Apr 262012
 
Free Software Directory
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page

What is free software? Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. Think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

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Jan 062011
 

Have you considered you only have to use a common password once on a site that attracted you with “Free stuff” and they can login everywhere else they can see you may visit.

I use KeePass (the portable version on my DropBox) – that works well for me,  I like the drag and drop user ID and Password including url if required. Except for common use accounts all my logins use unique passwords looking like this Ch4EDbTsBbcQx62WJ1Qt or nf4@@jxEuA’F`0m;%/`Y when not stored within my browser (a Portable firefox) I just drag and drop the user ID and password from KeePass.

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Oct 142010
 

SPF Lite

Which can be found at spflite.co.nr is a A Windows Editor for SPF Lovers.

SPF is an editor originally available only on IBM Mainframes and was one of those things I learnt in the Old days of COBOL Programming. Surely these days have passed and there all kinds of great editors out there ?

Well Yes and No.

COBOL and other programming languages often had a strong column wise format to them since mainframe files often contained fixed length records or Lines. At the time COBOL was popular line editors were also popular where editing took place one line at a time. SPF was an editor of it’s time and allows a range of actions on the text using both line and block commands, it shows the line number in the file and things such as search and replace can be limited to specific rows or columns.

If you are a competent keyboards user and want to edit data or programing files you may find SPF Lite both a productive and feature rich editor. There are somethings that are very simple in SPF Lite – which is an adaption for the Windows Operating system.

Some examples. Place a RR on one line number and RR on another following it and press enter – the block of lines will be repeated immediately after the second. Print screen functions write to the clipboard and multiple files are handled in tabs. It can monitor if files have been changed on disk, sort data, bookmarks, Macros, overlays, column wise shift, exclude lines containing, show lines containing, open a new file from the clipboard and much more.

The product is regularly enhanced and has programmable Keys and much more.

Check it out and make sure you pay George if you decide to use it.

Another example – Picture Strings, use in find change or exclude commands

P’=’               Any character
P’^’               Any character that is not a blank
P’#’               Any numeric character, 0-9
P’-‘               Any non-numeric character
P’.’                 Any non displayable character
P’@’               Any alphabetic character, uppercase or lowercase
P'<‘               Any lowercase alphabetic character
P’>’               Any uppercase alphabetic character
P’$’               Any special character, neither alphabetic nor numeric.
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 Posted by at 4:53 pm
Jul 252010
 

This is my first post from my iPhone using the wordpress app to my own blog.

I can see the possibility of taking notes on the road and blogging. Have to see if I can post photos. Note this post will also be geo-tagged.

I will add more info via my browser.

Ok, so the Test photo Sucks. I re-sized it once accessing the Blog via my laptop browser (FireFox is my choice).

But it was snapped in poor light and show the blog before the iPhone Post.

The great thing was I could control the status of the post on the local iPhone. No Need to type and post – take your time, edit then post. Not to mention have multiple WordPress Blogs defined.

I think it would be a good idea to have a private blog, login but not visible to the public as a personal Blog – or more like a traditional log or diary, not for planning but recording your life’s activities.

It does look if my current theme does not support the geo-tag.

Oh. And now edited from the iPhone.

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Jul 172010
 

I was looking into using GPS (Global Positioning System) Using great application on my iPhone called trails. I will post more details on that in the future. But one of the tips opened up a whole set of new ideas.

See http://trails.lamouroux.de/geotag-photos-using-iphone-trails.html

But what was marvelous to discover was most modern electronic equipment has a fairly accurate clock. Often this results in a time being recorded. For example when you take a photo, when you record a sound, send a message or create a task. the particular tip suggested using a GPS to track your location, then after the event you can see exactly where you were at a given time, when you review your photos you can see exactly where you were at that time you took each photo. This Time code is the connecting piece of data.  In the tip it showed how to add this GPS location to the actual photo data.

If you think about it you can see that this is a rather powerful tip. Forget Wireless and blue-tooth and all those special connections to link two tools together use the time as the synchronizing value.

I will post more ideas on this once I get some into practice.

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Jul 172010
 

To quote the official information;

TiddlyWiki is a reusable non-linear personal web notebook.
Some of you will be immediately interested in  “reusable non-linear personal web notebook”‘, but may may miss the meaning in that simple statement.
So lets look a little further.
TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki – including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. Because it’s a single file, it’s very portable – you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick.

But it’s not just a wiki! It has very powerful plugin capabilities, so it can also be used to build new tools. You have full control over how it looks and behaves. For example, TiddlyWiki is already being used as:
  • A personal notebook
  • A GTD (“Getting Things Done”) productivity tool
  • A collaboration tool
  • For building websites (the site is itself a TiddlyWiki file!)
  • For rapid prototyping
  • …and much more!
You can import and export data to and from all sorts of places. Check out some of the Examples of TiddlyWiki in use, and the Features that are available.

What does it mean to me ?, what do I use it for ? and why does it rate a mention here ?
One way is to check it out for your self, see www.tidlywiki.com and get it now for free.  Now give yourself a little time to work it out. It is not that it is difficult, but once you realise its basic structure you discover it’s infinite promise and you could spend the rest of your life a devotee, as I am.
Basically, without programing you can get you self your own interactive website that can basically evolve with you as you customise it to meet your application needs.  Yet this can simply be transported by USB in a single file, or as I do stored on DropBox and access it from any browser. But wait, no steak knives, however it may be a standalone file yet it can be made into a server based site, see tiddlyspot.com for your own free public or Private to interface with the Internet through HTML Java and other common web protocols or languages.
Back that up with a wealth of tools, the premier tools site is is in my opinion www.tiddlytools.com but wait until “you get it” before diving in there. Perhaps also use www.tiddlywiki.org as a good reference.
One of the best things is the community, I regularly see in our group forum new users posting that this is the best and most helpful community forum they have ever used. In the groups own words; New Users: Please don’t hesitate to post your questions. Elsewhere you are expected to wade through the archives before posting any questions. But it’s not like that here – just jump in.
See the TiddlyWiki Google group yourself, and there is a developer one for the hackers.
I will post on TiddlyWiki again, of that you can be assured. But I expect each time it will about how you can do something really useful. Oh, and before I post this there are a range of various implementations like pre-built Get Things Done, Presentation and other specialist ones for maths, genealogy etc…
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Jul 122010
 

ToodleDo is a todo list application with real power.

The customisability is substantial and I suggest giving it some for thought before adding too many tasks. I will post on some of my methods for using it effectively.

Some features are only available with the paid subscription but see connections below. The iPhone application is very good so my todo list goes with me everywhere, however it is available through any browser and has the ability to place it on iGoogle and other helpful places. Your todo lists are retained on the iPhone off line and you can sync only when you want.

I initially got it to synchronise with my own TiddlyWiki (Details in future posts) however I mostly use it in it’s own right.

Connections

From the ToodleDo site: Toodledo has the ability to connect to many popular services and devices to allow you to access your tasks from anywhere. You can also import and export your data in a variety of formats. It’s your to-do list, so you should be able to take it with you. You can manage all of your import, export and synchronization services from this page.

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 Posted by at 1:29 pm
Jul 122010
 

In this category I will post information about my favorite software in the “Software Category”. Unless otherwise stated this will only be software I use deeply and often. This is in itself proof of it’s value.

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 Posted by at 1:19 pm