Tinys World of Technology BS

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.

There are many good image viewer/editor programs that can be found with an internet search.  A lot of them have been around for many years.  If you talk to any computer user, they will tell you about their favorite.  Over the years, I have tested several of these reliable programs.  My personal favorite that I’ve used for many years is the FastStone Image Viewer.

The publisher’s description describes the program much better than I can: “FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor.  It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red‑eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, retouching and color adjustments.  Its innovative but intuitive full‑screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches one of the four edges of the screen.  Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more.  It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, PSD, EPS, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CRW, CR2, NEF, PEF, RAF, MRW, ORF, SRF, ARW, SR2, RW2 and DNG).”

The FastStone Image Viewer has all of the editing features you expect to find in a modern Windows image editor: resize/re‑sample, rotate/flip, crop, sharpen/blur, adjust lighting/colors/curves/levels etc.  There are many special effects that you can apply: annotation, drop shadow, framing, bump map, sketch, oil painting and more.  Image management tools include tagging, drag‑and‑drop and Copy To/Move To Folder support.

There are many features in the program that are either unique or better that those found elsewhere.  Chief among these is the full screen image viewer.  Unlike many others, you can move between images.  When the view is full screen, moving the cursor to the edges brings up different control panels.  The right panel shows the image attributes, which are editable by the user.  The upper panel opens a thumbnail browser.  This is a photo strip that allows you to easily move between images.  On the left side is the File Management Window, where you will find many file and imaging functions.  The bottom control panel is the Control Bar and Navigator Menu.

Many image viewers allow you to compare two images side by side.  FastStone goes a step further allowing you to compare up to four images.  You can view each one with separate magnification settings, compare EXIF and histogram data, etc.  The program also supports dual monitors which can be even more useful when editing photos.

FastStone doesn’t just allow you to view slideshows.  It is also an excellent slideshow maker.  With the built‑in Slideshow Creator, you can create and package your show and save it as an .EXE file.  Your slideshow can contain images, text, music and hundreds of transition effects.

In this short review, I have elaborated on only a few of the many features of the program.  I could also tell you about batch processing, image acquisition, screen capture, configurable mouse wheel support, running other programs with a single click (I quickly open paint.net) from the viewer and many more.  There is also a manual (tutorial) that can be downloaded in PDF, ePub or MOBI formats.

You can download the program directly from the publisher’s website.  The price is a reasonable “free for home users”.  Give it a try. I’m pretty sure you will add it to your images editing arsenal.

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.

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.

There are several free and paid utilities that you can use to make a screenshot of your monitor.  One of the best Windows utility programs that I often utilize can’t be downloaded.  It’s already built into the operating system.

Snipping Tool is a screenshot utility included in Windows Vista and later.  It can take screenshots of an open window, rectangular areas, a free-form area, or the entire screen.  Snips can then be annotated, stored as an image file (PNG, GIF, or JPEG file), an MHTML file or e-mailed.  The Snipping Tool allows for basic image editing of the snapshot, with different colored pens, an eraser, and a highlighter.  Prior to Windows Vista, the Snipping Tool was available in the Windows Experience Pack (power toys).

The start icon for the Snipping Tool can be found in the programs/accessories group.  I have found that it is much faster and easier to start by typing “sni” in the search box and clicking on “Snipping Tool”.  Once opened, the application is very simple to use.  There are several available options:
1. Hide Instruction Text will show or hide the instruction text in the main Snipping Tool window.
2. Always copy snips to the Clipboard will copy all snips to your Windows clipboard so you can paste them into other applications.
3. Include URL below snips (HTML only) will save your snip as a Single File HTML, or MHT document.
4. Prompt to save snips before exiting.
5. Show screen overlay when Snipping Tool is active.
6. Ink Color will change the color of the selection border when you create a snip.
7. Show selection ink after snips are captured simply shows the selection border around the snip.

Personally, except for Include URL, I’ve left all the options on default.  It really doesn’t make much difference.  After you’ve selected any options you want, it is time to make a clip of your screen.  There are four different types of snips you can take.  In order to change the type of of selection the Snipping Tool will use to create a snip you would click on the small down arrow menu next to the New button.
1. Free-form Snip: This method allows you to draw a shape around your selection using a mouse or a stylus.  Once the selection shape is drawn and you close the shape so there are no open sides, the snip will be created and shown to you.
2. Rectangular Snip: This method allows you to create a rectangular selection around a portion of your screen and anything in that rectangle will be used to create the snip.
3. Window Snip: Will capture the contents of the entire active window that you select.
4. Full-screen Snip: Will capture the entire screen on your computer.

After selecting your type of snip, simply left-click and hold your mouse button down.  Your screen will fade and you can move the mouse to select the area to clip.  After you are satisfied with your selection, release the mouse button and you have snipped your screen.

A new window will open with your clipped image.  You can make then use the pen to draw on your clip.  There is also a button to select a high lighting tool.  There is an erase button that will undo any changes you’ve made.  I seldom edit my snips.  I have found that when it is necessary it is easier to do in a graphics program.  When your snip is satisfactory, you can save it to a file or attach it to an e-mail.

Note: The screenshots and directions in this article were all done on a Windows 7 computer.  Everything is similar for all other versions of Windows.  I can’t give you a download link because the program is already installed on your machine.

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

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.

Are you like me?  Do you download a lot of programs, install them and then decide that you really don’t need them?  If so you should really use virtualization software of some type.  There are many efficient programs that do this.  VirtualBox, Parallels and VMware just to name a few.  There are also many quasi-virtualization programs.  These are programs that run software in a “virtual box”.  Examples of this type of software are Sandboxie, Bufferzone and DriveSentry.  Many software security suites such as Avast, Norton, Comodo, etc. also include sandboxing utilities.

The ToolWiz TimeFreeze is a simple and small sandbox utility that lets you protect your Windows Operating System.  The program creates a temporary cache file on your hard drive.  All changes made to your computer while TimeFreeze protection is enabled are stored in this cache file.  No changes are made directly your system, files, or folders.

After you install TimeFreeze you must restart your computer to allow the program to start its services.  You can the activate TimeFreeze from the system tray, start menu or desktop icon if you have one.  Simply select start TimeFreeze.

As you can see in the screenshot, there are only five options (check boxes) in the program.
1. Start Time Freeze automatically when Windows starts.
2. Enable Folder Exclusion when Time Freeze is ON.
3. Enable Password Protection for the control.
4. Show toolbar on your desktop.
5. Hide the tray icon.

I prefer not to start freezing with my system start. Instead I start it manually before I install a program for testing or do something that may be dangerous to my computer. If you add any folders or files to the exclusion folder, no changes will be made to them. Enabling password protection simply requires a password to start the program. I personally see no reason to do this.

You can stop TimeFreeze by clicking the stop button. When you do this a pop up screen appears with two options:
1. Turn off the protection and save all the changes. This will save any changes you made into your active system and then stop freezing. This may take several minutes.
2. Turn off the protection and drop all the changes. This will stop TimeFreeze and reboot you computer. Alternatively, you can click the your start button and reboot your computer.

CAUTION: TimeFreeze is a program useful for mainly for testing software without making changes to your computer. Although it may be helpful, it is not an anti-virus or anti-malware program.

TimeFreeze is free for personal use. It is a 2.8 MB download from many of the software download sites. I recommend you download from the ToolWiz website.

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.

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’ve used Spyware Blaster on all of my Windows computers for as long as I can remember.  It is a small program that will use less than 9 MB of space on your hard drive.  Unlike other anti-spyware programs, it does not remove spyware from your computer.  Instead, it focuses on keeping evil spyware, adware, browser hijackers, etc. from being downloaded by your web browser and being installed.  It does this by using a list of known exploits and setting the “killbit” in the Windows Registry that identifies the software as unsafe.  This in effect, sets a flag to notify a web browser that an object is not be opened.  Your browser will not download malware.

Unlike most anti-malware programs, Spyware Blaster does not have to be running at all times in the background.  It works seamlessly with whatever anti-virus software you use.  When you first install and run the program, you simply have to check for updates.  After updates are downloaded, select enable protection for all browsers.  You can then close the program.  Every week or so, you should run the program and check for updates to the data base.

Spyware Blaster has some other features that I have not tested.  You can create a System Snapshot, view and change browser settings, tweak Internet Explorer settings, backup the Hosts File, completely disable Flash content or create custom Active X blocking lists.  These are items that I either have no need for or employ in other utilities.

Spyware Blaster can be downloaded from the Brightfort website.  (Bonus: They have some other pretty good utilities.)  It is a Windows only program.  The software is free for personal and educational use.  The purchase of a license for $14.95 allows for automatic updates and support.  Give it a try.  It’s kind of like a flu shot.

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.