FastStone Capture - for all your screen grabbing needs

This has to be one of the most useful little programs in recent years. I remember when a lot of software used to be like this - simple, clean and with no redundant features. Snag It! was once like this, before it became an enormous catch-all program (not that isn't great, but I don't need all that stuff every day).

To top it all off, FSCapture can be downloaded as a zip file and extracted to your USB drive - no installation, no registry values.

It has recently moved from freeware status to shareware status. But it is definitely worth paying for. I've been using it for nearly two years now, and I can honestly say I use it every working day.

Download it now!

Stealth Windows update prevents XP repair

sent via email by muglatte

Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13506_1-9785337-17.html


sent via email by muglatte

If you haven't looked at Mozilla's recommended add-ons recently...

... it's time you checked back there. Visit the add-ons page post-haste.

I particularly like (actually, love is not too strong a word) the following add-ons:

• NoScript - from the guys who brought you the essential FlashGot comes the add-on that may save your PC's very life
• CoolIris - that's "cool iris", which will allow you to preview the content behind a link on any web page without actually having to click it. Very cool, but not really that different to just opening the link in a background tab really
• Greasemonkey - this cheeky little primate is sooo fun to play around with (keep it clean - Ed.). You have to try it for yourself.
• Firebug - if you develop web applications or create static or dynamic web pages and sites you absolutely HAVE to install this. This add-on will let you explore the DOM of the current page, view and alter its CSS or JavaScript, changing values on the fly to see how it will look. Go on, get it now, you'll thank me later.
• Session Manager - far superior to Firefox's built-in session management
• Stumbleupon - it has to be either this or del.icio.us, you know what they do...

Please comment with your favorite add-ons.

Unhook the OS from new hardware

While Dell, HP Compaq, Fujitsu Siemens and others are offering XP again to buyers of new PCs, how about taking things one step further? Offer no OS and let customers choose one for themselves. Can this work? Rob Enderle clearly doesn't think so.

Random thoughts...

Oh the dreaded blog description: "just some of my random thoughts". Sickening.

This is the very definition of randomness

Note to any decent amateur musicians out there in the blog-o-sphere: try playing some output from the random jazz scale generator

Spiceworks - how can they offer this for free?

Spiceworks is an IT inventory management system that will let you keep track of every system on your network. You can generate reports and troubleshoot problems on multiple systems from one control center. The only downside is that while you can monitor Unix and Linux systems, you can't install and run Spiceworks from them. Still, the trump card is the price - there isn't one.

Get it here

Your sister is as phosphorescent as a postal worker!

That's possibly the best insult that Insult, courtesy of the some person(s) who really should know better, can throw at you.
Decide for yourself, if you've got nothing better to do



Thanks to muglatte for bringing this piece of useless garbage to my attention ;-)

Computer Humor - two normally mutually exclusive words

Computer Humor - two normally mutually exclusive words come together to form a web page sprinkled with unfunny quips that aren't worth reading.

Why am I posting it? Well, what can I say? It's been a slow week.




Thanks to muglatte for bringing this piece of the interweb to my attention

Are you a nerd? Take the test and find out

Knowing who this guy is makes you a techno-freakin' nerd burglar, apparently.

Click on the image of His Nerdiness to take said test, you fucken faggit geekass homo you.


Thanks to muglatte for bringing this piece of the interweb to my attention

40+ Free Windows Apps For You

The good people of Technology Bites have been kind enough to compose a list of... you guessed it... 40+ Free Windows Apps... for, erm... you?



Submitted by muglatte via email

Welcome to Zombocom...

"... this is Zombocom, you can do anything at Zombocom, anything at all, the only limit is yourself..."

The unattainable is unknown at Zombocom.

Visit zombo.com now at zombo.com

**WARNING** You must have speakers to enjoy this limitlessly interactive service

**another WARNING** Don't click on the link, it is a waste of everybody's time

Dell lead the way (there's a first time for everything, I suppose)

As far as offering XP to PC buying customers goes, in any case.

Read about it here

Submitted by muglatte via email

Mashups in Minutes (or MiM, for those who need snappy three-letter acronyms, sorry, TLAs)

For those of you who don't know already, a mashup is a buzzword used to describe web apps that integrate data from different sources and display them all on the one page. I suppose they're called mashups because they usually end up in one big mess. Management types keep demanding this sort of thing, so if you develop apps for a job you should probably find some way to knock one out quickly and easily.

Intel have been busy in this area recently, it seems, and they've brought out something that may just help SWDs a little bit. Regardless, this is a very light introduction to an area of application development that seemed to me to be just something you had to whip up yourself every few weeks to keep the stakeholders happy.

See here, and here to find out what all the big fuss is about.

The History of the Internet

According some asshat called The Lemon.

Buy Viagra here, save 33% $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Excellent resource for web designers

http://opendesigns.org/

Check it out, some of the designs would take ages to produce from scratch - some are way beyond my meager abilities :(

Archeonology

After having dug to a depth of 1000 meters last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 1000 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 2000 meters and shortly after headlines in the UK newspapers read; English archaeologists have found traces of 2000year old fibre-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Scots.

One week later, Irish newspapers reported the following: After digging as deep as 5000 meters in a County Mayo bog, Irish scientists have found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, have concluded that 5000 years ago, Ireland's inhabitants were already using wireless technology.

IT Hell

Web 2.0
Circle I Limbo

OSI Seven Layer Model
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

cgi-bin
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

C++
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Internet Explorer
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

IT Management
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Bill Gates
Circle VII Burning Sands

Apple's Grooviness
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

IT Consultants
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

A Programmer's Best Friend

Ah, the plain old text editors - they can't be beaten. vi, Notepad (so simple it's bordering on stoopid), emacs and the rest. Quick, simple and essential.

Here's my pick for the best of the bunch:

1. jEdit

Pretty useful as a plain text editor in the basic download form, but with the enormous suite of available plugins you can turn it into an advanced text editing tool, a full-blown IDE (for Java, PHP, perl, Python, Jython, C, C++, Ruby and more), a database control center or even... you won't guess this one... an accountancy program.
There are some great commercial tools out there (such as UltraEdit32), but this is more than a match for any of them. It's find and replace functionality is the best I've seen, and that is perhaps the most important thing for the manipulation of huge amounts of text, such as the 80000 line xml files I've had to work with.
Free and open source. Cross platform, some functionality not available on Macs.

2. UltraEdit (UltraEdit32)

This is probably the only advanced text editor that can rival jEdit. For many people it's the ultimate choice and well worth paying for every year.
It has a mind boggling array of functions and pre-written macros for you to use and provides good code highlighting capabilities too.
Commercial, lifetime license available. Win32 only (still not ported for Linux - tut, tut).

3. Notepad2*

A tiny Scintilla based editor (but without the ugliness), I actually prefer this to UltraEdit32, but it doesn't begin to compare as far as funtionality is concerned. It's just quick and simple, and that's what I love about it.
It's just a basic editor with some great functions, like move line up/down, change line endings (to Win, Unix, Mac) and code highlighting. It will replace Notepad for you and provide you with quite a powerful editor to boot.
Free. Win32 only.

4. ConTEXT

This is well established by now. ConTEXT will allow you to do pretty much anything, but where it falls down on is startup speed. Fully featured, but a little slow and unintuitive, ConTEXT isn't exactly my first choice, but it does provide a direct challenge to UE32, in that it follows the same lines.
Free. Win32 only.

5. PSPad

I don't know what it is about all that great free software coming out of the Czech Republic, but this is seriously good. UltraEdit32 users will see a lot of familiar funtions here. Like all the previously mentioned tools, there is a file comparison feature that works very well. However, there are some quirky additions such as a Google Search on the current highlighted term, with advanced search available, and the choice to provide a line move feature with a difference ("swap lines" instead of move up/down).
I've put it in fifth place only because it's got a freeware look and feel as opposed to that open source feel, if you know what I mean.
Free. Win32 only.


Clever stuff all round - if you haven't tried at least one of these, it's time you did. Once you use them you'll wonder how you ever lived without them, especially if you have a lot of textual data to work with.

*Notepad++ runs this one pretty close - it really comes down to my personal preferece