Books & Project Gutenberg

I’ve always been an avid reader; going way back to the 1950’s when I was still a kid. My tastes back in those days leaned towards novels of adventure from authors such as Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Victor Hugo, etc.

I never read the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, although I was aware they were out there; they just never appealed to me. I preferred to spend my 79 cents on hard cover copies of books I found considerably more interesting. The H. Rider Haggard series with Alan Quartermain searching for King Solomon’s Mines, Edgar Rice Burroughs and his tales of lost worlds and Tarzan. James Fenimore Cooper was also one of my favourites with The Deerslayer and Last of the Mohicans.

I continue to read voraciously, although strangely enough, I’ve never had a library card.

I love to rummage around the book bins at flea markets, always on the lookout for a a good read. When I go to a shopping mall, my first stop is usually the discount bin of whatever bookstores might be there. There’s no telling what you might find and it’s an inexpensive way to buy books.

Books, if you haven’t noticed, are getting more and more expensive. One of the last Stephen King books I bought was a hard cover copy with a sticker price of $39.95. I didn’t pay that much of course; I found it in a discount bin for $6.95. I found this a little odd because the paperback version was still on the shelves and selling for $12.95.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve re-read a lot of those old “classics” from Burroughs, Twain, Poe, Austen, etc. I’ve also found copies of books I would not ordinarily spend money on; The Prince by Machiavelli, Songs of the Sourdough by Robert W. Service among others.

And, the reason I can afford to read many of these books on my pittance of a pension, is that they don’t cost me a dime.

If you look in the sidebar of this web log, you’ll find links to some of the best freeware in cyberspace. This post, however, is not about freeware; at least not in the normal sense. It’s about books; free books, available on-line; books on philosophy and politics, science fiction, adventure books, poetry and the literary classics.

Das Kapital by Karl Marx, The Illiad and The Odyssey from Homer, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and tens of thousands of others, are available free over the internet. There’s only one catch. The books you want must be in the public domain. But with the sheer numbers of books available, there’s sure to be hundred to your liking.

The books are available from Project Gutenberg, and you can download plain text copies of the books that can be opened in any word processor. There are no dues and no membership requirements although you may make donations. Their web site notes: “Project Gutenberg needs your pennies, nickels and dimes. An average of just one cent per eBook downloaded would make a huge difference.”

It’s a wonderful site for book lovers like myself.

Of course, I’ll still browse through the discard bins for the latest in both modern fiction and non-fiction. But if you like to read, you should check out this site.Go to: Project Gutenberg

Convert those old LPs to MP3

If you’ve visited this site before, you’ll know I’m a big fan of free, open source software. Free software doesn’t just mean free of cost (like the “free beer” available when I go to visit my kids). It’s free. Use it, copy it and pass it around to your friends with few if any restrictions. And, you can do it legally.

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds including MP3 files. Open source simply means that if you have computer programmaning skills, you can get the source code, study it and modify it to your liking. Audacity is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux as well as other operating systems.

Just what can you do with Audacity?

Well you can record live audio from web casts and your favourite internet radio stations. If you can play it through your computer sound card, you can record it with audacity. Or, you can convert those old albums and tapes to MP3s (or OGG files). And once you’ve recorded the music, you can edit the sound to your liking. With a little bit of tinkering, I’ve even been able to re-channel my old mono albums to simulate stereo.

You can cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together or change the speed or pitch of a recording. There’s an undo feature that allows you to undo any mistakes you might make. And go back an unlimited number of steps to make corrections.

The application interface is intuitive, and for the easy stuff, most people would be able to use it straight out of the box. If it came in a box. For some of the more advanced features there’s a slight learning curve, but there is excellent documentation available.

Audacity is being developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

You can read all about the many features provided by the application and download a copy by simply clicking the link below.

Download Audacity

Bargain basement photo editor

It’s a stereotype, of course, but Scotsmen have a reputation as being tight with a buck. My kids often use the word cheap. I like to think that I simply have an eye for a bargain. And there’s a lot of real bargains to be found on the web in the form of freeware. Not adware, spyware or trialware, but fully functional, no strings attached freeware.

The graphic which accompanies this post was created in an application called Photo Filtre. In fact, all the graphics you see on this web log were either created, or edited, in Photo Filtre. I picked up the program a year or so ago, and it’s one of the best I’ve ever used for image editing and special effects.

And, what’s just as amazing as its’ intuitive interface and ease of use, is the fact that it’s free.

The application was developed by a guy called Antonio Da Cruz and the man deserves a five star rating for making the program available free for personal use. The application itself gets a five star rating from most distributors and users.

I’ve tried a lot of commercial programs, including some of the high cost “professional” applications with their steep learning curves. They just don’t compare. In fact, since picking up a copy of Photo Filtre, I’ve removed all those commercial programs, to save some space, since I no longer used them; I found that I could do everything I wanted to do in Photo Filtre with a lot less effort and a whole lot less frustration.

The program offers all the standard editing features (selection, clone brush, paint brush etc.) as well as a large selection of image effects, photo masks, image adjustments, thumbnail browser and much more. The program also supports batch processing to apply filters, sizing, adjustments and transformations to a large number of images at once. PhotoFiltre comes with a modern, well designed interface and is well suited for everything from simple resizing to advanced photo editing. You can also add text captions to your photos.

And, did I mention that it’s free!

The only criticism I’ve been able to find involves the fact that Photo Filtre doesn’t support “layers” or PhotoShop filters. Neither drawback is likely to be considered a major flaw by most users. PhotoShop was one of the programs I removed after installing and using Photo Filtre for several months.

So whether you think I’m “tight with a buck”, just plain cheap or you fully appreciate the fact that I really do have an eye for a bargain, check it out. If you like messing with photographs, it’s a handy-dandy little program to have lying around on your desktop.

You can find a copy of Photo Filtre by typing “Photo Filtre Free” into your browser search engine, or just click on the following link.

Photo Filtre Free

Screamer - free internet radio

In my last post I wrote about some nut-bar who spent 160 thousand dollars on a 200 year old bottle of vinegar. Nothing particularly wrong with that, except that the man was a oenophile; someone who appreciates or collects wine. So what if it came in a wine bottle with a Chateau Lafite label, it was still nothing more than expensive (very expensive) vinegar. And, you can pick up a bottle of vinegar for under two bucks at “No Frills”. The guy was not a savvy shopper.

I, on the other hand, have an eye for a bargain. My kids interpret that as cheap, but that’s beside the point.

Some of the best deals available out there in cyberspace are in the realm of freeware. Freeware is made available in a variety of disguises, under various distribution licenses. But freeware applications have one thing in common. They’re free. That means no charge and no strings; no banner ads or spyware and no shutting down after 30 days. Now, that’s a bargain!

A few months back I picked up a copy of Screamer, a free internet radio application. The application was developed by a man called David Zidar who lives in Sweden where he studied Computer Science at Mälardalen University. Do not ask me how to pronounce his last name; I have no desire to demonstrate my ignorance in public. Wait a minute, try: eaz-dar. Amazing what you can find on the web these days.

As you can see from the screenshot at the top of the page, there’s no splashy interface. But, it works, and, it works well. Just what does it do? It’s a bloody radio, didn’t I already mention that.

According to the web site, “There is little reason to listen to commercial FM radio anymore, it is an old medium that provides little choice of music and is saturated with ads. For the last couple of years there has been an alternative, streaming internet radio; an alternative that has been somewhat complicated to use. Screamer Radio attempts to remedy this problem by bringing most of the required steps into a single, easy to use, freeware program.”

The application comes with hundreds of “preset” internet radio stations, from every genre of music imaginable: classic rock, jazz and blues, folk and country, reggae, rap and hip hop, etc, etc. You name it; it’s there. One of my favourite stations is from Mayo: Midwest Irish radio

And, you can not only listen to the music, but you can record it using the built in record feature. There are no ads, no spyware and there’s no cost, hidden or otherwise. Nor will it shut down after 30 days.

You can check it all out on the Screamer web site, then, download your free copy.
Go to: Screamer – Free Internet Radio