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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 »

In relation to my previous post about using third party plugin for GIMP, I had some comments, stating that there was an issue on plugin.dll file. The Adobe Photoshop plugin (pspi.exe) could not function properly due to the absence of plugin.dll file.

I did some Googling and found out some very interesting facts about plugin.dll. Apparently, plugin.dll is a proprietary file that belongs to Photoshop. By having this file, you could actually use Adobe Photoshop plugin with Paint Shop Pro and even Irfanview.

I remember that I have once installed Adobe Photoshop before, and plugin.dll may still be inside my notebook. However, when I do search for the file, I could not find it. Funny…  I wonder how did my .8bf file running smoothly WITHOUT plugin.dll?

If you face similar problem, I would suggest that you grab Plugin.dll from various sources from around the net:

1. Download it from Dlldump.com.
2. Download it from Paint Shop Pro User Group.
3. Download it from Irfanview Plugins website.

**Although these websites offer plugin.dll for download, it is basically illegal to do it, because it is part of Adobe applications and has a copyright.

I also came across msvcrt10.dll file that is also required for Adobe Photoshop plugin to be running smoothly in GIMP. I have mine in C:\WINDOWS\system32. You may need to download and install it in the same directory to minimize the chances of your Adobe Photoshop third party plugin error…

Can you get your .8bf file running with the above tweaks?

drizad :: Nov.05.2007 :: Editors :: 10 Comments »

If you have been using Adobe Acrobat to create your PDF files, you should check this post out. It is even more important if you are still using pirated copy of Adobe Acrobat, as what am I going to share with you now will not cost you anything - except your precious time.

We know that an original copy of Adobe Acrobat can burn a hole in your pocket, but these 3 simple software can do just what Acrobat can do.

Open Office.org

The so called MS Office replacement. OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite that contains word processor, spreadsheet, multimedia presentation tool, drawer, database manager and mathematical processor.

It can do almost all the things that MS Office can do, but the only thing that makes it more user friendly is its ability to export any files created by Open Office to PDF in just one click. That is the feature that made me stick to Open Office from its version 1.x.

Similar looks with MS Office Words, but with an extra menu button in the menubar. When you hover on the button, “Export Directly as PDF” will pop up. Make sure you save your files first before you export the file to PDF.

Similar looks as MS Office Excel, OpenOffice Calc also have an extra button to export your file to PDF.

qvPDF

An open source software specifically for Window$ users. It is an application that will function as a printer for your computer. It will install a printer driver, and it will print your documents out as a PDF. So, you can generate any documents that can be print out as PDF files, without the need of any other software.

You just have to download the installer file from Sourceforge.net, and run the installation process. During the installation, Window$ may warn you that the printer driver that will be installed by qvPDF is not recognized, and may tell you that it could harm your computer. Just ignore the warning and continue the installation.

Upon successful installation, check whether your new printer is available. Click “Start”>”Control Panel”>”Printers and Faxes”. You should be able to see your printer listed in the directory.

I have just installed and use qvPDF for a couple of days, and still learning on how to maximize the software usage.

PrimoPDF

PrimoPDF is not an open source software, but I would like to highlight it as it has served me long enough before I jump into open source software bandwagon. It is one of the most convenient software to have, and it function similarly like qvPDF. It will install a printer driver and it prints out anything that you want to PDF.

You can just download the installation file and run the executable file to install the software. You can see a new printer in your “Printers and faxes” directory, labeled PrimoPDF (like the one you see above).

I must tell you that PrimoPDF does a very good job at producing PDF files. Some of the features that I like about PrimoPDF are the ability to secure your PDF file by setting a password to open the file and it could also encrypt your PDF files.

Any other free PDF generator that you know?

drizad :: Sep.14.2007 :: Editors :: No Comments »

I used Adobe Photoshop - couple of years back when I was still using pirated software for my notebook. As we all know, Adobe Photoshop is the best and most expensive photo editor around. However, after using it for quite sometime, I don’t feel right with the pirated copy. In addition, the installer cdrom that I bought did not function properly. My Photoshop editing session sometimes behave “strangely” and it sometimes “hanged” my notebook.

I found GIMP as the replacement when I decided to jump into Open Source bandwagon, and never looked back since then. GIMP can do almost all the things that Adobe Photoshop can do, and it cost you almost nothing. I have experienced with the earlier version of GIMP (which was really buggy), but the latest version on GIMP is almost flawless. It can even use third party plugin for Adobe Photoshop.

pspi.exe

Tor Lillqvist wrote an executable file, pspi.exe, for Adobe Photoshop third party plugin lover in 2001. Pspi.exe is a GIMP plugin that runs 3rd party Photoshop plug-in filters. It can run Adobe Photoshop plugins with .8bf files.

How to install pspi.exe?

You need to have your own GIMP program yourself. Uninstall your pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop CS (if any), and get the GIMP installer package for Windows from GIMP.org.

Head to Tor Lillqvist’s page of pspi.exe plugin here. Download the Windows executable GIMP-pspi plugin.

Unzip it and put the file (pspi.exe) in your GIMP plugins folder. It is usually here: C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins.

Restart your GIMP. You should see “Photoshop Plug-ins Settings…” from Xtns menubar. Locate the folder where you put your Adobe Photoshop third party plugins, and put the link there.

For example, you can head to Flaming Pear Software for hot plugins for your GIMP. Bare in mind that a lot of third party plugins for Adobe Photoshop, especially which is free or “freeware” are mostly useless, as GIMP have their own plugins that can do better job then they are. You can test it before you have it as your favorite plugins.

*Attention for Linux users: You can also use Adobe Photoshop plugins in Linux!

drizad :: Sep.11.2007 :: Editors :: 7 Comments »

As a Blog Mastermind student, Yaro have mentioned to me regarding the use of podcast to produce an audio file in the blog post in one of his weekly e-lessons. He did mentioned about an open source application, Audacity, an award winning software that may be used to edit audio files during the production process.

I did not take what Yaro said seriously, until Steven Wong from Interneton9.com contacted me for a podcast interview. By the time I received the confirmation on the appointment for the interview, I have only 3 days to figure out how to produce a podcast.

I am going to share with you on how you can produce a podcast easily.

1. Get a headset. I bought a new headset, as my old one was really uncomfortable. It hurts my ears because of the design, although it has enough foam padding.
2. If you still do not have a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) software, you should get one. The most famous is Skype, but Gizmo can also do the job.
3. The problem with Skype: by default, it does not come with a conversation recording plugin or software. You have to download a separate plugin or software to do the job. I found out that PowerGramo does a very good job, and Freecorder toolbar for Firefox is a good option.
4. Get Audacity. Audacity won the SourceForge Community Choice Awards 2007 — Multimedia Category in July 2007. Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

Some people advise me to download iTunes for editing purposes, but I will tell you later why I don’t like iTunes.

The preparations

1. Make sure your soundcard is working well. I have problems with my soundcard when I opened Audacity and Skype at the same time. It seems that when they both access my soundcard at the same time, Audacity turns my microphone to “mute”, and during recording, I can only listen the other person’s voices and not mine. So, what I did was NOT running both applications at the same time.
2. Use your Skype with PowerGramo plugin and try to record a conversation of you with somebody else. I only test my recordings with the “Skype Test Call” girl…



(By the way, PowerGramo is a small “plugin” to Skype, which can record all kinds of calls and SkypeCasts. I like it very much because it is really easy to use, and the free version can even record unlimited time of conversation for FREE!). And don’t forget to adjust the microphone volume for your Skype higher, as you may record a lower volume of your voice recording.

3. Make sure you have Skype installed first before you install PowerGramo. Installing PowerGramo will add one menu in the Skype menubar and an additional button for easy access to PowerGramo. After successful installation, every call and conversation that you have will be recorded automatically.



4. Audacity and PowerGrammo does not come with MP3 encoder by default. It means that both of the software does not export MP3 files directly, but instead uses the freely available LAME library to handle MP3 file encoding. You must obtain lame_enc.dll separately by downloading the LAME MP3 encoder, and then locate this file for both of the software. You only need to do this once. (I got my lame_enc.dll by just Googling for it). Here is the dll file.

If everything is working well, you should be able to record your conversation easily with Skype and PowerGramo.

File Conversion

After any conversation recording finishes, PowerGramo will automatically produces an audio file with a .Pga extension file that can only be played back with PowerGramo. The file can be really big, and you need to convert it to either MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WAV format, so that it can be played with almost all audio player.

Just click File > and select “Export Record as” either MP3, Ogg Vorbis or WAV format. If you have installed your MP3 encoder properly (the same LAME MP3 encoder with Audacity), you can choose your file exporting records, i.e. the sample rate, the channels and the MP3 bitrate for your produced files.

For example, a simple audio interview podcast can be exported with 44100Hz sample rate, (1) mono channel and 64 kbps of MP3 bitrate, while still preserving the quality of the audio produced. My native PowerGramo file which was around 200MB was compressed to around 35MB of MP3 file for around 70 minutes of recording. Some podcaster choose 32 kbps of MP3 bitrate to make the file smaller.

Editing

Audacity is the best audio editor around. It does the job perfectly. If you ONLY want an audio editor, (without the complication like what iTunes has), nothing come close to Audacity. For example, I use Audacity to amplify my voices, but not Steven’s as some of the listener complained that my voices were softer.

What about iTunes?

I downloaded and installed iTunes (as suggested by some of my friends). Even before the download started, I have encounter some challanges:

1. The installation file was too big, to just do some audio editing. (I don’t know about you, but 48MB is really huge, compared to Audacity, 2.12MB).
2. I don’t use most of iTunes features - like the playlist, the store, etc…
3. It eats up my memory. All of a sudden, my other applications runs really slow.
4. I don’t have / use iPod.

How to upload your MP3 file into your Wordpress blog

You need to have Audio Player Wordpress Plugin by 1 Pixel Out. Follow the installation steps carefully. You should be able to get your MP3 file running in your blog in no time.

The product? Check out my first podcast interview here.

Happy podcasting!

drizad :: Sep.03.2007 :: Editors :: 3 Comments »