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For Windows user, you can use Gas Mileage Tracker Software (a freeware) to be used with your PC.

Another handy tool for Palm OS user. Track your fuel expenses with this handy program. With pFuel, you could track your fuel mileage spending of your car (or cars) on the go. I own a 2001 Proton Wira Sedan, which I have been using for the past 7 years. I was not aware on how many km/L of its fuel consumption until I use this program (of course, I knew its rough estimation).

pFuel could even track your expenses for maintenance of your car like servicing, repair, wheel balancing and alignment, and almost anything that you could relate to your car.

For your info, my car currently runs around 13-15km/L of petrol, depending on the road and journey that I took. Not sure about the standard consumption of fuel for WIRA generally…

pFuel

pFuel is an enhanced version of the “FuelLog” program for the Palm that records fuel purchases and computes statistics and creates graphs related to the fuel consumption for each vehicle.You can also set alert for the maintenance of your car. pFuel works in Metric (Km/Litre) or Standard (Miles/Gallons).

Data from pFuel can also be easily exported to and imported from a memo pad record.

drizad :: Apr.17.2008 :: Palm OS :: No Comments »

I felt some relief after securing my Ubuntu PC at home for my son from the exposure of porn at early age with OpenDNS. To get the PC to serve me on educating him on letters, numbers, colors, shapes, sizes and almost anything that he could get from Disney Channel, I installed GCompris - the free education software.

I must say that it is very intuitive, interactive and attractive to my son. The advantage of GCompris compared to Disney Channel is interactivity - while he could only watch and learn from Disney, with GCompris, he could interact using simple mouse gesture and sometime keyboard.

GCompris

GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

• computer discovery: keyboard, mouse, different mouse gesture, …
• algebra: table memory, enumeration, double entry table, mirror image, …
• science: the canal lock, the water cycle, the submarine, electric simulation …
• geography: place the country on the map
• games: chess, memory, connect 4, oware, sudoku …
• reading: reading practice
• other: learn to tell time, puzzle of famous paintings, vector drawing, cartoon making, …

Currently GCompris offers in excess of 100 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere.

And don’t worry. GCompris can be installed in almost any operating system (Linux, Mac & Windows) and has more than 40 language translation. Now give your child some good and free education!

drizad :: Apr.16.2008 :: Education :: No Comments »

The only way that you will know how important and FTP client for your computer is when you started your own website & blog. I personally knew FireFTP when I started mount-kinabalu-borneo.com, where I called Exabytes support on how to transfer my newly made HTML file to the server.

It was quite difficult at the beginning, and I decided to migrate to a stand-alone FTP client program just when I get use to transferring files to the server. I used FileZilla in my Windows for quite sometime, but it seems that the transfer time gets slower as time goes by. gFTP is used while I am in Ubuntu.

Because of FileZilla slowness (and I did find some bugs in their beta version), I decided to go back to FireFTP. It has been 6 months since I migrated to FireFTP, and the program has matured to give me the best service of transferring files to my servers. As it is also cross platform, I don’t have any problem while working in my Ubuntu.

What do you use?

drizad :: Apr.15.2008 :: File Sharing :: 3 Comments »

If you think that your default Windows Notepad sucks, I would agree with you. You may want to upgrade to one of the best free and open source notepad program - which even have its own thong - Notepad++.

It was the era of Windows Notepad when I started to hand code my own HTML files with the help of N|vu. But with its limited features (and boring black characters on white background), it easily made me boring after few minutes of using it.

I used jEdit initially, but I don’t feel it suits me, until I found Notepad++. I have been using it for the past one year, and I am really comfortable with it.

Notepad++ is a free (free as in “free speech”, but also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

Oh, the best thing about Notepad++ is that they have their own Notepad++ Thong. No, it is not a joke. You could get your piece from cafepress.

drizad :: Apr.14.2008 :: Editors :: No Comments »

Cyber porn and adult stuff - are some of the materials on the internet that are easily available for us. Just type anything in Google search box. You will be surprised on how many thousand pages of content that Google could gives you.

I was not bothered to look for solution on blocking porn from my internet browsing activities while I was single, but after having children, it seems that I could not avoid from having one.

My 4 years old boy now is more brilliant than his mother on using computer. He could switch on my home PC (which I installed Ubuntu Gutsy), type in the user name and password - and know how to get to YouTube for his favorite Jay Chow’s Initial D video clips. I know, if I don’t educate and control some of the content in the internet to get to his viewing, sooner or later he will surely be exposed to stuff that is not suitable for him.

As I use Ubuntu on my PC at home, Net Nanny will be out of the question. ParentalControl Bar, a free public service that helps concerned parents prevent their children from accessing adult-oriented Web sites was only made to be use with Internet Explorer 7. As Firefox and Ubuntu hardcore, I could only find one solution to get porn and adult content out of my son’s eye view for this moment - OpenDNS.

I have been using OpenDNS for different purposes for the past 3 years, which are navigating the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliably than ever before, but I just notice recently that they could also provide content filtering, phishing protection, adult site blocking and domain blocking.

As it is free and open source, I just get it set up on my Ubuntu PC and after some registration and follow their how-to guide, I now have secured my Firefox browser for my son’s browsing activities.

Yes, I know that blocking this adult content from my son is not going to be the total solution for him. I still need to educate and teach him on the lesson, as he will surely be exposed to those thing one day in the future.

drizad :: Apr.13.2008 :: Security :: No Comments »

You may want to check other free money management software for your Windows here if you think this post is irrelevant to you.

We work hard to make money. But we never work as hard to manage the money that we make. That is why, some of us “finished” their hard earned money even before the end of the month.

Most of us spend more than we could earn. And most of the things that we spend on to are not necessary. Try differentiate things that you are planning to buy next by labeling it to either “needs” or “wants”. You may then realize how much have you spent on unnecessary things…

If you think that you spend most of your money to the things that you “want”, and end up broke before the end of the month, then you should track your spending habits with some of the best free money management software around.

FreeCoins
For me, FreeCoins is one of the best free and open source money management software for Palm OS (which I use with my Treo 680) that I have used so far. There are other proprietary software to manage money in Palm OS, but I don’t think it is necessary for me to spend money when you could get something that is compatible and free like FreeCoins. Although the development of the program/software stopped on May 22, 2006, the program has been running smoothly, and I have been using it to budget and track my monthly spendings.

The only thing that FreeCoins can’t do for me is to import/export the database files to .QIF or even .CSV, as I planned to integrate it with Gnucash and jGnash, 2 of the best money management software which you could install in your Windows.

FreeCoins is a full-featured accounting program (similar to GnuCash) for the Palm OS released under GPL.

Some of the features in the program are:

• available in multiple languages (French and German at the moment)
• Manual
• Integrated calculator for speed-entering transactions
• International number format support
• accounts structured in trees
• Autocompletion for speedy entries
• double entry bookkeeping
• cleared/uncleared transactions (can be viewed separately and the views can be remembered)
• separate cleared/uncleared/available balances
• transactions can be scheduled (very useful for direct debits/standing orders)
• totals for the current account, current category and all accounts in all categories

I just hope that the development of the software could continue, as to improve the usability of the software in the future.

drizad :: Apr.12.2008 :: Accounting :: No Comments »

If you have been using M$ Windows Media Player and feels that it is getting “bloated”, slow and sometimes have annoying pop-ups saying that “you don’t have the plugin/extension needed”, then you may find VLC Media Player is the best replacement.

I have been using VLC for the past 2 years, and I have never found any other player that come close to it. VLC is small, fast loading and don’t have the unnecessary bells and whistle which most multimedia player has.

The best thing about VLC is that it could play .3gp files, which is a video files that you usually play it in mobile phones! You can install it in Windows, Linux & Mac.

VLC media player - the cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

drizad :: Apr.11.2008 :: Multimedia :: No Comments »

I wish I’ve found this open source software before I started my Kinabalu website. But anyway, it’s better late than never. I just found FreeMind few months back while planning to start my new blog/website. A “must have” tool for you to plan for any project!

I remember the last time I used mind mapping was during my school days, in one of the workshop for me to brainstorm new ideas and to plan for writing essays, for example. I used mind mapping in med school, but it was just for some subjects, and I never realize the usefulness of this “mind mapping” until I started my own websites and blogs.

What is Mind Map
A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

What is FreeMind
FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. And it has become one of the high productivity tool for almost everybody! You can download and install it in Windows, Mac and Linux.

drizad :: Apr.10.2008 :: Desktop :: No Comments »

Argh… I was bitten by SCUBA diving bugs after my first dive. I am now planning to get my PADI Open Water ASAP (i.e. when the $ is enough). Anyway, I just would like to share with you some of the best SCUBA diving software around for you to track and log your diving.

JDiveLog

An open source logbook for SCUBA divers for logging scuba dives. It’s written in Java (JRE 5.0 or later required). You could even transfer your dive profile from your dive computer directly to JDiveLog. Up to now some Suunto and Uwatec Aladin models are supported, as well as the Open Source Dive Computer by HeinrichsWeikamp.

Aqua DiveLog

Aqua DiveLog is a logbook for scuba divers, from beginner to technical diver.

The goal of this project is to develop a flexible and easy to use dive logbook for Palm OS based PDA. The advantages of the old paper logbook (small, lightweight and easy to use) should be combined with the power of a computer (interface to dive computer, search functions, data access , …).

And the best of all, it is free!
The ADL is an Open Source project under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

drizad :: Apr.09.2008 :: Recreation :: No Comments »

I have been using Palm Treo 680 for the past 2 months, which I bought from ebay for around RM1000. Seek for Salat Software for Palm OS since then, and I found that Salat Schedule 1.2 is the best.

Some of the features:
SalatSchedule is a simple PalmOS(R) application that displays the Muslim prayer time schedule for the current day, along with the praying direction “Qibla”.

A list of 525 city locations around the world are made available for the user to select from, with the ability to change location and Fiqh parameters.

Alarm schedule can be generated for 30 days and the software can be used as a prayer time reminder.

It only has “Takbir”, and not full Azan. A good feature (I think), that is just suffice if you think that the whole Azan is too long for your Palm.

drizad :: Apr.08.2008 :: Religion :: No Comments »