July 20, 2005

I end up changing my office laptops every year or so, and hence reinstall lots of software. Here’s my inventory. I most certainly will install the following. ActivePerl. I still program. I know Perl. I love Perl. Acrobat Reader BitLord DivX player Dave’s quicksearch deskbar Microsoft Office 2003. Has some really good improvements over Office 2000. NoteTab Light. Multiple tabs notepad. But is there anything better? Nero Express Picasa 2 WinAmp (with Media Library import/export) WinRar WinZip I most likely will install the following, but not necessarily. Adobe Photoshop. Almost vital, but I can live with Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Goldwave. I often record interviews, or give commentary for home-made movies. Google Earth (with Fraps). To browse the world and make movies out of them. Google Toolbar Mozilla Firefox. For multi-tabbed browsing, mainly. Otherwise, IE is fine. MSN Messenger. Just for the interface. Somehow, it feels “smoother” than Yahoo. RealPlayer. Don’t listen to RealAudio that much. Still… UnixUtils. I use “grep” and “less” more often than “dir” VirtualDub. For the occasional movie editing that Microsoft Movie Maker can’t handle. WinHtTrack. To browse offline. Google Desktop Search. Helps remember my browsing history. ...

Laptop hacks. Includes extending battery life, cleaning the keyboard, and reading web pages offline.

Google Moon. At the highest magnification, the moon is made of cheese. At the lowest, the moon is rectangular. But it apparantly isn’t a prank. Comments jayant 21 Jul 2005 3:41 am: Interesting - Just drag the zoom to max and leave it there. The picture colour changes. Wonder why… Dhar 21 Jul 2005 8:16 am: The idea is to show that the moon is made of cheese… Kinda easter egg thingy.

Google Maps gets Edwin Soto out of a traffic violation. He was able to use his laptop and wi-fi connection at the court to show the judge that Cathedral Parkway, where he ran a red light, was a two-way street and not a one-way as the cop indicated.