Good stuff here...

If, like me, you've used Pegtop's PStart to provide you with a portable shortcut engine for your favourite portable apps, you might find something else you like on their website.

Recently, I rediscovered PStart's power as a replacement for the clutter of the Windows Start Menu. No matter what you do, you never seem to be able to keep it all that tidy for long. Either you have a huge flat menu that sprawls all over the desktop, or you painstakingly set up a multi-tier hierarchy of menus, sub-menus and sub-sub-menus that becomes a nightmare to navigate.

Now, you can forget about all that.

PStart's Items tab allows you to add your very favourite shortcuts - nothing remarkable there, you've already got your Quick Start - but the Search tab allows you to search for an application shortcut that is either contained within PStart, or in the Windows Start Menu. And it does it very quickly, right before your eyes, even as you type.

Have a look on Pegtop's site for a collection of simple little applications that just work, can be installed on a USB key or your PC, and are full of little surprises. They have some great screensavers too.

100 Web apps

Great site for info and links on web based applications. I will add more as I come across them.

Computer Quotations

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-Alan Perlis

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
-Andy Rooney (1919 - )

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
-Bill Gates (1955 - ), Business @ The Speed of Thought

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.
-Bradley's Bromide

Why is it drug addicts and computer afficionados are both called users?
-Clifford Stoll

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
-Doug Larson

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-E. W. Dijkstra

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
-Edward Shepherd Mead

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
-Farmers' Almanac, 1978

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.
-James Magary

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
-Jef Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal

The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little.
-Joe Martin, Porterfield

One would think that if you're anonymous, you'd do anything you want, but groups have their own sense of community and what we can do.
-John Allen, A network called 'Internet', CBC, 10-08-93

In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear.
-John C. Dvorak

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
-Ken Olsen (1926 - ), President, Digital Equipment, 1977

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-Nathaniel Borenstein (1957 - )

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

The computer is a moron.
-Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005)

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
-Pierre Gallois

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
-Robert Orben

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
-Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
-Stephen Hawking (1942 - )

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
-Unknown

In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it.
-Unknown

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
-unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949

Nobody in the game of football...

Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.

- Joe Theismann

Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user

5 reasons why Linux still isn't exactly taking the world by storm? Only 5? I can think of way more than that - and the reasons stated are obvious. There is a great diagram on page 2 though, showing a timeline of Linux distros, clearly graphing the branching out from Debian, Slackware and Red Hat. Note that (open)Suse has stayed on the same track for some consderable time now. That really shows from the minute you boot openSuse up - joined up thinking and the most complete home computer OS of the lot, save OSX, which is just leagues ahead of everything.

openSuse 10.2 is superb: it has the best desktop, the "slab" which is a sort of quick access panel giving you a place to put everything you want to be able to find in an instant, and of course, YaST2 - simply the best "control panel" ever. Of course, the package manager is not great - it's no apt-get - but I've found it OK. Apparently, openSuse is the first Linux distro to support hibernation on almost all major brand laptops, out of the box. That said, some users have reported trouble with getting drivers. So the minus points are package management and drivers... mmm... so what's new there? For all the great things you can say about it, Ubuntu gives trouble when it fails to detect what version it is! That would be like a WinXP machine downloading Win2k updates and Win2k apps! And don't think I'm making it up either, because our local server runs on a schizo Ubuntu with an identity crisis - causing all sorts of pain. And they say Ubuntu is the beginners' choice!

To be honest, despite my own preference for openSuse, Fedora seems the most solid and simple distro yet. It's refined in ways that couldn't be possible for openSuse (which is new in comparison, while Fedora is on v6) and solid in ways that Ubuntu won't be for some time. If my life literally depended on it, I'd choose Debian - it's package manager is great and it's like a Toyota - but if I was choosing for my department I'd go Fedora as a client because it's the quiet guy that just gets the job done, and full-blown Suse as a server because it can take the most abuse and has configuration and control tools that take the pain out of sysadmining.

Whatever... Go openSuse! and Slax! Looking at the timeline, you can see that Slax and openSuse branched off from Slackware - SuSe back in '94 and Slax in 2003. So perhaps I should really go Slackware, but I'm not sure I have so much time on my hands. Anyway, if I was a real purist I'd go Gentoo - you virtually have to build the fracking thing yourself from scratch, for frack's sake!

Anyway, it's all academic really - I'm blogging away here from my WinXP laptop that I only bought because I couldn't afford a Mac ;-)

Liverpool 1 - 2 AC Milan

Another foot(ball)note

Despite the disappointment, I'm always glad to see Milan pick up that trophy - they're probably my favourite team (after Liverpool, of course). What they did from the late '80s to the mid '90s was almost perfect and they are the one truly great club side I can think of since Liverpool fell away. This team is nothing compared to those great line-ups, but they still have some top players:
Kaka, Maldini (despite being the old man of calcio), Nesta, Pirlo, Gattuso and Seedorf - all very worthy winners.

Now then, with the homage to AC out of the way, we can proceed to the diatribe:

Wtf was Benitez doing puttng that team out?

How they lined up:

Kuyt

Zenden        Gerrard        Pennant

Mascherano   Alonso

Riise   Carragher   Agger     Finnan

Reina

Zenden was unfit, and played like the useless cripple he is.
Kewell was a non-entity, despite (and because of) some nice, (meaningless) touches
Riise is not the best left back - Arbeloa is at least as good (even though he's a right back)
Kuyt cannot lead the line by himself, and Crouch is the best (fit) goalscorer the club have and should be used at every opportunity.
Pennant needs to work on his crossing, badly.


How I think they should have lined up:

Bellamy    Crouch


Riise    Mascherano      Alonso    Gerrard



Arbeloa  Carragher      Agger     Finnan


Reina

Arbeloa should have played LB to allow Riise to play further up the field.
Gerrard should have started on the right, free to roam, leaving Pennant a substitute option.

Then came the subs :(

1. Kewell on for Zenden. What was the point in that? Kewell had an impact against Charlton - that's about his level.

2. Crouch on for... Mascherano?! He had Kaka in his pocket and Liverpool were trailing by 1 goal. Why free Kaka up to let him show his class? Inzaghi was making those runs for the whole game, but no-one could get free in the midfield to put him through until Mascherano was taken off.
It reminded me of Man U - Milan when Gattuso was taken off with 30 mins left leaving Scholes free to take over and capitalize on the space.
Crouch should have come on for Kewell ;-)

3. Arbeloa on for Finnan. Like for like. An experienced, classy right-back replaced by an inexperienced, classy (maybe) right-back. Goodnight.

Performance:
Played well 1st half
Contained Milan well, Mascherano took care of Kaka and even Pennant pressed hard and did well but failed to deliver good crosses. The deflected free was a sucker punch and wasn't deserved.
The second half was much worse. Zenden had nothing, and Kewell had nothing either. Pennant continued to fluff his crosses and Gerrard could not make any impact from that strange position he was asked to play. Kenny Dalglish or Bergkamp he ain't. Alonso had no-one to aim for and started to make wrong choices. Kuyt drifted out to the left and right wing, leaving NO-ONE in the box (why do forwards do that?).
Kewell had no impact and Mascherano going off left a big hole, which Kaka took great advantage of, to absolutely no-one's surprise. Crouch made a difference, but he didn't perform any miracles. By bringing Arbeloa on for Finnan, Benitez was sending a clear message to Bellamy just how little he thinks of him - which is a shame, because Bellamy could have changed things.
By the time Kuyt scored, it was too little, too late and really a result of Milan getting complacent and switching off.

Summer signings for Liverpool:

Left winger (Zenden and Kewell are crocks)
Right winger (Pennant doesn't cross well enough)
Scoring centre forward (a fit Robbie Fowler - Kuyt still doesn't look a natural finisher)
Left back (Riise is not the best LB, and neither is Aurelio)
Extra Centre back (just for cover)
Playmaker / Attacking midfielder (it takes real class to open up defences)

LM: Simao? But I'm not sure if he's up to it.
RM: Simao can play there too, but maybe Joaquin - although he seems a bit of a nutter.
CF: Tevez? Berbatov? If you don't have classy wingers you need someone who can make something out of nothing, but if you have the wingers you just need a poacher - which Berbatov isn't. Question is: who is, these days?
LB: Someone who can defend well and bring the ball forward, overlap and put crosses in. Grosso springs to mind - he's the best I can think of.
CB: Not urgent - just a luxury - but someone young, yet experienced, like Mexes. I know he didn't look to good against Man U, but I still think he's a decent player.
Playmaker: Kaka obviously! But I'm sure he's out of reach. Good playmakers are elusive, but all the best teams have them - Liverpool certainly did when they were great.

Thing is, Benitez should have money to spend, but:
A) Will he know how to spend it? and
B) Can Liverpool attract the really top-drawer players?

XoftSpySE

Being an avid fan of Xoftspy for some time now I was a bit miffed to see that ParetoLogic had decided to sunset plain old vanilla Xoftspy. Naturally, they prompted me to download their fancy pants new second edition - bah! I hear you say...

Not so. If you have a current valid license and want to switch to XoftSpySE, all you have to do is follow the links and download the new app, filling in your name and email in the process, and the nice guys at ParetoLogic will send you a license key!

Apart from a new look, the app remains much the same, except that it scans much more quickly.
I have no idea if it is any better or worse, because I had no spyware before I scanned (according to the old Xoftspy, Spybot S&D and Spysweeper) and no spyware detections as a result of the scan.
But, as I said, it's quicker - and that can only be a good thing.

Do you like to make animations?

Then check out Project Dogwaffle - it's a big barrel of fun. A veritable box of delights and an effing good laugh.

I give it 11/10 (or 4.2 thumbs up)

Computer guy

We have all been there. Fixing computers for free.

Is 25GB enough

Need 25GB of online space for whatever. Can be yours for free.

One for the Bradford fans

"I understand that the police are looking into the pitch invasions at
Elland Road. So far, they've searched the Championship but have been
unable to find any Leeds" - Rob Freeman.

Audio File Manipulation

Free Audio Pack (developed by Koyote Soft) comes with three separate tools:

• A CD Ripper (to mp3, ogg, and wma at fixed and variable bitrates)
  
• An audio file format converter (wma, mp3, ogg, wav, m4a to various file formats)
  
• A direct audio waveform editor (trial only)
  

Download the bundle from ZDNet, or download them separately directly from Koyote Soft.

Another indispensable tool (that you have to pay for) is WavePad which you can download from NCH Swift Sound

In my opinion, while Koyote Soft have done a superb job in offering such useful software for free, WavePad is the far superior program overall - but I think both are definitely worth having.

Wonder goals

A Comparison between Messi's and Maradona's wonder goals:

Comparativa gol de Messi y Maradona
Uploaded by cariacolov

Here's how you do it with players hanging off your shirt:

Blu-ray burning its high-def DVD rival

7 out of 10 High-Def discs bought are Blu-ray...

Hamster on crack

Oldskool Wii...

Alernative Open source software that doesn't cost

Have a look here at Open source software that is available instead of the mega buck stuff

Speed Up My PC 3.0

Here's a utility from Uniblue (liutilities) that seems pretty useful.

It allows you to free up RAM, optimise the way applications use clock cycles and clean up backup files you don't need...

It all seems great in principle, my work PC is seriously short on memory, and any utility that could return some memory to the pool after apps are done with it would be welcome.

This is what the Memory Optimization feature looks like - notice the "Free Up RAM" and "Deep RAM Recovery" buttons.

The problem is, however, that these optimizers don't tend to work well on systems running near their limits - and Speed Up My PC 3.0 on my work PC was no exception. After freeing up RAM a few times, the system got unstable, and the utility doesn't do anything about PF usage either, which seems a glaring omission.

It did seem to perform its other functions well enough, but it was the memory management I was most interested in and, ultimately, most disappointed by.

Don't be put off by my less than glowing review - try it yourself.

ScribeFire

If you're starting to think you'd be better named Sir Blogalot, try ScribeFire*.
It's a very useful Firefox add-on that allows you to manage multiple blog accounts through one handy, feature-rich UI.

*You may have seen it in it's previous incarnation as "Performancing", but it has improved quite a bit

Java Tips

This is a good resource for Java programmers - especially beginners and intermediate level coders.

Check it out

Greenpeace rated each company on its policies on recycling and use of toxic chemicals