Time For Change: David Reece / David Daniels

This morning we implemented a new look. We’d like to play around with the graphics a bit more, try out different color schemes, but have to go out to do some business.

Chances are we won’t settle on the final appearance for at least 24 hours. But what you now see clearly is the shape of things to come.

As with any kind of change, we just discovered a few peculiarities with our new look that we’ll have to remedy. Most notably, private contact forms don’t seem to appear with this theme.

Please bear with us… we’ll figure it out!

–MC

Free Software Foundation by Kenn Wilson

Everyone likes free stuff. So we’ve decided to review some of the best freeware and freebies on the web. We’ve just added some new programs and comments in red.

Earthpages is not affiliated with any these companies, organizations or projects.

Disclaimer: This software and online content may be incompatible with your hardware and/or software. By clicking on the links below you agree that Earthpages.org | Earthpages.ca is not liable for any damages which may be incurred from visiting these links or downloading these programs.

Media Players

• VideoLAN – VLC media player Have you ever wanted to capture a still image from a video? Most free media players just won’t do it. After searching the web and reading all sorts of complicated do’s and don’ts from supposedly savvy technophiles out there, I stumbled upon this free program, which does it effortlessly. VLC also formats DVD playback in a variety of screen ratios, which can be nice.

Video Editing

• Bink Video (RAD Video Tools) Converts digital video files into different formats. Especially useful if your digital camera writes Quicktime .MOV files. Bink/RAD will convert them into .AVI files, which Windows Movie Maker can import!

Video Search

• Blinkx Not really freeware because there’s nothing to download. But it’s free and a good alternative to youtube and Google video searches.

Image Editing

• PhotoFiltre One of my favorite freeware photo editors with plug-ins, highlighting and “fade last effect” feature. Great power for a light, fast-loading program. PF doesn’t handle multiple layers like the GIMP but it’s light and tasteful. Don’t confuse this with PhotoFiltre Studio, which is not freeware.
• PhotoScape This is a fantastic program with some very high level filters, fun stuff and great text effects. I used this program for earthpages’ banner text – “twitter.com/earthpages”
• The GIMP GIMP stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program.” The GIMP just keeps getting better and better; features include text, drop shadow, bevels, layers, color replacement and lots of filters.
• Gimphelp.org Some very cool filters for the Gimp.  While Photoshop 8bf filters may be the industry standard I find that using freeware opens me up to different graphics and artistic approaches that otherwise I’d never try. Here’s a good example. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to install these filters. Just read the instructions.
• Virtual Photographer This is a great program for enhancing your photos, compatible with the GIMP and other commercial software.
• Picasa IMHO the strongest thing about this photo editor is the excellent color, lightness and contrast fixing. And it’s very user friendly. Photo rotation is a bit blurry. Use PhotoScape for that. Picasa has some good filters. It’s getting better.
• Photobie I don’t use this one too much but it has some good filters and is under steady development. Like anything else, software preference is a pretty personal thing. Definitely worth a try.
  
• LightBox Solid performer. Free version touches up pics nicely with minimum of effort.
• Gifworks Very useful online animated gif editor – add effects, resize, optimize.
• Easy Thumbnails This creates good, sharp thumbnails with the utmost of ease.

AntiVirus, Junk and Spyware Removal

• AntiVir A wunderbar antivirus program from Germany with frequent free updates. Grab it while it’s still free!
• AdAware A ‘too good to be true’ program for detecting and cleaning invasive ads and malware that can slow down your computer. With free updates and lots of options.
• Advanced SystemCare This was recommended by Amit and it seems very powerful. But some may find it too aggressive and Gizmo’s Freeware says some have reported errors after using. I’ve tested this out and so far have had no probs with WinXP. It gets stuff CCleaner doesn’t, and vice versa.
• CCleaner Great program for cleaning junk files from your hard drive with frequent updates. Also useful for fixing registry integrity and blocking unwanted Windows startup programs. Users should have a medium level of technical knowledge – use with extreme caution and don’t even think about going past the default settings unless you know what you’re doing!
• Glary Utilities Recommended by Amit; still testing…
• Malwarebytes This is handy if by chance the other stuff listed here can’t help you.
• Revo Uninstaller Recommended by Amit: still testing…

FTP

• FileZilla FTP freeware. This is another “too good to be true” program with frequent updates. It just seems to be getting better and better.

Making Web Pages

• KomPozer I just tested this WYSIWYG editor by loading a fairly complex html page from the old earthpages. Nvu, on which KomPozer is based, used to scramble the code for this page and freeze but KomPozer didn’t. Apparently some techies didn’t like the fact that the buggy but very promising Nvu went into stasis. So they continued where Nvu left off. Great job! From my preliminary test it seems this might be the best totally free WYSIWYG editor around.
• Amaya A free WYSIWYG html editor that changed a few things (e.g. table borders, top spacing) when I loaded an html page created by Evrsoft First Page. But this is a good, straightforward product that would probably fit the needs of basic to intermediate users. Also has some cool special characters.
• Evrsoft First Page is a free WYSIWYG editor (with a 5 sec. nag screen). It has advanced features but, as others have said, the last version I tested was a touch slow and, on my computer, a bit buggy. Still, I’ve used it with great results. (And it might have been updated since I wrote this particular entry in May 2008).

Making Music / Audio Production

• Kristal Audio Engine This is a great program for sound recording in a multi-track format. It’s like a software version of the old Fostex and Tascam cassette recorders. Handles up to 16 audio tracks with effects, copy/cut and paste, bouncing and room for expansion. Although Kristal has been criticized for tracks not being in sync, spending a bit of time in the friendly user forum solved the issue for me.

Music Listening

• iTunes You don’t have to purchase media with this software. iTunes comes with fantastic, free streaming radio and a 10-band equalizer and preamp with great presets. Travel the world through talk and music!
• Winamp Music and video player with a 10-band equalizer and preamp to make music come alive. It includes free Shoutcast TV and Radio–i.e. streaming video and radio with password-protect content filtering.
• Live 365.com No download streaming radio portal. Impressive selection of genres.
• RadioTime Provides links to many streaming radio stations.
• AudioGrabber Handles WAV and MP3 formats. Audiophiles will probably know that WAV files sound better but are huge. MP3’s are “sonically acceptable” and take up less space for iPods, the web and the like. There are several free grabbers out there but I find this one sounds bigger and fatter than the others I’ve tested. Some audiophiles may like that, others may not.

Create RSS Feeds

• FeedSpring Indie web publishers can use this to generate their own RSS feeds.

Get News with RSS

• RSS Reader Get news stories from all over the web. This is a super program. But a while back I tested a beta version requiring net framework 2.0 and wasn’t impressed. About a third of my RSS feeds didn’t work. So I reverted to version 1.0.88.0 with net framework 1.1 and everything works great.

Scanning, File Conversion, PDF

• Scan2PDF – scan documents to PDF format Scan anything and convert to .pdf (for Acrobat Reader). Also open image files from your hard drive and convert to .pdf. I found that it works best if in “options” you enable the scanner interface to be seen. That way you can adjust the resolution and get really good results.
• Open Office I tested out the wordprocessor on this suite in 2008 and found it satisfactory, although the English thesaurus was weak, and downloading/installing more dictionaries was a hassle. It was also a bit slow to load and felt heavier on my machine than commercial products. Open Office easily converts to pdf, however, and supports a wide number of languages. And I believe there’s a more recent version.
• Bullzip This easily converts Windows documents to pdf. Lots of options. Fantastic.
• Primo PDF Primo easily converts Windows documents to pdf. I’ve used this great program for earthpages’ Policy and Disclaimer but will probably switch to Bullzip now that I’m aware of it. Why? Mostly because Bullzip is faster.

Multitasking

• Always on Top I use this with WinXP when I want to keep an application window visible while working with other applications. Examples could be keeping MS Word or maybe a Google chat contact visible while web surfing or blogging. This program is very light and works great.

Black Panther à côté d'un Space Invader géant - Rue Emilie Durkheim: yoyolabellut / Lionel

Here’s another essay written while I was an undergraduate at Trent University in the 1980s.

Now converted into PDF, it was originally written on a prototypical Atari computer–one of the first PCs to hit the market, with an external floppy drive (those big, old floppies) and a b&w TV for a monitor.

The subject matter is an analytical assessment of Émile Durkheim’s (in his era) groundbreaking theory on suicide. I remember being impressed at how Durkheim looked at European demographics to try to understand suicide as a social phenomenon, just as social psychologists, advertisers and researchers would examine data today.

But like any thinker, old world or new, Durkheim had his limitations.

Feel free to mention this – and the ideas it contains – in university and college assignments but be sure to use one of the standard citation styles if you do.

» RevisitingDurkheim.doc

–MC

Marx neu entdecken (Rediscover Marx): quapan

This essay on Marxist theory was written in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate at Trent University.

Part of the pleasure in resurrecting it here involved learning how to best convert scanned text to PDF, watermarking, and so on.

Who would have imagined in 1985 that I’d be able to post this for the whole world to see?

The essay was written on a prototypical Atari computer–one of the first PCs to hit the market. It had an external floppy drive (those big, old floppies) and a b&w TV for a monitor. I doubt today that I could even access the file electronically, if I wanted to.

So here it is. One of my best papers during a period where I ironically knew precious little. I hadn’t yet been to India to study for my M.A. and all that transpired during my Ph.D. in Ottawa was just a glimmer in God’s eye.

Feel free to mention this – and the ideas it contains – in university and college assignments but be sure to use one of the standard citation styles if you do.

» RevisitingMarx.doc

–MC

Earthpages, circa 2006

After much consideration we’ve decided not to renew our web space at National Capital Freenet (NCF) in summer 2009.

This means that content currently posted at NCF might be deleted sometime during the summer or afterward.

This notice refers to material containing (and some material linked from pages containing) these characters in the URL:

http://web.ncf.ca/dy656. or  http://www.ncf.ca/~dy656

Why are we doing this?

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been migrating to WordPress and making other changes too.

Most text-based contributions to Earthpages will be moved to our WordPress account (if they haven’t been already). But some pictures and images might not make the transition.

As we explain in our About page:

Over the years Earthpages has gone through many changes. Most notably, we’ve transitioned to blog format and adopted the dual-stream approach of earthpages.org and earthpages.ca. And we’re now placing less emphasis on world photos with the growth of great sites like flickr.com and photobucket.com.

For those whose material might be affected, we thank you so very much for journeying with us through the first phase of Earthpages’ development. You gave us hope. And we will always appreciate that.

Sincerely,

Michael Clark, Ph.D.

It may seem like we’ve been on vacation for the past few days. In a sense we have been. I’m out of the city, in a beautiful rural town which happens to have a great wireless connection.

While it’s not exactly the place to watch and review DVDs or update old articles (activities I’ve been doing here as of late), it is perfect for going through thousands of RSS feeds and finding the best of the best (or the oddest of the odd) for a quick tweet at Twitter.

So check us out. There’s nothing tardy about the headlines here:

http://twitter.com/earthpages

Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols - Fair Use

This is the last of a long line of books by the celebrated Romanian scholar, Mircea Eliade, that have found their way into my library.

I’ve been familiar with Images and Symbols for quite some time, having browsed its pages at libraries and first run bookstores before finding an inexpensive secondhand copy.

For years I found the chapter “The ‘God Who Binds’” compelling. Here Eliade points out that the ‘binding of evil’ motif isn’t peculiar to the Christian story. However, each religious tradition has its own unique spin on the idea of knots and cords.

Some say it’s all about liberation–an untying or release from the bonds of karma, or an escape from hell or the symbolic labyrinth of the unconscious.

Other traditions more closely resemble the Christian story when telling of magically or, perhaps, spiritually binding fallen angels, demons and other invisible reprobates and sending them down below or away where they belong.

But there’s a lot more to this book than knots and cords.

The section “The Symbolism of Shells” is diverse and intriguing, as is Eliade’s treatment of the motifs of “The Center” and “Time and Eternity.”

Instead of separating religion and myth from history, Eliade makes every attempt to locate sacred stories within the cultural contexts that, at least in part, produce them.

Images and Symbols compares but does not superficially equate different world religions. This is particularly evident in the second paragraph of p. 166, where schematic similarities are noted but inner experiences are said to differ among some of the major religious traditions.

Here one could ask how Eliade knows they differ. And this is a tricky problem for religious studies and phenomenology in general. Be that as it may, I’m not convinced it’s an insoluble one.

All in all, a great book. One I’m happy to have added to my Eliade collection.

–MC

Baby Bird 08 by Jayme Frye

Updates for all things earthpages.org AND earthpages.ca are now at Twitter!

• twitter.com/earthpages