Great Free Stuff Online

FREE: Text Editor for Windows - Notepad++

2011-08-14T15:44:00.002+10:00

It's official, my new favorite text editor is Notepad ++

After using ConTEXT for quite a few years (it's still great but hasn't been modified since August 2009), I finally found a notepad replacement which has all of the features I want plus a few extras;

Notepad++

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

It's fast and it's free - but it seems to be a Windows only app.

Aside from the obvious programming language requirements (html, bracket matching etc), I have a few specific requirements for any notepad replacement product I test.

Macro Facility
Block Select
Sort Capability
Search and Replace including Special Characters

Notepad++ has brought a few more exciting "requirements" to the mix including a much wider variety of programming language support and a "Trim leading and trailing space" facility.

The TextFX Extension

Last time I looked, Notepad++ was a great contender but it was missing just a few of the critical things. I looked at it a bit more closely this time though and found that it had most of the missing facilities as "extensions".

Specifically, the TextFX extension (Unicode Version)

I had a bit of trouble with the download link (and finding the unicode version of it - which is why I've provided a direct link). Once downloaded though, it's simply a matter of copying the NppTextFX.dll file into your extensions directory (in my case; D:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins) and restarting Notepad++

My main reason for wanting the TextFX extension was to get SORT capability which is sadly missing from the main product. Of course, TextFX comes with a whole heap of other great functionality, including menu options to "remove all blank lines", count words and perform extended case conversion.

FREE Balloons TTF Font

2011-05-16T11:30:00.003+10:00

This morning I found myself having to do a comic at work as a way of explaining to users how a new system would work. Powerpoint comes with a few balloon options but I wanted more - and I wanted them to be easy to get to.

I decided that the best way to have them would be as a font - so I went hunting.

You can download a great symbol font here that is made up of Balloons.

Here's what it looks like if you type the alphabet in upper and lower case, plus numbers.

Once you've downloaded the fonts and extracted the fonts from their ZIP files, right mouse click on them and choose Install (Windows 7). If you're using Windows XP, you'll have to go into control panel fonts and install them that way.

If you type a single letter in powerpoint, you'll be able to easily resize it and use it when doing comics. If you've got a graphics program like Corel Draw! then you'll find that it loads as a draggable symbol which is even better.

There's plenty of other great fonts available at http://www.free-fonts-ttf.org/true-type-fonts/

In particular, if you're looking for symbol fonts, try;

http://www.free-fonts-ttf.org/true-type-fonts/symbols-18-high-quality-collections.htm

You'll find all kinds of symbol fonts on the site including;

Aliens
Animals
A huge selection of Arrow Fonts
Cards and Dominoes
Food
Fractions
Several Keyboard Layouts
A Cat Font
Mapping Symbols
Morse Code (x2)
Nautical Flags and Semaphores
Smileys

and lots more.

FREE 7ZIP Archive (Compression and Decompression) Utility

2011-05-04T13:21:00.005+10:00

Prior to Windows XP, you used to have to install a third-party archiving tool like WinZip in order to even view ZIP files. Fortunately, that's no longer the case. Windows archiving from XP onwards natively supports the creation and extraction of files in ZIP format.

What are Archives for?

Why would you use Archives? Well, there are several good reasons;

If you have a lot of files and you want to save them as ONE single file either for archived storage or to make it easier to send them via an email.
If your files are quite large archiving will often shrink them down. Note that archiving usually doesn't work well on files which are already compressed (particularly JPEG and Movie files).
If you're converting files for a comic. If you archive a whole heap of JPEG /JPG files to ZIP and then rename it as a .CBZ file, you can use a comic book reader to view them.

How To compress a bunch of files in Windows

Select the files you want to compress in windows explorer (the file manager)
Right-mouse click on your selection
Choose Send To,
Choose Compressed (zipped) Folder
Windows will create a new Zip file for you.

How To Decompress a ZIP file in Windows

Find the ZIP File in Windows Explorer (the file manager)
Right-mouse click on it
Choose Extract All...
You'll be prompted to choose a location to extract to.
Click Ok.

Enter 7Zip

Unfortunately, despite these capabilities, windows archiving is still sadly lacking. It doesn't support all file formats - in particular the very common RAR format.

7ZIP is a great free open source Compression and Decompression utility. In fact, I've tried a lot over the years and 7ZIP is my personal favorite.

You can download 7Zip from here: http://www.7-zip.org/

It supports;

Packing and unpacking for: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
Unpacking only for: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.

Sadly it doesn't let you create RAR files but who needs them? You should probably only be sending ZIP files around anyway because they're the industry standard.

7zip is available for Windows only but is available in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

It has a nice graphical front end but I've hardly ever looked at it because the integration with Windows explorer is so nice.

Instead of hooking into the confusing "send to" area, 7ZIP gets an explorer menu of its own and you get several great options including compress and email. Right-clicking on an existing archive gives you the option of opening the archive in the current folder or a sub-folder. It's fast and it's fewer steps than the Microsoft alternative.

Give it a try. (http://www.7-zip.org/)

FREE: Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10

2011-04-19T09:08:00.003+10:00

I usually have a bone to pick with Anti-Virus vendors because their products tend to slow my system down and often miss viruses. As a result, I switch vendors quite regularly. At the moment, my Anti-Virus vendor is Kaspersky.

Now Kaspersky itself isn't free but they're offering a completely FREE bootable Rescue Disk which is well worth having.

You can view a page about it and download it from here.

The Direct Download is here.

The rescue disk downloads as a 206 MB ISO file which you can use your favourite CD Burner program to write to CD.

Why is this CD So Good?

You can start your computer from this CD and know that since it's a CD, nothing will be written to the device (it's safe from viruses). It will load a nice GUI interface and will allow you to scan your computer. Since the systems on your computer's hard drive won't be active, any virus you have won't be able to hide and it won't be locked.

Even better, if you have network card, the CD will attempt to connect to the internet. You'll be able to download the latest anti-virus signatures (overcoming a major weakness in other boot disks of this type).

The CD also includes a web browser, so if your PC isn't working and you just want to get onto the internet, it will work.

This truly is a great rescue disk.

FREE Adventure Games: King's Quest III Redux (and others)

2011-04-07T08:17:00.005+10:00

King's Quest III: To Heir is Human is a classic Sierra adventure game which has actually been remade twice and both versions are available online for free.

The latest version is called King's Quest III: Redux and it's available from AGDInteractive Studio, the same guys who brought you the remakes of King's Quest 1 and King's Quest 2 and Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. Also, in case you missed it, QFG II has been updated to version 2.0 from January 20, 2011.

The games are available for both Windows and Mac.

The other remake of King's Quest III is available from Infamous Adventures. The latest update was released in August 2006.

I've included similar pictures of both simply to show the difference in graphics. There's a whole lot more than simply snowbound adventuring to be had.

Keep watching the Infamous Adventures site because apparently they're going to release their long awaited remake of Space Quest II on April 15, 2011.

Lots of Free eBooks

2010-12-18T06:20:00.003+11:00

Recently the eBook has finally started to reach the mass market with the introduction of a whole lot of new and impressive readers, like the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook and Kobo - plus of course, lots of cheaper readers for the mass market.

Some of the cheaper readers, like the MiGear, don't support DRM (copy protection) - although apparently the latest version now does. A lot of people see this as a major drawback but it's not. there are a lot of great free eBooks out there, you just need to know where to look.

Getting a Reader

Just in case you don't have a dedicated eBook reader device, don't forget that you can also read them on your PC (and on many of the smartphones). You can download the Adobe Digital Editions reader software for free (and you don't have to register it). It will happily read the ePub format. There are also lots of other formats including html, pdf, txt and rtf which will read on software you most likely already have installed.

There are some good review sites online which compare available readers (with links to download them). These could be a good starting point.

Getting Books

So, without Looking for free eBooks for your new reader?

Here's a few sites with some good books;

ManyBooks (http://manybooks.net/)

I was very impressed with this site, it's got several ways to locate eBooks, is very well laid out and has an amazing set of download formats available. Downloading takes seconds and there's no registration process.

Depending on your favourite genre, you can find a whole lot of great books here and some of these "old" writers are well worth a read. If you've never read the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, that's one you should certainly check out.

FanFiction.Net (http://www.fanfiction.net/)

Don't like old Books? FanFiction.Net has a whole heap of modern books which might not be written by the best writers but they're on "recent" topics. Many of these books are unauthorized sequels and spin-offs of popular movies and books and they make for interesting reading.

Free Tech Books (http://www.freetechbooks.com/)

Finally, if fiction isn't your scene, you can get lots of free techy books at freetechbooks.

Looking for more?

Check out FriedBeef's list of eBook sites.

Lots of Free Retro Games

2010-08-15T09:12:00.003+10:00

I just want to point out that this site: http://www.classic-retro-games.com/ has up-to-date links to a whole heap of great retro games remakes.

These remakes are downloadable and mostly play in Windows, though some seem to be cross-platform. Most of them don't even need to be installed, just copied to your computer and run.

So far, I haven't found any viruses though McAfee immediately deleted Donkey Kong, so maybe give that one a miss.

Some of the best remakes linked to on the site include;

Gods [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
Alien Breed [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
Aliens LV-426 [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
Galaxian Updated Version [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
Galaxian 80's Version [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
1942 [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
The Goonies [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]
Vigilante (which is a bit like Double-Dragon) [Retro Games Site Link | Author's Site]

There's a whole heap more there including other classics like Afterburner, Space Invaders, Tetris and Zelda.

Go have a look!

FREE Movie(s): I Drink your Blood (and Others)

2010-03-04T12:16:00.003+11:00

I watched this "Classic?" film for the first time a few days ago.

Now, I'm normally the sort of person who can suspend disbelief and doesn't let it get in the way of a film. I'll happily accept fake bats on string without laughing because after all, these films were once meant to be scary.

I'm really not sure exactly how to take "I drink your blood" but essentially, I don't think I've ever laughed so hard during a horror film.

It's a standard sort of "boy infects a group of strangers" with rabies style plot but what makes the film so funny is the way in which we're told. There's a man explaining the symptoms, "it starts off making you sweaty" - cut to man sitting up in bed rubbing his sweaty head. As each symptom is revealed, we're shown a shot of it, Naked Gun style.

The best bit is that these rabid people are afraid of water and there's a brilliant scene where our heroes escape the clutches of a bunch of amusing "foaming at the mouth" citizens by standing in ankle-high water in a creek bed and kick-splashing them.

I had sore stomach muscles from laughing so hard.

In any case, the reason why this little production is FREE is because it's out of copyright.

You can get this movie and lots more in MPEG4 format (which many players can play directly - or which you could use software like Nero to burn to DVD) at the Internet Archive.

A sample of the other FREE movies they have there includes;

Film Noir

Suddenly
Beat the Devil - Jack Clayton, John Huston, Humphrey Bogart
The Stranger - Sam Spiegel
D.O.A. (1950)- Leo C. Popkin
Scarlet Street - Fritz Lang, Walter Wanger
Panic In The Streets - Elia Kazan
Detour
Amazing Mr. X , The
The File On Thelma Jordan - Break Wind Studios
Kansas City Confidential - Edward Small
The Green Glove - Georges Maurer, Detmar Walter
The Man Who Cheated Himself - Felix E. Feist

Science Fiction and Horror

Night of the Living Dead - Karl Hardman, Russell Streiner
The Last Man on Earth
M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder - Seymour Nebenzal
The Lost World - Jamie White
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari ( The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ) - Rudolf Meinert and Erich Pommer
The Phantom of the Opera - Carl Laemmle
Bloody Pit of Horror - Francesco Merli, Ralph Zucker
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Lady Frankenstein - Umberto Borsato
The House On Haunted Hill - William Castle
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror) - Enrico Dieckmann & Albin Grau
Carnival of Souls
Invasion of the Bee girls
Grave of the Vampire
Horror Express

Comedy

His Girl Friday
Happy Go Lovely
My Man Godfrey
Charlie Chaplin Festival
My Favorite Brunette - Daniel Dare
Meet John Doe
Charlie Chaplin's "A Burlesque On Carmen"
Three Stooges Episodes
Charlie Chaplin's "The Vagabond"
Charlie Chaplin's "Tillies Punctured Romance"
Utopia - Raymond Eger
The Flying Deuces - Boris Morros
Charlie Chaplin's "A Fair Exchange"
Mud and Sand - Gilbert M. Anderson
Gorilla, The - Harry Joe Brown
Jack and the Beanstalk

FREE VBOXWIN Virtualisation (Run older Operating Systems without Risk)

2010-02-15T07:38:00.003+11:00

I've recently reloaded a PC for my kids and tried a whole bunch of tricks to get my older games working. Most of them worked brilliantly - and I found some amazing Windows extensions for them which I'll blog about later.

Some, didn't work too well under Windows XP. They needed Windows 95/98SE.

While it's possible to dual boot a Windows system so that you choose your operating system on startup, it's messy and there's a much better alternative - you can run the entire operating system in a window.

There's a lot of "virtualisation" software out there, the best known of which is VMWare. Unfortunately, the FREE bottom end of VMWare is the;

ESXi Bare Metal Hypervisor

http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/

This is a great product for servers but it isn't really suitable for home PCs. In any case, you need to load it FIRST, so it involves an entire Operating System reinstall. The paid VMWare flavours don't.

I was looking for a product which would do, for free, what the paid VMWare products do - and I found the VirtualBOX project.

VirtualBOX

http://www.virtualbox.org/

VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.

It's pretty impressive.

The one thing missing from the VirtualBOX site is a compiled .EXE file (binary) for Windows. You're expected to download the source code and compile your own. Obviously, it's not something I'm likely to do.

Luckily, there is a pre-compiled version of VirtualBOX available on the internet.

VBOXWin32

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vboxwin32/

VBox Win32 is a 9MB download which installs quite happily on Windows XP and presumably other versions of Windows too. The installation process is very straighforward and I was able to get Windows 98SE running in a window without any confusion. Obviously, you'll need to have the CDs for Windows 98SE (or whatever operating system you want to virtualise).

VBox Win32 is a great way to try out different operating systems, like Linux or to load up old favourites to run older software and games. It's well worth a try.

FREE Games: Neverball and NeverPutt

2010-02-04T09:36:00.003+11:00

Neverball is a bit like Marble Madness. You use your mouse to tilt a playing field which cause a ball to roll around. You can collect coins by rolling on them.

There are different aims depending on the level. Some levels have time limits, some have specific paths you need to follow and some have other requirements.

Neverball is completely FREE and you can download it from;

http://neverball.org/

The game also comes with a second game called NeverPutt which is a mini-golf game using the same graphics engine. It's pretty cool too.

System Requirements and Platforms

The game runs on Windows (2000 and XP). It doesn't mention other Windows versions on the site but it's clear that people are also running under Vista and Windows 7 (you just need to make sure you give yourself adequate rights when installing).

The game also runs on Linux; FreeBSD and Ubuntu. It also runs on Mac OSX.

Apparently it neesd a 500MHz processor and OpenGL but there are indications that people are able to run it on lower processors by disabling some of the graphics.

FREE Text Editor (ConTEXT)

2009-07-27T11:22:00.004+10:00

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

2009-06-25T08:32:00.003+10:00

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

2009-06-10T14:12:00.003+10:00

(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

2009-06-10T13:55:00.004+10:00

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)

2009-05-16T14:04:00.002+10:00

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

2009-04-30T19:00:00.005+10:00

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)

2009-04-16T16:54:00.004+10:00

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.

FREE Graphics Utility - Shape Collage

2009-04-08T14:43:00.004+10:00

Shape Collage

Version 2.1

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,77346/

This utility is single-purpose but very cool. You can use it to make some amazing graphics for cards to give people, wallpapers, displays etc.

All you do is drag and drop your photos to the application. To simplify matters, I copy mine into a new folder before I do. Then, pick a shape or a letter and press the preview button. This shows you the arrangement only. You can do things on the other tabs in the application, like put borders around photos etc.

When you've finished, click the Create button to save a file in JPEG or PNG formats.

Some Cool Ideas

Card Front; Create a collage of pictures of your loved one and use the Heart Shape. Then save it and use it on the front of a card (or send it via email).
Wallpaper; Choose the rectangle Adjust the photo size (and pay attention to the dimensions at the top of the status window when you refresh). When it looks about the size of normal screen resolutions, (ie: 1024 x 768), save it. You can use a proper graphics package, like the Gimp, to crop and scale it exactly. If you want to save yourself some time, consider loading a plain black or plain white photo background of the correct dimensions on the appearance tab. The application will give you an option to automatically scale it for you.

Since I like Doctor Who, I've done a Doctor Who Wallpaper with all the Doctors (1-10 anyway) as a demonstration. Note: This literally took me less than five minutes to make.
A Great Wall Hanging; Spell out someone's name one letter at a time. You can actually write whole words in the text field but it doesn't look as good. Use photos from different time zones, for example if the person's name is Fred and they're about 40, make the "F" from very old photos, make the "r" from photos aged 10-20, the "e" from photos aged 20-30 and the "d" from photos of 30-the present. Print them and cut them out and put them into a frame for them.

FREE Game - 3d Shooter - Nexuiz

2009-04-06T13:57:00.002+10:00

If you're a big fan of 3d shooter games like Wolfenstein, Quake, Doom and Duke Nukem 3d, then you'll love Nexuiz.

Nexuix

http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/

Version 2.5 of this Open Source game which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, has just been released. While I can't claim to have tried the latest version yet, I can tell you that I had a go of the previous version and was pretty impressed.

FREE Audio and Video Format Converter - WinFF

2009-04-04T16:42:00.003+11:00

Looking for a Media Converter
I had some unprotected ipod style m4b audio book files that I wanted to convert to MP3 format for playing on the Blackberry and other sources. In my search for free software to do this with, I found WinFF. WinFF does considerably more than I originally needed but as yet, I haven't tried it with anything other than m4b to mp3 conversions.

Availability
At the time of writing the latest stable version was 0.43 (and this worked well for my conversion). I tried version 1.0 for Windows but either I didn't allow it enough conversion time or there was a problem.

You can get the software here; http://winff.org/html/downloads.html

The software is Open Source and is available for Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, Debian and Redhat).

Usage
There's a manual available on the site but it's not terribly detailed. Using the program is pretty simple though, you simply "ADD" your file to the list and then pick a conversion type (Audio or Video). Then you choose the output types (eg: MP3) and an output folder. When you click Convert, a DOS/Command Prompt window opens and conversion starts.

Summary
It took a long while (about an hour) on a 3GHz P4 to process a 283 Mb m4b file into an equivalent 666 mb mp3 file (obviously MP3 is a format with lower compression) but unlike all of the other (apparently free) programs I tried, WinFF made it all the way to the end.

I'm not sure if it will handle "protected m4b" files or how it handles all the other formats but this program is a keeper, so I'm sure I'll find out sooner or later.

FREE Vector Graphics Software (Inkscape).

2009-04-04T01:18:00.003+11:00

Restating My Aims...
The aim of this blog was to introduce free stuff to the community specifically to;

Draw attention to "replacements for commonly purchased applications"
Draw attention to useful data libraries (audio books, ebooks, graphics libraries etc).

Unfortunately, I've been a bit busy of late and the updates have been slow but hopefully, this will change.

Inkscape
http://www.inkscape.org/
This is an open source replacement for Vector Graphics programs such as Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Visio. At the moment, it seems to be only available on the Windows platform. I'm not sure if this is true though because it says that it's available for Linux and Mac OSX.

The application interface is quite simple to master and I was able to create some decent drawings within about 10 minutes. I've started making this available to people at work and found that an average user can pick it up with minimal instruction and about a day or so of "play-time".

The default save format isn't a common one but it also saves as Enhanced Metafiles (EMF) and Windows Metafiles (WMF). I found the save as functionality to be a bit clunky and I did experience a few crashes but these were fairly predictable and mostly when I was doing things that were "wrong". The error trapping of the application needs tightening up.

There's an impressive image on their site (see below) which makes my own efforts look like Kindergarten stuff in comparison.

I found that this application had a bit of trouble accepting copy and paste (and several export options) from Microsoft Powerpoint but that powerpoint had no problems importing EMF/WMF files from it.

As far as I'm concerned, at work, this program is good enough to include in our standard operating environment.

FREE Lego Building Software for Kids

2008-10-19T14:33:00.003+11:00

These two freebies are great for people who enjoy lego.

LeoCAD
Do you (or your kids) enjoy building things in lego but never have enough bricks? Well, now there's LeoCAD, a FREE lego building application with infinite bricks and quite a few different varieties.

The application is available for both Windows and Linux environments and while it's fairly easy to use, though probably suitable for 10 years and over. Not only can you build things in it, but you can also animate them.

You can download LeoCAD from the following site
http://leocad.org/

Lego MiniMizer
If you're looking for something that's a bit better suited to younger children - or you want something that's instant fun for yourself, then the online minimizer is the way to go.

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini/kidsafe.htm

You can design your own lego people using this system... It's fast and easy and works entirely on the web (so it should work on Mac, Linux and Windows).

Here's one of my people who started out as being Smurfette;

FREE Doctor Who eBooks (From Classic Series)

2008-10-17T15:57:00.002+11:00

There are several Doctor Who eBooks available for download as PDF Files in the style of the Classic Target Range.

They are available from the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/novelisations.html

The books are as follows;

Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet
Doctor Who and the City of Death
Doctor Who and Shada
Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks

While on the Site, you might also want to check out their fanzines and the fan story Glory of the Daleks.

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/glory/

In my opinion though, the best book on the entire site is;

Doctor Who - Who Killed Kennedy by by David Bishop & James Stevens

This book is sadly out of print but you can still download the PDF on this site if you want to read it.

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/wkk/

FREE Audio Books - Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Doctor Who

2008-10-17T15:47:00.003+11:00

I’ve just been having a look at BrokenSea Audio productions.

They’ve got a bunch of Audio Books - actually full dramatisations - of various stories available for FREE download in MP3 format. Of particular note are,

Logan’s Run
http://brokensea.com/logansrun/

Planet of the Apes
http://brokensea.com/planetoftheapes/

Doctor Who (Various Stories)
http://brokensea.com/drwho/

There's also a few other things on the site including some Lovecraft but I personally found those things irritating. IMHO you have to be a reader with a certain style to read Lovecraft out loud.

One other thing to note. They haven’t been terribly good at keeping to naming conventions so you might want to rename the files as you download them so that they sort correctly in your player.

Check them out!

FREE Read-Along Books (for Kids and Kid-Like Adults)

2008-10-17T15:40:00.003+11:00

Remember those read-along books from your childhood where you had to wait for Artoo-Detoo to beep or Indiana Jones to crack the whip before turning the page?

Well, there’s a site where they have collected a bunch of the more exciting ones (the movie-based ones) and have converted them to executable PC and Mac Files with real turning pages. You can also download the books in MP3 format if you just want to listen.

Here’s the Site
http://www.readalongadventures.com/

Amongst others, they have the books for

Star Wars 1, 4, 5 & 6 - Plus Ewok Movies, ABCs and more
Star Trek 1-4
Back to the Future
Gremlins
The Goonies
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Indiana Jones 1-3
Mary Poppins
James Bond

Oh, and I just love the site graphics... so retro.

FREE Audio Books "Tales of Horror" including Salem's Lot

2008-10-17T14:42:00.006+11:00

There’s a lot of free stuff out there on the internet and while admittedly, much of it is of variable quality, The quality of the productions on this particular site is pretty good because they're all radio broadcasts.

Tales of Horror: Stories from Early Radio

I'm a little surprised by the words "early radio" in the title. Salem's Lot isn't that old after all (and the Radio Play dates from 1995).

On the site, (http://horrortales.libsyn.com/) you can download, in MP3 format, a variety of horror stories and plays prepared for Radio broadcast and acted out by some of the stars of classic horror. The site includes a number of rather interesting stories such as;

A 7 part 1995 BBC Radio Dramatization of “‘Salem’s Lot”
Stephen King's masterpiece (well I like it anyway). I've listened to all of this - it's very good and closer to the book than the TV Movie(s). There's also an interesting wikipedia articleabout the radio play.

“The Fall of the House of Usher”
By Edgar Allan Poe. This is a 2 part adaptation starring Richard Taylor.

“The Pit and the Pendulum”
Also by Edgar Allan Poe - and also starring Richard Taylor.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
by Washington Irving and starring Boris Karloff.

“Dracula”
By Bram Stoker. In two parts and starring Christopher Lee in his usual role.

There’s lots more on the site too - so browse around.

FREE Computer Game "TuxRacer"

2008-10-17T12:00:00.001+11:00

TuxRacer is an Open Source game which runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It’s cute and seems to work well on older hardware. The controls for this game are simple enough for young children to master - and I guess that’s about the right level for the game.

In any case, if you’re interested, you can get the game from the following web site;

http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/download.html

FREE Computer Game "Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire" Remake

2008-10-17T11:48:00.004+11:00

If you’re an old fan of the sierra style adventure games (I know I am), then you’ll probably remember playing the the original Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire Game.

The folks at AGD Interactive have worked their magic yet again and the game is now available for download at their site;

http://www.agdinteractive.com/

By todays demanding standards, the game probably isn't going to "blow your mind" but it's still a lot of fun.

Here are the system requirements/recommendations (though I'm sure it will work on older PCs too);

SuperVGA Video Card with 1-2 MB Video RAM
Pentium 500 MHz or above
128 MB RAM
Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP or Vista
DirectX 5 or above
DirectX Compatible Sound Card
Approximately 350 MB of Disk Space

AGD also developed remakes of King’s Quest I and II which were free and available on their website last year but the recent redesign seems to have hidden them. If you’re after those games, you might need to email them.

FREE Audio Book "U.N.I.T. The Coup"

2008-10-17T11:37:00.002+11:00

If you like Doctor Who, there’s a free audio book available for download from the Big Finish Productions web site. First of all, you have to register (and validate) and then you can download it. The book is about 27MB and I’ve listened to the story myself. It’s not a great one but it does have some cool Silurian sound effects.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s the URL.

Free Audio Book: Unit: The Coup
http://www.bigfinish.com/UNIT-The-Coup

About this Blog

2008-10-17T10:58:00.000+11:00

I started a blog a little while ago on wordpress to see what all the fuss was about (people had been telling me that wordpress is better than google blogger). It certainly isn't and the fact that I've moved the blog here should be proof enough of that.

My Wordpress blog was supposed to be about films with some other things like freebies being mentioned. Instead, I did only one review and filled the rest of the blog up with freebie info. This time I'm going to stay on topic... freebies only. In particular, I'm going to try to draw attention to;

Free Software
Free Games
Free Videos/Movies
Free eBooks (PDF Files etc)
Free AudioBooks (MP3 format suitable for most devices)
Free Music

As I'm moving the old wordpress blog here, so my original entries - the first seven or so, will be reprints of old posts. From then on, it will be new stuff.

I don't own any of the things I link to and I don't necessarily warrant that they're free from malicious stuff - you'll have to do your own scanning. I'll try to only post links of quality but anyone could change a link and I wouldn't know about it. In addition, I can't claim that the free stuff I link to will always be available - so get it while it's hot.

If there's anything wrong with any of my posts (particuarly copyright or offense), please let me know and I'll make changes or otherwise do my best to address the problem. Similarly, if you have related information, other free stuff (which is safe) or if you have a bad experience with any free stuff I post, I'd like to hear about it - so please add it as a comment.

I'll be moderating comments to prevent spam but won't deny comments which simply disagree.