux applications is Konqueror, the KDE browser. Of course it's a lot more than just a browser. Here's the story. http://KDE-Konqueror.notlong.com Good news for non-profits. http://nosi.net/ Our friend Lee Parmeter is the driving force behind our local Highland Lakes Linux User's Group http://www.hllug.org/ Here are a few links he's posted to that list. Windows users who skip our Linux section are simply going to miss a very good thing by not seeing this one but this is where Lee's contributions go and he's a diversified, and highly knowledgeable fellow so here's one for Windows users. If your XP system is running slow and nothing you've tried so far has helped, try this. http://ms-pagedefrag.notlong.com I think this may be the newest member of the *buntu family. Minibuntu. http://minibuntu.crealabs.it/ A Little Humor. http://humormatters.com/jokeof.htm Tips for This Issue. Linux Tips. http://www.pallier.org/ressources/linux_howtos/linux_howto.html James Eshelman's Windows Support Center. http://www.aumha.org/ A beginner's tutorial on Windows 98. http://www.bcschools.net/staff/Windows98.htm 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/ ) New and used books, movies and music. http://www.alibris.com/ A social network for music and video. http://www.orbitdownloader.com/ For the most popular news. http://groxx.com/ Very cool images of Washington, DC. http://www.flickr.com/photos/musely/1977925616/ Anybody want a shark break? http://www.sharkbreak.com/ From our web sibling Jo-Ann (Jo) Burton: ( Jo's site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/ ) Odd information. http://www.odd-info.com/ A sort of new take on the concept behind a viewmaster. Some folks can't see these. What works for me is to cross my eyes slightly. http://www.aolej.com/stereo/gallery.html Complain in annonymity. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ An interesting blog (Almost a newsletter). http://www.boogiejack.com/AlmostNews/aan135.html Gadgets for the home. http://www.smarthome.com/_/index.aspx Life in America. http://www.lifeinamerica.us/ The reference desk. http://martindalecenter.com/ Antique Corsets.http://www.antiquecorsetgallery.com/ This one reminded me of another. http://www.corsetiere.net/ Biblical manuscripts project. http://alpha.reltech.org/BibleMSS.html Our web sibling Jerry Fox sent us a link to this interesting flash media presentation from the Canadian Bible Society. http://Ecclesiastes3-1-8-11.notlong.com Our web sibling Bill Lanoue (who's decided he likes the Texas version of his name, "Beeyil") sent this link to a DIY paper Tux (the Linux penguin) toy. http://makeatux.notlong.com Our web sibling John Lepse sent this link to a very interesting history-oriented blog. http://delanceyplace.blogspot.com/ Our new web sibling Terri Martin-Goin (who's also Beeyil's significant other) sent a couple of good links for this issue. Do you have trouble remembering birthdays? This should help. http://www.birthdayalarm.com/Default.jsp Here's a few Christmas funnies. http://d21c.com/emma3/hoho/funnies.html New contributor Dan Urban sent links to the art of Guido Daniele... http://www.guidodaniele.com/ ...and this cool video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le3IYfz0uak My daughter Catrina Lofgren sent this link for a toothpaste sample. http://www.tryarmandhammer.com/ Lastly, here are three links from new contributor Tom Lumsden. Trade stuff online. http://www.tradestuff.com/ Used stuff exchange. http://used.recycle.net/exchange/ The One Red Paperclip trading post. http://www.1redpaperclip.com/tradingpost/ Editor's note: There may actually be a few of you who haven't heard the "one red paperclip" story, so here's a link to that interesting tale. http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/ Thanks Patrick, Jo, Jerry, Bill, John, Terri, Dan, Catrina and Tom. Last word, from Lisa: Time for a change here in Texas and in the Crowder household. The weather's getting chilly (finally; it's mid-November), there's a hint of anticipation in the air. Maybe it's the season, maybe it's the fact that mom's entered the Hospice program. Anyway, we feel a change in the air, and in our lives. As usual, the adventure continues... Lisa Our feedback form (goes to both of us): 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 blogs. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/ http://don-guitar.blogspot.com/ Our personal news page. http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html Don Crowder and Lisa Miller Saturday, December 1, 2007 1:15 AM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA Served by the U.S. Post Office in Tow (rhymes-with-cow), Texas 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. //www.freelists.org/privacy.html 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. ___________________________________________________________ Subscription management for this publication is available online here: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html or here: //www.freelists.org/list/donspatch