If you are looking for an awesome, free program to edit your audio files, I suggest Audacity. It is a free open-source program for editing all types of audio, and is available for Windows and Linux. Long ago, I used to use Cool Edit 2000. I guess that program went out of style and the company was later bought out by Adobe to incorporate it into their new expensive program for the genre. If you want to get some simple tasks done easily, Audacity is the program to have. It has done everything that I need, such as cropping and fading of songs for my CDs. It is quite terrific. And best of all, totally free.

Have you seen the stupid TV commercial for the supposed breakthrough weight loss pill called Lipozene? I am sure you probably have. I was just watching TV and it came on yet again. This time, I made notice of the small text at the bottom of the screen. The lady talking says that maximum strength Lipozene is clinically proven to lose body fat and weight. And that in a university study, 78% of the total weight lost in participants was pure body fat. While this is being said, the ultra-small text at the bottom of the screen reads “Over an 8 week university study, average 3.86 pounds fat loss.” Say what? That is all the weight that was lost in 8 weeks? Gimme a break. I knew this was a scam the first time I saw it. This assures it.

I have been a user of instant messaging since the early days when ICQ and the AOL messenger were the only games in town. Ten years ago, I created my AOL screenname that I still use today. The program grew quickly in popularity, and along came Yahoo and MSN. Suddenly, I was able to chat at all hours to most of my friends and family. I used to sign on nearly every time I sat at the computer, just to see if anyone I knew was on. Most of the time I’d find at least one of my buddies online. With the spread of always-on broadband Internet connections, I thought for sure that most of my buddies would eventually fall into the habit of leaving their IM software up and running in an away state, as I had noticed some people doing.

Time has passed, and today when I sign on to AOL and Yahoo, there is usually nobody online. Is this just my experience, or have others noticed it to? Maybe I just have fewer friends than I used to or something. But it is only every now and then that someone on my list logs on.

Today, I use Gaim to connect to the services all at once. It uses less memory, has no ads, and isn’t intrusive. Although I am almost never engaged in actual chat, I sign onto it anyway, just to tow the line and try to keep it alive. I figure if my buddies log on and see at least one person, they’ll be more inclined in the future to keep logging on.

Perhaps newer technologies like text messaging, Skype, MySpace, and There.com have siphoned away users from traditional instant messaging software. I don’t know the reason, or if the problem is as bad as I see it from my point of view, but I sure wish more people would continue to use these services. If the original programs have grown too bloated and bulky for you, try using Gaim or Trillian instead. Either is usually a better alternative to the real programs.

Today I wiped my slow Fedora 6 installation that I recently made, and installed a fresh copy of the latest release from Ubuntu. It is version 6.10 and is called Edgy Eft. It has the latest software releases, like Firefox 2.0 and the Gaim 2.0 beta. So far, it is so much faster and responsive than my experience with Fedora. This one is a keeper! I tested the video response in YouTube as I did in Fedora, and with Edgy, it doesn’t feel strained and delayed. So far the installation, online updates, and configuration have been a snap. Installing Linux these days, especially Ubuntu, is really a piece of cake. The only trouble spot is partitioning if you are going to dual-boot with Windows, as I do. Two hard drives is an easy way around that problem, though.

The next Ubuntu release is slated for April 2007. I don’t think I’ll be trying out any new distros until then. This one is simply the best there is, in my opinion.

I don’t think I have ever written about Picasa, the free photo manager from Google. It is one of the best, innovative programs I have ever used. If you have a digital camera, it is really a must. It does what I have not been able to with other programs, at least not as easily. Before Picasa, I actually believed that I could keep up with my mounting photo collection by using folders and filenames alone. But after a while, I had no idea where any particular picture was.

This program does it all very well. I get the most use out emailing photos with it, and making web photo galleries. It does both of those so quick that, without the program, I wouldn’t even want to bother anymore. It’s quick and easy photo corrections are pretty capable, and the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is always fun to toy with. The best feature of this program is that it never actually edits any of the original photo files! It stores a hidden .ini file in each photo folder that keeps track of your edits, rotations, etc. from Picasa. But keep in mind that it doesn’t substitute for hardcore photo editing, such as you would do in Photoshop.

There is a actually new version of Picasa that Google released recently, which is version 2.5. It adds some new features, hardly any of which I’ve tried yet. If you haven’t yet tried Picasa at all, then you are crazy. Try it out and you won’t go back. Read more about Picasa at: picasa.google.com.

I normally wouldn’t write about such a thing, but I almost feel compelled to. If you have never tried cleaning with a Magic Eraser from Mr. Clean, go get some and try it. This is one product that works as well as advertised, if not better. I swear it is truly magic. It works on practically any surface and takes dirt and blemishes away in an instant! It works particularly well on walls and paint. If there is a single product on the market today that performs precisely as advertised, it is the Magic Eraser. You won’t believe your eyes.

I don’t think I have ever posted about music, but I’ll say that I am a big fan of the Barenaked Ladies. Me and Laura saw them in concert together back in 2000, and it was really great. They are an awesome group and I really enjoy their music. If you do too, you may be interested to know they are doing a concert cruise in January 2007. All of the information is at ShipsAndDip.com, the name of the event. They are to perform every night of the cruise. I wish I could afford to do this right now. While on the topic, their band website has been updated and is at bnlmusic.com. Even cooler, the group hosts their own blog at bnlblog.com. Check them all out. Their latest CD came out just a few weeks ago and after I downloaded it from iTunes, I have been back in a phase of playing all of their songs again.

After the near ten years that I have toyed on and off with different Linux distributions, today it is still slow. It has really come a very long way, I do admit. It’s capabilities are growing all the time, and with popular open-source apps like Firefox and OpenOffice, you can do most of the tasks you could ever want to do with your computer using only Linux. But it is still a bit slow. I am primarily talking about screen refreshes and video speed in desktop Linux distros using both Gnome and KDE.

I know that video drivers from nVidia and ATI have been tweaked for Windows for years. Windows has more direct hardware support than Linux does, but I have always heard of Linux as being touted for older, slower PCs. Supposedly, it has fewer system requirements than Windows or Mac OS does. This makes no sense to me, because my PC is an old Intel P-3 933 mhz, with 1 GB ram, and a 128 mb video card. My system is surely outdated, but I have seen even new releases with memory requirements as low as 128 mb! No way.

When compared to Windows XP Pro, jumping through applications, dragging onscreen windows, and video playback in Linux is way slower and more sluggish. If it can run on an even slower PC than mine, I wouldn’t want to be there to see it. I have found this to be true in Fedora, Ubuntu, and SuSe. The most obvious example is dragging open windows on the desktop creates trails and tracers all over the screen from start point to finish.

This weekend, I wiped my Ununtu partition. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is the best available today, as I have said before in this blog. But I like to test out some other releases, so I installed the just-released Fedora Core 6. It has newer programs, libraries, and visuals, but the root of the above problem remains unchanged. Web browsing is fast and IP connections are surely speedy. But when I played flash videos on YouTube, the video wasn’t quite keeping up with the audio. There was a slightly noticeable delay on the screen. Granted, this may be due to the crappy Flash Player version 7 for Linux. I know that there is a new beta of version 9 available, but I did not try this. Besides, since that just came out a few weeks ago, so does that mean everyone watching web video and playing flash games in Linux for all this time has been tolerating slow, sluggish performance? If so, then why use it? When I tried playing a locally installed pinball game in Fedora, the system response was so delayed that I had a hard time hitting the ball with the flappers because there was a half second delay from when I hit the button and when the flap actually moved!

In the end, Linux is going to need some more tweaking and optimization to eve bring it close to the speed of Windows. I think it desperately needs some direct hardware driver support, especially in the video card arena. The system boot time has surely decreased over the years, but actual running performance for anything other than email, documents, spreadsheets, and the web, has got to improve if Linux is ever to be a real desktop contender.

For the first time, I have turned on reader comments in my blog. Comment on any post that you like, past or present. Though I am not sure if only future posts will have the option or all posts. I am going to test the waters with this and see how it goes. I have it set for me to approve all comments before they are made available on the blog, as a spam safeguard. Feel free to put in your $.02!

I have a great idea. I thought of this some time ago, and now I’ll toss it out there. They pack too many needless features into cell phones these days. All I really want is a phone that I can talk into and that is about it. I don’t need a camera, game device, or music player built in. But what would be great would be to add an infrared light at the top and make it double has a universal remote control. That way I can control my TV and DVD player and always have my phone in hand in case someone calls. At first it may sound like a little much, but most of the crap they stuff into the phone already is already over the top. Personally, I’d like to have one of these.