Basically, you take a screenshot of a couple of words from the font you’re trying to identify and upload the picture to What The Font. Within seconds, it suggests several fonts that it thinks are close matches.

There are two drawbacks to the system:

1. It seems to fail miserably when letters touch, meaning cursive fonts are beyond its abilities, and
2. I’ve never seen it return any free fonts. Every font that it suggested was sold by myfonts.com.

The site easily identified the Choose Your Own Adventure font, and was able to pick up a minor detail that identified Despair.com’s demotivational posters as being in Caslon 3 Roman and not Times New Roman.

On the other hand, it failed miserably when I tried to identify the fonts in the headers of several sites including Just A Wee Bit Closer, CO-OB, The Learned Fangirl, and Savage Chickens.

So, the system isn’t perfect, but might at least get you moving in the right direction when you’re trying to find a specific font and don’t know where to start.

Check it out here: What The Font?

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5. ClamWin

Despite a badly stripped down UI, Clamwin has a cool factor because it’s one of the few (if not the only) open source virus scanners out there. Unfortunately, the detection rates are lower than other available free products, and the product lacks an on-access component. Without an on-access scanner, this program is only able to clean your PC after it has become infected, and really offers no protection against virus threats.

Rating: Not recommended

4. BitDefender Free

Although the commercial version of BitDefender falls in the top ten of most antivirus tests, the free version lacks an on-access scanner, making useless at preventing infection.

Rating: Not recommended

3. AntiVir Personal

The commercial version of Antivir was the top ranked antivirus product in tests from both AV Comparatives and AVTest, and although I was happy that it detects rootkits, I was a little surprised that it didn’t have an antispyware component. I was even more surprised by how often a product that doesn’t scan for adware or spyware gets ranked as the number one choice in a fair amount of reviews of free virus protection.

The product has a higher than average updating schedule, and averages 31 updates a week when compared to 9 or 11 for other products. That could be viewed as a good thing because they’re releasing patterns faster, or it could be viewed as a traffic generating nuisance. Hyper updating schedule aside, even though it’s common to do adware and spyware scanning with other free tools like SpyBot Search & Destroy, the lack of an antispyware component makes the free version of this product incomplete.

Pros: Highest virus detection rate, Antivirus, rootkit protection, phishing protection, heuristic scanning, automatic updates
Cons: No adware or spyware protection, hyper updating schedule.

Rating: Not recommended

2. AVG Free

AVG Free is another common recommendation for free antivirus. It includes antivirus, antispyware, an e-mail scanner, and a link scanner that will make recommendations on the safety of sites that come up in search results. It has a clean interface and decent scan speed, but it lacks a few features (IM protection, download scans, rootkit protection) which really should be common protections by now. The product certainly offers more than Antivir Free, and has detection rates that routinely put it in the top 5 products in testing, but it doesn’t offer as much protection or features as Avast.

Pros: Antivirus and antispyware, search result safety notification, heuristic scanning, e-mail scanning, clean user interface
Cons: No rootkit protection, no IM protection, no download scanning

Rating: Recommended for people who can’t tolerate the Avast user interface.
Download: AVG Free from AVG

1. Avast Home Edition

In terms of detection rates, Avast falls about a percentage point under AntiVir Premium, but it’s still in the 98-99% range, earning it a spot in the top 3 detection rates from AV-Test and AV Comparatives. The free version of Avast offers more features than any other free scanner that I’ve found, and it’s missing only a few features (task scheduling, command line scanner, and a web script blocker) from the pro version. The script scanner would be highly useful for anyone who has kids, but the command line scanner and task scheduler are no big loss to the average person.

You know that there’s a catch though, right? Actually there are two catches, but they’re relatively small. First off, it seems that all the money that could’ve been spent on “pretty” went into “protection”, so the Avast user interface is not in the least bit intuitive. By default, the application looks exactly like like a music player (complete with a play and stop button), which makes it confusing to navigate. The application supports skinning, so the situation can be remedied by downloading a new skin such as MacLover OS X or Avist that make the scanner look more like a virus scanner. The product also requires a free registration within 60 days to continue getting updates, but that’s the price for such a high level of protection for free.

Pros: Antivirus, antispyware, antirootkit, P2P and IM shield, intrusion detection, HTTP proxy (for filtering web traffic), boot time scan, self protection, downloadable skins to change appearance.
Cons: Requires registration, looks like a music player by default, higher memory usage than other scanners, and requires registration to receive updates.

Rating: Highly Recommended
Download: Avast Home Edition from Alwil Software

So What Do I Use

Because I’m currently a Comcast Cable customer, I get McAfee VirusScan for free (see my post on How To Get McAfee For Free for a completely free and legal way to get it for yourself). It includes both adware and spyware protection, and although it has lower detection rates than Avast and AVG, it has fewer false positives and includes a firewall. I could defend my choice, but it’s really just a result of working with the product for a decade in the corporate arena. For people who don’t have Comcast, I tend to recommend and install Avast because it’s the most complete, free protection available.

What do you pay for your antivirus? Are you thinking of switching to free? Let us know in the comments…

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For the personal user, virus protection has gone from a software purchase to a protection racket, with consumers paying between $40 and $80 per year to have adequate virus protection on their PC’s. Once those consumers stop subscribing, they no longer get updates and their virus protection becomes ineffective in a matter of days. Don’t get me wrong. $40 a year is a small amount to ask for all the research and testing goes into keeping PC’s protected against the latest threats, but for a lot of people, a recurring $40 payment is a lot of dough.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get something that works as well as a commercial product, and get it for free? Well, you can. There are several products on the market that offer virus protection for no cost, but they vary widely in the amount of protection they offer. If you’re not a security expert, how do you pick the product that gives you the best protection? You don’t need to be a computer wizard to find the answer, but you do need to know who to look to for accurate information.

Figure Out Who Not To Trust

You could simply follow the pack and download one of the most popular virus protection products, or poke around for reviews on the web, but both of those methods will tell you that Avira’s Antivir is the best free product out there. The reviews will claim all kinds of certifications, and tell you that the free version of Antivir will not only protect you from viruses and adware, but it will stroke your hair and ward off bad dreams as you drift off to sleep.

Despite popular opinion, it’s simply not true. When a site says that the free version of Antivir is a VB100 and ICSA certified product that removes the highest percentage of viruses and spyware according to independent testing labs, they are actually referring to the commercial version of the product, Antivir Premium, which costs around $54 per year. The free version of Antivir doesn’t even have an antispyware component included in it, yet many review sites on the wild, wild web don’t fact check and simply attribute testing results from the commercial version to the free version as if they’re the same. They are not.

The same goes for BitDefender. If you ever see a review recommending the (current) free version of BitDefender, click the little X in the browser tab because those people did no research whatsoever. While the commercial version of BitDefender is usually ranked in the top 10 for virus protection, BitDefender Free is an on-demand virus scanner that lacks an on-access scanning component. That means that the free version has nothing that stays resident in memory to protect your PC. Nothing. The best you can do with BitDefender Free is get infected with a virus, and then scan for infections later. Any site claiming that the free version is a worthy choice to stand guard at the gates of your PC might not be a site you should take recommendations from.

You hope that the reviews you read were written by people who know what they’re talking about, but you never can tell if a site is recommending a particular virus protection product because it “seems” better, because they heard it was better, because they are trying to sell you something, or because are they simply parroting advice that they found during a five minute liaison with Google. The question becomes, who can you trust to recommend a product to protect your PC?

Get Independent Test Results Of the Commercial Versions

There are four independent testing companies that you can look to for quality virus protection information. Unfortunately, they generally only test commercial software and you’ll rarely see a free product make their lists. The best that we can do is look at the test results of the commercial versions and then see how close the tested versions are to the free versions. It’s an incomplete method, but it tends to produce better results than blindly trusting the advice of sites that may not be qualified to recommend your antivirus product.

1. AV Comparatives
   AV Comparatives is a non-profit Austrian company that does independent, vendor requested testing of antivirus products. To get their latest test results, go to their home page and click on “Comparatives”. Click on “Online Results” to get a chart comparing all the different virus protection products. For a more in-depth report, click on the “Report” link. There you can see how fast products scanned, how many false positives they got, and what percentage of viruses they caught at the default and maximum settings. Here you can find the September 2008 results.
2. AV Test
   AV Test is a German company that specializes in the testing of antivirus products. On their main page, you can usually find something under the news section that links to their latest antivirus test results, such as the September 2008 comparison.
3. VB100 Certification
   Virus Bulletin has been a major source for virus and malware news since 1989. Their certification, the VB100 was first introduced in 1998 and requires that a program detect 100% of known malware with no false positives with both on-demand and on-access scanning at its default settings. You can’t get the details of how products fared without being a paid subscriber to their magazine, but with a free registration, you can access the pass or fail histories of any virus product that they have tested in the VB100. Unfortunately, this Yes/No answer provides little information beyond helping to support or refute the more detailed testing results from organizations like AV Comparatives or AV Test.
4. ICSA Certification
   The International Computer Security Association (ICSA) is an independent testing and certification division of Verizon. Most of the time, free antivirus products will not get ICSA certification, but their commercial versions will, so this step is only a guideline to get an idea of how good a commercial product is. Like the VB100 result, this certification can only serve to support or refute more detailed testing results. Go to the ICSA homepage and click on “Antivirus”, and then select “Certified Products” from the dropdown box. You should end up at the Antivirus Certification List.

See How Close The Free Version Is To The Commercial Version

This is the important step that a lot of review sites miss, and it is critical in evaluating a free virus protection product. If we look at the top three results from AV Test and AV Comparatives that have free versions, we end up with Antivir Premium, Avast Professional, and AVG Antivirus. Because those are the commercial products, the test results don’t tell us anything unless we verify that the free version is very similar.

Every company offering a free version will have a chart comparing what additional features you can get on their antivirus products with each higher payment, and those charts will tell us how the features of the commercial and free products compare. If a free product is vastly different than its commercial product (as is the case with top rated AntiVir, which lacks an adware/spyware component), we know that the ratings aren’t going to apply like they would in a case where the free product and the commercial product are more closely related (as is the case with Avast, which is almost identical).

A Few Antivirus Version Comparison Charts

1. Antivir (version comparison)
2. Avast (version comparison)
3. AVG (version comparison)

Conclusion

You can get antivirus for free, but figuring out if there is a penalty to using a free product requires that you know who to trust for your information. Getting professional testing results for commercial products and verifying that the free products are similar to what was tested can get you the protection you need at a price that you can live with.

For a comparison of a number of free virus protection products using this method, be sure to check out the follow up article, You Want Free Antivirus? You Got It!.

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If your PC were a book and your files were chapter 9, Windows delete is like removing chapter 9 from the index, but leaving the pages in tact. The data may not look like it’s there to the average user, but until you write over that space, anyone with a free file recovery tool and access to your PC has a chance of recovering your files. That’s why if you’re going to retire a PC, the best thing that you can do is to completely scrub your hard drives by overwriting every last block with multiple passes of random data. Governments, corporations, and paranoid geeks have done this for years, and in this age of identity theft, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t either.

Don’t start sweating now. You don’t have to have a room full of mainframes or know anything about Star Trek to scrub your drives clean. With a free piece of open source software and the short set of instructions below, you can ensure that your private data will be banished to the land of wind and ghosts, which is way beyond the reach of anyone without a clean forensics lab and some incredibly skilled data recovery personnel.

Warning: I’m going to spell this out on the off chance that you are skimming. Creating this disc and using it on a PC or Mac will overwrite everything on the hard drive. You won’t be able to surf the internet, chat, play games, balance your checkbook, or update your Facebook profile on it anymore because it is not going to boot. This is not a way to clean spyware or securely empty the recycle bin. This is a method to use only when a hard drive is going to leave your hands and you don’t know whose hands it may fall into. Ok? Back to skimming.

How To Securely Erase Your Personal Data Using DBAN

1. Download DBAN. You can download the installer to create a floppy disk, or you can download the ISO to use with your favorite CD burning program to create a boot CD.
2. Insert the CD or floppy you created in step 1 and start the machine. If your PC boots normally and not into the DBAN program, your PC doesn’t include the floppy or CDROM drive in the boot sequence. You need to go into the bios and change the boot order to include the drive that includes your DBAN disk.
3. Press [enter] when you arrive at the Darik’s Boot And Nuke splash screen to start DBAN in interactive mode. This will take you to the drive selection screen.
4. Select the drive(s) you want to erase using the arrow keys and space bar.
5. Press M to set the erase method. There are six choices, including standards from the Department of Defense and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but most are rated only medium security options. The only two that are rated high security are the Gutmann method and the PRNG Stream. The Gutmann method does 35 passes of data, but it takes much longer and provides no extra benefit over the PRNG stream on modern drives.
6. Select PRNG Stream by using the arrow keys and space bar.
7. Press R, [backspace], 8, [enter] to set the number of rounds to 8. Most of the methods only use one round and multiple passes, but because the PRNG Stream only makes 1 pass, we have to set the rounds to 8 to ensure a high security wipe. You should now see rounds set to 8 at the top of the main screen.
8. Press [F10] to start the wipe, and walk away for a while because properly scrubbing your personal data off of a hard drive can take several hours to complete.

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If you’re ready to get started, download the Free Polaroid Template to your PC by right clicking and selecting Save Link As.

For people who need a little bit of guidance, instructions on how to make a Polaroid with this template in GIMP are included below.

Enjoy!

How To Use The Template To Make a Polaroid With Gimp

1. Open the Polaroid template in GIMP.
2. Click File / Open As Layers and open the picture you want to use.
3. Scale the image to approximately 314px tall by 302 px wide.
4. Open the Layers Dialog by clicking [CTRL]-L
5. Click on the image layer.
6. Click on the green down arrow to move it underneath the Polaroid template.
7. Position the picture in the middle of the template.
8. Click Layer / Layer to Image Size
9. Click Colors / Brightness and Contrast and jack up both brightness and contrast on the image because Polaroids weren’t known for their quality.
10. Open the Layers dialog and right click on the Polaroid template layer and select Merge down.
11. If you want to put writing on the Polaroid like in my shadow people post, find a good handwriting font, type out your message, rotate the text -2 degrees, and apply a 1 percent Gaussian blur to the text layer. Merge the text down the same way you did in step 10.
12. If you want to get a little fancy, you can use the rotation tool to rotate your new Polaroid slightly so that it looks like you’re so cool that you don’t care where your Polaroids land when you throw them on your web page. I leave that choice up to you and your level of cool.
13. Click File / Save As and save your picture to your desired format.

Special thanks to Chip O’ Toole for taking the time to measure a Polaroid so the rest of us don’t have to.

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And that’s where the fun ends. Nearly every time I tried to add a new drum kit, Hydrogen would crash with the following error:

Microsoft visual C++ Runtime Library

Assertion Failed
Program: hydrogen.exe
File: instrument.cpp
Line 122
Expression pDrumkitInfo

The only response I could find via my good friend, Google, was that I could solve the problem by switching to Linux. I’m all for Linux, but I’ll dig out my old Boss DR-550 drum machine before I switch O/S’s to play around with a drum machine. I have a lot of respect for people who develop free products, and a lot of sympathy for people who have to work on help desks, but telling someone to switch O/S’s to solve an issue isn’t a solution. It’s a cop out.

I like Hydrogen quite a bit, so I wanted to see if I could come up with a solution. It only took 20 minutes of poking around the Hydrogen directories to figure out what was going on. If you try out Hydrogen and get to the point that you want to add more kits, you don’t need to switch to Linux to do it. You can add kits on Windows (without tearing your hair out) as long as you know couple of small, yet important, pieces of information.

First, Hydrogen doesn’t actually support importing drum kits in the .h2drumkit format like you would expect it to. It’s a known bug, so the sooner you forget about the import button, the better off you’ll be. Second, Hydrogen is ridiculously finicky about how drum kit directories are named. It not only cares what you name your directories, but whether you use upper or lower case.

If you follow the instructions below, you’ll be crash free and adding kits to your heart’s content. Happy beat making. Long live free software.

How To Install New Drum Kits In Hydrogen Without Crashes

1. Download a kit from Hydrogen’s drum kit page.
2. Unzip the file until you have an .h2drumkit file. The .h2drumkit file is just a zip file containing a bunch of sounds (kick drum, snare, high hat, etc.) and an XML file. The file is usually a zip of a zip of a zip, so you use your favorite unzipping tool (such as 7-Zip) to unzip the .h2drumkit until you have a folder of audio files and an XML file called drumkit.xml.
3. Open the drumkit.xml in your favorite text editor (Notepad++, anyone?) make note of the line that looks like <name>DrumKitName</name>.
4. Create a folder under <installation dir>\Hydrogen \data \drumkits that is named exactly the same as what you found between <name> and </name> in the drumkit.xml file. If the folder that you create isn’t exactly the same as the name line, Hydrogen will crash when you try to use the drum kit.
5. Copy all of the files that you unzipped in Step 2 into the folder you created in Step 4.
6. Now, open Hydrogen and click on “Sound Library” and your new kit should be available under “System drumkits”.

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However, in those cases where even a small amount of JPEG compression leaves distortions in my images, I opt for the lossless compression of PNG files, so that the images will look exactly the way I want them to. To offset the larger file size, I use an excellent (and free) command-line utility called PNGOut to reduce the PNG files another 10-15%.

Today, I wanted to see how PNGOut stacked up against its peers, so I exported one of my old Finetune Friday posters from Inkscape and ran it through three different PNG compression utilities. Even though I tried some of the more advanced options of the other utilities, PNGOut still provided twice the reduction of its closest competitor.

Orginal PNG File
218k

Lossless Compression
PNGCrush: 212k – 2.8% reduction
Optipng: 206k – 5.5% reduction
PNGOut: 195k – 10.6% reduction

Lossy Compression (For Comparison)
JPEG (no compression): 128k – 41.3% difference
JPEG (5% compression): 71k – 67.4% difference

PNGOut Download:

If you’re going to use PNG, I highly recommend using PNGOut.

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Thanks to some generous folks sharing their Inkscape tips and tricks, you can now create better looking graphics with less of a learning curve than ever before. I’ve picked over 45 of the best tutorials and guides (spanning from basic to advanced) to get you creating crisp vector graphics like the pros.

Enjoy!

Official Inkscape Download

Inkscape.org

Official Inkscape Docs

Basics

Advanced

Shapes

Tracing

Caligraphy

Elements

Interpolation

Tips and tricks

Keyboard and mouse reference

Video Tutorials

Raindrops

Glass buttons

Shiny buttons

Realistic pinup polaroids

Shatttered photos

Pop people out of photos

A quick lightsaber

Perspective text

Basic animation with Inkscape and png2swf

Creating comics with Inkscape

Objects and Effects

Web 2.0 badges

Sticker with folded edge

Glassy Buttons

Shiny arrows

Postage stamps

Detailed shadow tutorial

Shiny chrome effect

Reflected chrome effect

Woodgrain effect

Realistic hair

Rubber stamp

The grunge look

Realistic paper

Cartoon dynamite

Shattered text

3-D Text

3-D Ropes and Tubes

3-D Objects

Flow charts

Architectural modeling (with Inkscape and Blender)

General Resources

Tavmjong Bah’s Guide to Inkscape

Screencasters.Heathenx.org

Nicu’s How-to

Richard Querin

Inkscape Forum

Inkscape Wiki

SWFTools.org: The home of PNG2SWF (mentioned above)

Free Vector Graphics

Dezignus
Open Clip Art Library

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Christmas Fonts

1. Chaussettes de Noel
2. Santa Time
3. Santa’s Sleigh
4. Santas Big Secret BB
5. Papa Noel
6. St. Nicholas
7. Mickey’s Merry Christmas
8. OrnaMental
9. Christmas Card
10. Christmas Card
11. Christmas Tree
12. Christmas/Flakes
13. Xmas Lights
14. King Xmas
15. PF Xmas Flower 1

Hanukkah Fonts

16. Hanukkah
17. Dreidels by Tom
18. Hebrew Participants
19. Festival of Lights

General Wintery Fonts

20. PF Wreath
21. Wreath 2
22. Scarlet Ribbons
23. Krystal
24. Candy Cane
25. PF Snowman
26. Snowy Caps
27. Igloo Laser
28. Almonte Snow
29. PC Snowballs
30. Hultog Snowdrift
31. Summer’s Snowman
32. Snowflake Letters
33. Plymouth Rock ‘SnowDusted’

Winter Hollywood Fonts

34. Burton’s Nightmare
35. Grinched
36. Frosty
37. Frosty’s Winterland

New Year Fonts

38. Cocktail Bubbly
39. Bubbly
40. FontDiner Sparkly

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Google Sketchup is a free 3D modeling program that I’ve been using for a couple of weeks to do just that. It allows me plan the renovations to scale and then walk around the house as if I were in it, giving me a better idea of where what works on paper and what works in the real world coincide. I did this once with a kitchen renovation, and it worked out extremely well.

In my short time working with the product, I’ve compiled a number of tips and resources to help minimize your frustration and get you up to speed faster with your own project.

1. Customize Your Toolbar

Sketchup starts with a limited toolbar so that the new users aren’t overwhelmed, but the limited format will have you hunting around for a lot of the basic tools you’ll need. Hunting in a new program can be very frustrating, so do yourself a favor and activate the following toolbars from the View / Toolbars menu. Having only these toolbars visible should give you access to 90% of the tools you need:

• Large Tool Set
• Standard
• Layers
• Views
• Face Style
• Google
• Shadows

2. Learn To Use Layers Early

A Layer is like a group of objects that can be hidden. Getting large groups of items out of the way without having to physically change their positions will make the modeling process much less frustrating. I would suggest storing your outside walls and the related windows and doors as one layer, each floor as its own layer, and all your renovations in another layer.

3. Dock Frequently Used Windows

I have found it useful to keep certain windows available when working on my model. Click the following items from the Window menu and drag them to the upper right to dock them together. Clicking on the title bars will minimize them in place to keep them out of your way:

• Materials
• Components
• Layers

4. RTFM

Playing with Sketchup a little before you read the manual can increase your comprehension, but you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you at least skim through the Google Sketchup Users Guide (.pdf) before you dive into a full project. Some things in Sketchup are very intuitive, but others are painfully not.

5. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

There is no reason to spend two hours building the perfect model of a bookshelf if your real objective is to model a renovation. Unless a specific, custom bookcase is essential to the room, you can save a lot of time by downloading pre-built models included in the Sketchup Bonus Packs or some individual, user-built models from Google’s 3D Warehouse.

6. Customize Your Components

When you insert an object from the components list (such as a staircase or counter) and it isn’t exactly what you want, you have the ability to customize it. Start by moving the object away from all your other components (if you don’t, reassembling the object will be painful). With the object selected, click Edit / Component / Explode. This will break the object into its individual pieces. Make the changes you want, highlight all the pieces of the object, and select either Edit / Make Group or Edit / Make Component to reassemble it.

7. Creating a Triangle

You can create squares and circles by clicking on the square or circle buttons, so you would think that creating a triangle would be as simple as clicking the triangle button. It’s not. The triangle button is actually the “Create Polygon” button, which will create a hexagon by default. To create a triangle, create a hexagon and right click its edge. Select Entity Info to change the number of sides to three. If you click the middle of the hexagon instead of the edge, you will slowly go insane looking for a “Sides” parameter that isn’t there.

8. Tell Google Where To Go

Because your model is three dimensional, Sketchup has to interpret the direction you want an object to go when you move it. It usually works pretty well, but when items randomly switch planes and shoot off into the horizon when you move them, it can drive you berserk. There are two ways (that I know of) to guide Sketchup’s interpretations. If an object is moving in the direction you want, holding down Shift will lock whatever plane you’re moving along. If you can’t seem to get an object to move in the direction you want, hold down one of the arrow keys as you drag to force the movement into a particular plane. Left is Red, Right is green, and up & down are the blue axis.

9. Measure Twice, Cut Once

Use the tape measure (shortcut T) to measure off areas before creating your components. The tape measure tool will create dotted lines that your components will snap to. These lines can then be deleted after your components are created.

10. Learn the Shortcuts

Things go so much faster if you learn Sketchup’s keyboard shortcuts. More complete information can be found on the Google Sketchup Quick Reference Card (.pdf).

• Arc Tool (A)
• Paint Bucket Tool (B)
• Circle Tool (C)
• Eraser Tool (E)
• Offset Tool (F)
• Pan Tool (H)
• Line Tool (L)
• Move Tool (M)
• Orbit Tool (O)
• Push/Pull Tool (P)
• Rotate Tool (Q)
• Rectangle Tool (R)
• Scale Tool (S)
• Select Tool (Spacebar)
• Tape Measure Tool (T)
• Zoom Tool (Z)
• Zoom Extents Tool (Shift+Z)
• New (Ctrl+N)
• Open (Ctrl+O)
• Save (Ctrl+S)
• Cut (Ctrl+X)
• Copy (Ctrl+C)
• Paste (Ctrl+V)
• Print (Ctrl+P)
• Redo(Ctrl+Y)
• Undo (Ctrl+Z)

Further Resources

If you’re just starting with Sketchup, you may have a lot of questions beyond what was covered here, so below are some tutorials, forums and extra information that should help. Good luck!

• Google Sketchup Download
• Official Google Sketchup Video Tutorials
• Google Modeling Guide (.pdf)
• Supported export formats for the Pro and Free versions
• Sketchup Compatible applications
• Sketchup Google Group
• The Sketchup Wiki
• Sketchup Community Forums

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I’m a huge fan of free, but to get a solution that includes firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and rootkit protection for Windows, you typically need to either pony up the cash for an integrated solution from a big vendor like McAfee, or cobble together your own solution using multiple free products that only do part of the job.

So, how do you strike a balance between cost and quality? Well luckily, you don’t have to because Comcast and AOL have partnered with McAfee to stack the deck in your favor for a change.

If you are a Comcast Internet customer, you can download the McAfee Security Center for free. The suite includes VirusScan, Personal Firewall Plus, SecurityCenter, System Guards, Backup & Restore, and their Privacy Service.

Not a Comcast customer? You’ll be happy to know that you can download McAfee VirusScan Plus from AOL for free with nothing more than a valid aol.com e-mail address.

I’ve used both products and I haven’t been able to find another product that offers the same level of protection for free.

Some of What Is Included (for FREE):

• Real-time, On Demand & Scheduled Scans of Viruses, Worms, Trojans, Malware, Spyware, Cookies, and Rootkits
• Boot-Time Protection
• Intrusion Detection (IDS/IPS)
• E-mail Attachment Scanning
• IM Attachment Scanning
• Heuristic-Based Detection
• Script Blocking
• Auto-updates Virus Definitions
• Firewall With Inbound/Outbound Blocking by Program or IP Address
• Visual Tracking of Attacks
• Network Detection
• Secure File Shredder
• The Ability to Clean Or Quarantine Infected Files
• Quick Clean (cleans out registry items, cache, temp files, cookies, etc.)
• Parental Controls (limits the kids access on the internet)

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Scary Band Fonts

1. Cannibal Corpse (band)
2. Cramps
3. Danzing
4. Amped for Evil (Dystempa)
5. Misfits
6. Samdan (Samhain)
7. Slayer

Scary Movie Fonts

8. 28 Days Later
9. Ben Witch Project (Blair Witch Project)
10. Bewitched
11. Burton’s Nightmare (Nightmare Before Christmas)
12. Casper
13. Dark Crystal
14. Dracula
15. Evil Dead
16. Evil Dead 2
17. Evil Dead: Army of Darkness
18. Frankenstein
19. Fiddums Family (Addams Family)
20. Friday the 13th
21. Gargoyles (tv)
22. Gremlins
23. Ghostbusters
24. Harry P (Harry Potter)
25. Hellraiser SC
26. Horror Hotel
27. Karloff (actor)
28. Night of the Dead
29. Sleepy Hollow
30. Rebuffed (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
31. Rocky Horror (Rocky Horror Picture Show)
32. Scream
33. Skellington bats (Nightmare Before Christmas dingbats)
34. Resident Evil

Pointy Pokey Fonts

35. Cenobyte
36. Claw
37. Cosmic Bats
38. Deutsche_Zierschrift
39. Kreepy Krawly
40. Luciferius
41. Rapscallion
42. Satan Posessed
43. Transylvania
44. Zombie Holocaust

Blunt Trauma Fonts

45. Morgus the Magnificent
46. Munster Mash
47. Scary
48. Satan’s Minions

Scary Boney Fonts

49. Bones
50. Calaveras
51. Dia De Los Muertos
52. Tango Macabre

Creepy Crawly Fonts

53. Halloween Spider
54. Mummified
55. Riot Act
56. Spiders
57. Scary Monsters

Scary Psycho Fonts

58. Black Letter
59. Caracura
60. Crazy Killer
61. Feast of Flesh
62. Nightmare
63. Plague Death
64. Punk Ass Bitch
65. Uncle Typewriter

Drippy Slimy Fonts

66. Creepsville
67. Kreepshow Frigid
68. Postcrypt

Halloween Pumpkin Fonts

69. Perfect Pumpkin
70. Pumpkin

A few of my favorites from the list were Amped for Evil, Scary monsters, and Misfits, which were combined to create this post’s header image. Did you have any favorites?

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If you’re a Windows user, a common cause of PC slowdowns is file fragmentation. If you don’t know what file fragmentation is, consider this example:

If you imagine that your hard drive is a bookcase, and that you are the Windows operating system, then a file would be a single book. In that scenario, creating a file would simply be placing a new book on a shelf.

Now, image that three months have passed, and your shelves are nearly full. You just bought a gigantic dictionary and none of the shelves has enough room for it. Because you don’t have time to rearrange the other books to make room, you tear the dictionary apart and put A-H on one shelf, I-R on another, and S-Z on another. This is what file fragmentation is like.

Now, let’s say that someone tells you to go get the dictionary. It’s going to take you longer to grab each piece than if the entire dictionary sat together in one spot. As time goes on, you find that it’s taking you longer and longer to grab other books for people because you’ve torn so many of them up.

If you’re organized, you go through the shelves every so often and try to put the pieces of each book together again. After you’ve finished organizing, if someone asks you to grab the dictionary, it will take you less time because you can grab the whole book from one place rather than searching for the pieces. This is similar to the benefit you get after defragmenting your hard drive.

The Search For a Better Defragmenter

This week, I ran the standard the Windows defrag tool (typically Start… Programs… Accessories… System Tools… Disk Defragmenter), which analyzed my drive and told me that I didn’t need to defragment. Because I was already experiencing some disk slowdowns, I pushed this advice aside and told it to defragment anyway. Ten minutes later, my only slightly fragmented drive was still only 3% done.

With years of tech support under my belt, I wish that I could say that this wasn’t typical, but it is. The slow speed of the basic Windows defragment tool is one of the reasons that companies pay for third party tools. Because I am a fan of free (as in beer) stuff, I thought I’d see if there were any free alternatives available.

I was pretty skeptical that I would be able to find a stable alternative to the Windows Disk Defragmenter for free, but a quick look at download.com turned up Auslogics Disk Defrag. Although it didn’t have an official CNET review, it did have over 900,000 downloads and a 4.5/5 user rating. Because download .com guaranteed that the download was spyware free, I gave it a shot.

Not only did I find that Auslogics was a lot faster than the standard Windows defrag tool, it also gave a better visual representation of what was going on during the defrag process. For those that don’t want to spend $40+ for defragmentation software or the time waiting for the standard Windows Disk Defragmenter to finish, this tool fits the bill perfectly. And you can’t beat the price.

Have another defrag tool that’s better? Let me know in the comments.

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Here’s how you can create a ringtone from one of your MP3s for free.

What You Need

If you don’t confirm that you have all three of these before you get started, you may end up wasting a lot of time on something that isn’t going to work. If you’re unsure, check your manufacturer’s and/or service provider’s websites.

• A phone capable of playing MP3 ringtones,
• A way to get the MP3 to your phone (PC to phone USB cable, etc.), and
• An installed copy of Audacity (a free and open source audio editing software).

Instructions

1. Open Audacity.
2. Select File, Open and open the MP3 you would like to make into a ringtone. After Audacity loads it, your screen should look somewhat like the screenshot above.
3. Click the point in the file where you want your ring tone to start.
4. While holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse to the right to highlight the section of the MP3 that you want use.
5. Clicking the green play button will play your selection.
6. When you move the mouse pointer close to the edges of your selection, your cursor will turn into a hand. By clicking and dragging with the hand you can shorten or lengthen your selection as needed. This can be done at either side of the selection.
7. If you have trouble getting the exact point you want, click the zoom button (or [CTRL]+1) a few times so that you can make the start and end points of your selection more precise.
8. Once you are happy with your selection, select File, Export Selection as MP3.
9. In the “MP3 Save As” box, change the name of your ringtone to make sure you don’t overwrite the original file.
10. Connect your Phone to your PC and follow your manufacturer’s instructions for transferring the ringtone onto your phone. With my phone (Sony-Erikson W810i), it was as simple as connecting to the PC with a USB cable and dropping the ringtone into the “ringtones” directory.

And you’re done!

Tips:

• Holding down the shift key when clicking play tells Audacity to play your selection as a loop.
• Some phones have size limitations for ringtones, so if you can’t get yours to work the file may be too big. Try cutting the length of the ringtone down to ten or twenty seconds.
• Sometimes carriers lock the ability to load MP3s on a phone so that they have a monopoly on selling you ringtones from their store. If this is the case, you may be out of luck.
• Be careful of what you use as a ringtone. That mushy song that reminds you of your significant other is bound to make you look like an idiot when you’re out in public. Unless of course, that sentimental song is “Brick House” by the Commodores (She’s a brick… Hauuuuus. She’s mightay mightay. Lettinitallhangout.).
• Assign custom ringtones for each of your contacts so you know who is calling without looking. If it’s Slayer, it’s Darryl. If it’s Michael Bolton, it’s probably one of the Bobs.
• Please don’t ever use Michael Bolton as a ringtone.

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I went through hundreds of clients to sift out what I thought were the best multi-protocol IM clients out there. My requirements were:

• It must be free (as in beer).
• It must run on Windows.
• It cannot be a beta.
• It must be actively developed.
• It must support at least five major protocols.
• It must support encryption.
• It must support basic features like graphical smilies, message logging, themes and file transfer.
• It must not require registration to use.

Originally, the last requirement wasn’t on the list, but as I went through more and more clients, being asked to sign up for yet another online account started getting on my nerves. The goal was to consolidate my accounts, not add more. Once this requirement was added, my list was cut down to only three clients: Trillian, Miranda, and Pidgin.

Trillian

Cost: Free
License: Proprietary
Supported O/S: Windows
Basic Protocols (5): AIM, ICQ, Windows Live (MSN), Yahoo!, IRC,
Extra Protocols: None

Trillian may not support as many protocols as its open source counterparts, but it’s the only client to support voice chat. It also has the slickest interface of the group and supports spell checking natively. It was the clear winner in the group in terms of memory usage, using a scant 5.6 MB when idle, compared with Pidgin’s 22 MB and Miranda’s 7.5 MB. In use the software performed exactly as expected with no major hiccups. There were a couple of minor drawbacks, though. Because of its profit based nature, Trillian attempts to bundle toolbars from the Weather Channel and Ask.com during the installation. The options are easily unchecked to avoid the installs, provided the user is paying attention. It also left remnants behind in both the file tree and the registry when uninstalled. These are worth noting, but are relatively small drawbacks for solid performance and the lowest memory usage of the group.

Website: http://www.ceruleanstudios.com
Download: Trillian Basic or Trillian Portable

Miranda

Cost: Free
License: GPL
Supported O/S: Windows
Basic Protocols (6): AIM, ICQ, Windows Live (MSN), Yahoo!, IRC, XMPP (Google Talk, Jabber, etc.)
Extra Protocols: Tlen, LAN (NetSend, WinPopup, Novell Netware NCP, BattleNet, Vypress Chat, Quick Chat, and Walla Chat), OTR, QQ, Gadu-Gadu, Lotus Sametime, Bonjour

Miranda supports all six of the major IM clients, and is second only to Pidgin in terms of number of extra protocols supported. It’s the most stylistically challenged of the group out of the box, but with so many themes available, it’s an easily correctable issue. The strong point of Miranda is that it’s extremely quick to install and use. It is by far the fastest of the group, despite its middle of the road memory footprint. I have used the product happily for years at a time, but finally traded it in for Pidgin. The major drawback of Miranda is that the database that it uses seems to corrupt every once and a while, causing the user to have to rebuild the database. It’s such an issue that a shortcut to the Database Repair Tool is placed on the start menu with the application during installation. My database has corrupted on several occasions in the past, and even though it’s a one click fix with no data loss, it’s more of a hassle than having no issues at all.

Website: http://www.miranda-im.org
Downloads: Miranda or Miranda Portable

Pidgin

Cost: Free
License: GPL
Supported O/S: Windows, Linux, BSD, Unix
Basic Protocols (6): AIM, ICQ, Windows Live (MSN), Yahoo!, IRC, XMPP (Google Talk, Jabber, etc.)
Extra Protocols: SILC, Zephyr, XFire, OTR (with plugin), Blizzard Battle-Net Chat (with plugin), QQ, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, Lotus Sametime (with plugin)

You may never have heard of Pidgin, but it has years of development behind it. The application formerly known as GAIM was recently renamed to Pidgin as part of a settlement with AOL, who thought that “GAIM” and “AIM” were named a little too closely to be distinguishable. New name, same code. The interface for Pidgin is not as slick as Trillian’s, but not as angular as Miranda’s, making it the least obtrusive for me as far as style. It’s installed with spell checking, and supports more protocols and operating systems than either of its competitors. It’s covered under the GPL license, which should warm the hearts of most nerds, but doesn’t support voice chat or webcams.

Website: http://pidgin.im
Downloads: Pidgin or GAIM Portable

Conclusion: So Which Is Best?

All of the clients listed have portable versions that can be run from a thumb drive, allowing you to IM from places where you can’t (or shouldn’t) install software. These versions are also a good way to get a feel for a client without running a full install on your PC. While all three have their benefits and drawbacks, any of them is a solid way to handle your multi-protocol IM needs. The one you choose is largely a matter of which one feels right to you.

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I have to admit that I use Democracy mostly to watch G4TV and viral videos, but I have to say that I’ve gotten very used to the TV-like way that I can watch a continuous stream of clips with a single click. Because all of the major networks are focussed on controlling their content through an array of individually aggravating and inflexible web-based players, I can’t be bothered to watch them online. Unfortunately, until the majors give up a little control and join this download party or the independents expand the number of high quality shows, Democracy won’t be replacing my DVR just yet.

My Current Democracy Channels

Democracy doesn’t currently have a way to import or export channels, so I had to compile this list manually. It might not look like much, but it’s a surprisingly large amount of content, which I can almost guarantee you’ll be tired of watching long before Democracy is tired of serving it up.

1Up
Attack of the Show (G4TV)
The Broken
Cerealized
The Daily Feed (G4TV)
The Daily Nut (G4TV)
DJ Battle TV
DLTV
Frestopia
GeekBrief TV
Lulu TV
Make Magazine
Robot Chicken
Strongbad E-mail
Telemusicvision
WASD
Top 10 Viral Videos
Video Bomb Front Page
XPlay (G4TV)

Further Channel Surfing

If you still need more content, there is a TON to sift through in the links below…

Atom Film’s Feed List
Bittorrent
DailyMotion
IFilm’s Feed List
Jeff Pulver’s Unbelievably Extensive Web TV List
Lifehacker’s List of TV on the Web
Light reading’s Top Video Sharing Sites
Peekvid

Happy surfing! (And if you find some good channels, throw them in the comments.)

Update:: Thanks to a comment from Nicholas Reville of the Participatory Culture Foundation (the folks that run Democracy), Democracy users can subscribe to my current channels above with a single click on the button below the “My Current Democracy Channels” list.

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Instead, I tried to compile a list of some of the free software that I find useful. As far as I know, everything listed below is freeware, has a relatively straight forward EULA, and hasn’t triggered any virus or spyware warnings in all the time that I’ve been using them. Most do not even require any form of registration to download.

Just leave the money on the nightstand…

ActivePerl
You cant run Perl without a Perl compiler. ActivePerl is the Perl compiler for the windows environment. I’ve been using it for years for various projects at work and home that saved countless hours of manual labor. Perl Newbies can get a lot of great help over at Perlmonks, where I used to frequent quite a bit.

Adaware & Spybot
I like McAfee’s spyware app, but not their retail price. For free, I use Adaware & Spybot for optimal protection against spyware. Both products are good, but in my experience, no spyware app gets rid of all strains. If you use these in conjunction, you stand a much better chance of staying clean. I’ve also heard good things about the Microsoft spyware app, but it’s beta, and in my experience, Microsoft + Beta = Kiss your machine goodbye.

AngryIP Scanner, NMap and Ethereal
AngryIP is a really simple port scanner, while NMAP and Ethereal can actually analyze traffic. With that added power comes added complexity, though. I think I prefer Ethereal to NMap just because it has a better graphical interface. As an admin, I feel dirty just admitting that.

ASpell & IESpell
I use both Aspell and IESpell on different machines, both of which work nicely for spell checking these blog posts. IESpell is slightly better because Aspell lacks an “Ignore All” button, which can be essential for correcting long posts like this one.

Audacity
This is a free audio editing tool that has put a good layer of dust on my 4 track. I wish I used it more, but sadly, there is little time or energy left by the end of the day.

CDex
I rip all my CD’s to MP3’s with CDEX. It’s certainly not the best or the prettiest, but I’ve been using it since the beginning of time, so that’s what I use.

Comcast McAfee VirusScan / Personal Firewall
Although I’m partial to the enterprise version of VirusScan, Comcast provides the retail versions of McAfee VirusScan and McAfee personal firewall to all of their customers for free. When you look at the $40 /year subscription fees of the major virus scanners and the slightly sub par performance of the free scanners like Avast and AVG (they do work, though), this is a no brainer for the Comcast customer. They also have a privacy service for those of you who want to keep your kids off of certain sites. I don’t need that though. Gooooo Porno. See the comcast site for details.

Disk investigator & PC Inspector
When you delete a file in Windows, you aren’t really deleting it off the drive. You’re merely deleting the entry in the MFT (that’s master file table to you non-geeky types). If you think of your hard drive as a book, the MFT is the index. When you tell Windows to delete a file, it merely erases the file entry from the MFT, leaving the actual file on the disk. It’s like erasing chapter 13 from a book’s index, and claiming that it’s deleted, while never actually tearing out the pages in Chapter 13. Both of these tools help you to recover those files by examining the book rather than relying on the index. I don’t prefer one over the other, and I have both loaded just in case.

DVD Decrypter
I saw a 320 Gb hard drive for $117 the other day. If a movie takes up about 4 Gb of space, you could fit 80 movies on that drive, allowing you to watch them all on demand without ever leaving your couch. DVD Decrypter is the program that will copy those DVD’s to the drive to get you started.

Eraser
So, what if you don’t want people to find out what you’ve deleted? Well, then you need to act like the Department of Justice and use an erasing tool. This tool will overwrite the sectors that you delete files from with random data. You can specify the number of times that it overwrites the data to lessen the chances that anyone will be able to recover it. Remember that additional writes take more time and wear down your hard drive more, so use this only for things that you need to get rid of like dossiers, personal information, or your midget donkey porn collection. If you use the McAfee Privacy service, it includes an eraser, and you don’t need this.

LEDHead
Remember that hand-held football game with the red dots and all the beeping that your parents paid $25 for back in ‘82? Yup, me too. I played the shit out of that thing when my Dad wasn’t using it. This is the software version of all of those LED games in one executable. There’s basketball, no passing football, passing football, baseball, and a ton more that I don’t care about.

Mediamonkey
I need to manage a LOT of MP3’s and Mediamonkey is the best way that I have found to manage them. It supports TONS of ways to manage your music, and has more options than I’m going to even begin talking about here. It even supports looking up album covers from Amazon.

Mixmeister BPM Analyzer
Technically a DJ tool, I use this on every MP3 I create. It can bulk analyze MP3s and add the Beats Per Minute to the ID3 tag automatically. This is useful if you’re not in the mood for a particular type of music, but would like to listen to songs that are a all the same speed. This is a no brainer for a music junkie.

MSIZap
Ever have a situation where a piece of software won’t install because the installation is under the impression that you have an incompatible piece of software installed? But, you really dont? Yea. It happens infrequently, but when it does, it SUCKS. This “last resort” tool from Microsoft will bomb out all pieces of a of a piece of software. Please use with caution. If you use it properly, this can be a life saver, but if not, you may want to lay down and die.

Notepad++
I needed a simple, free script editor that does context highlighting for coding. I used to use Code Genie, but I can’t seem to find that online anymore. I’m open to suggestion on this one, but this is the best I have for now.

OpenOffice
The only free office suite that I’m aware of for windows is OpenOffice, which I’ve used in the past, but have not jumped into yet. It seems to have everything that office has, and can write office-compatible documents (and databases), but the word on the street is that it’s become as bloated as Microsoft Office.

Opera
I still use IE, and I have no big grudge with it except that it doesn’t do tabbed browsing. Opera is now a free, ad-less browser that includes tabbed browsing, skinning, built in google search bar, a newsreader and a whole bunch of nice tweaks thrown in. Check out 30 Days to becoming an Opera Lover for some pretty neat starter tips.

PhotoPlus & DrawPlus from Serif
You have to register for these, but they are pretty darned good products. DrawPlus is not as powerful as PhotoShop, but it’s not as pricey, either. If you need photoshop power for free, you could use the Gimp, but I found the interface to be too cumbersome for me. DrawPlus is is powerful enough for me, but is intuitive enough that I didn’t have to spend six months learning an interface.

Picasa
Face the fact that the software that came with your digital camera is crap. Replace it with google’s picture management software that has a really nice interface, and a few basic editing features.

Process Explorer
Hailing from Sysinternals, this is like task manager on steroids. Most of the time, I use this to find out what process is hanging on to a .DLL that I want to delete.

PSTools
The Sysinternals PSTools suite is for executing files on remote machines, doing remote reboots, and other tasks that admins need to do from a command line.

Sync Toy
This is a Microsoft tool that helps to automatically keep two directories in sync. Think backups.

Thunderbird
I installed this mail client for my parents about a year ago because it is so good with spam filters. I installed it for the same reason, but I may switch to the Opera mail client in the future.

Trillian
It’s a single application that allows you to log into all the major chat services (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, etc) through one interface.

TweakUI
TweakUI gives you quick access to some of the tweakable settings in windows, but I only use it because it allows me to auto complete directories in DOS by using [TAB] key (like linux) and because it allows me to create search prefixes. A search prefix is like a shortcut. You can associate the word “GOOGLE” with a google search, or “CPAN” with a CPAN search so that you can simply type “google Jon Dyer” into the explorer bar, and it will query google for you by auto-filling “http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=jon+dyer”

Windiff
This is a microsoft utility that alows you to compare differences between two directories or files. You have to load the whole Platform SDK to get it, which is kind of a pain in the ass.

WordPress
I dove into WordPress after seeking add more features to this blog than Blogger had to offer. I looked at various tools including a few full-fledged content management suites before settling in on WordPress for it’s simplicity.

ZoneAlarm
Yes, XP has a built-in firewall, but it only protects you from someone trying to come in to your PC. If something already made it in and wants to call your information back to some server in Russia, the Microsoft firewall won’t even try to save you. You’d be surprised what is accessing the internet behind your back. Do yourself a favor and just disable the thing and load ZoneAlarm to help track both what is trying to get in to your PC, AND what is trying to get out. I have this installed on some machines and the McAfee firewall on others, and like them both equally.

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I’ll link and explain all the stuff that I use once my eyes can focus.

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The end is Nigh
I found this cartoon from the ACLU, and it made me want to re-up.  Then, the mood passed and I fell back into the role of the drone protecting the corporate hive.

worker bees can leave
even drones can fly away
the queen is their slave
-Jack

The Writers
Since no one I know really updates their blogs anymore, I have been on a tear to find new lives to peek into.  I put a couple that I’ve started reading daily onto the side bar, and I may add these two if I find that I keep up with them. 
 
The Sandal Wearing Adventurist and the Angel Headed Hipster

The Reader
Sometimes, I think that I can write.  And sometimes, I can.  When I read other people’s stuff, I think I’m delusional.  I think that I am not a needle in a haystack, but a merely a piece of hay.

The Lessons
When we made an offer on a house, the sellers were real pricks about signing the deal.  They made demand after demand and said that we weren’t to present a laundry list of corrections after the home inspection (as if I would waive that).  After we walked away from the deal due to the laundry list of items from the home inspection and the strange way the buyers had been acting, I was confused that the sellers were surprised that we didn’t negotiate with them.

Lesson 1: If you say that you will not negotiate and act like a hard ass, make sure the guy on the other side of the table won’t call your bluff.

Lesson 2: If you don’t lie well, make sure the guy on the other side of the table is not more thorough than you are.

Lesson 3: If you’re going to act like a prick and make people uncomfortable, don’t ask them to provide you with the results of a $400 inspection report for free after they walk away from the deal.  They might gently tell you to go fuck yourself.

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