PCUGR Shareware SIG - January 26,
2002
Rawls Frazier,
Facilitator
rfrazier
Six braved the rainy
weather for our first meeting of the new year. We had a good time, I think,
exploring some web sites that challenged our minds and perceptions as well
as examining some utilities for our machines. We also had some goodies to
eat as well - this SIG is beginning to compete with our venerable "Pig
SIG" :-) Anyway, first up was a little web surfin'.
 Whatis.com |
 Free
On-Line Dictionary of Computing |
| These two
sites, Whatis?com
and FOLDOC
are great for looking up computing and related technology terms. We
tried out the search functions and noted some techniques that would
make it more likely to "hit" and make the search successful.
For some fun items, in Whatis?com, take a look at Asimov's
Three Laws of Robotics (no self-respecting geek would not know
these :-). Also, for those who want to "talk" cool when
IMing, educate yourself with Chat
Abbreviations. |
Nikon
MicroscopyU
Next stop in
cyberspace was MicroscopyU,
sponsored by Nikon and dedicated to the arcane world of microscopy. Here you
can find tutorials, specs for Nikon's microcopes and, best of all, galleries
of digital images and movies including the "Small World Contest"
winners for various years. You can also get a nice screen saver with the
latest Small World entries. Another nice microscopy site was Molecular
Expressions with links to image galleries, microscopy museums and
interactive on-line microscopes. We especially liked the cool (sorry 'bout
that) snowflake and the geometric-techno looking mixture of aspirin and
sulfur images. Great educational fun.
Illusionworks
After traipsing around in the subminiature, we sojourned over to world of
optical illusions at Illusionworks.
There are too many unusual, surprising, amazing, mind-messing things to
describe at this site - just go there and take a look. The best part about
this site is the illusions are explained. All the classics are there as well
as some great illusion art.
A Periodic Table of the Elements from LANL
Since we were on an educational spurt, we went over to a "period"
piece - one of the best periodic table of the elements out there, A
Periodic Table of the Elements, sponsored by the Los Alamos National
Laboratory Chemistry Division. This table is not only up to date, but has
colorful information and history about each element and it's uses. Don't let
your eyes glaze over and don't skip this one - it is really very interesting
and fun.
GeoAstro
Applet Collection
The GeoAstro
Applet Collection is the place to learn all about the sun and moon
relationships to the earth - rising times, setting times and much more. In
addition, the site author, Juergen Giesen has great pages devoted to
Astronomy, Physics and Chaos Theory and more. Our focus was on his Java
applets that let you calculate the sun or moon positions at any time and
date for a given location. For our own education we used one of the applets
to demonstrate that the shortest day of the year (the winter solstice) does
not have the latest sunrise or earliest sunset! An amazing,
non-intuitive fact.
Where's
George
From the heady world of
Astronomy we let whimsy take over with a visit to Where's
George. At this fun site, you enter the serial number and denomination
of a bill and then find out where this money has been and how fast it has
traveled (in mph, no less :-). Well, almost. The data for the bill has to
have been entered previously by someone else (there are some examples at the
site). However, if your bill isn't there, you can put the info in: location,
date and a comment. Cute.
Since we were in an
educational mode and paying deference to the fact that our computers are
electronic devices, last few stops on the web were electronics tutorials.
The
Multimedia Electronic Literature and Learning Internet Site
Well, this name is certainly a mouth (er, eye?) full. MEL&LIS
is a nice collection of tutorials, projects, software and other information
with an aim toward the needs of EEs. A few things in the tutorials we
enjoyed were the humorous "How
to solder", the into to mixers
and the complete modem
AT command set. Lots of good links here, too.
Electronics
for Beginners
Electronics
for Beginners is a very nice place for the novice to learn some basics.
There is an intermediate
section as well. Both of these are informative without being overwhelming
with theory and math.
Electronics
Tutorials
Our last electronics tutorial stop was Electronics
Tutorial. It was certainly this and much, much more. It's perhaps better
described as an eclectic collection of pages and links. The tutorials were
fine, but some of the other items perhaps outshone these. For the airplane
buffs out there, check out the B-52
picture collection. Then for those looking for great, funny quotes and
sayings, look at Great
Unyielding Truths and Famous
Last Words (don't be surprised by the voice that comes on here :-).
There's more. Have fun surfing around from this spot.
Enough of the web. Time to
look at some software. Our first stop was at Joe'Software
where we looked at his take on how to tweak the Windows UI, Tweak Revisited,
a cool little program called DeskWriter and a color picker for Visual Basic
programming or web pages. If you drop in to his site, be sure to look at his
"Info and Diatribes". He has some interesting info / opinions on
WinXP and disk imaging / backups.
Tweak
Revisited
Tweak
Revisited is Joe's idea of a practical UI adjuster and not a collection
of exotic functions for "hobby tweakers". Some of the functions
provided include a start menu manager, a startup manager (stuff that starts
automatically when the computer first boots), an icon editor and manager, a
cookie manager, a backup manager, a logo manager and more. One feature that
looked interesting was the one to change the folder icons. With this, you
can change specified folders to icons that reflect what's in the folder
rather than have them all look like the same, boring manila things. It was
also easy to revert back to the Windows default. $15 Shareware from Joe'Software
- some of the features are disabled until registered.
DeskWriter
Joe's description of DeskWriter
says it all: "The Desktop Writer is a simple program that
will write text
directly on the Desktop. You can choose text color, background
color, font face and size." Great for leaving a note on the screen when
you have step away for a few minutes. You know, "Back in 5" or
"Toucha this computer and your are DEAD!". To clear the screen,
just refresh it. (Don't know how? For the desktop, right click in a blank
area and choose "Refresh" in the popup menu. Otherwise, if you
written on top of a program window, minimize it to the taskbar and the it back up again.) Freeware from Joe'Software.
VB
Color Code Picker
Last up from Joe's was the VB
Color Code Picker. With this, you can choose a color from the usual
Windows color palate and get the Visual Basic hex or long rgb value as well
as the HTML equivalent color value. A sample of text in the color is also
provided. Once the right color is found, the code can be copy/pasted into
your VB or HTML code. Freeware from Joe'Software.
FolderIcons
One of the reasons to look at Tweak Revisited was the folder icon changing
function. If that is all you were looking for, there is (naturally) a
freeware way to do it as well: FolderIcons.
That's all it does, but it works fine. Resetting back to the default Windows
folder icon is easy, too. Freeware from Max Maischein.
ReadPlease
2002
Tired of taking the time to read the docs or information items that come
with software when you'd rather be trying it out? How about a text to voice
utility to read to you? ReadPlease
2002 is a nice one. Fire it up, paste in the text of interest, choose
from 4 voices, set the reading speed and start it talking. There is both free
version (which we looked at) and a more full featured "Plus"
version for $50. From ReadPlease.
Properties
Plus
Last up was a look at Properties
Plus. This little utility adds more functionality to the Windows
Properties item, available when you right click on a file or folder. With
Properties Plus, you see not only the standard stuff on the normal
Properties dialog, but you can make many more changes: convert the filename
to all upper or lower case; change the file extension; add or remove the
system attribute as well as modify the other file attributes; modify any of
the time stamps - when created, modified and last accessed. These changes
can be done for single, multiple or all the files in a folder. Freeware from
Kish Designs.
That was it for the day.
One last question from the group was how to trace back the source of an
address on the internet. We took a quick look at the TRACERT command
provided with Windows. A more friendly, graphical alternative is Neo
Trace Express.
Thanks, as always, to Bernie Stepan
for the meeting room, Internet connection and coffee supplies
at RE/MAX Marina, Petaluma. It was a special treat for us to have him join
our group this time.
RE/MAX Marina
775 Baywood Dr. #100
Petaluma, CA
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