Gallery

I’ve just moved most of my photos over from Yapig, to the more powerful Gallery. It’s a shame; I liked the simplicity of Yapig, but it doesn’t support nested galleries yet.

Free Windows Software

Over the years I’ve found quite a few good free programs. I’ve not bought much software since my new installation of XP, and have found most of what I need as either freeware or open source, or both. Here’s my list:

Utilities

• Anti-virus
  AVG 7, Free edition
• Archive / ZIP
  IZArc
  QuickZip
• CD/DVD burning
  DeepBurner
  CDBurnerXP Pro
  Burn at Once - good for quickly burning an ISO
• Spyware removal
  Spybot Search & Destroy
• Multiple entry clipboard utility
  ArsClip
• Calculator
  AnalogX PClcalc - Almost ideal, but not quite; does not parse divides correctly.

Programming

• Text editor
  Notepad++
• C/C++ Development IDE
  Dev C++
• Scripting
  Python - Powerful and object oriented, yet still simple and easy to program.

Internet

• FTP
  FileZilla
• Browser
  Mozilla Firefox
• Newsgroup binary reader
  GrabIt
• PC remote control
  Ultr@VNC
• Web server
  Abyss

Multi-Media

• Image Viewer
  FastStone Image Viewer - Finally, a lightweight, simple image viewer, once you switch from the awful default skin.
  XnView - Good, but slower than the above for fullscreen viewing.
• Video player
  Media Player Classic
• Audio Player
  Winamp 5, Free Edition
• Audio Encoding / Transcoding
  dBpowerAMP Music Converter - Handles MP3, OGG, WMA and more. Simple right-click file explorer interface.

Other

• Celestia - Allows you to explore the universe in 3D. Comes as standard with plenty of objects, but additional can be added, including extremely high resolution textures for solar system objects.
• NASA WorldWind - Like Celestia, above, but concentrates only on the Earth, fetching data from the web as required to give the highest resolution images available freely. Fantastic. Similar to Google Earth, but open source.

In the beginning…

Hopefully, I’ll start adding more to this rather blank front page. Most content is in the Photo Gallery, which you’ll need a password for, for most of them. Mail me for it. I just don’t want them public by default.