Category: ‘Lagniappe’

WordHippo Website

January 3, 2021 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

This month, instead of a free program, I’m going to tell you about a website that I use nearly every day.  I do a lot of writing.  LibreOffice and Scribus are the two main programs I use to edit the written material.  The WordHippo is the site I use for tools to (hopefully) help me do a better job with my content.

WordHippo was originally launched in 2008 as a site to find rhyming words.  It has evolved to include a thesaurus, dictionary, antonyms, word finder and many other word tools.  There are many sites on the internet that do these things.  This is the only one I have found where everything is on one easy to navigate page.

A complete list of word actions include:
• Synonyms – the thesaurus is the default home page.
• Antonyms – gives an extensive list of opposite words.
• Definitions – a pretty much standard dictionary.
• Rhymes – I would have never found a rhyme for lagniappe without this section.
• Sentences – gives several examples of word usage.
• Translations – only translates from English to other languages.
• Find Words – you can select the number of letters and find words for Words With Friends, Scrabble and Crosswords.  You can specify starting or ending letters.  There are many more finding functions.
• Word Forms – finds plurals, past tense, present tense and more.
• Pronunciations – reads words and sentences aloud.

For the most part, the website is easy to use.  It utilizes a tabbed layout.  Entering a word in one section carries over to the other functions.  I turned off my ad blocker for the site.  There was only one small unobtrusive advertisement on the right side of my monitor.  There are apps for both iOS and Android.  I haven’t tested them.

Give WordHippo a try.  Everything is free and there are no up‑sells for a paid version.

If you like the website, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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A Fracture Made Me Sad

December 11, 2020 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

I’m so sad.  There are a lot of reasons I could be sad.  The coronavirus is keeping me from attending computer club and SubVet meetings.  I could be sad about how the elections were resolved.  I could be sad because Alex Trebek passed away.  Those things do make me downcast and blue, but that is not why I’m sad.

I’m sad because my cell phone now looks like my grandson’s.  There is a large spider‑web crack on the screen.  I’ve got to say that I’m not really surprised.  It was only a matter of time.  I have the habit of carrying my phone in my shirt pocket.  When I bend over, I occasionally forget it is there and it drops out.  My Moto G6 Play was a tough phone.  I’ve probably dropped it a couple of hundred times.  Actually, it still is a tough phone.  Even with a bad crack, it is still usable although the screen is hard to read.

I’m on the search for a new phone.  I’m fairly sure that it will be another one in the Motorola line.  They aren’t the fastest with updating, but I like the fact that there isn’t very much bloatware installed.  That is why I don’t buy my phones through the cell phone carrier.

One thing for sure is that I don’t plan to spend a lot of money for a high end device.  I don’t need the latest technology.  The only thing I really miss and want to make sure I get is NFC capability.  The search goes on.  I’ll be doing another review in the future.

Thanks for reading.

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Windows Calculator

November 8, 2020 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

It’s official.  I’m 26,501 days old.  No, I didn’t have another birthday.  Those days convert to 72 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, 6 days.  I don’t know how many hours.  Why is this information important?  It isn’t, but it is an example of what the Windows calculator can compute.

The Windows Calculator has evolved from the simple arithmetic program that was first included in Windows 1.0.  Over the years it has become a useful, full featured application that is overlooked by many users.  It includes different modes, date calculations and several useful conversion functions.

First time use of the calculator opens it in Standard Mode.  You will see all of the normal numerical keys, memory buttons and mathematical function keys.  Additionally, there is a small icon to the right of the info bar.  This toggles the program to always stay on top.  Clicking again turns to function off.  On the far right is a clock icon.  Clicking it opens or closes the history function.

There are four modes:
1) Standard Mode – for basic math operations like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, as well as for finding square roots, calculating percentages, and working with fractions.
2) Scientific Mode – expands on the Standard mode, giving you the additional functions you’d find on a typical scientific calculator.  In addition to the Standard mode operators, it contains functions like log, modulo, exponent, trigonometric degrees, and SIN, COS, and TAN.
3) Programmer Mode – adds the ability to switch between different number systems: binary, decimal, hexadecimal and octal.
4) Date Calculation Mode – lets you calculate the difference between two specific dates.  I used this mode to find the data in my opening paragraph.

There are also several Converter Calculators:
• Currency
• Volume
• Length
• Weight and Mass
• Temperature
• Energy
• Area
• Speed
• Time
• Power
• Data
• Pressure
• Angle
These all work similarly.  Select the convert “from” and the convert “to” measurements.  Then type the number you want to convert.  Answers instantly show up.

There are many specialized calculators you can install, but the Windows Calculator will fill most user’s needs.  It is included free with your Windows installation.  You should probably use it more often than you do.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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Avidemux Video Editor

September 6, 2020 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

I don’t do a lot of video editing.  When I do, it is almost always simple things like cropping frames from the beginning or end.  Other edits I often make are cutting out scenes from videos.  I’m interested in filming the grandson hitting a home run, not the pitcher throwing the ball.

Avidemux is open source video editing software.  It can do basic editing tasks and supports all the major video formats.  It is very fast because it does one thing differently than most other editors.  It doesn’t re‑encode video unless you are changing the file format.  This saves a lot of time when you save your edited file.  Most people save their files in the same format they started with.

The interface looks a little “clunky” because there isn’t a timeline like most video editors.  After you have loaded your video to edit, you simply set a start and end marker.  Then cut out what you don’t want.  You can either save the clip to a new video or delete it completely.

There are several transformations and filters you can apply to your videos.
• crop
• resize
• add black borders
• vertical flip
• rotate
• reduce noise
• sharpen and blur
You can also extract and save only video or sound. I have not tested this function as I have other programs that this.

Avidemux is licensed under the GNU General Public License.  It is available for Windows, Linux, Mac and PC‑BSD.  You can download at this link.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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BlueGriffon Web Editor – Originally Published July 2020

July 5, 2020 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

The club website is one of seven that I am currently maintaining.  To do so, I need some specialized tools.  For years, I was a “real” designer and wrote all my code in Notepad and later in Notepad++.  I may be showing my age, but I remember when I purchased Microsoft FrontPage in the late 1990’s.  I acquired it because DreamWeaver was just to darn expensive.  It turned out to be a good decision because DreamWeaver was later purchased by Adobe, which isn’t one of my favorite companies.

FrontPage taught me that I liked “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) editors.  I’ve tried many of them.  For the past year, I’ve been mostly using BlueGriffon.  Their tagline is “The next-gen Web and EPUB Editor based on the rendering engine of Firefox.” Old timers may remember the NVU Editor. BlueGriffon is a descendant of the program.

There is a new document wizard which is handy for starting a new page. You can easily select the page language: HTML 4, XHTML 1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 5 or XHTML 5.  The wizard then lets you enter document information: Title, Author, Description, Keywords, Language, etc.  You can also choose, fonts, link colors, background image and more.

The BlueGriffon interface is fairly basic and closely mimics a word processor toolbar layout.  Icons to the most common options are clearly laid out: adding a table, a single image or a thumbnail.  Switching from WYSIWYG view (where you can arrange objects visually) to the web page source code (where you can manipulate the web page by editing the HTML code) is done by clicking on two buttons at the bottom of the page.  You can also view WYSIWYG and source code in side by side windows.

I am definitely a user of the multiple tabs feature, which makes it easy to quickly switch from one document to another, copy and paste, etc.  My only problem is that inactive tabs are not easily seen without mousing over.  This sometimes makes it difficult to quickly go to the desired tab.

BlueGriffon is cross‑platform with versions for Windows 7, 8,10, Mac OS X and many Linux distros.  There is also a portable version (for Windows only).  Like much modern software, you can purchase a license and get more features.  One of these is a manual.  I’ve found that a web search works just as well.  You can find a complete list of features here.  To download the program, click here.
If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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Core FTP LE – Originally Published March 2020

March 4, 2020 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is still surprisingly popular.  If you need to set up a simple way to transfer a file, FTP is a reliable, suitable method.  People and companies of all sizes use FTP every day when transferring files between clients and colleagues.  FTP is a great way to transfer large files or large amounts of data.  There are many free FTP Client and server applications.  For many years, I have been using Core FTP.

Core FTP is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software that is used to transfer files between remote devices directly.  It is completely packed with features and functions which will assist you efficiently.  It is free software that is available only for Windows devices.  The most important feature of the software is that it provides support to a many protocols like FTP, SFTP with SSH and HTTPs/HTTP.  Other than that, the security of data is pretty important while transferring.  For that reason, it encrypts all the data as well as account information while the transfer of data is occurring.

The interface of the software is intuitive and easy to use.  To use the program, you must first connect to an FTP Server.  This is done by clicking the “new site” icon an inputting the host URL, user name and password.  After the initial connection is completed, the site is saved in the program’s “Site Manager”.  The next time you can easily reconnect by clicking on the site.

After the connection is made, the program shifts to the upload/download window.  There are two panes in the window.  Local files are on the left and the remote files on the right.  It is very easy for you to differentiate.  To upload a file(s), simply highlight them in the left pane.  You can upload clicking the upload button, right clicking, or drag and dropping.  Downloading is done in a similar manner.  If the file already exists, you are given options to overwrite or cancel.

The picture shows my connection to the club’s website. The left pane is the SWLAPCUG folder on my computer.  You may recognize some of the folder titles.  On the right you can see some of the files on the HostGator club website server.  The upper pane (below the menu bar) shows commands that are executing and their status.  The lower pane shows the progress of file transfers.

Core FTP LE/Lite is free for commercial, business, educational, and personal use.  There is a pro version, but I find it interesting to note that the website doesn’t list a price.  I assume that the price is dependent upon usage.  It is a Windows only program.  The CoreFTP download page has several options, including a voice pack.  If you have need of an FTP client, I highly recommend the program.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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Rufus – Originally Published January 2020

January 31, 2020 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

Do you ever need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs?  Do you need to work on a system that doesn’t have an OS installed?  Do you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware?  There are several utilities you can use for these and other USB purposes.  For several years, I’ve been using Rufus.

Rufus is a small utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys, memory sticks, etc.  In today’s world of computing, laptops and PCs are often shipped without DVD drives and Blu-ray players.  In their absence, Rufus plays a powerful role in helping users to turn their flash drives into a form of reusable DVDs.

It can be especially useful for cases where:
• you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs.
• you need to work on a system that doesn’t have an OS installed.
• you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware from DOS.
• you want to run a low-level utility.

Using Rufus is easy.  To create a new bootable USB flash drive, simply browse and load your ISO file.  Click start, sit back and watch it work.  There are a few of customization options.  You can change the file system type, edit the volume label, disable quick format or enable disk checking on the USB drive to scan for bad blocks.  Advanced options allow you to manipulate cluster size and partition scheme.

Rufus supports both GPT and UEFI boot systems.  Depending on the ISO file and how Rufus loads it, there may be additional features and options.  For example, selecting a Windows installation ISO, you may be prompted create a Windows installation disk or setup Windows To Go.

Keep in mind that any device you plan to use with Rufus will be formatted and all content will be destroyed.  An excellent feature of the program is that only removable drives are listed under available devices.  You can’t accidentally format any of your fixed drives.

Rufus does not have to be installed.  Just download the file and extract the program.  It runs on Windows 7 or later.  The program is 1.23KB and runs really fast.

Like most of the software I review for my lagniappe column, Rufus has a price I really like.  The cost is zero.  Unlike most freeware, there is not even a donate button on the website.  The developer explains it like this: “Let me ask you this then: Would you pay $0.99/€0.99 for a utility that simply creates bootable USBs? Or would you just pick one of the many free alternatives? Heck, even I would not pay $0.99/€0.99 for this, despite being acutely aware of the cost associated with its development. So, even if I could try to cash in on the success of Rufus, I see it better to try to benefit millions of users, by providing a free application, instead of just a few thousands with a paid one.”

You can download the program from the Rufus Home Page.  I also recommend that you peruse the FAQ page.  It is not only informative, but is also interesting.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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Diffractor – Originally Published November 2019

November 10, 2019 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
By Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

For the past year, I’ve been on a mission to finally organize all of my digital photos.  Like many people, over the years I’ve saved them in several folders on different computers.  I finally placed a SSD drive in a portable enclosure and moved all my photographs to it.  I’m a little embarrassed to say that there were much more than 10,000 files, going back almost twenty years when I bought my first digital camera.  There are also many pictures that I’ve scanned from old photographs that were taken with film cameras.  Centralizing the pictures was the easy part.  The biggest problem I faced is tagging and organizing them all.

For editing photographs, I like to use Paint.net, Teorex Inpaint and FastStone Image Viewer.  These are all excellent for editing, but not so good for filing.  I downloaded and tested hundreds (I’m not exaggerating) of organizing programs, both paid and freeware.  I was looking specifically for ease in filing.  My main complaint with most of the software I tested was that they emphasized photo editing and did a poor job of tagging.  One day, in the comments section of a review site, mention was made of a relatively unknown program.

Diffractor is a tool for viewing and managing photos, videos and other media files.  It is a lightweight (less than 20MB) application built specifically for helping organize your media files in a clean working environment.

The first time you run the program, time is spent indexing your files.  This took about fifteen minutes on my computer.  Results are displayed in a simple thumbnail organizer.  There is a preview window on the left, folders and thumbnails are on the right.  Double‑clicking will open a file to view full‑screen (or play a video).  The Esc key returns to normal view and browsing.

The search bar works much similar to Windows Explorer.  Click it to display your viewing history.  You can also start typing to display anything with matching file, folder names, or metadata.  An Overview screen has canned searches you can use immediately to group files by date, rating, sizes, cameras, albums, artists and more, depending on file type.

One of the best features is that Diffractor is location aware.  You are able to sort your media display by location.  It will organize photos as recorded by their location data.  If you didn’t initially save location date, a Google Maps Powered Locate function makes it easy to add your chosen location to any set of photos.

Editing functions are limited.  You can rotate pictures to different angles, crop them, apply sharpening and denoising, adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and a few others.  I’ve only used a few of the editing options as I am mostly interested in filing and searching.

Many image organizers overwhelm you with complex features that most people never use.  Diffractor is different.  It focuses on building a usable interface that is easy to use.  If you don’t need too much media management power then you should check out this program.

A note from the developer’s website: You can use Diffractor for free but if you find it useful please become a sponsor.  Diffractor developers and testers are unpaid volunteers, we rely on sponsors to pay our costs.  If you use it at work, get your company to become a sponsor.  Indexing and searching non‑standard folders is only available to sponsors.  We have to reward our friends somehow!  The money is used to keep servers running, we are not buying Ferraris.

Diffractor is a Windows only program.  Diffractor can be downloaded on its website.  There is also a short video (6.25) on YouTube that is worth watching.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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Windows Defender’s Ransomware Protection – Originally Published September 2019

September 1, 2019 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

This month, I’m going to diversify a little and not tell you about a free program.  Instead, I’d like to inform you of a little known setting in Windows 10.  A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about Windows Defender’s Ransomware Protection.  I was surprised that I hadn’t heard about it before.  Maybe it is because it wasn’t originally a feature but was added in October 2017.

Windows Defender will monitor which programs are accessing protected folders and the files stored within them.  It will then block suspicious programs from trying to gain access and making changes.  The feature is disabled by default.  Here is how to enable it:

• Open the Start Menu, then click the Settings icon.
• Go to Update & Security>Windows Security>Virus & Threat Protection.
• Scroll down to Ransomware Protection and click “Manage Ransomware Protection.”
• In the next menu, enable “Controlled Folder Access.”
• Controlled Folder Access only protects certain folders by default: Documents, Pictures, Videos, Music, Desktop, Favorites. You can extend the Ransomware Protection to other files and folders by clicking “Add a protected folder” in that same window.
• Navigate to the folder you wish to add to the ransomware protection. Repeat for each folder you want to have protected.

After you set up Controlled Folder Access, Windows Defender will monitor which programs are accessing the protected folders and the files stored within them.  It will then block suspicious programs from trying to gain access.  The problem is that some “suspicious” programs are not actually malicious.  To avoid false positives, you can add a program to the Controlled Folder Access whitelist.  Here is how to do this:

• Open the Start Menu and click the settings icon.
• Go to Update & Security>Windows Security>Virus & Threat Protection>Manage Ransomware Protection.
• Scroll down and click “Allow an app through controlled folder access,” then find and add the desired program to the list. You’ll have to repeat this process for each app you want to grant access to.

You can also click “Block history” to view a list of programs that Windows Defender has prevented from accessing your protected files.  If you don’t recognize a listed program or aren’t sure why it would be trying to access your files, you might want to uninstall it.

If you like this tip, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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Who Is This Domain – Originally Published July 2019

July 7, 2019 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

Have you ever been surfing the web and gotten curious about the sites domain information?  Normally, you would have to open another browser tab and go to one of the many look‑up sites, type in the domain and get the information.  Alternatively, you could install an extension (on most browsers) to do the same thing.  If you do a web search, you will find many programs to accomplish the task.

What if you wanted to look up many sites?  What if you wanted to look up these same sites a month from now?  If the answer is yes, I have another question.  How would you like to get the information without installing any software on your computer?

Whois This Domain is a small domain registration lookup utility that allows you to easily get information about any registered domain.  It connects to the WHOIS server and retrieves the record of the domain.  It supports both generic and country code domains.

The utility doesn’t require an installation.  Simply put the executable file anywhere and run it.  After you run the program, you will be able to choose one or more domains.  I haven’t tested if there is a maximum number of sites you can check at one time.  When you’ve selected your site(s), click the OK button and you will get your domain report.

For this article, I’ve used one of my websites, the club website and Mr. Fixits website for demonstration purposes. I hope Tom doesn’t mind because it would be a pain to change the screenshots.  The report is straightforward.  The upper window lists each site and gives information that most people want to quickly know.  The lower window gives more detailed information on whichever site is highlighted.

    

This program is extremely easy to use.  It only takes 59KB of space on your hard drive, opens quickly and runs fast.  One of the best features is that you can save domain lists that you may want to look up in the future.  You can also save to a CSV (spreadsheet) file.  One other option is to view an HTML report.  This opens the domain list in your default browser making the data easy to read.

There are many times you might want to use this program.  If you remember when the club lost its dot com domain, I often checked to see if the usurper had relinquished control.  It was then easy for us to regain control.  I often check sites I am browsing to see who really owns them.  I also have a list saved of all my domain names.  It makes it easy to check if I need to renew them.  Finally, I have another list of domains that I would like to buy.  I’m pretty sure I’ll never get Tiny.com, but I keep checking.

Did I mention the cost of this utility?  It will set you back a grand total of $0.00.  Like many freeware authors, donations are accepted.  The program runs on any version of Windows from Windows 2000 through Windows 10.  Download Whois This Domain and give it a try.  I think you might find it useful.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

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