That’s right, it’s Friday, and I’m cleaning out my bookmarks again. This week, I found some links to some really terrific free utilities. 4 of them assist in managing and accessing your Media, and 1 of them is just plain handy. Hope you enjoy them.

TvVersity - Would you like to get all of that tasty media that just sits around on your computer, and put it on your TV? If you have any of the devices on this page, then you can do just that for free.

TvVersity supports generic UPnP / DLNA devices, which is actually a pretty popular set of protocols supported by lots of devices. XBox 360, PS3, and many, many others. I just heard about this software package this morning, on Tekzilla, so I haven’t had time to check it out. I’m anxious to try it out and see if it works with my Popcorn Hour. The software is free for home / non-commercial use.

KillBox - Ever try to delete a file, and some unknown program has it open? Killbox is a freeware utility that will end the process of any program that has a particular file open. Very handy. Don’t try it with explorer.exe though.

CDex - Converting your CDs into MP3s? Want to convert your audio book CD into one big MP3? CDEX is not only free, and powerful, but open source as well. I especially love that I can rip an entire CD into one file. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it works terrifically.

Mp3Tag - Do you have any MP3s that you didn’t rip correctly, now all of the tags are missing, Mp3Tag is a great tool to help you get your MP3 meta information, the ID3 tags, in order. Did I mention it’s free?

DVDShrink - If you’re trying to make backups of the movies that you already legally own, then DVD Shrink is a very handy utility. It will take the original DVD, or the files that were already ripped, and allow you to select / deselect various content, subtitles, extra audio tracks, to be compressed.

It will then calculate how much it needs to compress your video to fit on a standard 4.7G blank DVD. I personally like to create .ISO files that I can copy to my Popcorn Hour.

Have any free stuff that you can’t live without? Let me know, post it in the comments.

Posted in Multimedia, free stuff, Utilities No Comments »

One of my favorite podcasts has been This Week in Tech. I’ve posted about it a couple of times, even talked about it on our most recent podcast. There is some really great stuff to listen to there.

Recently, the guy behind the TWIT podcast network, Leo Laporte, launched Twit Live, which is a series of cameras that record him while he is recording his podcasts. The guests on his podcasts can use their video cameras, and in studio guests can be on camera too.

The thing that amazes me is that Leo Laporte has this following of fans, and for good reason, that just keep adding up. From his stint on TechTV, to his radio show. The more venues he is in, and the more exposure he gets, the more fans he "collects". The number of them seems to keep growing.

Affectionately known as the TWIT army, the fans come out to listen, they come out to download podcasts, and now, they can watch him too.

Windows Weekly is probably one of the least watched shows on the TWIT network, but here, while it is being recorded, at noon mountain time on Thursday, Leo has 1800 users watching the feed.

That just boggles my mind. I’m at work, and I just popped in to see what was going on. Yet 1800 people were able to find the time during the day to watch Leo record a podcast.

On a recent episode of TWIT, they were discussing the viewership of TechTV, a professionally produced cable television channel. They realized that the TWIT network blows TechTV out of the water when it comes to the number of people that listen to the show. Amazing.

Keep up the great work Leo!

Posted in TWIT, LeoLaporte, TV, WebSites No Comments »

Growing up, I always wanted to shoot rockets, and I just never did. I can’t complain, there were a lot of things I was able to do that most kids don’t get to. Rockets would have been great though. Then again, I did have that tendency to set things on fire…

Now, I’m all grown up, with kids of my own, and recently I realized that I should just go out and buy a rocket.

We started with water rockets, but they weren’t in great supply around here. I found some plans on NASA’s web site to build your own water rocket out of 2 liter bottles, if you are interested.

Anyway, we bought a $16 dollar kit from a large retailer, it was made by Estes, and included a pre-built rocket, a couple of engines, and a launch platform. There were some other things included, basically everything you need to launch the thing a couple of times.

Let me tell you, it was a little overcast, and a little windy. Sure, we spent more time chasing the rockets than actually launching them, but I don’t know if you could put a dollar value on that type of fun.

My oldest currently wants to be a Scientist when he grows up, I just don’t want to grow up. I want to try and get my guys interested in Science. I hope to give them enough real world examples so that when they are sitting in math class, they don’t have to think that they’ll never need to know this stuff.

Now I just need to find the formula that tells you how much thrust you need to launch a specific height, or maybe how many feet per second an object of a particular weight will fall.

Oh wait, the oldest one is 6, well it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?

Wait, there was almost something really interesting to write about.

I didn’t mention the day that we did this. It was memorial day.

The following Wednesday is the day that the Air Force Academy graduates, so in preparation, the Thunderbirds (the aerial stunt team of the Air Force) was practicing.

I was launching my rocket just North of the Air Force Academy, and those planes were flying pretty low.

OK, of course I was making sure that the multi-million dollar planes were no where near me when I was launching the rocket, but in this paranoid day and age, you never know what could have happened. Can we say SWAT team?

What would have been even worse, is that after we were finished with the rockets, we were going to meet some friends to target shoot. So I also had a couple of hi-powered rifles and several hundred rounds of ammo in the Jeep.

I can imagine the headlines now.

I thought it was really fitting though, making use of my freedoms on Memorial day. A belated thank you to all of our Men and Women in the Armed Forces, and the Men and Women who support them. Thanks guys!

Posted in Rocketry, Fun, Distractions 2 Comments »

Not being the super visual guy, I had to actually give myself a re-occuring task to change my wallpaper. I just never think about it, and changing my desktop wallpaper regularly keeps things feeling fresh.

Today’s wallpaper is from Vlad Studio, again.It’s called "They Stole the Moon (2008)". It seems like the stuff from Vlad Studio has been on my desktop for weeks, even though this is the first time I’ve posted about it.

Great Stuff!

Posted in Wallpapers, WebSites No Comments »