6 Must Have Free Programs

It seems that a lot of commercial software, including the "free" stuff, has become a lot more complicated than it needs to be. And most people that aren't steeped in the industry don't realize that there are better, simpler alternatives out there. Here's a list of my favorite 6 pieces of free software that can make your computing life a little easier:

Firefox Web Browser (Windows, OSX, Linux)
Faster, more secure, more flexible, and uses less resources than Internet Explorer. Need I say more?

AdBlock Plus (Any system that runs Firefox)
Along with Firefox, make sure to install the handy AdBlock Plus add-on. It prevents Firefox from loading or displaying most of those annoying, flashing, bandwidth-steeling ads.

Foxit Reader (Windows, Linux)
Adobe Reader (former Acrobat Reader) was meant to be a simple, ubiquitous tool for displaying PDF files. But somehow Adobe has managed to bloat it out into a slow-loading resource hog with a myriad of bugs and security holes. Why? What else is it supposed to do? I don't know, but I know what Foxit Reader does: It just displays PDFs quickly and flawlessly.

PDFCreator (Windows)
Capping off the other end of the PDF world is PDFCreator, which installs a virtual printer that creates a PDF file from any program that prints to it.

VLC Media Player (Windows, OSX, Linux)
Tired of the bloated monsters that media players have become these days? And the worst part is that most of the big name players dont' play all the formats, so you have to install them all. Lame! Enter VLC Media Player - lightweight, quick to load, plays practically every video format there is. The default user interface is a bit sparse though, so I recomend also installing one of the optional skins.

CCleaner (Windows)
A very good maintanance tool for Windows. Cleans out the left over temp files, tidies up the registry... You'll be amazed at how much performance / stability you can regain by running this.

UPDATE! I forgot one other must have piece of free software. I use it so much I didn't even think about it...

Picasa (Windows, Linux)
An excellent photo management and simple editing tool from Google. It's super easy to use and works with your previous photo organization scheme instead of forcing you to reorganize all your photos for it like some other popular photo organization tools.

20,000 Liters Under Tennant Lake

Last night our Couples Group went to Hovander Park and Tennant Lake in Ferndale. Tennant Lake is a remarkable park where they've built wooden boardwalks through a very dense wetland area. It's fascinating to walk through and see a marsh from this unique perspective.

But I wanted to see the lake from an even more unique perspective - from under the water!

To that end, during this trip I tried out my new invention;
Camera-On-A-Stick!
This is basically a camera in a waterproof enclosure that's been stuck to the end of a pole along with a Zebralight. I put the camera (my trusty Canon SD10 "Adventure Camera") into video mode and dunked it into the muck.

I was completely blind as to what I might be filming, or if it was even working. The footage, although clearly revolutionary, I'll admit, is not spectacular. I've added a little of William Shatner's crooning to help make the video more palatable.

The exceptionally observant observer may be able to spot three fish, a water bug (from below), myself, Taylor Swedberg's pointing finger, and a triceratops:



Things I've learned from this experiment:

1. What I thought were slow, smooth movements translated into quick, herky-jerky footage. I will have to be more careful and hold still more if I do this again.
   
2. A shorter pole would have helped as this long one had trouble getting caught on the above-water foliage.
3. The water in the marsh is much clearer than I expected, as long as you don't stir it up too much.
4. My SD10 locks the exposure when you start taking video; A camera that would continuously adjust exposure would be a huge benefit.
5. Zebralights are awesomely versatile headlamps.
6. William Shatner's singing can take anything from weak to WOW! Even videos of the bottom of a swamp!
   

All The Summer Camps I Went To As A Kid Were Crap

For the 4th of July this year Kristi and I went to Bainbridge Island to visit with her family at her Uncle Bob's property. While we were there, Uncle Bob gave us a tour of the IslandWood Camp where he is a docent.

IslandWood is an educational camp that runs programs for school children, graduate students and adults and specializes in education about natural ecosystems and environmental technology. It was founded by the Brainards, who also founded Aldus, the creators of the Pagemaker software that has since been sold to Adobe. There are seven separate, natural ecosystems on the 255 acre grounds; a marsh, a bog, a pond, a seasonal stream, an estuary, a saltwater harbor, and woodland areas. It's very rare for so many ecosystems to exist in such close proximity, which makes IslandWood a real treasure for studying the natural sciences.

And everything about the camp is completely over-the-top amazing!

To give you an idea of what the grounds are like I'm going to start by describing the student sleeping quarters. In any camp I ever went to we had "cabins" that were basically glorified woodsheds crammed full of bunk beds. I think I went to one camp once where each cabin had it's own toilet and sink, shared by 8 to 10 people.

At IslandWood they have three Lodges, each of which has 24 separate rooms (I think) and each room has four bunk beds and one queen size murphy-bed for overflow. So there's a maximum of 6 people in each room, and each room has a private bathroom, and each bunk has it's own window that looks out into the forest and an LED lighting fixture that allows the kids to write in their journals with out disturbing their roommates. All the bunks, railings, and furniture are handmade out of natural tree limbs, the floors are all cork, and everything is gorgeous!

Plus there is a common area with vaulted ceilings, handmade artisan furniture, fireplaces and metalwork sculptures. I want to emphasize again that these are the lodges where the kids sleep! And if that wasn't amazing enough, I should point out that all of the buildings, classrooms and educational structures are built like this. It's absolutely mind boggling!

One of the other buildings is called the Learning Studios, which houses several classrooms where students can participate in science projects and demonstrations to learn about how the environment works. Notice that there are solar panels on top. Many of the buildings also make use of solar water heaters and unconventional sewage treatment, like the "Living Machine" next door...

The Living Machine is an autonomous natural sewage treatment plant. It looks like a big green house full of big tropical plants. Black water** is pumped into three giant tubs filled with Purple Taro plants. They grow like crazy (over 12 feet tall) and clean the impurities out of the water. The water can then be used for gardening and flushing toilets and such. Amazingly, there is no foul odor inside the greenhouse. The greenhouse is also completely computer controlled - opening and closing vents, raising and lowering shades, etc. It's really, really impressive!

Other educational structures include a 75 foot suspension bridge, a bird blind that over looks the marsh, a tree house that overlooks the bog [*Bonus Question: Do you know the difference between a marsh and a bog? Check at the end of this post for the answer!], a 150 foot aluminum frame tower that allows kids to study the tree top canopy, a hand-crank cable boat on the pond, various team building ropes-type courses... Plus lots and lots of wild life that freely roams the grounds. It's truly unbelievable!

So you are probably assuming, as I did, that this is a luxury camp for rich kids. No. According to Uncle Bob, most of their campers are schoolchildren from the inner city. These are kids that many of whom have never planted a seed and eaten what it produced. Kids that don't know where food comes from past either a can or a microwave oven. What an amazing, perspective changing experience it must be for those kids! I can hardly imagine.

Here's a link to their website if you want more information on how to either get involved or help support this truly amazing facility.

I'm impressed, if you hadn't picked that up already. And also a little upset that all my fond, childhood camp memories have now been dashed by the grandeur that is IslandWood. Other camps in the area must really hate this place.

*Bonus Question Answer: A Marsh has water flowing both in and out of it, a Bog has just enough water coming in that there is no outlet. Nutrients, acids, and whatever else flows into a bog tends to build up since there is no outflow, and it supports a very different, and much more fragile ecosystem.

**Am I the only person that thinks it's hilarious that the Blackwater contracting company that our military has been using to do much of the dirty work in Iraq is named after water that's contaminated with fecal matter?