Philip Goddard
www.philipgoddard.com
Do you live in or near Exeter, UK, and want a real quality computer system built for you, with a seemingly unbeatable level of knowledge and understanding of computer issues displayed in the guidance, advice and support that you get?
Then Brian Fowler is the man for you! He is a true expert, not only in his extensive knowledge but his deep understanding of what he is dealing with. I had my computer system built by him in late 2003, and I naturally returned to him for the full upgrade / rebuild now (March 2008), for he has been the one computer seller who I know of with whom I could have a really useful and fruitful discussion about my requirements and feel that we were talking and thinking at the same level.
If you just want the cheapest computer possible (i.e. built down to a price for mass selling), go to Curry's or any old computer store and enjoy your computer's run-of-the-mill performance and your mediocre (at best) technical support service, but if you want a real quality system with every component chosen for performance and reliability and avoidance of known problems and compatibility issues, and with really brilliant support and troubleshooting, then Brian is your man, and my own experience so far has been that for what I get he charges remarkably low prices.
N.B. This is a completely unsolicited 'plug' for Brian's excellent service, and I make no financial gain from it.
David is a painter of considerable originality and integrity. Clarity, luminosity and simplicity are features of his surrealistic paintings. In his case surrealism does not denote the freakishness of much surrealist art, but works in which a luminous and precise economy of means and often seemingly realistic depictions point to the metaphysical and spiritual.
David actually troubled to put an entry in this site's Visitors' Book, upon which an e-mail correspondence started between us. (Great friendships can arise thus, you know - give it a try yourself!) His music is very different from mine, and, on the basis of souped-up versions of his MIDI files played on my enhanced non-GM playback system, I get a great deal of pleasure and uplift from it.
Another kindred spirit who actually bothered to put an entry in this site's Visitors' Book.
Yet another kindred spirit who actually bothered to put an entry in this site's Visitors' Book. He and I have turned out to have a lot of empathy over matters of spirituality as well as the music.
I got to know Jim as a warm-hearted and very active and supportive fellow member of Classical Music Makers (CMM), a major Internet group and webring of classical artists with online music - though the group became more or less defunct at the time of the demise of MP3.com, which the group was linked to. Like me, he has had commissions for organ music from Carson Cooman, and it was this that prompted the initial e-mail communication almost immediately I joined CMM, which led to a good friendship quickly developing. He and I have much in common in addition to the music - including clapped-out spines!
If those of you who get uptight at the mention of such things had any idea of the torture inflicted upon people graced with the abovementioned condition, you would surely drop your taboo about the subject forthwith and seek to be supportive (surely, wouldn't you?...). How would you like almost every body movement of yours to seem to be sinking another razor blade into the delicate tissue of your beleaguered back passage? And for you to be passing "red-hot cannonballs wrapped in barbed wire" (one lucky sufferer's description) when you 'go'?
I know about all this first hand, and there's no good reason for shame or embarrassment in saying so. The A.F. Self Help Page is a godsend for anyone with this devilish and often chronic affliction, which far too many medics still know remarkably little about. The site gives a wide range of helpful information compiled from various sources, and an invaluable collection of first-hand personal case histories which all help you weigh up the various healing options (both surgical and non-surgical) which are open to you. Knowledge and understanding, and knowing you're not alone with this little hell, greatly help take the sting of fear out of A.F. Take charge of your healing and don't let the medics' ignorance do you a mischief!
However, it would be extremely helpful to understand that NONE of the contributions to that site shows knowledge or understanding of the true underlying cause of the vast majority of anal fissures, so inevitably the various 'solutions' put forward are more a matter of patching up the symptoms rather than resolving the underlying cause.
One extremely important thing that you will probably not find mentioned other than on my sites (or where my own findings are quoted or getting taken on board) is that the vast majority of cases of very troublesome anal fissures, aggravated haemorrhoids, anal abscesses and other anus problems are caused or greatly aggravated by the 'dark force', which is largely responsible for the chronic over-tightness and involuntary clenching and spasms of the anus. The underlying cause of these problems is thus non-physical and therefore cannot be addressed by medical means.
Therefore it is worth reading my pages Dark Force and Entity Troubles - The Real Way to Clear Them and Healing and Self Actualization - The Safest and Quickest Way. On the latter page I have some suggestions specifically relating to anus problems, and they even include a dedicated yogic practice, which, if used daily, can help to reduce the severity of anal over-tightness and clenching.
International Paruresis Association
Shy bladder, bashful bladder, no-pee, shy pee, avoidant paruresis - These are among the names given to the anxiety state causing difficulty in peeing in particular circumstances - particularly when there are people around. Typically anyone with this problem feels completely alone with it - as though virtually nobody else has such a problem or would understand, but that is really far from the case. There's a hell of a lot of people (mostly men) who each is feeling that they're virtually the only one with it - and I've been one of them. Get supportive information from the above website. An additional tip from 'Phil the Widdle' - use Self-Power Walking and the Grounding Post procedure in an ongoing manner. You could also try the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or / and The Work on the condition.
One extremely important thing which you will not find mentioned on that page is that virtually all cases of shy bladder are caused or greatly aggravated by the 'dark force', which is largely responsible for the clenching of the pee sphincter (where the urethra connects with the bladder), and this can even mimic prostate trouble. The dark force will also attack with the relevant anxiety feelings to mimic 'shy bladder'. Therefore it is worth reading my page Troublesome Astral ('Dark') Entities - Managing and Removing Them. Also, I give descriptions of some extremely helpful practices in Some Potent Self Realization Practices.
Explore Gordon Ramel's extraordinary
award-winning Insect
World
site!
(but bookmark this one first!)
Please let me know if you find that this site has disappeared.
My only (but very welcome) direct acquaintanceship with Gordon is through the good soul having picked me up and given me a lift when I was hitch-hiking out for one of my crazy long-day hikes on Dartmoor. His site is quite a mega-site.
There is a valuable and well laid out website that serves this function - http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk. Registration is free, but if you want to be able to contact anyone on their lists, or include photos of yourself in any personal details that you wish to display, then there is a small annual subscription. You can enter yourself in the listings for any schools, colleges and workplaces that you've been to, right from primary school onwards, and the site has an effective search function and system of message boards.
Are you a website owner or developer who has or wants to avoid a problem with spambots (e-mail address harvesters) getting e-mail addresses from hidden fields in forms on your site (e.g. guestbook or feedback forms)? I, for one, got wearily fed up with this happening and my visitors' book recipient address getting eventually spammed. A Javascript obfuscation of the hidden e-mail address can be used, but it's said that the smarter spambots can interpret the Javascript and reconstruct the supposedly hidden e-mail addresses out of the script. I even found that an e-mail address that I'd displayed only as a graphic eventually started receiving spam. So, what's the solution?
One much more secure configuration, which I've now implemented on this site, is to have the 'recipient' e-mail address(es) for any forms actually embedded in the script (in a protected cgi-bin folder separate from the web pages), and not to have one's e-mail address on one's site at all - either displayed or hidden.
Most formmail (form-to-e-mail) scripts do not provide for this, requiring you to have your 'recipient' e-mail address in the form(s) on your site. A much better formmail script that I can recommend can be obtained from the nms Project. There are many scripts calling themselves formmail.pl, but this one appears to be particularly secure and allows you to specify one or more recipient addresses in the script, so that the 'recipient' tag in the form on your site looks like this:
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="nutstoyou">- where the 'value' can be not just "nutstoyou" but whatever alias you have specified in the script to represent the required e-mail address. Therefore it is useless to spammers.
My Contact page on this site now has a simple feedback form using the same nms formmail script that my visitors' book form uses, without any e-mail address of mine to be found anywhere on this site.
Over some years of using nms formmail there was still one thing bugging me about my form set up with that script. Form spambots could still (ab)use forms by filling them in and sending spam submissions to me, replete with links to nasty sites. I had a lot of head-scratching and tried out the odd only partially successful attempts to outwit those spambots. The problem was that nms formmail has no means of checking that a specified input field in the web page's form fits certain specified criteria - a functionality that I really wanted, because with it I could simply get the would-be submitter of an entry to enter a particular string of characters (which could be copied from another part of the page - something that a robot could hardly do) and have nms formmail check that the particular string of characters was present in the relevant field.
One way round that absence, which I was poised to try out, would have been to install a 'CAPTCHA' script that would require anyone using the form to enter a string of characters that are displayed in more or less distorted form in a graphic - which, hopefully, only actual humans could read. The only nuisance about that would have been that it would be an extra hoop for each person to jump through when submitting an entry, and also my understanding is that at least some widely used CAPTCHA systems can at some point be 'cracked' by spammers.
A further Internet search eventually brought me to a solution that would
most likely always work, and one thing I particularly like about it is that it
is completely transparent, so I've been able to remove all visible anti-spambot
measures from my website forms. If you yourself want to use nms formmail
without getting spam entries, this is where you can find what appears to be solution,
which I've now implemented on all my sites.
Fed up with spam? You can spend money on
programs to block your spam, but they still add to the load on your
system, and most don't do what most Net users really want - to get the
spammers' accounts closed down. The basic Spamcop service is free,
though you can subscribe to a fuller service. You just paste an
offending spam (with full header displayed) into a form provided by
Spamcop, and it will within a few seconds trace the source of the spam
and, with your approval, send a report to any appropriate source. I
myself have had a thank-you e-mail from one ISP for sending a Spamcop
report on a spam that was sent through them; they told me that they'd
just closed the account of the sender. Not all spam is traceable, but
through Spamcop we can all help to reduce this scourge.
Be
a responsible Netizen! Use Spamcop!
Really
effective spam management
with MailWasher
Pro
MailWasher is an extremely handy program that I use for filtering my e-mail and dealing with spam before it can reach my own computer. It lists what is currently on my e-mail server, with recognised spam already marked for deleting and bouncing at the server end, and suspected spam and viruses appropriately indicated; presence of attachments is also shown and any full header or entire message can be safely previewed (no executable code is run). With two mouse clicks I can mark any sender as 'friend' or 'blacklisted', or indeed mark a whole domain as such, and items on the 'friends' list can be excluded from the listing, so keeping the battlefield clear and avoiding future inadvertent deletions. When I click 'Process mail', all the messages marked for deleting and/or bouncing are cleared, and then, if anything is left on the server, my regular e-mail program is automatically run so that I can then retrieve the messages that I do want.
If everyone were using this, or an equivalent, the Net could become a much less encouraging environment for would-be spammers.
If you purchase your copy through the above link you would be helping support this website because I would receive a portion of each such payment.A real solution at last - enter TrueCall!
TrueCall is a small device that you fit between your phone and its wall socket, and which gives you a multitude of options for screening out unwanted calls while allowing those calls that you do want. At last you can be clear of all silent calls and those tiresome scammers' calls such as "Congratulations! You have just won...".
I won't try to describe it here because the TrueCall website does that very
well anyway. I am using one myself now, and it seems to be doing all that is
claimed of it and indeed sparing me the hassle of unwanted calls while letting
through all those that I'd want to receive. Peace at last!
N.B. I was using Window XP, then Vista, and am now using Windows 7.
Please note that certain links given in this section are affiliate links, which would gain me a contribution towards maintaining my sites each time a purchase is made through clicking one of those links.
Browser - Firefox, with the following add-ons:
Web page editor - KompoZer. For me this is better than any of the real heavyweights like Dreamweaver, because its interface is simple and highly intuitive, and isn't cluttered with features that I don't need - and it's free!
All my
websites are designed
and built by me, using 
Text editor - Notepad++. The '++' in its name is no exaggeration, for this is a remarkably well featured text editor. It is much more than just a replacement for the Windows Notepad - and it's free.
CSS stylesheet editor - TopStyle Pro
Wordprocessor - Microsoft Word
2010. I was till recently perfectly happy with Word 2000, but Secunia
PSI warned me that it was a security risk, and because that version was 'end of
life' it wasn't being updated with security fixes. Therefore I chose to replace
it with Word 2010. In fact I find there to be many improvements in the new
version, and the controversial vastly changed layout hasn't been too much of a
hassle for me, for it is pretty intuitive and flexible / configurable
Search (& replace):
PowerGrep - the real 'heavyweight' search & replace program, with particularly powerful regular expression support. Searches for file contents - not actual file / folder names - and can display a marvellously informative action preview, showing in context the 'finds' and what they would get changed to - and a similar display of the results of a completed action. This program is expensive - but I couldn't find anything cheaper that even approached the functionality and usability of PowerGrep, so I don't grudge my outlay on this.
Actual Search & Replace - a very nice lighter-weight utility for search / replace, which can also search for filenames but not folders. Regular expression support. Very useful for the simpler S&R tasks, where the quite complex interface of PowerGrep would be overkill.
HTML Search and Replace - mostly but not completely redundant for me now since I purchased PowerGrep and Actual Search & Replace. This is the only search / replace utility that I've yet found, which can search just the text you'd see in a browser - i.e. completely ignoring HTML code and source code formatting that can otherwise cause target text strings to fail to be found. You can do search engine type searches on that text too, with AND, OR and "..." (for exact phrase). No regular expression support, however.
(search only) Free Commander (see further below) - this extremely fully featured file manager is excellent for file and folder names, though can search for contained text (but I'm not aware of any regular expression support for that).
Image viewers / managers:
XnView - a really great open source (and thus free) image manager with comprehensive viewing / processing / conversion facilities, including batch operations.
(specifically for photos) - Photo Mechanic. Particularly recommended despite price, on account of its thorough and superior handling of IPTC metadata. It also has some particularly handy features for sorting through a batch of new photos and picking out the best.
Image editor - Photoshop Elements 5. I got this in a free software bundle from my hosting company, and for my purposes it's brilliant, and is much more intuitive and easy to use than various other image editors that I've tried, and its 'straightening' function for photos has much less degrading effect on image sharpness than in other editors that I've tried.
File
manager - Free
Commander.
This is by far the best and most intuitive file manager that I've
tried, out of quite a number. I was for many years a PowerDesk devotee,
but Free Commander knocks not just spots but huge blotches off
it! 
(you
get the
picture?)
And
it really is free - though it's so excellent that you may be moved to
donate something to the author. It is so full of features and options,
however, that some users would most likely find it rather daunting, BUT
the real way to approach it is to take some time initially to
methodically configure it to display just what you want, in the way
that is most intuitive for you. Once you've got it set up like that it
can look refreshingly simple and uncluttered, with little or nothing
getting in your way, yet still having virtually any file management
functionality that you could possibly have need for, including powerful
search and quick filter capabilities, file / folder compare and
synchronization, intelligent bulk rename, stored and recallable user
defined layouts, user defined columns in file listings, FTP
functionality, and....
Folder synchronization with FTP for uploading large numbers of updated web pages as well as doing daily data backups to external drives - Beyond Compare. Standard FTP programs with synchronization facilities proved to be unreliable and prone to making a mess of the website on the remote server by putting lots of files in wrong folders, or simply giving up on the operation part-way through - but Beyond Compare has been rock-solid reliable and very fast in its synchronizations and FTP transfers, and is really a great piece of work, albeit not really best for standard uploading of just a few files, where a more normal FTP program makes better sense.
FTP program for use when folder synchronization isn't required - Wise-FTP. Despite the odd small bugs and its folder synchronization option looking pretty untrustworthy (I couldn't make out, from the display, exactly what would happen if I actually let it proceed), this program has what is for me the clearest and most intuitive interface that I've found in an FTP program, and it does seem to be very fast in its uploading of multiple files simultaneously.
Monitoring the state of my websites - Integrio Uptime Scout. This is a simple free program, which periodically checks the home page of each site and warns me if any of the sites are 'down', including indicating the HTTP status code. The main value of this to me is when I've made an amendment to the .htaccess file of any or all of the sites. If I've inadvertently put even the slightest error in one of those .htaccess files, the whole site is immediately 'down', every single file request to that site then getting an 'Internal server error' message. Uptime Scout now warns me if I've boobed in that way, so that downtime is absolutely minimal before I investigate and rectify the error.
Notifying me of available new versions of installed programs - Software
Informer and Secunia
Personal Software Inspector (Secunia PSI). The latter focuses on
potential security threats posed by software that doesn't have the latest
patches.
Backing up:
Beyond Compare for daily synchronization (non-compressed) data backups;
Acronis True Image 2010 for disk / partition image backups, including a remarkably quick weekly system partition backup. With these backups I'm unlikely to have to reinstall Windows ever again in the event of a problem. Both backing up and restoring the system partition has proved to be an amazingly speedy and trouble-free process.
Disk defragmentation - Diskeeper 2010. The 2010 version has a new functionality that is claimed to actually prevent the vast majority of fragmentations, so greatly reducing the amount of defragmentation that needs to be carried out. I have this feature turned on for all drives, and have auto-defrag scheduled for a half-day per week for each fixed drive, except the C drive, which gets two half-days per week. Like this I can forget about defragmenting, and the auto-defrag, when it happens, doesn't at all get in the way and indeed goes almost unnoticed. This program in its 2010 version has changed the face of defragmentation for me - from a periodic chore to simply a little bit of wizardry stowed away under the bonnet (so to speak).
Security software:
Antivirus - Avira
Antivir, Premium
Edition. This, like most modern AV programs
nowadays,
protects against a range of threats, including spyware and all sorts of
problems that come from web pages and e-mails. Antivir pretty
consistently comes out top or near-top in comparative reviews of
antivirus programs. With the additional behavioural detection of possible
malware that has come in version 10 of Antivir, I recognised that having PC
Tools Threatfire on my system had become more or less redundant, and I removed
that from my system, so simplifying things a bit. Interestingly, at that point
I ceased to have occasional system freeze-ups during the late Windows startup
process, which had been rather a pest for a month or so at that point.
Firewall - Agnitum Outpost Pro, though unfortunately its spyware protection is switched off in order not to conflict with Antivir.
Monitoring of system changes:
STasks
Process Manager -
an extremely useful security layer is provided by this apparently
unique little program, which really works in the way that Windows Vista
and
Windows
7 needed instead of their obstructive and user hostile 'User Account
Control' (UAC), which latter I and other people have had to switch off
because it is so bothersome (yes, even in Windows 7). This program, via
prompts that it gives you for each new starting or running process that
it detects, builds up an 'allow' and, as appropriate, a 'deny' list of
processes, and prevents any process from running if it isn't in the
'allow' list and you don't 'okay' it.
It also enables you to check on
the bona fide or otherwise of any listed process (or one that
is the
subject of a prompt) so that you can get a pretty good idea whether to
allow it or kill it and deny any future access from it - though I found
the odd incorrect threat indications there, so caution is needed in
interpreting those indications, and alternative information sources for
the particular process need to be found before you can be really sure.
I caution generally that this program is best in the hands of
reasonably tech-savvy
users, because it's so easy to allow something that isn't okay or to
deny something essential and cause a major problem. The point is, the
program doesn't make decisions for you or warn you immediately that a
program is malicious; you have to satisfy yourself about that.
Caution! This program is badly written with regard to its maximum security setting (safe_level=1), and is likely to cause serious problems when operating in that mode (it certainly did for me!). It is important to use it in the default security level mode (safe_level=0) and ignore the author's recommendation to set to safe_level=1 after perhaps a week or so. Then the program shouldn't go causing you problems, provided that you're reasonably tech-savvy and respond in an appropriate way to its various prompts relating to new processes that have launched.
WinPatrol PLUS
- An excellent
manager and monitor of startup programs, processes and services and changes to
critical system components, BUT
for me a fair bit of its functionality is redundant because of the next item,
and I thus have its monitoring of new startup programs switched off.
However, some of its other warning prompts have covered things that the
next item didn't prompt me about - and in the current version this is more so
than previously. Also, for paid-up users of the Plus
version the 'Plus Info' given on individual program files that you want
to query can be very useful, helping you to decide whether to allow a
particular startup program or service.
Anvir Task Manager (the paid-for version) - An amazingly fully featured manager / monitor of startup programs, services and processes, with detailed displays that enable you to do all sorts of troubleshooting and indeed sniffing out suspicious processes or activities and, hopefully, forestalling any need for real troubleshooting. I use this to prompt me for approval or otherwise when it detects new startup programs. However, neither it nor any other program that I know has the functionality of STasks Process Manager, so, although ATM is an absolutely great security tool, it isn't completely comprehensive in its process management.
A special functionality of Agnitum Outpost Pro firewall ('Host Protection') that warns me and requires my approval or otherwise for events where one program seeks to control or modify another in some way, and when newly changed executable files are run.
Additional malware scanning programs:
Ad-Aware. I use this only for periodic scans, for its resident functions could well conflict with Antivir and cause problems.
Spybot - Search & Destroy. Similarly, I do not use SSD's resident functionality and use it just for an occasional 'immunization' and a periodic scan, alternating with Ad-Aware (because different anti-malware programs tend to pick up different things).
E-mail protection:
Of course I have the Mailguard function of Avira Antivir, BUT in practice this has nothing to find, because of...
MailWasher
Pro. This is
not only an extremely effective anti-spam tool, but is a great first
line of e-mail security, enabling me to investigate and discard as
necessary any or all e-mails in my mailboxes on the mail server, so
that
anything at all dubious
never gets downloaded to my system. Theoretically the very occasional
rogue e-mail could slip through the net,
however, if it happens to arrive on the server during the short
period between my checking the mail in MailWasher and my downloading
new mail in my e-mail program, so vigilance is still required.
However, the new version -
MailWasher Pro 2010 - has a less clear interface, is a resource hog, and I'm
not sure yet whether for my purposes it's really an overall improvement over
the previous version (6.5.4). At least I've found that its facility for
grouping messages in the listing, and for collapsing any group (i.e. actually
hiding all its messages) more than makes up for the lack of an overt 'hide'
function for 'good' messages, as one had in earlier versions. All one needs to
do in the new version to hide good messages is to group them by classification
and then collapse the group of 'good' messages.
Web / Browser protection:
Internet activity monitoring / control:
Net Meter from Hoo
Technologies. I caution that this program's executable file or/and its
installation program may cause you false positive alerts from certain
antivirus programs. Unfortunately there has been at least one bit of
nasty malware going around with the name of Net Meter, but I can assure
you that the Net Meter from Hoo Technologies is excellent and perfectly
benign and clean.
I keep Net Meter's display normally visible in a corner of my screen,
and it enables me to see when any unexpected Internet activity (green
for outgoing, red for incoming and yellow for both) is occurring. When
appropriate I can then get more detailed information about what's going
on and which process is responsible for the particular activity, in...
the already mentioned Anvir Task Manager. - Well, that was the case, but in my Windows 7 system it's failing to show me that information at the moment, and the developers are investigating the problem.
NetBalancer Pro,
from SeriousBit Software. This gives a listing of each Internet connected
program and its Internet activity, together with a graph of overall Internet
activity (i.e. of all programs), though that graph is currently less
sophisticated than that of Net Meter (see above) and not configurable. However,
I have learnt from the developers that they are working on implementing some
degree of configurability of the graph display, and, particularly usefully,
making it possible to tell which program is responsible for any particular part
of the activity that is shown on the graph.
Additionally, as its name suggest, NetBalancer enables you to control your
Internet traffic, setting the priority for particular programs so that those
whose Internet activity is most important won't be affected by simultaneous
Internet activity of other programs. (For example, on my system I've
thus set Skype as having high priority for both outbound and inbound traffic.)
You can also block or 'cap' the Internet activity of any programs you have
selected in the list.
There is a free version, but that allows you to set priorities for only a few
programs.
E-mail software:
MailWasher Pro, as noted above.
Poppy,
one of a good
number of available small programs that sit in your system tray /
'notification area' and periodically check for mail on the server and
notify you when there is any. Actually, MailWasher is supposed to be
able to function in this way, and so a program like Poppy shouldn't be
needed, BUT owing to a design flaw in MailWasher versions prior to the 2010
version, it didn't notify
about any e-mails that arrived if they were in categories that had been
set to be hidden in MailWasher (e.g. from friends and other known
bona-fide sources). Thus I used Poppy and didn't have MailWasher resident
except when actively using it to check mail.
However, with MailWasher Pro 2010 there isn't this issue, and I keep MailWasher
resident (with icon in the notification area) and so I have no further cause to
use Poppy.
Eudora, version 7.1.0.9. This is my e-mail program, and for me personally this is streets ahead of other e-mail programs that I've tried, in terms of range of functionality and intuitive layout and working. Unfortunately, what is being called Eudora 8 is really not Eudora at all but Thunderbird with some sort of attempt to make it look rather like Eudora, and it thus doesn't have the full range of functions, nor the flexibility and intuitiveness in use, that the real Eudora (i.e. up to version 7.1) has. So, bizarrely, to 'upgrade' to version 8 would mean taking quite a retrograde step, so I'm sticking with version 7.1.0.9!
N.B. Version 7.1.0.9 has been effectively put in the public domain, and licences for using it with full functionality and no sort of 'nag' are no longer being sold. Because of this, a user-name and registration code have been made available sort-of unofficially but at least perfectly legitimately. In order that you don't have to risk visiting dodgy sites to get them, I reproduce them here:
Registration code: 4352-4846-7641-3881
First name: Paid_Mode_No_Support
Last name: Without_X1_Search
Some really handy system utilities:
System Scheduler Professional, from Splinterware. Gives many more options than the Windows Task Scheduler, and I use it to give me reminders for such things as backing up, defragmenting and other maintenance tasks, as well as actually running certain programs.
SpeedFan. I am using this to control the speed of my CPU fan, which had been a bit stressful for me noisewise. It monitors fan speeds and temperatures inside one's computer, provided the hardware supports this. I caution that this utility could cause harm if used carelessly and particularly without proper awareness of how it works - so really it's best regarded as something of a geek tool, but in the right hands, and with the right hardware, one should be able to have a quieter computer at least for some of the time, thanks to SpeedFan.
Granola. A small utility that lowers the voltage
supplied to the CPU when it doesn't need all that power. The aim is to
significantly cut overall CPU power consumption without significantly impacting
on performance. In my case the program claims to be saving me a bit over 24%
CPU energy - though I have no means to verify this.
CleanMem. An excellent
little non-resident utility for clearing unused memory. Most utilities
that claim do do this are not very effective, and many are memory
resident and so take a little bit of system resources themselves.
CleanMem,
however, exits as soon as it's done its quick job, and I use System
Scheduler
(above) to run it every 15 minutes.
In early December 2009 Avira Antivir started giving an alert every time
CleanMem ran, saying it was a Trojan. That, I'm sure, was a false
positive, and I submitted a copy of the program file to Avira as a
suspected false positive, and, sure enough, after about a week this
behaviour stopped, so the guys at Avira
evidently responded to my and no doubt other people's 'false positive'
reports and accordingly amended their signature files or whatever it
was that caused this particular false positive.
N.B. I found it important to set CleanMem's 'State' to "Hidden" in the System Scheduler configuration window for that task, because otherwise every time the program runs, it causes a temporary loss of focus of the window in which you're working - which can be very annoying.
Walyk Wallpaper Changer. Not as replete with features as some wallpaper changers, BUT unlike those it actually has the functionality that I need, and without anything getting in the way. I use it to cycle through a very large collection of wallpaper images, with an automatic change at every startup of the program.
Unlocker. A small utility whose installation puts an entry into the context (right-click) menu for files or folders in Explorer and other file managers, enabling you to carry out basic file / folder actions when the selected file or folder is locked or Windows in its superior wisdom tells you (as owner of your PC and working as administrator) that you don't have permission to carry out the particular action. So, with Unlocker at last you don't have to reboot into Safe Mode to move, delete or rename that file or folder, and can do it right on the spot (and sod Windows!) or at least have an action performed automatically upon the next reboot.
True Launchbar, from Tordex. I'd already got
the stand-alone
version of this set up in Windows Vista to take away the
clutter on my Windows desktop and even keep the Quick Launch bar clear
so that the taskbar was as uncluttered as possible. I configured TLB to
give me access to the vast majority of my programs, through an
intuitive arrangement of menus and submenus, and found that for me the
most convenient and intuitive place for the bar to be was NOT in the
standard taskbar position but on the left-hand side of the screen, set
to auto-hide so that the desktop (with nice background) was beautifully
clear of anything except what I was working with.
Subsequently the autohiding became vexatious for me because of the launchbar and its menus popping up and interfering whenever I moved my mouse pointer about close to the left edge of the screen during the course of my working in various applications. What I did then is what you see in the picture. I resumed use of the Windows Quick Launch bar version of True Launchbar, but with the top-level launchbar menu being reduced to just one button next to the Start button (i.e. like a second Start button), so that its main menu (actually top level submenu) popped up every time I moved my mouse pointer over it.
Start Menu 7, a significant enhancement of the
Windows Start menu. I found that I could still easily get to the actual Windows
Start menu by pressing Shift when clicking on the button, so no functionality
has been lost through using this alternative. This is still accessible with
StartKiller (see above) running; one just clicks on the extreme left of the
taskbar, and, if one wants the original Windows Start menu, then one
Shift-clicks on the same position.
Hot
Copy
Paste, previously called Comfort
Clipboard Pro, from Comfort
Software. The best clipboard history manager that I could find (at
least, at a reasonable price), out of quite a number that I tried. This
program saves to hard disk all Windows clipboard 'clips' and enables
you to retrieve any of them, with search and filter facilities for
speedy finding of what you're after. You can set the maximum number of
clips to be stored on the hard disk before the oldest start getting
automatically deleted. There is also a Favorites feature, so you can
have a small collection of regularly used items that you may want to
keep pasting into files that you're working on. There is a very cheap
'Lite' version, but I considered the very modest extra cost of the Pro
version well worth it - all the more so because this entitles you to
all future major upgrades as well as any intermediate program updates.
...Hmm. Well, it was widely claimed that Win7 doesn't have a Quick Launch
bar, but when using the standalone version of True Launchbar docked on the left
side of the screen became increasingly vexatious for me because of the autohide
feature causing it to keep popping up when not wanted, I looked again and found
that there IS a Quick Launch bar in Win7. Maybe it was absent in Win7 earlier
on and
had been restored in one of the Windows updates? Anyway, as noted further
above, now I use True Launchbar configured to work as the primary Quick Launch
bar, but configured to look simply like a second Start button, which reveals
its secrets when one clicks on it.
This was a real headscratcher for me for quite some time. An Internet search eventually revealed that various people had found (not just in Windows 7 but in XP and Vista too) that this problem arose only when they were using auto logon to speed up the startup process. I then found that likewise I could avoid the problem by turning off auto logon - but of course that meant the delay and nuisance of having to enter my password for every Windows startup, so there was still something that needed sorting out.
I eventually found a good bit of the answer as a result of further Internet research. Basically what is required is the deletion of the Windows Explorer icon cache in the registry. To save you going into the registry to do this, here is a little bit of text to copy and paste into a text editor such as Notepad and save to a file that you name Reset_Notification_Icons_List.reg:
To make the registry change, simply double-click on the file's icon and click 'Yes' to the prompt.
Then - IMPORTANT! - you have to open Task Manager, kill the Explorer.exe process, and then with Task Manager still open, you restart Explorer by going to the Application tab, clicking on New Task and entering 'Explorer' (without quotes). If you don't kill and restart Explorer at that stage, you'd find that your change to the registry got wiped out and you'd still got the problem.
Having cleared those two registry values, for a time I was getting no further problem with the tray icons on startup, even with auto logon. However, after a while I did start getting one or two icons going awol again, and this was not resolved by the above-mentioned method. In this particular case I tried putting the program with most often missing icon into Anvir Task Manager's delayed startup list, with a reasonable time separation between its loading and the loading of the preceding and subsequent programs. The other affected program was already in the delayed startup list, but I adjusted its timing to ensure that there was, again, a significant time space (at least 5 seconds) between its loading and the loading of preceding and subsequent programs. Since I made that change I had no further problems with missing tray icons for a while, but more recently just one icon started occasionally going awol again. All I could do about that has been, when it happens, to open Anvir Task Manager and restart the process - upon which its icon and display would normally appear as they should have first time round.
I'm still seeking an answer to this one. So far the Microsoft Answers people appear to have no clue about this and have suggested quite irrelevant things to try.
In Windows Vista, UAC could be tamed to a quite usable extent by use of the free third party utilities Norton UAC and UAC Snooze. Unfortunately Norton UAC doesn't install in Windows 7 (at least on my computer) and UAC Snooze, although it does work in Windows 7, sets the UAC only to fully on or fully off, so that you get UAC operating only in its most intrusive mode or not at all.
Reluctantly, my answer to this was eventually to turn UAC completely off. However, certain security programs that I use would be filling the gap created by my turning UAC off - especially:
- So, together with relatively safe behaviour on the Internet, I'm pretty well covered for security, and to my knowledge I've never had an active infection on my computer right from the time of my first computer - an Amstrad PC1512 in, I think, about 1986 (I first got online in 1997).
Carl Nielsen >>His organ work Commotio, which is remarkably different from any of his orchestral work and clearly rooted in the work of old masters at the organ, such as Buxtehude and J.S. Bach. There is a rarefied and radiant spiritual quality of this music, transcending all ordinary emotions.
Jehan Alain >>Organ works - look beyond the commonly performed Litanies! Recommended recording (may have to be specially imported): 2 CDs on the Erato label, played by Marie Claire Alain -- head and shoulders above others I've heard.
Charles Tournemire >>Much as I admire some of his L'Orgue Mystique organ pieces, the work which has gripped and haunted me most of all is his Douze Préludes-Poèmes for piano - effectively a major piano suite of a powerful mystical quality unlike anything else I've heard on the piano. Some very memorable bell-like sonorities in some of the more dramatic movements.
Vagn Holmboe >>His oeuvre in general, but especially symphonies 6-10. Recommended introduction: BIS CDs of Symphonies 6 & 7, and 8 & 9. I regard his 8th Symphony as unsurpassed in stature, beauty and power by any other symphony, though some listeners have difficulty with the strange, haunting atmosphere and the sheer intensity of his music. (Note that I have worded that last sentence with care: it would take an ignorant person indeed to claim that any one particular symphony is the greatest, seeing that so many different types of vision and approaches to musical form are presented in different symphonies, and different people will inevitably have their particular musical resonances.)
Eduard Tubin >>His oeuvre in general; I found his symphonies 2, 4, 6, 8-10 especially powerful and beautiful. Recommended introduction: the BIS recording of the 4th & 9th Symphonies.
Olivier Messiaen >>His organ works, especially Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'Orgue. Recordings by the composer (historical quality, mono) and Jennifer Bate (with awesome reverberation in Beauvais Cathedral) especially recommended.
Igor Stravinsky >>Although much of his music is widely known and accepted, two wonderful works that are still largely ignored are Persephone and Canticum Sacrum.
Bohuslav Martinu >>His Symphonies 3-6, Double Concerto (for 2 string orchestras, piano & timpani), and the powerful and immensely moving choral work, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Ralph Vaughan Williams >>Apart from his better-known works such as Symphonies 1 - 7, Job and Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, I strongly recommend Sancta Civitas and Riders to the Sea.
Giacinto Scelsi >>Truly extraordinary visionary music - quite unlike anything else of any age. This is the 'good' face of seemingly way-out modernism, with an awesome radiant spiritual quality. Go especially for the orchestral works - several excellent CD recordings on the Accord label.
Iannis Xenakis >>Provocative and often abrasive music, and thus not for the faint-hearted! Many of his earlier works especially have a tremendous visionary quality. His apocalyptic and haunting Kraanerg was the work that forced me to recognise that even modernistic idioms could be beautiful, and full of colour and powerful vision. Other wonderful works include: Nomos Gamma, Terretektorh, Anaktoria,Metastaseis, Bohor, Persepolis. But those listeners attached to romanticism and melody, or who shy away from breathtaking visions of the far reaches of the Universe, will not be pleased!
Harry Partch >>There is nothing else like this ritualistic and almost primitive-sounding music written in microtonal scales for a whole orchestra of purpose-designed instruments. Go especially for Delusion of the Fury - a unique masterwork, dramatic, sometimes eerie, and powerfully moving but including a remarkable humorous element.
Havergal Brian >>This is truly amazing! In general I dismiss his music, which seems to me somehow to contain some fundamental unsoundness and leaves me cold. Yet the Marco Polo CD recording of his huge Gothic Symphony, despite the work's many rough edges, is the one commercial recording that I'd have wanted to be saved above all my others if an earthquake destroyed my abode today. A monumental celebration of the life (and ultimately death) experience.
Robert Simpson >>Although I find his idiom mostly too limited, so that for me many of his works sound too similar despite their great integrity, his 9th Symphony (recorded on Hyperion) is an awesome 'hit'.
Giles Swayne >>Cry is a truly unique visionary choral work - CD recording on NMC label.
Louis Andriessen >>De Tijd (Time) - a bewitching state of blissful peace, space and primal emptiness is evoked by this choral work. CD recording on Elektra label.
Eivind Groven >>Draumkvaedet. Typical of Groven's music, the idiom of this choral work has a bewitching modal sound, conveying an uplifting sense of purity and simplicity. The melodies derive with unusual directness from Norwegian folk song and dance. CD recording on Aurora label.
Einar Englund >>Symphony 2 (The Blackbird) - a compellingly atmospheric symphony with a strange combination of nature in the far north combined with a certain toughness and darkness of sound.
Rued Langgaard >>An enigmatic Danish composer of the first half of the 20th Century, much of whose music is of a rather undistinguished conservative Germanic neo-Romantic cast. Amongst such works, however, particularly in the middle part of his output, were a number of much more experimental and at times visionary works. Especially go for: Symphony 6 (Det Himmelrivende, which translates as 'The Rending Heavens') and the haunting Music of the Spheres. Also very powerful are the piano works Music (or Fantasia) of the Depths and The Fire Chambers. Symphonies 4 and 10 are also well worth hearing, even though less experimental in idiom.
Kaikhosru Sorabji >>The gigantic Organ Symphony 1 and even more gigantic Opus Clavicembalisticum, and other works. Most of his extraordinary oeuvre hasn't yet been recorded and thus most of his works I still haven't heard.
Toshiro Mayuzumi >>His short two-movement Mandala Symphony, despite the seemingly rather unpromising modernistic sound of its beginning, is an incandescent visionary work, which gathers a quite awesome power. I know no other works of his.
David Solomons >>I got to know David's music closely in 1999 when at his request I produced some MIDI realizations of his works. As yet not 'officially' recognised, his music has something in common with mine in that it is written by one who composes not for a career but because he has something wonderful and vital to communicate, so it's music with beauty, heart and spirit, and no grey intellectualism. But his music is very different from mine, and is mostly in the form of miniatures (well, more or less). The light-hearted and even frivolous titles he so often gives to his works usually belie the depth, uplifting quality and generosity of spirit of the pieces. I commend the following as an introduction. For serene uplifting beauty, go for his Suite for Recorder Orchestra (ignoring his funny titles for the 5 movements!). For a wonderful and memorable tune that you could well curse because you can't get it out of your head, go for Dawn in the Room for baritone & string orchestra. For particularly moving choral pieces, go for the very short unaccompanied motet Hoc est enim corpus meum and the similarly short Te Deum for girls' chorus, organ & harp. For something actually sombre (unusual for this composer) but with great nobility, go for his Prayer Before the Close of Day for two tubas & two euphoniums. But these suggestions are only the tip of a wonderful iceberg. Click here to visit his site (but bookmark my site first!).
***And a lamentably neglected earlier composer***
Mikolaj Zielenski >>A Polish contemporary of Giovanni Gabrieli. What little I've heard of his output has something of the sound of Gabrieli (similar cadences) but with a radiant deeply moving quality that I've not heard in other music of that period - Gabrieli with a bigger, deeper heart. Unfortunately the only recording I know of Zielenski's music (an old one on the Olympia label, OCD 321) is appalling both in recording and performance quality, with the choir often singing raggedly and dreadfully flat - not a good introduction to such wonderful and inspiring music!
Frank Perry >>A mystic and sound healer who produces extraordinary visionary music through a process of highly inspired* improvisation. His music uses a vast array of Tibetan singing bowls and other, related, instruments. This music is leagues beyond what is generally produced as healing / meditation music, with no hint of the 'commercial Kitsch' sound that characterizes almost all New Age music that I've heard.
* My current 'reading' about this, which is not to be taken as a categorical statement of fact, is that many elements in his music are sourced from another, probably concurrent, universe.
My recommendation comes with one caveat, however. To listen to the music in any sort of meditation state, or to 'enter into the sound', as the composer recommends, is seriously harmful in the long run. It is extremely important that this music be listened to only in very grounding situations and contexts - usually while you are getting on with something practical to keep your awareness well grounded. To follow his recommendations would help unground you and make you more open and vulnerable to the astral ('dark') forces, of which I have and thus know what I'm talking about. The Composer's well meant but harmful recommendation stems from the almost universal perception of ungrounded awareness and astral (actually 'dark side') connections as 'spirituality' and also pointing themselves to that 'spirituality rather than the true self realization which is where they really need to be heading. I explain more about that in Exit Spirituality - Enter Clear-Mindedness on my Self Realization site.