SIGNIFICANT BITS

April 2007

by Sean N. Henderson

Having just organized a focus group for DACS.org this past month along with others on the committee, I'm finding this installment a little rushed as far as deadlines. My intended article about the roles computers play in our lives will have to wait until next month. This month, the topic is a collection of applications and utilities for both Windows and UNIX.

ERRATA

Let me begin by clearing up some errors in the last two Significant Bits articles. In the February column the MP3 player I wrote about was made by “Creative Labs”. The March article made mention of an Amiga 4000, which should be the model Amiga 3000. Also in the same column some of the software links got skewed. The on-line version should have these corrected.

MORE ABOUT SOFTWARE SEQUENCERS

I did get a chance to check out Sonar 6 Professional music sequencing/production software. Morgan at East Coast Music Mall was kind enough to lend me a NFR copy. What a great software package! I saw the previous demos, and this package is just all-around slicker and more thought out.

However, I've come to the conclusion that my Gateway MX6436 laptop is simply not able to do any serious music sequencing without adding external hardware - and even then, maybe not. So I'm in the market for a new laptop, probably one made by Rain Recording. I will be looking for one that has old-school parallel and serial ports, and an on-board GM-compatible sound-module, not just a version of MS GS Wavetable SW Synth. Other features to look for include three audio-related eighth-inch stereo jacks (mic/headphones/line-in) instead of two (mic/headphones), and an analog volume control vs. using a Fn-key type thing. Two PCMCIA ports would be nice as well.

By the way – thanks to everyone with their help and suggestions for somehow faking out XP to believe there's a parallel port on my laptop. Alas, none of the suggestions panned out.

SOFTWARE PICKS

My current browser of late is a program called Flock. (http://www.flock.com) I like it because it comes with provisions for blogging, image management, link management and other things already built in. It just looks nicer, behaves nicer, and uses the same page-rendering engine as Firefox. I use some of the default services suggested with Flock, such as del.icio.us and Flickr. My blog uses Wordpress hosted on SDF (aka freeshell.org and numerous other synonyms), and also actionable from within Flock. I'm looking at migrating from Flickr to Coppermine, also hosted on SDF.

I'm still using terminal-based email. Web-based email provided by the likes of Google and Yahoo just do not do it for me. But, there's another answer for those seeking a server-side mail application, though it's not delivered via a web browser, but via a terminal session. I access a program called 'pine' (http://www.washington.edu/pine) on SDF using a ssh-protocol client called PuTTY. (http://www.putty.nl) PuTTY gives me ssh access, and once 'in', I fire up 'pine' on the server-side and chew through my email that way. Like all things UNIX, the ability to work with things in a batch mentality (wholesale) vs. pointilistically (retail) goes a long way with me. For instance, attachments get handled by 'piping' the email message into a handler that converts these binary file-types into plain-text readable format. So, I get the text portion of PDFs, spreadsheets and word processing documents. This is all I need 99% of the time. Pine is very fast at selecting and organizing email, and selections can be done on an amazing amount of criteria. To some this may not matter, but for someone like myself who has many interests, groups, memberships, accounts, and so on, this flexibility is key. Another nice thing about Pine is it lets me save a message while ditching its attachment. That's a key feature for me because a lot of people send me attachments and not links.

Since I'm a big terminal (command-line) user, I was thinking there's got to be a command-line calendaring program in UNIX. I was right and discovered a program called 'pal'. (http://palcal.sourceforge.net) In checking SDF, (http://sdf.lonestar.org) I found it was installed there and so started using it. Some of the .conf files were missing at SDF, so the SourceForge site was useful in finding the pal.conf file. A little editing with 'vi' and now I'm using a command-line app for calendaring – just like that! Such heaven. Another such program is GNU's 'gcal'. Using 'pal' is simple. Just type 'pal -d today' and get 5 lines of calendar plus the day's history and calendar events. Typing 'pal -m' let's me interactively add an event. Or, I could just hand-hack my personal .pal file myself if I wanted to make a whole bunch of changes at once. Try doing that in MS Outlook! The 'pal' program also lets you check other user's calendars as well. Typing 'pal -h' will get you all the options, and typing 'man pal' will get you more information.

On a (lengthy) side note (really a long-winded rant) - programs like MS Outlook continue to baffle me, and I truly cannot understand why people use such awful, complicated software. All the features touted by MS Outlook are features present naturally in versions of both UNIX and Linux operating systems. Plus, so many of the commands I use when forced to use MS Outlook are buried in sub menus. And no amount of configuration in MS Outlook will force plain-text emails in all situations, which is my preference. There doesn't seem to be a corresponding or logical key sequence for many features I like. I'm used to Ctl-n being a new email message, regardless of what screen I'm in. MS Outlook makes this key sequence to me “New screen-dependent object”, rather than “New email message regardless of screen”. The Journal part of Outlook is a crime, and seems to stick these entries where it wants them instead of an exact time (or no time) that I choose. Then there's trying to import-and-export .pst files from one box to another, which never seems to work because the other box had Outlook 200 vs the new box having Outlook 2003. So much bother for so little benefit.

Despite my current interest in 'pal', I'm still a big fan of the PIM software that comes with Palm Devices - Palm Desktop. One plug-in piece that runs inside this is called SplashID. It's a very simple database application, but it works great at keeping track of all my passwords, logins, combination locks, serial numbers, and so on. It's well worth the price. Obviously, one could build their own mobile database app using MobileDB or similar, but this is already done, so why do the double-work? Unlike programs like Roboform, it doesn't paste or automatically fill in login info, but I'm handy at typing and doing cut-n-paste so it's no bother. Despite other DACS member recommendations, passwords are something I don't want handled automatically.

TWEAKS

Any version of Windows seems to need a lot of corrective configuration right out of the box. The first thing I do when I get a new machine is uninstall and disable all the programs that come with Windows as a sweat-heart deal. So that means getting rid of McAfee or Norton anti-virus programs and replacing them with something saner. (My current fave is Awil's Avast! Anti-virus.) If your new machine has some MS Office trial ware or student ware, ditch those immediately and load Open Office 2.0, or upgrade to a full MS Office version. Don't even waste any time with the trial ware. I get rid of absolutely everything having to do with AOL. Then I download an alternate browser, and get that going.

Another thing to do immediately is to download two of Microsoft's PowerToys – Open Command Prompt Here, and TweakUI. For XP users the link is http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx. Using TweakUI, I immediately ditch the Recycle Bin icon on the Desktop, include the Windows version info on the Desktop, and adjust the Places menu to include “...\All Users\Documents” and “Program Files” directories. These two PowerToys are so important, I really cannot work on a Windows PC without them.

Other tweaks include in order: display full path in both address bars and title bars, show hidden files, and unchecking “hide extensions for known file types.” These tweaks are usually performed by clicking in the menu bar of a folder: Tools > Folder Options... > View. Then I check off the particular boxes and radio buttons in the Advanced Settings part of the window. I also like unchecking “hide protected operating system files” so that I can see everything in the folder. My default view setting for all folders is “detail view.” Looking at a folder full of randomly dispersed icons seems like chaos to me.

When I first came across the launch bar next to the Start button on the Task Bar, I didn't really see the point, but now I'm loving it. In particular I use it for putting two shortcuts there for shutdown.exe. One is for logoff and the other for shutting down. This way it's a one-click thing to shutdown or logoff my machines – the way God intended.

The last hack I'll mention here is one I got from a “Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition”. Edit the hosts file to loop back ad-related websites. This works wonderfully. The link mentioned in the book is http://www.everythingisnt.com/hosts.html. This will make a huge difference in your computing environment. One tip I have for this is copy or rename your machine's 'hosts' file (no extension, so no file associations) to something like 'hosts_orig.txt' first, before editing or replacing the actual 'hosts' file.

I'll leave you with a couple of book recommendations. Both are published by O'Reilly. The first is “Windows XP Hacks, 2nd Edition” by Preston Gralla, and the other is “Windows XP Annoyances” by David Karp. I consider both of these books essential.

That's it till next month. Have fun!

 



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