Whatever

This program performs an essential function - it keeps you from forgetting stuff. I have a tendency to forget things unless I write them down. I also tend to lose papers on which I write things down. No longer. And, of course, it’s completely free. Oh, and it has a very imaginative name:  Stickies.

Actually, this program has been around a long time, but the author continues to improve it. It’s by far the best free sticky note program available. Other choices exist, but most have disabled functions unless you buy the full version, or they simply don’t have the simple elegance of function this program possesses.

Some of the functions I appreciate:

1. stickies can be hidden to re-appear whenever you’d like
2. you can set an alarm to sound (as a helpful reminder)
3. stickies stay where you put them, even through re-boots (you can’t lose them)
4. it initiates no registry changes (now that’s nice)

Of course this amazing free sticky note program performs other cool functions but you’ll have to download it for yourself to figure out what they are.

Download Stickies here.

I don’t really know how in the heck Aegisub works, but it does. I also don’t know what else it’s capable of doing, but I use it for adding subtitles to videos edited in Virtualdub.

You’ll need Virtualdub, Aegisub, and VSFilter (VSFilter is the plugin that makes it all work). So, get Virtualdub, then go grab Aegisub and don’t forget that pesky plugin, VSFilter. I’d get the VS filter without the installer, unzip it, drag the VSFilter.dll to your Virtualdub plugins folder, rename it VSFilter.vdf, and you’re good to go.

Now, next time you have a video you want to add subtitles to, just open Aegisub, drag the video onto the interface, add the text where you want it (I’m not going to tell you how to use it; you’ll have to figure it out), and save it. Typically I use the .ass extension (really).

Then open your video in Virtualdub, go to Video –> Filters –> Add –> TextSub (the new plugin), browse to your file (with the .ass extension), open it, and . . . . you’re done! Of course you have to save your new video but you should now have subtitles.

If you’re interested in using a simple script for fading text, check out this link.

If you want something easier than all this for adding subtitles to your videos, I’d suggest buying some commercial software like Pinnacle or Sony Vegas. But I’m not suggesting that anyone really buy those packages. I think you’d be much better off figuring this stuff out on your own!

For a bit more assistance figuring this out, check out this informative Youtube video (just remember that Aegisub now comes with its own installer - you don’t have to download all the separate .dll files like it says in the video).

Shucks, I don’t even know how AviSynth works, or what a frameserver is, but I do know that in combination with Virtualdub, it allows me to do some pretty cool things with videos.

What can you do with it? Well, you can create slow-motion effects. You can use it to join videos together. AviSynth feeds the video to the editing program rather than letting the program actually open the video. Because of this, you can use it to open massive files not typically supported by your video editing program. Or, you can open up video files of different types because your program thinks it’s just opening up a standard AVI. There’s lots more AviSynth can do, but to be honest, I don’t know what. It’s a program for much geekier types than myself, but if you have a little bit of patience, you’ll find it can do amazing things when you’re post-processing your videos.

Actually, I just wrote about it to make myself look really technical.

Download AviSynth here.

The best free desktop search is . . . well, I’ll tell you later (really - it’s at the end of this entry if you just want to scroll down). I want to tell you about the Windows Indexing Service first.

Windows Indexing Service eats up valuable system resources (it’s true). Turn that garbage off. It’s easy, really (these instructions are for XP users). Click start, click run, type in “services.msc” then hit enter. Scroll down to indexing service, double-click it, click the stop button if it’s running, set the “startup type” dropdown to disabled, click apply then OK. Phew! We got that out of the way. Your computer is thanking you.

Oh, you should also right-click the start button, then left click Explore, right click C:, then left click properties then untick the checkbox that says “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching” then click OK and wait a few minutes. Click “ignore all” if Windows gives some garbage about not being able to apply an attribute or something like that. You can still search; you’ve just given your computer a performance boost.

If you have Vista, well, read this article, because I’m tired of typing and really, this post is about the best free desktop search tool!

Thanks for stopping by.

Oh, wait. You want to hear about the best desktop search? You want an alternative to the indexing service you just turned off? OK. It’s called Agent Ransack, and it’s free, of course. It doesn’t chew up valuable resources, it’s blazing fast, and you can even use regular expressions (whatever that means)! I’ve been using it for the past couple years. It blows away other desktop search alternatives (Google Desktop, Copernic), because it doesn’t surreptitiously invade your computer.

Download Agent Ransack here.
Get help for Agent Ransack here.

Not only is KeePass free, it’s also open source.

What does it do? Simply put, it remembers passwords for you. I use the Internet a lot, and I have a lot of passwords, and for years I’ve tried to keep it all straight (and done a pretty good job, if I say so myself). But finally I broke down and started looking for a password manager.

KeePass fit the bill perfectly. It costs relatively little (free), it uses the most secure encryption algorithms known to mankind (well, OK, I don’t know if that’s really true but the KeePass site says the databases are encrypted “using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).” So, I believe them.

Anyway, if you’re having a hard time remembering all your passwords, and you want to make a list of them (stored very securely on your computer) then get KeePass.

Get KeePass here.

OK. I’ll admit it. I don’t have Irfanview on my computer. I have a different image viewer. However, I did have Irfanview on my computer for years and I still say it’s the best free image viewer out there (we all need change at some point). It began the slew of freeware image viewers and most others have cloned or copied its features at some point or another.

If you want the ability to batch edit graphics, view slideshows, view EXIF information, losslessly rotate photos, or just view files (most any type of file), Irfanview will do it all. It IS the original and still the best free image viewer.

Irfanview has served me well over the years and I think it’s time to re-install it.

Get your free copy right here.

I looked back over my posts on free software, and I realized I hadn’t given e-sword its own post. I’ve mentioned it in my top five free software picks of all time, but really, e-sword should have its own entry.

This program deserves my award for the best free program of all time. Sure, many other programs are useful (Firefox, for instance), and many other programs do more (Open Office, for example), but none (except e-sword) provide life-giving truth.

E-sword easily compares to commercial offerings. No, you can’t get all the “premium” modules for free (like the NKJV) but who needs ‘em? The ESV (English Standard Version) is a very literal translation that I find very similar to the NASB. Download multiple versions, bucketloads of commentaries and dictionaries, devotions, maps . . . get going!

Some people say the interface appears antiquated, but I disagree. To me, it looks snazzy and modern (O.K., well, it’s free) and it even provides useful tips on opening (if you want them).

Some cool things that I like are:

• the ability to create your own parallel Bible with up to four versions,
• the simple to use tabs that show you which commentaries, dictionaries, etc. have information pertinent to the passage you’re reading,
• the fast search tool (you can search dictionaries, commentaries, etc. as well,
• the tooltips which appear when you hover over certain things (like Scripture references in the commentaries and dictionaries),
• and all the little extras, like the Bible reading plan, daily devotions, and the cool Scripture memory tool.

Visit the site to check out the many features of e-sword. Check out the many downloads available. If you want access to the best free program of all time, then quit just checking out all the benefits e-sword has to offer - get the program!

Download e-sword here.

I have a Canon G9 but I absolutely hate Canon’s bundled software (sorry, Canon). I call it “bloatware.” As you install it, you don’t know what to install or not install. Then, when you finally figure out what to install (usually everyone just installs everything), you have 200MB of crap on your system you’ll never use. I’ve had a G3, and now a G9, and both times I purchased a camera I tried installing the Canon software and promptly uninstalled it. I don’t like bloat. I like efficiency. Speed. Lightness of being. So I started looking for a free alternative.

I found it in cam2pc. I’ve been using this freebie for years and it’s never failed me. It does what I want it to do (which is download images and videos from my camera and losslessly rotate them). It does a lot more, too, but I use it for one thing - to download images from my camera quickly and painlessly. If you want to see its other features, check out the cam2pc website. They also sell a more feature-packed version of cam2pc, which I’ve never used, but if it functions as flawlessly as the free verions, I’d highly recommend it.

Download the free version of cam2pc here.

Oh yes, you’ll also need to download the Canon support files (if you have a Canon, that is), found here.

My sister recently asked me to record a two hour gymnastics show for her. She didn’t have the equipment to record it herself. No biggie, right? Well, I haven’t used my VCR in about five years and didn’t have any blank tapes. The show started in 20 minutes.

I have Media Center 2005 on my machine, and I record shows for home use all the time . . . so I decided to record the gymnastics and see if I could create a DVD for her. Everything went smoothly until Media Center spit an error in my face. It read something like, “Your file is too big to put on a DVD, Stupid!”

So, I looked around, found where MCE stores video files, then tried double clicking it. Windows Media Player opened it right up. “Hmmmmmm,” I thought. “I could email her file and all she’d have to do is double-click it!” I now only had one problem left to overcome. How in the world was I supposed to send a 7GB file?

After a period of searching, I decided the best method was to split the file, burn two DVDs and send them to her in the mail.

I searched a bit and found a free program called GSplit. I downloaded it, stuck with the default options, split the file, and all of a sudden three files sat upon my desktop. I couldn’t watch either video file by clicking on them, but when I clicked the third file (a small executable created by GSplit), it magically re-joined the two files and restored them to the original 7GB file.

Thank you GDG Software!

Download GSplit here.

Are you an Internet parent? Do you struggle with how to keep your kids from running into less-than-uplifting material? Struggle no more. K9 (from Blue Coat) filters the bad stuff out. Plain and simple. And even better - it really works. And best of all, it’s free for personal use.

I had doubts about this program. I figured it’d be simple to cripple, especially for today’s Internet-savvy kids. Well, it’s not. And it’s nearly impossible to uninstall if you don’t have your original password and email address. So, if you plan on installing this, do not, I repeat, do not forget your password and email address you use to sign up! If you do, you’ll be in for some serious trouble when you try to uninstall.

If you want to know how it all works and why it’s free, well, visit the Blue Coat website!

Download K9 here.

I know I talked about imgburn in an earlier post, but I think imgburn deserves its own post.

I recently wanted to start burning DVDs because my new camera takes excellent video and CDs no longer seemed a reasonable way to organize my backups. So, I tried burning a DVD with XP, and, needless to say, it didn’t work. While XP has efficient CD burning capabilities, it lacks DVD burning capabilities. So, I started looking through my software for Cyberlink (which came with my Dell when I bought it). Well, I couldn’t find the product key, so I started looking online for a free alternative. And I found it. It’s called imgburn (if you hadn’t figured that out already).

I love this program. Even DVD dummies like myself can figure it out. And if something seems confusing, check out the forums on the imgburn website. I personally found the guides section of the forum to be particularly useful. And don’t forget, it can burn CDs, HD DVDs and Blu-ray disks as well.

So, forget about the commercial bloatware (like Cyberlink) and instead choose simplicity and elegance - choose imgburn.

Download it here.

Do you want to edit video without purchasing a commercial program like Sony Vegas or Pinnacle? I do. Do you want to burn DVDs that’ll play on your standard DVD player but cringe at the thought of installing a massive, bloated program like Cyberlink PowerDVD on your PC? Yes, please.

OK. No problem. Download Virtualdub (read about it here) and the proper codecs and you’ll be in business for the video editing part. Visit the Virtualdub forums for answers to your burning questions (no pun intended) or post a question in the comments section and I can try answering it (not that I’ll actually be able to).

If you really want your video to be playable in the standard DVD player, please compress it using the xvid codec. Of course you could use DivX, which a lot of people do, but it’s not free like xvid (at least the pro version isn’t). There is a free version of the DivX codec with limited functionality, but who wants something that only half works? Not me.

Once you’ve edited your video you now want to burn it to a DVD. So, you try to do it, but quickly come to the conclusion that XP does not have built-in capabilities for burning DVDs. So, you’re too cheap to buy any commercial software, so where do you turn?

Easy. You turn to imgburn. It’s easy to use, user-friendly, simple, straightforward . . . oh, and did I mention that even my mom could use it (sorry, Mom). Download it, throw your blank DVD in, burn the files, and voila! if you encoded them correctly (with xvid or DivX), you’ll have a DVD that’ll play in most standard DVD players.

If for some reason you got an error when trying to burn your DVD, you might need to upgrade the firmware for your DVD burner. I had to. Mine’s a Lite-On DVD/RW SHW-160P6S. I found the firmware by googling the Lite-On website, navigating to the “downloads” section, then to the “firmware” section, then selecting my specific product. I downloaded it, installed it, re-booted, and all of a sudden I could burn DVDs.

So, to recap, you’ll need:

Virtualdub
xvid or DivX codecs
imgburn
some blank DVDs (I recommend Verbatim)
a possible firmware upgrade