FREE Text Editor (ConTEXT)

I've been looking for a decent freeware text editor for years. In fact, I've been using the now defunct PFE Editor for years. They stopped work on it in 1999 but until recently, I'd never found anything better. Even then, PFE Edit was still a poor replacement for QEdit which I had in the DOS days.

So, after a long time looking, I'v found something that satisfies my main difficult criteria.

The ConTEXT Editor

http://www.contexteditor.org/

There are lots of text editors which do all kinds of fancy things. It's easy to find a text editor that will do bracket matching or open multiple files. I decided on a few things that I needed in a text editor on top of the usual things...

• The ability to Sort lists
• The ability to record and play back macros
• Block Selection
• Case Conversion
• Search and Replace

ConTEXT does all of this, plus a few great features that I didn't know I needed, like being able to strip the trailing spaces off lines and being able to convert tabs to spaces. ConTEXT also has a cool little file browser on the left hand side and a long list of recently edited files.

At first, I wasn't happy with the fact that I could position my cursor anywhere as I often use this to work out whether I have trailing spaces or not. A quick glance through the preferences dialogs however showed me that I could easily turn this feature off - and a few other great features, like line-highlighting, on.

If you're still using Notepad or if your current text editor isn't up to scratch, ConTEXT is well worth a look.

As far as I can tell, ConTEXT is only available for Windows. I presume that there's an equivalent product for the Mac and Linux environments but I haven't yet found it.

FREE Audio Book Library for Children

I just stumbled on this site while trying to find an audio adaptation of Jungle Book (in case it rains on my upcoming Cub Scout weekend).

Anyway, the site is called;

Kiddie Records Weekly
http://www.kiddierecords.com/

And it has literally hundreds of kiddie records (and cover scans) from the "Golden Age" of children's records. I'm presuming that this means the fifties?

Anyway, it has gems like

• Boris Karloff in Peter Pan
• Jerry Lewis' The noisy eater
• Walt Disney's adaptation of Rob Roy
• Francis the Talking Mule
• Lost Horizon
• Grimms Fairy Tales
• My Favourite Martian
• Hansel and Gretel

and some of those politically incorrect (and therefore no longer obtainable) stories including;

• Little Black Sambo
• Uncle Remus
• George Washington Rabbit

** Note: Apologies to anyone who may be offended by some of these titles. These stories may be offensive but they're part of the culture of the time and (arguably) key to understanding the sort of repression that our ancestors perpetrated. It's my belief, perhaps wrongly, that it's better to come clean and accept history than pretend that this stuff never happened.

FREE Audio Book - Battlestar Galactica

(BTW: This image isn't mine, I found it online but I don't know who the owner is).

Another free audio book from the fabulous Brokensea Audio. This time it's a cure for anyone who preferred Battlestar Galactica the way it originally was. That's right, Starbuck is Male and the Cylons have those cute little voices...

You can download the audiobook from BrokenSea Audio on the link below;

http://brokensea.com/bsg/

This audio book sounds fantastic and the special effects sound like they are better than the ones on the original show. The cylon voices are brilliant and actually still able to be understood better than the TV ones.

I can't comment on how close the voice acting is because it's been a while since I watched the original series but overall I was pretty impressed.

There's quite a bit of advertising on the front of each episode which can be a little distracting but it's quite acceptable for a free download. I actually did make a note of some of the web links they mentioned and found some more great material which I'll talk about once I've listened to.

Well done once again Brokensea!

FREE Audio Book Mad Max - Tomorrow's Road

Mad Max: Tomorrow's Road is a short audio adventure set between Max Max 2 and 3. It tells and interesting story and it's done in a way that works well. It sounds brilliant.

You can download the audio book from their web site in MP3 format from here;

http://brokensea.com/madmax/

Shane Harris, the guy who plays Max, has the voice down pat and he manages to stay in character pretty much thoughout the entire production. The rest of the cast are all good performers too, though not necessarily as voice-perfect.

I was surprised to note that the production runs for 50 minutes. I guess it's the sign of a really engaging audio book when you wish it wasn't over so quickly. Well done Brokensea! Hopefully there's more Max Max in the works, there's plenty of scope to fill in the years between Mad Max 1 and 2.

One thing to keep in mind though before you go giving this to your kids. There's some strong language in this audio but it's all very much in keeping with the style of the story.

FREE Puzzle Game Pingus (Windows, Mac and Linux)

About the Game

Pingus is very similar to the old DOS game Lemmings, only this time using Penguins. In the game, your objective is to help a bunch of Penguins find the exit to the level. The penguins are stupid and will generally follow eachother, even if it means certain death.

There's a great series of tutorial levels at the beginning of the game and I'd strongly recommend that you play through them before trying the harder levels.

You can designate a variety of different roles to each penguin based on a selection available at each level. Examples include; Digger, Horizontal Digger, Step Builder and my favourite, Bomber.

Development

Pingus is Open Source and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

You can obtain Pingus from the download link on the following site;

http://pingus.seul.org/

Free Arcade Game: Mayan Maze

Operating Systems: Windows Only

Mayan Maze is a marble game for windows which is very addictive and simple to play.

You can download it here

http://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/freeware/t-free-mayan-maze-freeware-rseldoai.html

I tested it on Windows XP but it's rated for all Windows versions from Windows 98 through to Vista. It doesn't need special hardware, a standard onboard intel video card is fine. My wife played it all the way to the end - she's such a dedicated game tester. It took some beating (apparently).

Warning: Mayan Maze is freeware with a catch. I'm deliberately not mentioning any freeware on this blog if it includes unavoidable adware or malware. It just scraped through.

If you just install according to the defaults, Mayan Maze will add some browser links. Read the install screens carefully and make sure that you deselect the links to add toolbars to your browser. There are two links to add ASK.COM stuff. One looks like a compulsory license agreement but it isn't. Deselect them both.

Mayan Maze will also launch a web browser window when you close it. This window apparently has other "free" games but the one or two that I checked out had unavoidable baggage, so I refused to install them. It's best to simply close the web page without being tempted by any of the other games in it.

FREE Fonts (1001FreeFonts.com)

Fonts are pretty cool and very useful in a lot of graphics, presentation and desktop publishing applications. The problem is that there are lots of sites out there which offer fonts but charge for their use.

Here's one that has good quality fonts and doesn't charge.

1001 Free Fonts

http://www.1001freefonts.com/

This web site that offers, as the name says, 1001 free fonts (possibly more). If you feel like parting with money, they'll allow you to download a pack of 10,000 fonts but you'll probably find something you can use amongst their free offerings.

The site offers fonts for both Mac and Windows (Truetype) and you can access them alphabetically, which is great if you have some idea of the font's name.

Alternatively, you can access them via categories as diverse as; 3D (fonts with shadows), Celtic, Christmas, Dotted, Famous (which has cool fonts from movies, cars and other products), Horror, Medieval, Outline and Sci-Fi (which has Alien, Blade Runner and a few other Sci-Fi films amongst the styles).

There are a lot more categories, I've just listed some of my favourites. Note that the categories don't contain all of the fonts. For instance, there were no Star Wars fonts under Sci-Fi. Instead, I found some alphabetically under S (for example; Star Jedi Hollow)

Previewing

Even better, the fonts can be previewed before you download them. Simply click on the font and type whatever you want in the preview box.

The results display immediately.