Posts Tagged: ‘Software’

Planetarium Programs – Originally Published September 2017

September 3, 2017 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.

Last month there were a lot of astronomy stories.  The eclipse that crossed the United States was on the news every day.  This has been only the latest of many extra terrestrial stories in the recent past.  Pluto was downgraded from planet status. We have been exploring our solar system in depth, especially Mars.  Deep space telescopes are finding many new planets orbiting distant stars.  Scientists are speculating that many of them might even be habitable.

Back here on Earth, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on a telescope to view the heavens.  Planetarium software will allow you to view stars as if you were actually looking at the sky.  All you need is a computer with a decent graphics card.  There are several free planetarium software programs that can bring the skies to your monitor.

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium program that shows the sky in 3D.  If you have a compatible telescope you can use the program to control it.  The program runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS.  There is also a portable version.

SkyChart is another open source cross platform program.  It also will control a computerized telescope.  There are many deep space images with more being frequently added to the data base.

C2A is a freeware program that has an excellent data section next to the sky image display.  The program is very intuitive and easy to use.  It is available for Windows only.

WorldWideTelescope has an interesting “Guided Tours” feature.  Each of the tours takes you on a multimedia trip through some aspect of the night sky.  You can either download the program for windows or view in a web browser.

If you like these programs, 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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Android App Memories – Originally Published August 2017

August 8, 2017 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

I recently read an article on Android Police – My Talking Tom squeaks and tickles its way to over 500 Million downloads on the Play Store.  The app My Talking Tom brought back some great memories.  It was one of the first apps I installed on my tablet many years ago.  I never played with the virtual pet, but I sure remember a much younger grandson manipulating it for hours on end.

That got me to thinking about other apps that I’ve installed over the years.  There are many like Nova Launcher that I’ve installed on every Android device I’ve ever had.  As I look through the list on my Play Store account, I see there are many others that I don’t use anymore.  Some of them evoke special memories just like that cat did.  Here are a few good (and some not so good) apps that I don’t use anymore.

The Dolphin Browser is a highly rated web browser that I used as default for many years.  I’ve not installed it in several years.

Clipper Plus is a clipboard manager for Android that automatically saves everything you copy.  It is another excellent program that I quit using.  I no longer do much writing on any of my mobile devices.  Type Machine is a similar app that I’ve outgrown.

When App Volume Control Pro was first released, I downloaded it almost immediately.  It supposedly changes the volume control on your Android device depending on what application is currently running.  I could never get it to work for me.

Pedometer is a highly rated step counting program.   I used it for about a week but found that it wasn’t very accurate.  I’ll keep wearing my OMRON pedometer on my belt.

SD Maid – System Cleaning Tool, Battery Widget, Avast Mobile Security & Antivirus, BatON and many other similar security apps no longer find their way to my mobile world.  I’ve found that the services they provide are usually not worth the resources that they use.

Sometimes a trip down memory lane can be a fun digression from the modern world.

Thanks for reading.

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Windows Snipping Tool – Originally Published July 2017

July 5, 2017 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.

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.

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MacroDroid – Originally Published June 2017

July 5, 2017 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

Down deep inside, I’m pretty lazy.  I think that is one of the reasons that I’ve become a technology geek.  After all, why should I get up from my easy chair to turn off the television when I can just push a button.  Of course, in this modern age, I’m not sure I could even find the on/off button.  When I’m in my vehicle, like many other people, I connect my phone via Bluetooth.  When I get out, I always take out my phone and stop my music player, turn on the Wi-Fi, turn off the Bluetooth and put the phone back in my pocket.

The truth is that is how I used to do it.  I don’t have to anymore because when I turn the engine off and open the card door, it all happens “automatically”.  This is done with an application that I’ve been using for the last month or so.

MacroDroid is a powerful task automation and configuration app that focuses heavily on usability with a simple UI and a logical step by step process.  I’ve tried many similar apps and even reviewed a few of them in past Newsletters.  MacroDroid is the easiest and most functional that I’ve ever used.

There are three steps to using MacroDroid:
1. Select Trigger – This is where you define an action that will start your macro.  In my example above, the trigger is Bluetooth disconnect from SYNC (my cars Bluetooth name).  At the time of this writing, there are more than 40 triggers.
2. Add Actions – This is what your device will do after the trigger occurs.  In my example the macro turns on the Wi-Fi, disables the Bluetooth, says the time and launches the home screen.  There are more than 70 actions you can use.
3. Add Constraints – This is where you can set options to limit when a Macro can activate.

There are many built in templates and user uploaded Macros.  All of them can be easily modified for each users needs.  I do have a small quibble with the templates.  For many actions, there are too many templates.  You can spend a lot of time finding the perfect one that works with your device.

     

 

The developer operates an active help forum where users can suggest features, share macros and get help with the application. There is also a settings helper application for devices that might have problems.  I haven’t had to use it.

 

You can download MacroDroid – Device Automation from the Google Play Store.  Android version 4.0.3 or higher is required.  The free version is limited to five macros and contains advertisements.  I can’t tell you whether the ads are obtrusive or not.  I purchased the pro version for $2.99 about fifteen minutes after I installed it.

Thanks for reading.

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Paint.net – Originally Published May 2017

May 4, 2017 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.

At last months meeting there was an excellent discussion about various graphics editing and manipulation tools.  I thought I’d take a few minutes and tell you about one of my favorites.  The program that I use most often for serious editing is Paint.NET, an open-source, free photo editing software program.  It was originally created as a college undergraduate student project in 2004, funded by Microsoft and was designed to replace Microsoft Paint, which was included in Windows.

The program has a simple, intuitive interface that is easily learned.  There is a large selection of tool that is easily and logically arranged.  Many of the tools are contained within their own window.  This allows users to set up their work space for their own convenience.

Paint.NET has many advanced features which include blurring, sharpening, the Magic Wand which allows for the selecting of regions of similar color and the Clone Stamp which is used for copying or erasing portions of an image.

Layers are another great feature of Paint.Net.  They allow you to add a layer on top of the background that not only allows you to add new items on top of others, but to edit them independently of the other layers.

The program has a large number of special effects.  These allow you to alter the appearance of your image.  You can use blurs, sepia toning, color level altering, ink sketch transformations, anti red-eye, distortions such as bulging, denting and pixelation.  The software has a huge following of users that are constantly creating and sharing other special effects and plug-ins.

If you’re like me, a great feature is unlimited history.  You don’t have to worry about making errors while you are editing.  You can make as many changes as want.  If they don’t look good, just undo and do over as often as you like.

There is also an active online community and forum.  They will give you any extra help that you might need.  You can also find several tutorials and guides.

Did I mention Paint.NETs best feature is the cost?  The price is free, although the authors will accept any donations.  Give it a try.  You might like it.  You can download Paint.NET by clicking the link.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLACUG extra, bonus perk; a little lagniappe.

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April Fools Pranks – Originally Published April 2017

April 7, 2017 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

April is here again.  I won’t make the same mistake I did last year when I wrote an April Fools column about leaving Lake Charles.  I sure got a lot of questions about why I was moving.  I’ve always been an April Fooler type of person.  It all started several years ago when I was almost born on April 1.

In this modern age, April 1 pranks almost beg to be played on someones computer.  Almost every one uses a laser mouse these days.  They can be easily disabled with a small piece of tape or a post it note on the sensor.  Many people won’t notice and will have a hard time figuring out why all of a sudden their mouse isn’t working.  You can confuse them even more by opening mouse properties in the control panel.  Change the mouse speed to the slowest setting will make any mouse activities an ordeal.

Another prank that has been around forever can still confuse even a veteran computer user.  Simply take a screen shot of your victim’s computer.  Then hide all of the desktop icons and replace their wallpaper with the screen shot.  Sit back and watch them click on icons that won’t load a program.

Another quick prank is to open Google’s home page in a browser.  Click on preferences and change the default language.  You’d be surprised at how many people this trick will fool.

All of the following pranks in this article have been tested on Windows computers.  I haven’t done any research to see if they will work on Apple’s Operating System(s).  It shouldn’t be to hard to find out if you’re interested.

Many users don’t know about sticky keys.  Sticky keys will change how the Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Windows Key will function.   When enabled, keys are serialized instead of operating together.  For instance, instead of typing “Shift – a” to capitalize, you would have to type “Shift”, release the key and then type “a”.  This key change will drive an unsuspecting victim crazy.  Sticky keys are enabled easily by pressing the “Shift” key five times in quick succession.

An evil prank that you should only play on someone that won’t beat you up is to cause their computer to shut down.  Right click on one of the icons on your victims desk top.  Type the following in the target box: %windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -s -f -t 100 -c “Your Message Here”.  “Your Message Here” can be replaced with whatever message you like.  I use something like “That does not compute so I am shutting down” or “I’m sleepy.  I think I’ll shut down and rest now.”

Whenever your victim double clicks on that shortcut, their program will not start.  Instead, your message will display for 100 seconds (unless you change the number in the target box.)  Then the computer will shut down.

These computer pranks are all designed for the Windows operating system.  Although they are non-destructive, you run the risk of aggravating the user and making him or her possibly want to harm you.  Use them at your own risk.

Here is one last little April Fools that is easy to implement.  Surprisingly, even though it has been around for a long time, a lot of people don’t know about it.  You can try it out right now.

Press Ctrl-Alt-Down Arrow on your keyboard.

It would be nice if you fix their computer for them afterword, but who am I to tell you what to do?

Thanks for reading.

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Reviewing My Reviews – Originally Published April 2017

April 7, 2017 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

It’s hard for me to believe, but I’ve been writing these Android articles for more than four years now.  It all started when I got my first Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note II.  That was a good machine.  I used it a lot and never had one battery explode.  Since then I’ve written a lot of articles about using Android, hardware that I’ve owned and apps that I’ve used.  This month, I thought I’d take a look back and re-view some of the applications I’ve reviewed.

Voice Shortcuts Launcher was the first app I ever reviewed.  I liked it a lot but don’t use it anymore.  OK Google has improved so much that it is the only voice control I use.  Speaking of Google, the first app of theirs I reviewed was “Google Currents”, a newsreader that Google discontinued about six months later.  It sure is hard to believe that Google would discontinue something.

When I reviewed Cluefhttps://tinys-bs.com/wordpress/wp-admin/post-new.phpul Privacy Advisor by Bitdefender, I thought it was an interesting program that inspected your installed apps and gave privacy recommendations.  I didn’t use it for a very long time.  Kingsoft Office is a suite of apps that has been updated and renamed to WPS Office + PDF. At the time, it was the best word processing software available for Android.  Many tech sites still say that today.  I don’t do much word stuff on my smaller mobile devices any more and have not installed it lately.

When I reviewed the Amazon App Store, it wasn’t really a review but an article explaining why I removed it from all of my devices.  I got a little upset when Amazon required me to be logged in whenever I used one of the “free” programs they featured.  My machines seemed to run a lot faster without the program installed.

Wordiest is the first game I ever reviewed.  I still play the game almost every day.  Other games I’ve reviewed are Red Herring, Trainyard, Shikaku and Monkey Wrench.  Except for Red Herring, I still play them all fairly frequently.  I’ve reviewed the Fireproof Games Room Series more than once.  Even though they aren’t free, they remain my favorite Android games.

In October of last year, I reviewed Solid Explorer, an excellent two panel file explorer that keeps getting better all the time.  Simple Checkbook hasn’t been updated since November 4, 2014.  Every time I think about downloading something newer, I realize that the older model keeps my accounts perfectly.

I hope you enjoyed this short synopsis of some of my Android Reviews.  It has been four years since I left Windows Mobile and went to the Darkside.  Maybe it isn’t so dark after all.

Thanks for reading.

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FreeOCR – Originally Published March 2017

March 12, 2017 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 couple of months, I’ve been working on my latest club project in my spare time.  I hope to get all of the club newsletters scanned and posted on the web site. It is a time consuming job, but I think it is an important part of the clubs history.

I could just scan each page, combine into a PDF file and post to the website.  The problem with using that simple, easiest method is that the files would not be indexed by the Google web site search engine.  I spent so much time setting up the web site custom search that this became an untenable alternative.  I needed some good optical character recognition software (OCR).

I’m a scanning rookie.  By that I mean I have never used a scanner for anything but scanning old pictures and the occasional document.  This whole project has been a learning experience for me.  I hope everyone thinks the results are satisfactory.

The first thing I learned is that many of the OCR scanning programs use the same engine, Tessaract OCR.  Tesseract is a commercial quality OCR engine that was originally developed by HP.  It was open sourced in 2005.  Click this link for An Overview of the Tesseract OCR Engine.  There are many OCR software packages (both free and paid) using Tesseract.  All of them are just “wrapper” interfaces.

After a thorough search of reviews, a few test downloads and several second thoughts, I did what I often do: go with Gizmo’s recommendation.  I downloaded and installed FreeOCR.  FreeOCR is a free Optical Character Recognition Software for Windows.  It supports scanning from most Twain scanners and can also open most scanned PDF files and multi page Tiff images as well as popular image file formats.  The interface is intuitive and the program is easy to use.

FreeOCR processes only one image at a time, but it will OCR multi-page PDF files.  There is no limit on file size.  FreeOCR can create Word and RTF documents from the text it extracts, but it’s just pasted text.  There is no attempt to reconstruct the document or place images.  Most importantly, text scanning conversion is excellent.

There is an Online Help Menu, but you will likely only have to look at it once or twice.  To use the program, simply open a document by scanning, opening a file or opening a PDF.  You can either select the entire page or draw a box around part of the image.  Then press the OCR button to process your selection.  The original image is on the left panel and the OCR text is on the right.

The left panel has nine menu items (the small icons on the left of the pane).  From top to bottom, you can select next page, previous page, fit image to screen, fit width to screen, enlarge, reduce and rotate either counter or clockwise.  The bottom icon (the little square) is the most used and the most useful.  Clicking it opens the selection menu allowing you to crop the image to your selected area or copy the entire image to the clipboard.

Similarly, there are seven menu items in the text panel on the right side. From top to bottom, you can clear the text window, save text, remove line breaks, copy all the text to the clipboard, export text into Microsoft Word, export text as RTF or change the font size.  In my setup, I copy the text to the clipboard and then paste into Scibus.  Most of the text editing required is deleting extra spaces, changing the number 1 to a lower case letter l or changing the capitalization of the x.  The program doesn’t reliably convert some fonts.  After about fifty edits it got much easier as I learned what errors to look for.  When I am done editing the text, I select images and copy them to the clipboard.  Then I paste them into the document.  I don’t spend a lot of time making them perfect because I think the important part of the newsletters is the articles and being able to search them on the club website.

FreeOCR is freeware OCR & scanning software and you can do what you like with it including commercial use.  The included Tesseract OCR engine is distributed under the Apache V2.0 license.  I recommend downloading the program from the home page.

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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ToolWiz TimeFreeze – Originally Published January 2017

January 11, 2017 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.

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.

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Simple Checkbook Ledger – Originally Published December 2016

December 4, 2016 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

The number one app on my phone hasn’t been updated since November of 2014 and will likely never be updated again.  I’ve used it on all my android phones since my first one and it is one of the first programs I install if I get a new phone or do a reset.  I use the app nearly every day and often many times each day.

Simple Checkbook Ledger is a checkbook ledger.  Many of the other apps of this type have more features, sophistication, adaptability, etc.  I like this one because it does one thing and does it well.  It keeps the balance of my checkbook, savings account, gift cards, etc.  It does all this while actually looking like an actual old time check register.
Main features include:

– Keeps track of multiple accounts with password protection (password can be turned off in account preferences)
– Saves a list of descriptions/payees so that after you type something once you only need to tap on it later.
– Tap on a transaction to mark it mark it as cleared (it will be highlighted).
– Long press on a transaction to void, delete, edit, or add a note to the transaction.
– Schedule automatic transactions to be entered into the ledger at specified time intervals such as weekly, biweekly, monthly, and yearly.  Special monthly transactions are also supported for items not occurring on the same day every month, such as the third Wednesday of the month.
– Export your ledger as a comma separated value (CSV) file that can be loaded on almost any spreadsheet software.
– Archives cleared transactions.
– Export archived transactions as a CSV file and optionally have them deleted from the app at the time you export them.
– There is also an option to sync your accounts with Google Drive. I have never tested this.

         

As with many programs, there are a few things that could be improved.  If you hit the back button without saving a transaction, it will be lost.  The app doesn’t remind you.  If you password protect an account, it is imperative to remember the password.  There is no recovery method.

Simple Checkbook Ledger is free on the Google Play Store.  A one time purchase of $0.99 will remove advertising.  The app has been on my phone for such a long time that I cannot remember the placement or obtrusiveness of the ads.  If you have a use for this type of program, give it a try.
Thanks for reading.

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