The Geek List

Dear Zeem! Readers,

How do you like the new blog design? The colour scheme did not change much in order to maintain consistency, but I hope you like the new masthead. Sure, it rips off Microsoft .NET, but who's suing? And I hope you notice the even cuter picture of me in my profile.

Some of you readers have been reading since the early days of the blog. For that, I thank you. Some of you only caught on during early 2006. For that, I thank you less. But lots of loving all around anyway.

I hope you have enjoyed reading some of my earlier writings this past week. I have purposely withheld a particularly racy post involving masturbation, in order to maintain my female reader base. OK, so it's just Kelly regularly commenting, but who's counting?

I really don't fit into the stereotypical image of an IT geek. Well, my wardrobe may be a little bare and boring, but that's where the similarities end. I don't wear thick spectacles with huge rims. I am not a fan boy of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. I don't know how to play Magic: The Gathering. I can interact perfectly well with the ladies while I'm sober. I have not invented any secret code, algorithm, or robot.

Get the picture?

Still, I am an IT guy, and therefore I'm at least expected to be good with using computers. Let me tell you a little secret about us IT guys - we're not really that smart. Well, there are some hardcore people who do everything the hard way, but for the rest of us there is certain software that help bring us through the day. And today, I show you some of the best utilities that have helped me be more productive. You may have heard of some of them, but chances are you will find a couple of gems here that you will love.

I will provide a link to the website of the software, plus a short write up on why I love it so much. As of now, all the software recommended is free but who knows if it will change in the future? So get a copy now and spread the word for these wonderful programmers.

With much love,
Zemien

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Gadwin Print Screen (www.gadwin.com/printscreen)
Screen capture utility
I have to type many reports in my course, and I sometimes need to get a screenshot of what I am currently seeing on my monitor. Common things I need include the window of a program, a particular toolbar, or the entire desktop. The old way of doing things is to press the PrintScreen key on my keyboard, which will store an image of the entire screen into my clipboard. If I only need a small section of the screen, I would need to open up Adobe Photoshop, paste the screen shot in, and then extract the part I need. It's a time consuming and troublesome task.

Well, not anymore. With Gadwin PrintScreen, I am presented with the power to be flexible. It can automatically save just a particular window or an arbitrary rectangle that you draw yourself. It can also be saved to a variety of locations, inclluding to your clipboard or even a JPEG file. Best of all, you can still use your normal PrintScreen key to access its features and then change the settings quickly. So now, I easily shave off much frustration and minutes when I need to capture a lot of screens.

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uTorrent (www.utorrent.com)
BitTorrent client
This is the BitTorrent client that everyone's been raving about! If you don't know what BitTorrent is, then you can skip to the next program. The major strength of uTorrent is its simplicity and compactness. When I first explored BitTorrent, I used Azureus. It was good, but it lagged and frequently hogged my memory. I then switched to BitComet, another popular client. However, it is blacklisted by many seeders because it has a bad reputation of leeching.

So I have switched to uTorrent and never looked back. However, I suggest you get it fast and get it now. I have been monitoring its development for some time and I can see it is also getting bloated. In the past it was very lean and compact. But due to its popularity more features were added which is usually unnecessary. As a result it needs more memory to run, and looks more complicated. If the developers aren't careful, uTorrent would violate the idealogy it started with. Latest version is 1.5, but I'm sticking with 1.2 and have no plans to upgrade.

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Memento (www.guyswithtowels.com/dev/apps/memento.html)
Virtual Post-It notes
Post-It notes are one of the biggest productivity boosters in the new century. It has helped people the world over to remember little things like meetings, messages, and online banking passwords. As many office worker's work revolves around the computer, it is logical for vritual Post-It notes to be used. I have looked around for many types of Post-It notes, but the best I've found so far is Memento.

In the creator's own words, he wrote Memento when he "found the only programs available seemed to be either crap, not free, a 7Mb download, or some combination of the above." And Memento is the opposite of all of them. It is very simple and usable, free, and only 345kb. It is fast to add a new post and then hide it for later. It is free of all unneccesary clutter like alarm reminders and password protection. What you get is pure, useful virtual notes.

I use Memento when I create small lists, such as what to bring back to Nilai and even the list of software that I need to recommend in this post.

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Foxit PDF Reader (www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php)
Lightweight PDF reader
PDF is one of the most common document file formats to be used everywhere. Normally we will use Adobe's own Acrobat PDF reader. However, since version 6 Acrobat is becoming a memory hog, and takes almost a minute to open.

With Foxit PDF reader, it should not take more than 10 seconds, and you get all the basic navigational tools. There are some missing features, but if you only need to read some PDF files on your computer, there is no better way to go than Foxit. They also have a commercial Pro version that supports editing.

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Slickrun (www.bayden.com/SlickRun)
Command line program launcher
This is one of the programs that you must download and try it yourself to see why I love it. It is extremely useful for people who need to frequently open programs or documents.

When you want to open any software, such as Mozilla Firefox, there are several common ways that people use. Most people are familiar with the mouse, and they might use it to access the Firefox icon on the Desktop or through the Start menu. Or, you could use the command line, such as the Start menu > Run command.

Most people use the mouse, but for those of us who have used computers long enough, we know that the keyboard is actually faster. Pressing Ctrl-C to copy some text is faster than using the mouse, hunt for the Copy icon, and click on it. Therefore, program launchers were created. They basically assigned specific hotkeys to each program. For example, to launch Firefox you only need to press Ctrl-Alt-F. However, there is a major flaw in the design. You have to remember what the combination is for each software, which is very troublesome as how can you differentiate between similar hotkeys, like Ctrl-Alt-F versus Ctrl-Shift-F?

That's where SlickRun comes in. Instead of assigning long, cryptic hotkeys for each software, you assign a single word that you can remember and logically associate with. For example, I associate Firefox with the command 'firefox', but you may find 'internet' to be more suitable. No problem - SlickRun can accommodate that! You can set commands for almost any application. You only need to remember ONE hotkey - the key to activate SlickRun. For example, I use Ctrl-Q but you can easily change that as well. And it remembers your latest entry and AutoCompletes it. What this means: to start Firefox, I press Ctrl-Q, type 'F', and press Enter key. I don't need to waste time using my mouse, minimize all my windows, and hunt for the Firefox icon to click.

If there's one software you download from this list, THIS IS IT. I purposely put it in the middle to reward those who actually bothered to read everything. Congratulations! We have 4 more programs to go.

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PIXresizer (bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm)
Bulk image resizer
I love photography. Not as fanatic as Dad and David, but I always aim to take good photos instead of mindlessly pressing the shutter. With my digital camera, I have taken thousands of photos by now. Once transferred into the computer, the photos can then be stored, uploaded to the blog, or e-mailed to friends. A common problem is the image file size. Photos taken with modern digital cameras are usually 1 to 2mb. Even with broadband, it is a pain in the you-know-where to actually download 10 photos that are 1.5mb each.

What if we can reduce the image file size to 150kb per photo? It is possible with a combination of JPEG compression and resolution reduction. A photo is usually good enough for the web and email if it is 1 megapixel (1024x768), so we use an image resizer to take all your 5, 6, or even 10 megapixel photos and reduce them to 1.

There are many image resizer tools, but the one I like so far is PIXresizer. You can resize all photos in a particular folder, and then place them in another folder. So you maintain the quality originals as well as the compressed versions, both with the same file name. This has a very niche application, but when I need to resize many photos, nothing beats PIXresizer.

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Winamp 2.92 (www.winampheaven.net/old.php?major=2)
Multimedia player
Winamp is one of the earliest and most popular audio/video players around. So why feature it here? Notice the version 2.92? That's why.

It is now in version 5, and like most modern multimedia players, Winamp is B-L-O-A-T-E-D. It takes up memory, has all the functions that I don't need, and is just too whiz-bang for my liking. Therefore, I have stunted its evolution at just version 2.92. It is stable and good enough. Before you think it is outdated, I can still add all the latest plug-ins and play all the latest Lost episodes I download using uTorrent.

Obviously you won't find 2.92 on the official Winamp site, but the website I linked to above has an archive of almost every Winamp version released. Scroll down the page and get 2.92 or 2.95. If you don't believe me, go ahead and download version 5 as well. In terms of being able to play music and video, they are literally equal.

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wBloggar (www.wBloggar.com)
Desktop blogging software
Most bloggers use a web interface to post new items. However, this can be annoying. We have to launch the web browser, log in to our blog, and then type our post. What if we can launch an application, and then type our post without needing to load any website? wBloggar is the answer.

It can plug-in to many blogging platforms, but it supports several popular platforms like Blogger immediately. If I have a quick thing to post, I will just use wBloggar. But it is not specifically for Blogger, so it does not have several important features like image uploading. I still use Blogger's web interface to type many posts (including this), but for spur-of-the-moment stuff I love wBloggar.

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EvilLyrics (www.evillabs.sk/evillyrics/)
Automatic lyrics displayer
I enjoy music, and I sometimes like to sing along. But I'm quite anal and would like to know that I'm singing a song correctly. So online lyrics are one of the best creations after Zeem! (gotcha!).

Basically, EvilLyrics takes the work out of searching for a lyric. Open EvilLyrics and play the music. It can automatically detect the song being played in Winamp, Windows Media Player, and several others. As long as your music file name has both the artist and the song title (e.g. Pink - Leave Me Alone), it has a good chance of finding it. It uses Google to search and extract the lyrics so it is pretty accurate.

Once in a while it does screw up and it displays the wrong lyrics (or no lyrics). But that happens only 20% of the time. Just think of the effort saved for 80% of your lyrics! And some members contribute the karaoke timings for a song, so it can highlight the appropriate line that is being sung.

Works best for English songs, but it can sometimes get the hanyu pinyin romanization of Chinese songs.

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YES! That's it! You survived (possibly) The Longest Zeem! Post Ever! I'm mightily proud of you, unless you scrolled down here first without reading everything. If so I will have to slap you around with a trout.

The software I recommended may not be the best, but it does its work well enough for me. If you have other alternatives to the above, please suggest them in the comments. Refrain from suggesting software not related to the above categories - I know I didn't cover every fantastic category of software.

Well, with that we will move on to the Photo Week! From tomorrow onwards you get to have a break from reading and instead just enjoy some of the pictures I took (or appear in).

P.S. Happy birthday as well to Jackson, who is 20 years older than this blog!