Filed under Geeky, I Like Lists, Reviews on September 6th, 2009 | 12 Comments »
There are so many different PC application packages available for free. Below I’ve listed a few I find especially useful for streamlining my workflow when designing for the web.
- Notepad ++ is my source code editor of choice. It’s very handy ‘notepad’ replacement software. I find the tabbed interface and syntax highlighting particularly useful.
- XAMPP is by far the easiest way I’ve come accross to run PHP, MySQL, apache, etc. on my computer. I’m far too lazy to compile them all myself. I like XAMPP better than phpdev and EasyPHP which are what I’ve used in the past. I have WordPress and a few other scripts installed and I do all my design and coding development on my machine locally rather than directly onto a live server. I do this mainly because I’m really really good at breaking things! :)
- FastStone Photo Resizer is an image converter / resizer which is free for home users. It allows you to manipulate images in so many different ways. I’m constantly using it to create thumbnails and/or to quickly convert batches of images from one format to another.
- NexusFont is a very nifty free font manager. As well as your ‘typical’ font manager type features (grouping fonts, uninstalling fonts etc) I think the thing I like about it the most is that it allows you to easily view, preview and compare your fonts.
- ThumbView Lite is awesome. It allows you to view PSD files, PNG files (and a heap of other ones too) as thumbnails in Explorer.
- Taskbar Shuffle is very simple. It allows you to drag and drop the buttons in your Windows task bar, allowing you to rearrange them to whatever you like. I’ts very useful when you tend to have 43573485734 things open at any one time like I do.
- Filezilla is my FTP client of choice. It’s free, and does absolutley everything one could reasonably expect from an FTP program. :)
- Pixus is just a very simple Adobe Air based application I use to measure screen objects in pixels.
- Snippely is another Adobe Air based application. I use this one to organise code snippets I find myself using over and over again. Before using this I was using Notepad files, and organising them was annoying. Snippely is good because it allows you to define and group your code snippets. I also really like that you can add notes explaining what the code snippet actually does.
- Firebug for Firefox and Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar intergrate with their respective browsers and both allow you to debug CSS and HTML live on any website. I find these both really useful when making sure websites are cross browser compatible.
Are there any freeware/open source tools you use that you think I’d find handy? Please let me know!
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Filed under Inspiration on September 5th, 2009 | 6 Comments »
You’re going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it’s always their actions you should judge them by. It’s actions, not words, that matter. – Nicholas Sparks
Filed under Life, Uni/Work on September 3rd, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Looking back, I can’t believe its September already. That said… August was incredibly busy. Time just seems to be disappearing these days! I’m back at Uni and currently slaving away at my final year group project. We’re developing games targeted at autistic children with the aim of helping them develop their life skills. Autism is something I’ve never really come across on a personal level before and I’m finding it’s a really interesting topic to be addressing. I’m actually rather excited about the fact we’re designing our games in conjunction with a school that specialises in teaching Autistic kids and I think it’s fantastic our games will have a very worthy real world application. You can read a little more at the Swinburne Design Autism Games website if you’re interested.
With both work and uni at the moment…. I don’t really have the busiest of social lives. I haven’t been out too much over the last month or so, although I did make it to my cousin’s roaring 20’s themed 21st a few weekends ago and to pub trivia with a few friends last night.
These days I’m finding I don’t really have enough time to do anything! I even miss finding time to go to the gym and as a rule I hate exerting energy. Talking about energy (or lack thereof), I’ve been at Uni all day presenting project documentations. I’m absolutely stuffed! It’s 4pm and I think it’s time for an afternoon nap…
Filed under Site Updates on August 10th, 2009 | 12 Comments »
It’s a new layout. And it’s pretty. And I quite like it! After drowning in HTML/CSS & databases at work all day, the last thing I usually feel like doing when I get home is coding away some more, so it’s taken a while! It’s also taken me forever to come up with something that I’ve actually been happy with. I mocked up five designs before finally settling on this one. It’s quite simple, but I think that’s actually why I find it so appealing….
Just quickly I’d like to thank Amy Mahon for the very cute hand-drawn twitter bird, Laszlo Krokoska for the textured background & Fasticon for a few of the icons I’ve used in the footer menus.
Please let me know if something’s not quite right or if you have any suggestions! :)
Filed under Geeky, Reviews on August 3rd, 2009 | 6 Comments »
This morning on my oh-so-boring train trip to work, I was thinking about just how much I’ve come to rely on my iPhone for my day-to-day activities and just how big of a part it now plays in my day to day communications.
In short? I am an iPhone addict. As I’ve mentined before, sticking with the one phone for more than a couple of months is quite a big deal for me. I’ve now had my white 16GB iPhone for almost a year, and even though she’s a little worse for wear (the poor darling has a tendency to fall out of my pocket and down the nearest set of stairs every five minutes)… I don’t see myself changing phones any time soon.
Here’s a list of my six most useful iPhone applications. I was going to make it my 5 most useful iPhone apps, however, as much as I tried I couldn’t narrow the list down anymore! I haven’t included games, because, they’re not really ‘useful,’ just fun! I’ll make that list another time!
- Metlink (free)
I could spend this paragraph whining about Melbourne’s public transport systems… but I won’t, because really… I have far better things to be doing. That’s probably why I find this little application so useful. As well as listing all the train, tram and bus timetables for Melbourne, it also has maps of the public transport network and lists of current disruptions and alterations. I think my favourite feature is the plan trip feature. It allows me to pick a start point, a finish point, and a start time, and based on that information it calculates the best way for me to get from the start point to the finish point by public transport!
- iiQuota ($3.99)
I like this particular app because it allows me to monitor my phone and ISP usage straight from my iPhone. It shows me exactly how much of my call and data allowances I’ve currently used in an easy to read graphical format. I currently use this to monitor my 2 mobile phone accounts (one on a plan and one on prepaid) as well as my home ISP and wireless broadband. It’s so much easier to have all this information collated in one place rather than having to log into 3 or 4 different websites.
- Wikipanion (free)
I love Wikipedia. Before I do any serious research on anything, I usually Wikipedia it first, just to get a general overview! I really like Wikipanion because as well as being faster than loading Wikipedia up with Safari, the formatting of the information is so much nicer and easier to read on the iPhone’s display.
- FlickIt (free)
I use FlickIt to add Flickr metadata to the photos in my iPhone photo library (title, description, privacy settings etc.) and then use it to upload these photos directly to my Flickr account. It also allows me to assign tags and assign photos to sets. So much easier than getting photos off my iPhone and onto my computer, then uploading them to Flickr!
- TwitterFon (free)
I’m yet to actually find a twitter application for the iPhone I actually love. TwitterFon may not be the prettiest Twitter app I’ve seen, but it’s simple, clean and very easy to use. That said, I have been playing around with Tweetie ($2.99) a bit over the last couple of days. I love the multiple account support and it does everything I use TwitterFon for (while just being that little bit prettier). It’s coming very close to replacing TwitterFon as my Twitter application of choice.
- ToiletMate ($1.19)
Toilet mate will take your current location and inform you of the nearest public toilets. The app will then provide you with directions. It’s a simple app, but an absolute lifesaver when you’re somewhere unknown and really, really, really, really need to find a bathroom!
Please note: Some of these are Australian orientated! Namely Metlink, iiQuota & ToiletMate.
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