| Phun 2D Physics | 2D physics simulator that does rigid bodies, liquid, springs, hinges, chains (see video). Has more features than Crayon Physics but not as pretty. Another promising 2D engine is OctaveEngine Casual. It is based entirely on SPH, but no demos available yet. |
| TextPad ($30) | TextPad is a text editor. I bought this in 2001, and it was the best money I ever spent. It has all the features I like: recorded macros, clipboard history, syntax coloring, spell checker, hooks for external help, compilers, etc. I am using it now to write this web page. |
| Trillian | Use this to chat on MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc. at the same time. No advertising! I hesitate to say I like this software, because there are so many things I dislike about it. But I like it because the alternatives are even worse. |
| GSview | For viewing PostScript files. A lot of academic paper sites (like citeseer) have postscript and compress ".ps.gz" files. GSview can look at these. The installation is awkward, but if you follow the directions it will work. And make sure Media->Display "alpha" is set to 4 bits. Otherwise it looks very "chunky". |
| Daemon Tools | dtools is a brilliant idea, and brilliantly written. It is a software CD-ROM emulator. To your computer it looks just like you have a new CD-ROM installed. The only difference is that you don't insert plastic discs, you "insert" images of discs that are stored on your hard drive. When I get a game CD, I put it in my computer once, make an image of it (with Nero or BlindWrite), and then put it away in a safe place. |
| BlindWrite ($29) | I paid for this, but it was worth every penny. It can copy literally any game CD, no matter what kind of copy protection is used. |
| Sketchup | This is a 3D design program to model stuff like a cabin, city, windmill, spaceship, or anything like that. It is one of a kind because it is so incredibly intuitive, I think even a 7 year old could use it. If you make a model of your house, you can add it to the Google Earth online database. |
| Blender | Open source 3D modeling tool. Rich feature set that rivals Maya. Lots of good tutorials for doing character modeling and animation. I bet you could use this to make a Veggie Tales movie. |
| AC3D ($69) | Yet another 3D modeling tool. This one is much simpler than blender or gmax. Good polygon editing and UV texture tools. Reads and writes all major formats. I used it to make a nice model of a tank with textures that I scanned from a toy. It is shareware (expires in 30 days, but see my notes about regmon). |
| Google Earth | If you have a pretty fast computer and a good 3D graphics card, (dx8 or better) this is an awesome program. You can do a completely smooth zoom from Iowa to Siberia and see cars on the road. The "kml" format lets you share global place markers and routes with others on the internet. It is hot linked to google search engine so that you lookup addresses, or find hotels or restaurants really fast. |
| Celestia | Celestia picks up where Google Earth leaves off. This program is completely breath-taking. The planets are so beautifully rendered. Earth even has atmospheric effects and cloud layers. Mars is tiled with the latest surface photos. The Sun even has realistic spots and flares. It has hundreds of thousands of stars, all with the correct color and brightness and location in 3D. And as you zoom through them at 100x the speed of light you can think "each one of these stars is really there, in space... wow!" |
| HiJackThis | Hijackers stick to Windows like lampreys on a whale shark. This program shows all the parasites that are sucking the life out of your computer, and helps you get rid of them. Very thorough. But be careful not to get rid of useful things. The msconfig command (comes with Windows) is also useful for this. |
| Tweak Now Registry Cleaner | A dirty registry can make Windows run slower, or so they say. This one is pretty good. Probably the best cleaner you can get for free. |
| Ad-aware | This picks up the web parasites that are overlooked by virus detectors. It knocks out many kinds of spyware and tracking cookies. Real simple to use. Run it monthly for a healthy computer. |
| Gibson Research - Freeware | A really fun web site. A lot of really useful geeky tools for your PC. I especially like the Sheilds UP that tests your internet security. |
| FreeDownloadManager | A great download manager. Multiple streams, automatic resume, multi-threaded, multiple files, ftp browser, HTML spider, totally free. It doesn't get any better than this. |
| Core FTP | For web masters, this is a pretty good FTP manager for uploading web sites. There are probably better ones, but this does every thing I need. It remembers my password, and supports drag and drop. |
| WireShark (aka Ethereal) | This in the only tool you will ever need for intercepting and dissecting internet data. For instance, if you want to see what cookies you browser is giving away, or you want to see the hidden data being posted when you login to your bank account, so that you can write a script to emulate a sequence of web inputs. Then you need wireshark. This is a really powerful tool. |
| Regmon | Regmon is a very handy tool, it monitors all read/write activity on the system registry. Suppose you download a shareware that expires in 30-days. Suppose you try it once, but they you get distracted and don't look at it again for a while. Bummer, it won't run. Easy, just start regmon, run the shareware, and see what registry value it is looking for. Then run regedit and delete that entry. Voila, another 30 days.
Note: Better yet! The makers of regmon have now written ProcMon that captures even more data than regmon. Bill Gates liked it so much, he bought the company. Note: Even better!! Try Process Explorer it's fun, it's colorful. |
| Picasa | This is a photo browser/enhancer. Actually I don't like it, but lots of other people do. It is very shiny, and runs like a pig. |
| Real Alternative | If you've every installed RealPlayer, you probably wish you hadn't. This freebie is a really great no-nonsense replacement. |
| Network Stumbler | The definitive "war driving" software. This uses your wireless adapter to scan for any wireless routers in range. Then you can plot them (with GPS) and try to access them. Excellent for other uses, too, like aiming your directional antenna. |
| Power Toys | Several tools free to XP owners. I like the image resizer, and command-line-here. |
| FreeUndelete | Not that I would ever delete a file by accident... I would delete the entire directory. This tool saved my skin once, so I swear by it. |
| Maxthon Browser | This is a tabbed browser that uses the IE renderer. A new version IE7 just came out with tabs and I thought about getting it, but decided to look around first. I gave Maxthon a test run, and I like it better than SlimBrowser. I installed just the maxthon -- no plugins. It has very nice tabs, nice auto fill-form, good AD blocker, very customizable. I love the mouse gestures and the ctrl+tab menu.
If you are using maxthon, click on the links below to add new search engines to your search bar. As you click each one, Maxthon will prompt you for the Shortcut. You should pick a one or two letters like "gn" for Google news. Then in the search box, you can type "gn shuttle" it will search for "shuttle" on Google news, for example. |
| Opera | This is well integrated suite for e-mail and web browsing. I haven't used it much, but I set it up for my father-in-law and it looks quite useful. |
| ThunderBird | I think this is the best e-mail client on the planet. It can do multiple accounts and display them separately or together. Constantly improving. |
| Budget Dialup | No matter how reliable your DSL is, someday maybe it won't work when you really need it. That's when a cheap per-minute dialup service comes in handy. No monthly fees, only pay for what you use. You can just download the installer, and don't install it until you need it. For peace of mind. |
| QBASIC | They don't make 'em like this anymore. QBasic is a complete programming language, help text, editor, and debugger in one neat little environment. It was free with DOS 5.0 in 1991. After all these years, I think it is still the best way for a beginner to learn programming. Before my son was 10 years old he wrote over 200 qbasic programs, mostly games. |
| Processing Language | This is a beginner programming language. Actually it is a dialect of (and is translated into) Java. It is very beginner friendly and yet very powerful and succinct. Quinn learned it when he was 10 and wrote a nice 3D maze program with it. |
| Interlinear Greek NT | Anyone who knows more than one language realizes how much meaning can be shifted or lost in translation. The only way to get first hand understanding of the NT Bible is to read it in Greek. I don't know Greek, so this program is the next best thing. For each Greek word, it gives a unique English mnemonic with tags for the tense, gender, etc. |
| SharpEye ($99) | OCR program for Music. With this software you can scan the page from a hymnal, and it converts it to MIDI with lyrics. I tried several music scanning programs and SharpEye is the best. |
| Knoppix | My favorite linux distro. Runs on CD, no install required. Very pretty, and jam packed with really great software, like Gimp, Apache, Open Office, and PHP. Over 900 pre-installed software packages on one CD! It's really amazing. It makes you wonder why Windows XP is such a pig, when it comes with so little. |
| Audacity | Open source audio editor. You can zoom out to see 1 hour in a glance, or zoom in to edit each sound wave. Has many filters (mostly undocumented). Can mix, overlay, append, blend, convert sound tracks and export to WAV or MP3. I used it to convert tapes to CD. |
| Wavepad | Shareware audio editor. This is similar to audacity, but easier. The "masters edition" is $50, but the plain "wavepad" is free and does everything you'd want. [NOTE! the plain version expires in 30 days.] It comes with optional CD ripper/burner, if you need that. |
| Timez Attack | Fun game to learn your multiplication facts. Free demo (one level) teaches all the facts up to 12x12. You can pay to get more fun graphics. Use coupon code: igivebigbrainz to get sale price $25. |
| RICOlMER Reminder | I use this program to remind me to do things. Like everyday at 9am it launches a document so I can record my job activity. You can schedule events each hour/day/month/year, and avoid weekends, etc, etc. It can play music, run programs, open documents, popup messages, anything really. Freeware. The alternative is the builtin "control panel -> Scheduled Tasks", but I don't like that because when I change my password all the tasks stop working. |
| jansfreeware.com | Wow, this guy is amazing. Many free tools, top quality. I really like the Diagram Editor. |
| getwebpage | I wrote this, so you can download stuff from the web directly to the harddrive. For geeks only. |
| Windows Desktop Search | Desktop search -- once you try it, you can't imagine how you lived without it. I've tried several: Google desktop, MSN, Exalead, Copernicus. They are all fast, but I like Windows search best because it gives me the most control over when and how the index is built, and the advanced search tags are the best. P.S. If you use Vista, it comes pre-installed with Windows Desktop search. Lucky you. |
| Foxit PDF viewer | Same as ADOBE acrobat, to view PDF files. But better. More features, and cleaner installation, no spyware, no background processes. |
| SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) | This is a what it says. It will play any video format AND convert to any video format. This is a must-have tool for anyone doing video editing. It is completely free, no expiration. The web site has a ton of obnoxious advertising, so you might want to click here to download directly (it is 27 Meg). |
| N | This is a real fun flash game. It a 2D physics based game. You run around and pick up coins trying to get to the exit. You are challenged by monsters that chase you and interesting puzzles. It's like lode-runner which I played on the Apple ][e or like the fairy godmother game. Both of which I enjoyed for hours. (Many hours.) |
| onlinestarter.de | Many fun free fonts |
| bookingbuddy.com | Airline search engine |
| universe-review.ca | The most fun web site I have ever visited |
| cdbaby.com | Very diverse site for amateur musicians |
| craigslist.com | Online classifieds |
| usairnet.com | My favorite place for weather |
| zipzoomfly.com | Real good place to buy computer parts |
| geekyjock.com | For geeky tips and bargains |
| wikipedia.org | Really useful online encyclopedia |
| google.com | Best internet search engine |
| mathworld | Best mathematics resource ever |
| archive.org | Find stuff that used to be on the internet |
| johnny.ihackstuff.com | My idol. |
| yugop.com | The most absolutely amazing FLASH site ever. |