Main Page

Welcome! This site is a place to document technical information and other stuff that I was not able to find easily and/or don't want to lose.

Technical Notes

• Amazon EC2
• MediaWiki
• Newtek VT5
• Wirecast
• Western Digital Mybook World Edition II
• Wowza Media Server

Links

Free Tools

Here are a number of free tools that I have found to be very useful.

Graphics

• GIMP GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package.
• Hugin Panorama photo stitcher.
• jhead Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool (can use -autorot flag in conjunction with jpegtran to automatically rotate images based on orientation data stored by cameras that support including many Canon Powershots).
• jpegtran Lossless jpeg manipulation including rotation (direct link for .exe version is here).
• ImageMagick I mainly use this for batch picture resizing (mogrify -resize *.JPG 1600x1600)

Video

• MPEG Streamclip Simple video editor that can read multiple formats and export them to QuickTime, DV, AVI/DivX and MPEG-4.
• VLC media player The cross-platform open-source multimedia framework, player and server

Networking / Connectivity

• Firefox Web browser (favorite add-ons include Copy Plain Text, Auto Copy, ShowIP and SwitchProxy Tool)
• Skype Encrypted text & video chat that just works (even through firewalls)
• PuTTY Free telnet/ssh/serial client which supports tunneling and much more.
• UltraVNC Remote control software

Security

• KeePass Password Safe Secure, encrypted password storage with cross platform support including blackberry and other mobile devices.
• TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux (I use it mostly for a virtual encrypted disk within a file which is mounted as a real disk).

Other

• 1-4a-rename A file renamer which renames many files at once (handy for combining pictures from multiple sources and prepending numbers to keep them in order).
• CDBurnerXP Burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs for free.
• Directory Compare This handy utility will compare and/or synchronize folders including network shares and can be used for simple backups. Visit the author's home page for more handy tools: http://tp.lc.ehu.es/jma.html

Free Website Software

Here are a few free web tools and software packages that I use.

• Google Apps I use Google apps for my email & calendars (yes I realize it's the only thing in this list that you can't install on your own server)
• MovableType Publishing Platform
• Gallery Your photos your website
• MediaWiki Free software wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia (this site is running on it).
• Secure PHP Form Mailer Script
• Secure Guestbook Script with Image Verification
• AWStats Free tool that generates graphs web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics.
• csv2png Very small precompiled utility for generating graphs from csv data.
• PHP RecipeBook PHPRecipeBook is a web based cookbook with the ability to create shopping lists.
• GNUMP3d Web based music indexing & streaming including recursive playlist generation.
• LimeSurvey Opensource survey application (run easy to use surveys on your own web server)

Network Monitoring

• Cacti Graphing
• Zentrack Project management & helpdesk
• Zabbix Network monitoring, alerting & graphing
• Nagios Network monitoring & alerting
• OpenNMS Network management platform (overlaps with Zabbix)

Websites that I frequent

Entertainment

• Facebook I use Facebook to stay in touch with friends
• Hulu Watch TV shows & movies online for free legally
• Pandora Free music streaming service that plays new & old music based on what you like
• National Geographic I get several e-newsletters and enjoy the pictures & articles
• slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters

Shopping

Stores

• Amazon Buy and read reviews on almost any product
• Monoprice Very reasonable prices on cables and other IT/AV supplies
• eBay Buy stuff cheaper (sometimes) and/or locate hard to find items

Comparison/Deal Sites

• Dealnews How to go broke saving money
• Salescircular Retail store specials aggregated & sorted in one place
• Google product search Price comparison shopping

Travel

Travel research often involves many varied sites, but here are a few that I use often and a couple that are unique enough to mention.

• Expedia Tickets, Hotels, Cars, etc
• Tripadvisor Hotel reviews and more
• Airtreks Affordable, multi-airline around the world tickets (I have never actually used them but it's fun to dream)
• Travelzoo Travel Deals
• Upgrade:Travel Better Informative travel blog