Here are a few tips I put together to help me organize my files.
Dealing with the amount of files we do it can very easily get out of hand and you can end up with a desktop full of icons it can be difficult to see the woods through the trees. I’d like to introduce you to a few windows xp hints and plugins that you may not know about.
1. When you have big messy pile of files on your desktop If your anything like me sometimes I find it difficult to know what to delete and what to keep. Create a ‘DMZ’ or BIN folder in the root of your messy desktop, drag and drop everything that you think you don’t need into it but may need in the future. This is like throwing everything under the bed, when you have time deal with it later but at least you will have a clean desktop, and it will make you feel better.
2. Use your desktop for work in progress and periodically file completed projects and documents away.
3. Don’t create folders that only hold one or two files (or worse yet empty folders), instead name your files with relevant names so that you can easily find them.
software to help:
Most users are familiar with the ability to display folders and files using Tile, Icon, List, Thumbnail, and Detail views. They can be easily changed using the View menu or the Views toolbar button. Many users are not aware there is another view called Show in Groups. Right click in the main Explorer pane, select Arrange Icons By and one of the options will be Show In Groups. ( Note: The Show in Groups option will not be available if List View is selected. Some say this is by design, others say it’s an XP bug) Once Show in Groups has been selected the files will be sorted by alphabetical headings. http://www.theeldergeek.com/file_management_in_windows_xp.htm
5. Dealing with large video files I find it necessary to delete a lot of large files if you have a lot of large files in different places on your computer these tools can help.
The Renamer takes and enhances the idea of editing files in directory in a full featured Text editor and then writing all the changes at once into the files.
This program shows you visually how much space is taken up by what folders/files on your hard drive. Think of it as a sort of square pie chart that allows you to zoom in to a folder.
Google recently released Picasa 3 beta version. Picasa is google’s free photo management, editing, and publishing tool. I find it quite useful for a number of tasks. See video below
One of my most favorite tutorial websites is Video Copilot, they have a great selection of free tutorials that are very informative and most importantly won’t make you fall asleep, the first tutorial I did was the planet earth zoom, you can see the results here.
I recently bought the Pentax K10D on recommendation of a college of mine, I will hopefully put up a review soon. Watch this space.
10.2 megapixels
“Shake Reduction” system
New dust removal system
New 22bit A/D converter
New Pentax Real IMage Engine
New exposure modes for more control
11 Point SAFOX VIII autofocus
2.5″ LCD screen with 140 degree viewing angle
72 water and dust seals
Unlimited continuous JPEG shooting
This digital SLR camera combines 10.2 effective megapixels with a host of advanced technologies — including the PENTAX-original Shake Reduction (SR) system — to deliver high-quality digital SLR photography and responsive operations to advanced amateurs and experienced hobbyists.
Developed as the result of PENTAX’s pursuit of higher-quality, finer-resolution digital images, the K10D combines 10.2 effective megapixels with an array of advanced features and a series of improvements at every stage of digital SLR photography. PENTAX believes that, while some of these technologies and improvements may not be actually reflected in the product’s specifications, they do make a significant difference in the final images. Important features include the PENTAX-developed Shake Reduction (SR) system to minimize the adverse effects of camera shake, a newly developed A/D converter designed to convert a large volume of data more faithfully and swiftly, and a new high-performance imaging engine designed exclusively for the K10D.
The K10D also comes equipped with a host of features and functions designed to assist the photographer in various aspects of high-quality digital SLR photography. They include a new Dust Removal (DR) system to keep dust off the CCD surface, a PENTAX-original exposure system for faithful reproduction of the photographer’s creative intentions, and a dependable dust-resistant, weather-resistant body construction. All combined, the K10D delivers exceptionally high image quality and responds brilliantly to the exacting demands of advanced photographers.
If anyone has done any HDR shots with this camera I would be interested in what sort of results you got, and would also be interested in what you thought of the camera in general, in the past I have used Cannon 350D.
Recently I have had a number of people asking me about spyware and viruses and how to protect against them, for starters if you haven’t already done so get the following software.
ComboFix (use only if still infected after using all of above and read instructions!)
I have had good success with using the above software, although it is certainly not guaranteed work, especially if your using software such as LimeWire (just don’t do it), if you must use a P2P program use a torrent program such as Uttorent and a torrent search engine, also you may want to protect yourself using PeerGuardian.
One of the things that has got to be a pain using windows is that if you want to defrag your drives you need to either manually run it or schedule it using the Scheduled Tasks tool. I have found a better way… use JKdefrag!
JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows.
It is by far one of the best out there, I recommend setting it up to run as a screen saver simply copy and paste the files into the windows directory, take a look at the screen savers and JKdfrag should be selectable as an option.
Skype Launcher allows you to login to multiple skype accounts on the same computer, now I can monitor both business and personal calls at the same time hurray!
Recently I have had a number of people asking me about spyware and viruses and how to protect against them, for starters if you haven’t already done so get the following software.
