The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for May 2009
The International Space Station may be a colossally expensive bridge to nowhere, funded on the backs of the people of the world…
… but it’s going to be flying overhead tonight from 8:50 to 8:55. Since they installed the latest bunch of solar panels, when passing, I hear it’s like the second brightest “star” in the sky! I’m going to check it out with Charlotte.
Cool.
I am looking for a cool, quiet place near SF to try my hand at making cured meats.
Do you have a basement with a tiny space in the corner?
Wouldn’t you like to see some curing meats hanging there? I can pay my rent for the space in home made prosciutto, lonza, mortadello, and salami!
The spot should be cool, dark, generally out of the way and not near a car. No one likes gasoline flavored meat!
I was working on inserting Google Calendar into the SWARM blog and… :-(
See this Lee Recommends Computer Programs page too
Recuva recovers files deleted from your Windows computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player. And it’s free!
Ccleaner protects your privacy online and makes your computer faster and more secure
Updated 5-6-09
Ok, I realize that this post has become just a pile of links. It’s a bother to maintain a document over time. So just click around and figure out for yourself what you like.
These programs make everything else work better
Truecrypt
Taskbar Shuffle
PlainPaste replaced with PureText on 10-15-08
Autohotkey
Google Desktop Microsoft Windows Search replaces Google Desktop in 2009!
Cloudmark Desktop anti-spam (get it cheap by using the referral link here)
Having 2 computer monitors
These programs are better in their own right
Moffsoft FreeCalc – a free “calc” replacement with a running tape
Google Chrome Web Browser
Firefox
Sage RSS reader, Fasterfox, Foxytunes, IE Tab
Filezilla
MS Outlook
Mediawiki
Paint Shop Pro 8
Juice
Notepad++ replaces Editpad in 2009!
[last updated 6-12-06 – Lee]
This is my list of Good Programs. Here I’ve listed the computer programs that I find essential and actively use. If you don’t have them, you should ask yourself why! I try a lot of software and I’m pretty picky (bordering on anal) about getting the right tool for the job. Regardless, most everything here is for Windows XP Pro.
Firefox – A replacement for Internet Explorer. It’s faster and more secure than Internet Explorer.
Essential Firefox extensions
ShellTrayInfo – lets you arrange your system tray icons. That way, the system tray icons you use often (IE: the Trillian system tray icon) will always be in the place you look for them first. I put Trillian at the far lower right so I can find it quickly.
Taskbar++ does the same for the taskbar tray.
Truecrypt Excellent software encryption. I put my password files inside an encrypted volume.
Outlook Quotefix fixes message quoting in Outlook. Works great.
Trillian is a better AOL Instant Messenger client than AOL Instant Messenger. The shareware version works great. I bought the package so I could search archives too. VERY useful. IMMerge (mentioned here) can merge Trillian log files from multiple computers for times when you shift from using several computers to just one.
Rename-it – If you’ve ever needed to rename a whole mess of files in a similar manner, this is the tool for the job. And it’s free. And it’s really good. Correction: it is so good, it should be a part of the operating system.
Google Desktop Search – Like Google, but for the content on your PC. It searches through all of my Outlook email in under two seconds while Outlook’s Search feature takes upwards of a minute. Tremendously useful!
Picasa – It’s a very good picture viewing tool. The interface is about the best I’ve seen in such a product and, thanks to the Google company, it’s free.
AutoHotkey – 7-29-04 I’ve just started using AutoHotkey and it’s a much more powerful cousin to Shortkeys. I think this might replace Shortkeys (plus, kudos for the author of AutoHotkey to send me a letter suggesting I try it)
Qliner – A great little program that puts random signatures at the end of your emails. Be sure to get the multi-line patch available via their FAQ or here. I searched through a LOT of quote programs and this is the only one that does a reasonable job of: 1) not needing clumsy database entry; it takes text files. 2) handling multi-line quotes. 3) having a reasonably good randomizing engine.
Note: I switched to Notepad++ in place of Editpad in 2009. EditPad Lite – A great little text editor. I use this 10 times a day. It’s a terrifically suped-up Notepad without all the crapola of Wordpad. They’ve also got EditPad Pro which looks like a great programming tool. The kind of thing you’d live in all day. And EditPad Lite is -freeware-! I finally broke down and bought the full Editpad.
Filezilla – a very good free FTP client
UPS Internet Ship – for shipping packages from home. I’ll never write another UPS label by hand again. They give you free labels and supplies too :-) It’s free and they even give you better rates than if you walk up to a UPS counter!
Winamp – It really whips the llama’s ass. But seriously, it’s the best audio media player. Lots of visualizers and skins. Fast and easy to use.
7-Zip – A great free zip/unzip compression program.
Cloudmark Desktop – It’s a human-powered collaborative spam filter system. It works really well. It’s $4/month or $2 if you use my referral code. My referral code is: hze4hl.
UltraVNC and Team Viewer – Need to log onto your cousin’s computer to fix her whatchamacallit? Have her run Team Viewer so you can get on the machine easily. Then install UltraVNC in Listen mode, put a hole in the firewall and set up a DNS utility in conjunction with DynDNS so you can get on any time.
Synergy. I can share my mouse and keyboard and monitors with 2 computers seemlessly.
Snag it – A great screen capture program. Lots of features but still easy to use.
Calculators for PocketPC. There’s a gazzillion calculators out there. I reviewed some large percentage of them them for a math class in 2004. My top choices are below… I decided not to bore you with the 50 or so rejects. I decided not to use any because the school is loaning me a TI-89 for the semester, but some really shined. Here’s the list, roughly in preferential order
Jasc Paintshop Pro 8 – A really nice all around picture manipulation tool. A lot easier learning curve than Adobe Photoshop
Windows Remote Desktop – Bill has all the hooks built into his operating system so he can make the best remote desktop client. When I’m working on my computer remotely over high speed internet, performance is so smooth that it’s easy to forget I’m working over a wire!
Spybot Search and Destroy – This is a powerful adware/spyware/malware tool. It’s non-crippled shareware (though I paid the man!). Beware, you can mess up your PC if you don’t know what you’re doing with this.
Ad Aware Personal – Another free powerful adware/spyware/malware tool. This one is totally automated so there’s less of a chance of you messing up your PC, but it often doesn’t catch everything. The only way to really catch everything is to go in manually with Spybot.
Xtreeme SiteXpert – (removed 5-6-09. I haven’t used it in a long while. Maybe it’s still good) This is what I used to build all the nifty sitemaps on my website. You know, those clickable directories that bounce you around my site. It’s easy to use, highly customizable and makes nice scripts.
Microsoft Trips and Streets – Running this program locally is a lot faster than using Mapquest over the internet. I use it all the time. Of course, Mapquest’s satellite images are amazing. [Google Maps kicks it’s ass 6-12-06]
PCAnywhere 10 – remotely operate your PC. PCAnywhere is expensive but it has the best security and my company buys it for me :-) [VNC replaces it. PCAnywhere 11 isn’t backward compatible with version 10.5, fuckin thieves. 6-12-06]
BOINC – That’s the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. It’s a system for volunteer distributed computing. As of 4-11-05, I run LHC, Einstein@Home, and Seti@Home. I’ve been running Seti since it started… 7 years or so, yow, I’m old. For Seti, I’m on the team ADP
Hit Squad. [Hey, it costs a rather significant amount of money for electricity to operate a computer with the CPU at full throttle all the time. 6-12-06]
Winzip – The zip program for Windows. [7-Zip replaces it 6-12-06]
Winrar – The compression program for RAR. [7-Zip replaces it 6-12-06]
Paypal – It has made exchanging money on the internet a terrific experience. It’s great for buying and selling online, especially for eBay. Their built-in shipping feature(attached to UPS shipping) is very convenient for selling on eBay. [Everyone knows about this 6-12-06]
FTP Voyager – I will never go back to a command line FTP client. This thing is the best. It makes FTP look like Windows Explorer. The Scheduler program can be very useful for scheduled file moves, backups, etc [Filezilla replaces it 6-12-06].
Tera Term Pro – a very good telnet client. [removed 9-05 – who uses telnet anymore? Putty SSH is da bomb now.]
Mailagent – (4-11-05 update: I haven’t called a unix box my home in 2 years or so) A Perl program (only for Unix) that sorts your mail. I could never figure out how the frig Procmail works… Procmail is completely non-intuitive. Mailagent has worked great for me for years now. Look for it on CPAN. This search should find it. It’s written by Raphael Manfredi
TestTrack Pro – (4-11-05 update: I haven’t used it for 2 years now. I’m not in a development setting.) Defect Management. It’s inexpensive, reliable and works right out of the box. It’s not totally customizable but that’s ok, customization can be a pain anyway.
Audiocatalyst – rips and mp3-ifies music CDs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in Windows XP. Audiocatalyst is dead. Long live Audiocatalyst!
UPS Worldship – (4-11-05 update: I haven’t used it for 2 years now. I’m not in a corporate setting.) For shipping packages from the office (you need a corporate account to use it). I’ll never write another UPS label by hand again. And all the records are kept in a local database.
FTP Control – (4-11-05 I haven’t used it in 2 years now… I just haven’t had the need for such a tool) powerful FTP scripting language. Although I found a few bugs in the language, it’s the best thing out there for FTP scripting if you can’t use FTP Voyager and don’t want to program it in C or Perl
Tardis – (4-11-05 update: Windows XP incorporates a clock update system so I don’t use this anymore. Still great for Windows 98) It simply keeps your computer’s clock correct. Most clocks I see drift 2-6 seconds/day. That’s up to 3 minutes a month. No wonder you were late for your appointment! And it’s FREE, well, it’s shareware but you don’t have to register.
Altdesk – (4-11-05 update: Since I got a second monitor, I don’t need this anymore. It’s still a great product) This replaces Deskwin as my virtual-window tool. It’s not quite as good as Deskwin except that it doesn’t crash (which is really really important)
TClockEx -(4-11-05 update: This program works great with Windows 98 but Windows XP incorporates some of it’s functionality so I don’t use it anymore) With this, the Windows clock in the system tray is finally useful! And it’s free!
Customize Folder Shell Extension – It’s so simple, it changes the color of your folders in Windows File Explorer. Bill should have thought of this, it saves me time looking through my folders every single day and doesn’t change the way you use anything. It’s the bee’s knees. (12-23-03: Originally for Win2K. Windows XP has this function pretty much built in, though the CFSE icons are really good)
SpamKiller – A filtering program that keeps spam in your mailbox to a minimum. It only works on systems with POP mail. It brings me from 40 spams/day to 2-3. McAfee bought it from the original author in 2001. For better or worse, they haven’t done anything with it except rebrand it. (12-23-03: Spamkiller’s algorithm can’t keep up with modern spamming tech. It only blocks about 40% of spam.)
Deskwin – gives you 4 desktops instead of 1. Freeware and it works great in Win98. Unfortunately, v 1.4.1 occasionally loses windows in Win2k so I can’t use it.
Shortkeys Lite – (4-11-05 update. Autohotkey is a better tool. I use that now) It’s this little text replacement program. So instead of me typing my business signature, “Lee C. Sonko | The Computer Guy” I just type “..cg” and it does the rest. It’s good for all kinds of canned messages, especially since it doesn’t work with just any one particular program! And it’s free!
Hurray! One of my all-time favorite comedy-gore movies, Psychos in Love is out on DVD!
This 1987 masterpiece was released on DVD just last week and it’ll be on Netflix tomorrow!
Here’s a pretty good fan-made trailer!
local version:
This feels a little like an “overshare” but hey… I’ve been documenting the treatments I’ve received for my fingernail and toenail fungal infection. Phew, I’ve tried a lot of drugs over the years for this stuff. In high school I had it on my right index finger, then it moved to other fingers, then disappeared from my fingers and on to my toes. After 20 years of treatment (yow) my right big toe is still “yucky”.
Two other blog posts about this:
NonyX Nail Gel – with a hundred great comments
Zetaclear – don’t buy Zetaclear. Here’s why
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A friend of mine introduced me to a new project he’s working on. As the website touts, Etherpad is really real-time collaboration. It lets multiple people work on the same document simultaneously.
I used it to great effect working on a recent document collaboration. I collaborated with 2 other people, making a proposal for the San Francisco Unified School District. Sometimes we worked in person on multiple laptop computers in a coffee shop. Sometimes we worked completely online, using the tools chat functionality. It worked well both ways.
And it is really a hoot watching someone type on their computer and have the each character appear on my screen in realtime, just 1 second delayed.
The product is very new but it accomplishes its core functionality flawlessly. Try Etherpad.
Zetaclear is a scam.
To start with, just look at the ingredients in ZetaClear Clear Nails Solution as mentioned on their website (in order of prevelance).
Undecylenic Acid – Moderately effective. Available from your local Walgreens for $12 per ounce or so. It’s generally available in 10% or 25% strength. I wonder what % is in Zetaclear because they don’t say.
Tea Tree Oil – It’s a pretty good natural anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. It might help with your nail fungus but it costs $10 for 4 oz at your local Walgreens
Clove Oil – smells nice. Kills fungus? Not so much.
Almond Oil – nice oil for back rubs…
Jojoba Oil – wha?
Vitamin E Oil – Good for lots of things. But not for fungus.
Lemongrass Oil – Smells nice on Thai food. Not so much help with fungus.
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Zetaclear Nail Fungus Relief Homeopathic Spray
Ok, then they have this ZetaClear Oral Homeopathic Spray. This is… Need I remind you that homeopathy is quackery? I’m not talking about herbal medicine here but homeopathy. If you still want to buy ZetaClear Homeopathic Spray… man, I’m not stopping you!
Ingredients in Zetaclear Nail Fungus Relief Homeopathic Spray from their web site
Antimonium Curdum 200C
Arsenicum Album 200C
Mancinella 30C
Nitricum Acidum 30C
Sulphur 12X
Thuja Occidentalis 200C (Arbor Vitæ)
Inactive Ingredients: Alcohol 20% v/v, Purified water.
Just a homeopathic reminder, this product is 20% alcohol and 79.999999999999% water (yes, that many 9’s). All the rest is potent medicine! ;-)
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10-10-11 Update: They used to have a terrible bad return policy. I see today that they have changed it to be reasonable. I have struck out my previous comments (below) about their return policy.
Here is the core of their new return policy from their site
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Here is their previous return policy:
Return Policy
Take a look and see that the company’s return policy charges $10 per bottle restocking fee and doesn’t include return shipping. The stuff doesn’t cost $10/bottle to make! So, when it turns out that it doesn’t work, even AFTER you return it and gotten your partial refund, they will have made money on the deal.
Here is the full text of their TERRIBLE return policy:
7. 90 Day Return Policy:
We take great pride in the superior quality of our products and want you to be pleased with your purchase. We believe in offering the very best value, quality and selection to our customers. You may return any unused and unopened item purchased from us for any reason within Ninety (90) days of your purchase. If you purchased your merchandise through a “Buy Three, Get Three Free” or similar offer, all items must be returned in order to receive a refund. If you return a partial amount of merchandise, you will forfeit the free product and receive a refund on the discount price per item based on the total purchase.
Your complete satisfaction is our ultimate goal. You may return any item shipped by HealthBuy.com or GSCM fulfillment, keeping the following in mind:
* You should return the item to us within 90 days of your purchase date.
* There is a $10.00 restocking fee for each unopened item ($5 if item was less than $20).
* We do not accept items back that have been opened or used. Opened Items are Non Refundable.
* Shipping and Handling Fees are Non Refundable.
Example: If you purchase 1 bottle for the price of $39.95, and returned one unused, or unopened, bottle you would receive a refund (less the restocking fee of $10) for a net refund of $29.95.
To request a refund you must obtain an RMA (Return Authorization). Requests must be made online and submitted with your order information and explanation of the why you wish to return the product. You will recieve your RMA via email once our customer service department has identified your eligibility for a return under our policy. Please do not call for an RMA. If you return your product without a RMA number you will not be refunded. Shipping and handling charges are non-refundable. For returns via mail, you must carefully package the product, you are responsible for the cost of return shipping, and we must physically receive the return within the 90 day period. Health Buy reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to reject any return that does not comply with these requirements. Once your return has been received, a refund check will be issued within 30 days and an e-mail confirmation will be sent.
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There are many discussions about nail fungus going on on my blog. Search my blog for the word “fungus” for more.
