I have a whole lot of (legal) music on my computer.  For the most part, we left out CDs and cassettes (remember those?) and LPs (yikes!) back in Canada and just brought the music in MP3 format on our hard drive.

This means that we can technically play most of the music we’ve ever owned randomly (not that we do that exactly, but we do play large collections on "random").  That’s all very well and good, but as you well know recording quality varies, and some recordings are set at a much LOUDER volume than others.  So you can be listening to one song just fine, and the next might BLAST you out of your seat!

Software developers, who also occasionally listen to music, came up with volume normalization, which attempts to keep your music from drastically changing decibels from track to track.  But there are problems with this too.  For one thing, it can slow down the program you’re using.  You may also use more than one program, and each one must normalize the volume.  Finally, many programs have trouble understanding how the human ear hears the song, and so the results that come out of your speakers are far from perfect.

One of the most perfect solutions out there is a program called MP3Gain.  MP3Gain simply normalizes the volume of MP3 tracks, but it attempts to adjust how the track actually sounds to the human ear.  The results are far better.

You can also maintain the volume difference between songs in a single album, and yet lower the general volume of each album.

The only complaint I have is that the setup is a little confusing at first.  But there’s a help file, and once you figure it out it’s very quick to set up and very simple – you basically press a button to analyze your MP3s, and another button to normalize the volume.  All done!  Go listen to some music!

The program is free, of course, under the GNU General Public License.  It was developed by Glen Sawyer.  It’s available in a number of languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese and Uzbek.  If you listen to music via MP3 on a regular basis, this is a must have program.  Go to the MP3Gain download page and grab yourself a copy.  MP3Gain for Mac is available here.

Essentially, Winamp is a program that allows you to watch video and listen to audio, much like Windows Media Player. Created by Justin Frankel many years ago (and since developed by many), the program does what it does with style. You can listen to CDs, to MP3s, even to streaming audio off the internet (and you can even do it on a dial-up connection in many cases). You can listen in sequential order, or random order, or make your own order. You can watch video full screen or in a little box. You can watch pretty flashing lights while the music plays.

Winamp can be just a small bar on the top of your screen

I set up a little menu on the bottom of my screen with playlists of the music I have on my computer. With a couple of clicks I can play all the music I have by one artist, or play a certain theme, or just play kids music. This is the beauty of Winamp playlists.

A pay-for version, which I haven’t tried, also allows you to convert music into MP3 format.

That’s just a hint of what you can do with Winamp. Perhaps its biggest problem is that there is just so much you can do with it – you’ll never finish checking out all the features, plugins and skins. But in the mean time, just download it, stick in a CD, and press play. You can learn from there.

CoolRuler is one of those little programs that every once in a while makes something a whole lot easier.  The concept is quite simple, really.  CoolRuler is a little ruler that appears on your screen.  It can be horizontal or vertical.  It can measure in centimeters, inches, pixels, or a custom measurement.  You can move it around the screen and put little marks on it just where you want them.

There are all kinds of reasons why you might want to use something like this.  If you’re working with graphics online or emailing to a friend, you might want to measure how big the picture should be.  If you’re writing an academic paper, you might want to see just how big those margins really are.  Anything that’s going to stay on your computer, or be printed out, might need to be measured with CoolRuler.

Sure, you may not want it now, but the day will come when you’ll remember what I said and go looking for it.  So why not just get it now?  It’s a tiny program available from FabSoft.  Click here to go to the CoolRuler download page [edit: looks like the link is no longer available. Sorry! Contact me if you're interested in Cool Ruler.].

Some of the applications I use have a spell checker.  Some don’t.  And even when they do, they certainly don’t have all the words I need.  And what if I want a definition?

No problem.  All I have to do is highlight the word and click [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[W].  Low and behold, up pops the definition, and synonyms to boot.  It will even tell me how to pronounce the word – and believe it or not, that comes in handy sometimes.

Even more amazing, WordWeb will differentiate between Canadian, British and US spellings.  Now at last I can spell colour my favourite way!  It’s not exactly a spell-checker, but I use it to check spelling often.  It does give suggestions of “close” words, and it’s lightening fast.

If the definition doesn’t appear, I can click the link and it will automatically find a definition on the web.  Pretty smooth.

The program is called WordWeb.  WordWeb is free for personal, non-commercial use, and only US$19 for the Pro version, in which you can add your own definitions, solve anagrams, and do wildcard searches.  WordWeb will even work on Windows 95.

By the way, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the nifty dictionary I used long before WordWeb.  This one just uses online information, unlike WordWeb which has a built in dictionary.  It’s called the Magical Jellybean Dictionary.  But I prefer the offline abilities and speed of WordWeb.  The nice thing is the ability to press the keys from any application and get it to bring up the word.

WordWeb – dictionary, thesaurus, all at the push of a button.  Visit their website now to get yourself a copy of WordWeb, free!

I believe this is number 4 in my series on great free software.  First was the graphic viewer, Irfanview.  Next came Dave’s Quick Search Deskbar.  And the last feature was RJT DateCalc.

 Today I’m recommending another mathematically oriented piece of software.

Every once in a while, you come across it, and you just can’t figure it out.  You know – ounces, litres, quarts, centimetres, celsius.  What you need is a tool that can convert all these things.  Well, you’ve just found one.

Quick Convert can convert just about anything.  Just enter in the number, choose the two units of measurement, and there you are.  You can make it positive or negative even.

The only slightly awkward thing about Quick Convert is that you have to select the “Integer range” and “Decimal places”.  If that sounds hopelessly complex, don’t worry.  It just means that if you’re going to enter a number 100 or greater, you have to choose a range larger than 1 … 99.  That’s all.

The beauty of this program really is the range of conversions you can do.  Watch this.  How many metres in a mile?  1609.34.How many seconds are there in a decade?  315360000.  Ok, how many miles an hour is the speed of light?  670616629.40mph.  I have a 1 Gig flash drive – how many megabytes is that?  1,024.  How many UK stones in a 3.03 Tons?  432.86.  How many franklins are 1.1 coulombs?  3297717979.11.  You get the idea.

Quick Convert is a steal of a deal at $0.00 (what’s that in pesos?  Oops – it doesn’t do currency!) and only .98MB.  Download it right here.  And never let your cookbook confuse you again.

Ok, now if Uncle Joe is 54 today, when was he born?  Ah, those date questions.  I could never figure them out.  That is, until Jane Taubman came along.

Jane is a family historian that came up with a little program called RJT DateCalc.  All it does is calculate dates.  You want to know how old Jeanette is at her 50th wedding anniversary?  What day she was born if she’s 76 today?  If she was 35 when she got married, when was that?  Well, this calculator can do it all.  So, in my quest to find you free software of many different types (this is the third in a series – see the first entry and second entry), I bring you this simple but extremely useful little tool.  You can download RJT Date Calculator here – she has versions for Windows XP down to Windows 3.1.

Visit Jane’s website here, she has some very interesting history related to her family on there as well (here’s a great example).  This software is totally free, but you can donate on her site if you find it useful, or at least drop her a line to say thanks.

Speaking of dates, don’t forget to see our family tree!  One of these days I’ll get a new version out.

David Bau, a software engineer and former Microsoft employee from Pennsylvania USA is the author of one of my favourite pieces of free software.  If you use Windows and spend any amount of time looking for information on the internet, this may become one of your favourites too.  David is the creator of the aptly named, Dave’s Quick Search DeskBar.  Here’s what it looks like:

As you can see, this is a little box that sits beside your Start button on your Windows desktop.  When you’re not doing anything, it just shows the date and time.  But when you’re ready to search, you type in what you want to look for.  Then, you press Enter and your browser automatically searches Google for that search term.  Handy, but that is only the beginning.

There is a handy menu that can open up after you type in your term.  That menu allows you to search other things.

 Search with Yahoo!.  Check stock quotes.  Search news, weather reports, movie reviews, eBay, amazon, WalMart, encyclopedias, dictionaries, medical articles and comic strips.  Do currency conversions, find distances, read tips to tweak Windows….the list goes on and on.

One of the simplest things that I personally use is simply going to a web page.  Just type in the URL and press enter.  You can also type in a time and a message, and an alarm will sound at the appropriate time.

It’s impossible to list all the things this bar does.  On the right there you can see a search for recipes.  I forgot to mention that one, and a few gazillion others.  But essentially, it allows you a lightning quick way to find key information on the internet, whatever that information may be, without loading a bunch of pages in between that you don’t need.

You download Dave’s Quick Search DeskBar from this link.  Note that there is currently a minor glitch when you try to use this program in Windows XP.  Don’t panic – I use XP.  There is a work-around that you need to do once after installing, and this is clearly explained on the website.

For those adventurous types, there are some nice ad-ons at this website here.  Enjoy!

Now that I have these blog entries neatly arranged in categories, I thought some of you might find it helpful to hear about some of the best free software out there.  So, every once in a while I just may include a little note about one of my tried and true favourites.

One of the first things I install on any computer, and one of the programs I use the most, is called Irfanview (pronounced earfanview).  Irfanview was created years ago (though last updated in October) by a guy named Irfan Skiljan, originally from Bosnia, now living in Austria.

Ok, so what is it?  Irfanview is a very fast graphics viewer – actually, multimedia viewer, for Windows.  You can use it to view photos, sounds, and movies in all different formats.  Some of the common ones would be jpg, gif, avi and some mac formats such as pict, and other formats like kdc (Kodak digital camera), psd (Adobe photoshop), cur (cursor), ttf (true type font) and many, many more.  In other words, if you don’t know what to open that file with, try Irfanview!

You can also make changes to some files.  You can make your photo smaller, brighter, and add special effects.  The other nice thing is that Irfanview comes in about 30 languages now, including English, Spanish, Uzbek, Hebrew and Chinese.  Yikes, if I tell you everything about the program I’ll be here forever.

So, here’s how to get it…go to the website, and click on “download”.  Be sure to also download the plugins, that way you can load a lot of extra file types.  Irfanview is free for non-commercial use, but for commercial use (or if you really like it and want to support Irfan) you can pay through PayPal or Kagi by clicking on “Support Irfanview”.

You may ask, how did I do that cool screen shot of Irfanview for you to see?  Well, I used Irfanview, of course!

I like this mouse game. Why? Because! When I play the game I learn about colours. If you want the game, it’s free here: