Posts Tagged with Software

Desktoptopia is really cool: it’s a desktop wallpaper changer, but the wallpapers are downloaded directly from Desktoptopia’s collection of selected designer wallpapers. Most of the one’s I’ve seen so far are really nice. This was originally available only for Mac OS X, but the team recently released a beta version for Window’s. It’s dead simple to use and definitely worth a look if you’re constantly looking for decent wallpapers.

What fun. I had planned to do a few things in the last couple of days, and then my power gets knocked out. Not the whole house, of course; just my room. It probably won’t be fixed until after I leave, either, so I finally broke down and moved everything into our spare room. It’s cluttered, but at least it works. Anyways, on to the fun: it’s the Year-End Omnipost!

Virginia

I was lucky enough to spend a week in Virginia with a good friend and had a blast. We spent a lot of time watching movies, but I also got to visit Washington DC for the first time, as well as meet some new people. The flight back was an experience too; flying was fun, but with a two-hour layover in Atlanta meant that I didn’t get home until 5:30am the next day (that’s about twelve hours from taking off in D.C. to arriving home in Michigan). I’d just like to thank everyone in Virginia again–particularly the one that made the trip possible–for an awesome time.

Return to Oz

Liliy finally got me to watch Return to Oz, an awesome movie that’s much better than the original. Unless you completely hate the original film, you should definitely see it.

MO and RPG

Thanks to the freak power outage, I haven’t had time to get to any new Maikeru On themes; I’d hoped to do both a Christmas and 2008 theme, but it looks like they’ll both be late. On the plus side, the MORPG prototype forum is up if anyone is interested in participating. Even if you don’t have anything particular to contribute, you can still join the forum, post in the general section, and test out new features as they are added.

Half-Life

Half-Life has devoured most of my time these past few days. I got The Orange Box for Christmas, and ended up purchasing Half-Life from Steam so I could get the backstory for Half-Life 2. Having finished the original and Portal and started on Half-Life 2, I can safely say that these are some of the greatest games ever. Coolest moment so far: in Half-Life 2, there’s a spot where you have to load bricks onto one end of a see-saw platform to  get the other end up high enough to reach a ledge. It sounds boring, but those kinds of physics are rarely found in a game, and that level of detail and interaction really help to immerse you in the experience.

Dai-Guard and D.Grey-Man

I finally got Dai-Guard (perfect collection) for Christmas. I’m only six episodes in, but it’s definitely one of the better mecha anime I’ve seen. It’s always funny to see a stuffy board of directors argue over forms and funds while their pay-roll pilots launch the mecha with their say. The real genius of Dai-Guard is that it presents a fairly plausible picture of what things would probably be like if an independent corporation had it’s own giant mecha: the thing constantly breaks due to poor construction, and the corporate board sees it as a money pit that should never actually be used.D.Grey-Man is awesome, by the way. It’s the first actual manga I’ve read, but it’s good. And it’s probably going to eat away at my bank account now.

Safari

I’ve been playing with the Firefox 3 beta release for awhile now, and it’s really good. Unfortunately, it’s also not compatible with most of my extensions, and it made me realize that without those, there’s no particular reason for me to use Firefox. I decided to give Apple’s Safari a shot, and I’m extremely pleased so far. It’s really slick, and lightning-fast compared to Firefox. Firefox 3’s address bar autocomplete is still prettier, but Safari has it beat on speed. I might end up sticking with it.

And Finally…

… here’s to a new year; to new beginnings, new places, new opportunities, new experiences, and new people. To overcoming, letting go, and finding happiness. To good times and good friends. Here’s to what will hopefully be an explosively awesome year. Happy new year everyone!

I was planning to do a series of posts under the Essential Software title, wherein I would select a piece of software I consider essential for my computing experience and detail what it does and why I like it. As I worked through the first post, however, it occurred to me that I only have about ten pieces of software I consider absolutely essential, and most for pretty straightforward reasons. Breaking it all down into a single post for each application seemed like overkill, so here’s a complete list of the software I can’t live without.

• 7-Zip: File archiver. Supports every compression format known to man, as well as many known only to monkeys. It’s own 7z compression is incredibly effective compared to the more common zip or rar formats and is excellent for backing up large files.
• BitTorrent: Torrent handler. I used to use µTorrent, but BitTorrent gobbled them up and re-branded it as their official client. The original is still available and in development, as far as I know. The officially-branded version has a nicer icon, though.
• Firefox: Web browser. I’d rather use Apple Safari or Opera, but Google owns me. I need the Google Toolbar, so my options are Internet Explorer (which should be avoided at all costs for reasons explained everywhere else on the Internet) and Mozilla Firefox. Guess who won. The FireFTP add-on is really nice too.
• ISORecorder: Disc image burner. This is a really focused application—it’s sole purpose is to integrate .iso image burning into Windows. If you have no idea what an .iso image is, you probably don’t need this.
• iTunes: Music player. It’s the best at what it does. If you aren’t using it, you really should be.
• Pidgin: Instant messenger. Nearly everyone I chat with on a regular basis uses AIM. I’ve toyed with LightAIM, but it’s still a piece of crap. I’d be using GoogleTalk if I could convince everyone to sign up for a Gmail account, but some people seem absolutely dead set on keeping their add-loaded IM experience. Maybe if that big Google/AOL deal that was supposed to bring AIM integration to Google Talk ever gets going. I still maintain user accounts on five separate IM networks, so it’s nice to be able to seamlessly connect to all of them at once.
• Shareaza: Peer-to-peer handler. For those rare instances when I need to do something over a P2P connection. I rarely use the thing anymore, but it’s nice to know I have it should the need arise.
• VLC: Video player. Plays everything. Even stuff you’ve never heard of from dimensions you couldn’t imagine in ways that would blow your mind. Except Real files.

And that’s it. Those eight programs cover nearly everything I do with my computer on a regular basis. A large part of that is because a lot of what I do these days runs through Google (Gmail, Reader, Calender, etc.), which effectively eliminates the need for an e-mail application, feed aggregator, calender, and a number of other applications. The FireFTP add-on also eliminates the need for a separate FTP application. Much as I despise Firefox for it’s slow rendering and ability to eat vast amounts of RAM with little effort, it’s nice to be able to consolidate the majority of my needs in it.

There are two things missing from the above list. One is Microsoft Office 2007, which is the best office suite at any price. If you’re stuck with 2003 and refuse to pay, there’s always OpenOffice.org, which is slightly better than Office 2003. If you don’t mind paying, however, get one of the cheaper editions with Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Much like Vista, everyone loves to hate, but it really is worth it.

The other is the Adobe Creative Suite. Specifically Photoshop and Dreamweaver, though I’ve started using Illustrator and Flash much more recently, and have sworn myself into learning InDesign at some point. Any edition of the Creative Suite is probably beyond both the price range and technical knowledge of the average user, so don’t run out and pick this one up. If you really want to play with your photos or slap together a website, try out Photoshop Elements (which is nearly Photoshop for about 1/6 the price) and Notepad. Seriously. It’s a pain, but it is the best way to learn.