In any case, the end of the year brings with it certain things that need done, and the changing of the calendar is a good time as any. Maybe these will help remind you of a few things you need to do.

• Change the batteries in your home’s smoke detectors and test them.
• Clean out the inside of your computer(s). This is something that should be done at least annually and probably 2–3 times a year if you keep your computer on the floor, have a dusty home, or have pets who shed.
• Change the passwords of all my sensitive accounts, such as e-mail, banking, credit cards, and any online bill-pay accounts. You should be doing this at least once a year to help combat password hacking. MakeUseOf has an excellent guide on creating strong, but easy-to-remember passwords.
• Take a personal inventory. This will include things I’ve accomplished, things I meant to accomplish but didn’t, and goals for the next year. I prefer “goals” to “resolutions” as it sounds more imperative and definite. Plus, there isn’t that triteness associated with New Year’s resolutions, which most people break by February anyway. If you are the resolution type, however, Leo Babauta has a great article on sticking to your resolutions over on Zen Habits.

If I don’t post anything between now and then, have a happy, fun, and safe New Year’s Eve.

Allow me to introduce Startpage:

Startpage claims no retention of user search data, and you have the option to use HTTPS (secure/encrypted) connections to further protect yourself. Startpage uses an aggregate search from various engines, kind of like Dogpile, and gives pretty good results.

You’ll probably want to click the “my settings” link on the front page to customize the output a bit, most notably to enable the “Secure Socket Layer (SSL) / HTTPS” setting. If you choose to “add startpage to your browser”, also make sure to check the “Use HTTPS” box.

If you’re using an unsupported browser, you can manually set up Startpage with the following URL string:

https://startpage.com/do/metasearch.pl?cat=web&query=%s

Note that some browsers want a different variable for the search string, so you might have to replace the “%s” with another string of text.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Of course, back in those days, you had 9600 baud modems, unless you were a bleeding-edge person with a whopping 28.8 kbps one. However, even in today’s world of widely-available and affordable broadband connections, I still carry the flame for Lynx’s simplicity.

Google home page

Sure, because it doesn’t support graphics, JavaScript, Flash, and all the other fancy stuff, a lot of today’s popular sites don’t work at all with it. But if you’re just reading primarily text-only articles, it’s quite nice to be able to read without flashing banners, pop-up ads, and all those other things distracting you from the information you’re trying to digest.

Apropos mnmlist.com article

Obviously, Lynx isn’t for everyone, but if you’re a heavy article reader, maybe you should consider using this classic program again.

Mozilla Firefox — People have been gushing over Chrome lately, but its lack of extension support (mainly AdBlock Plus) keeps Firefox as my default browser.

Crimson Editor — This is still my default code editor. The built-in FTP support is great since I currently work in text-based Unix development.

CLCL — This keeps a history of the last X number of items you copied into your clipboard (the number is configurable), so you can reuse them later. I don’t know how developers can work without using this or a similar utility. I wouldn’t be able to count the number of hours this has probably saved me in development time.

FreeCommander — Windows Explorer is fine for basic tasks, but this dual-paned, feature-filled replacement keeps a lot of useful functions at a single button click or a single menu level.

FileZilla — This open-source FTP client gets better with each new version. Everything you could possibly want to do with FTP is supported, as is SFTP, and the multi-thread transfer mode makes uploading entire web sites a breeze.

CCleaner — Help keep your PC in tip-top shape by cleaning the Registry and unused temporary files left over from your applications. It’s amazing how much stuff accumulates over time. This is especially good to run before defragmenting your hard drive, which brings us to…

Defraggler — While it uses a lot of the same libraries as the built-in Windows Defragmenter, Defraggler puts it in a much friendlier interface, and it gives a few extra run options for advanced users.

PDF X-Change Viewer — Adobe Reader has turned into a bloated security risk waiting to happen. PXCV gives you all the features you really need, plus additional options for annotating and saving PDF files. Foxit isn’t a bad choice either, but it doesn’t have as many features as PXCV.

7-Zip — This has been my default archiving tool for a while now. It gets great compression ratios without sacrificing speed. People who need a more user-friendly interface might want to give jZip a look since it repackages 7-Zip to make it work more like WinZip.

Panda Cloud Antivirus — Because I’m on broadband, have firewalls built into both my DSL modem and my router, keep Windows and other software updated, and practice safe surfing, Panda is more than sufficient for my needs. People on dial-up or those who do a lot of P2P transfers may want something like AVG or Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE is not recommended for computers with single-core processors) for the extra protection they offer.

VLC — Sure, it’s not as flashy as some of the other media players, but this program opens every media format I’ve thrown at it without having to install additional codec packs.

CutePDF — This is a simple print-to-PDF driver, which is handy when you want to print off invoices and receipts, but don’t want to waste paper unless it’s absolutely necessary. There are tons of these out there, but what I like about CutePDF is that it doesn’t open the document after you print it out.

KeePass — Because, really, who can remember all of their passwords?

IrfanView — An image viewer on steroids. View and do low-level editing of pictures. This has been a great piece of software for well over a decade now.

jStrip — You’d be surprised on how much wasted space is eaten up by your pictures. If you don’t need the internal EXIF data (which lists time the picture was taken and other info), just run this against a directory of photos and be amazed at how much space you get back.

Launchy — This is a program launcher, which may not sound overly useful, but just typing the first few characters of a program name is for me a lot quicker than trying to find it in the Start Menu.

ImgBurn — While it’s not quite ready for the general populace yet due to a somewhat non-intuitive user interface (especially if you’re used to Nero or Roxio), this free disc authoring and burning software has an impressive list of features and capabilities.

AutoIt — Whenever I need a quick program to do something or I just want to automate a few tasks, this comes in real handy. If you’re not a programmer or have no interest in programming, this won’t be of any real use to you, but I can’t imagine life without it.

SharpDevelop — Speaking of programming, I’ve just started using this as a replacement for Visual Studio .NET. So far, it’s done everything I needed it to do, and you can’t beat the price.

Those should keep you busy for a while. Enjoy!

While it maintains all of the original functionality of the main Twitter site, Brizzly goes above and beyond by adding features like auto-expanding shortened URLs, showing pictures and videos inline, and performing live updates on your feed stream. In most browsers, the left and right navigation panels are fixed, so they are always visible for use.

Brizzly is still in “beta” status, and you need an invitation code to use it. I’ve embedded the one I was given in the link above, but if all ten get used, just search Twitter for “brizzly invite“, and you should find one to use.

SomaFM’s default streaming method is through .VLS files, which work seamlessly with VLC, which is my default media player.  They have options for other media players on their home page if you want to use something else.  I personally like the .VLS files because I can just save the file to my computer and double-click it when I feel like listening.

Because SomaFM is commercial-free and requires no registration, paid or otherwise, they depend solely on user donations.  Visit their Support page for information on various one-time and recurring donations.  Considering satellite radio runs $8–16/month and isn’t always commercial-free, SomaFM can be a great bargain.

Twitter 'More' button opinion

Apologies to Fail Blog.

The Basic PaperBackSwap Flow:

1. Visit PaperBackSwap and fill in the registration form.
2. List ten books on there that you’re willing to part with.
3. You get two free “credits” for listing ten books. Just pick ten books you didn’t like or aren’t likely to read ever again.
4. You then use one credit to request a book listed on the site, and it gets sent to you by mail for free. When you receive it, you mark it “Received” in PaperBackSwap, and the sender gets a credit.
5. If someone requests one of the books you listed, you ship it out to the requestor’s address. When they mark the book “Received”, you get an a credit.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 indefinitely.

PaperBackSwap offers print-on-demand postage service, which I find preferable to doing manually. There are a few advantages to this:

• The postage and delivery confirmation charges are slightly cheaper than they are from the Post Office.
• When you choose this option, credits are instantly applied to your account, and you don’t have to worry about the receiver forgetting to mark your book “Received”.
• Both you and the reciever have access to the delivery confirmation tracking numbers, so you can be sure the book arrived or where it is currently.
• If the book is under eight ounces, you can drop the book in a mailbox instead of making a special trip to the Post Office.

After nine months, I’ve had a flawless experience with PaperBackSwap and recommend it highly, which is why I included it in my FreeBooks software.