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I’m still surprised how many websites I visit that are awful. By that I mean they’re ugly, unusable, out-of-date things. There is no reason not to have a great-looking website that’s up-to-date these days. You don’t have to be a graphic artist or a web designer, you don’t need any knowledge of code, if you can create a Word document you can create a website quickly and simply. And because there are so many great free templates out there it doesn’t need to cost much either. (Though I am advocating paying for hosting, there are free options but it’s worth a few quid to get quality).
You, your company, your club, whatever, could have a great website that’s easy to maintain in no time, read on to find out how.
What You’ll Need
To host your own website you need four things:
- A domain name (i.e. www.yourwebsite.com)
- A web host to host your website (store the files and make them available for people to see)
- Static HTML files or a Content Management System to display your content
- Some content
This article will run through setting up the first three, the last one is up to you.
Step 1 – Register a domain
The first thing you’ll need is a domain name. This allows people to find your website. To register a domain you need to buy one from a domain registrar. Some web hosts will offer them as part of hosting packages, but I recommend setting one up on your own to give you more control (some web hosts don’t let you take them with you).
Continue reading…
31st May
I’ve been a user of Celtx for a number of years. Apart from being a great free app for writing screenplays, comics, stageplays, etc, I’ve also found it the closest thing on Windows to Scrivener for writing stories of any length.
That’s not to say it’s perfect, especially where text files are concerned. Some of the features available in screenplay mode just aren’t there, and some simple tools are missing (global word count across all of your files – I use a separate file per chapter – for instance).
So, I rolled up my sleeves and put together a little app. Originally I was going to do it as an extension, but after leafing though the docs for a while and making no progress I went back to good ol’ WinForms.
I haven’t done much testing but it seems to work OK on Vista 64-bit, Windows 7 32-bit and XP 32-bit.
Features
The app comes with three features:
- Global Word Count – this will extract all of the documents (text or screenplay at least) and perform a word count, then display the total.
- Export Selected Docs – this will display a list of the text documents (and screenplays) in your project and allow you to select which ones to convert to plain text, merge and save as a single file.
- Export to Final Draft – this is designed for screenplays and will export it to Final Draft 8’s .fdx XML format. It will only bring over the screenplay, not characters or notes or anything else, but it will preserve the formatting.
Installation
To use the application, just download the zip file below, extract all the files to the same folder and double-click the CeltxTools.exe file. No need to install.
The application uses the .Net framework and is best used with .Net Framework 3.5.
Usage
Once you have started the application:
- Click the Select File button to browse for your Celtx file.
- Once you have selected it, pick what task you would like to perform:
-
- Do a Global Word Count: this will display the total words of any text documents in the gap below the button.
- Export Selected Docs: this will display a pop-up window with a list of the text documents in your project, check those you want to export and it will merge them and export them to a text file and save it in the same directory as the original Celtx file, but with a .txt extension.
- Export to Final Draft: this will convert the screenplay part of your project to FD8’s format and save it in the same directory as the original Celtx file, but with a .fdx extension.
Release History
- 0.9 – 4/5/2010 – Initial release.
- 0.91 – 22/5/2010 – Added ability to do word count on selected files.
Download
Get Celtx Tools here
4th May
I recently got asked to copy some songs off an iPod because their computer had died and they’d just bought a new one, which obviously didn’t have their songs and audio books on it. As far as I’m aware they were no backups. I’ve tried a few of the applications and methods to copy songs off of iPods before, but thought I would lay down the easiest way I have found to help anyone in the same boat.
Music and Videos
There are quite a few applications out there which claim to allow you to ‘backup your iPod’ but most of them (like Yet Another iPod Manager AKA Yamipod and SharePod) haven’t been updated in a while and either didn’t work for me, or didn’t work with the later versions of the iPod (e.g. 3rd gen Nanos).
In the end, the easiest solution I’ve found is to use a copy of WinAmp. You only need the free version, you shouldn’t need any plugins. Just download, run, connect your iPod, select the tracks, right-click and select ‘copy to local media’ and voila, job done. Note that you can set the location is copies to in the preferences (it defaults to your My Music folder).
Quick, simple and fairly painless.
Photos
Photos are another matter, for two reasons. One, I haven’t found a free solution to copy them, all the software I’ve seen is shareware. Second, unless you selected the option to copy the originals over, you’ve probably only got thumbnails (small versions) of the images that are designed to be displayed on the small iPod screen and therefore don’t need to be very big, so you may only get postage-stamp-size images even if you do retrieve them.
Conclusion
The main points are that you can copy your music and videos easily, but photos you’ll need to pay for. Perhaps the best recommendation is it’s much easier just to back up your music, videos, photos and anything else before you need to rely on your iPod. External hard drives are pretty cheap and you can get a few GB of storage online for free from a number of different providers, so make use of it and save yourself the agro.
27th April
Strictly speaking this should probably be ‘lessons learned from building and running HTPCs.’ My media centre has been the hub of home entertainment for the last 12 months, so I thought it was probably time to do a rundown of the things I learned along the way.
- Silence is Golden
Making a PC totally silent is hard and can be expensive, but well worth it. My top tips are to pick a good case and case fans, don’t scrimp on these. Another rule of thumb is that if it’s got a fan it’ll never be silent (CPU coolers and PSUs) no matter what they say. Fan controllers are a great way to help reduce noise to a minimum though.
- It’s All About the Case
Definitely don’t scrimp on your case, but research it well first, my Silverstone LC17 wasn’t cheap and is nice (if big), but I built an HTPC for my brother using an Antec NSK 2480, which is their budget HTPC case and it was infinitely easier to build, had nice separation of PSU and main compartment (to keep heat down) and vibration dampening mounts for the HDDs as standard (not quite as quiet as mine, but it didn’t take a fanless CPU fan, fanless PSU and some fan controllers to get it that way).
There’s also a massive range of sizes and styles out there, so take a look around. Silverstone, Antec, Thermaltake and Lian Li are a few quality makers but are by no means a complete list.
- Trade Horsepower for Less Power
HTPCs need very little processing power, playing back even HD video is not CPU intensive, just make sure you have reasonable graphics, onboard generally suffices depending on the type. Recording TV likewise takes very little power. Where you’ll need it is transcoding (changing the format of recorded material) or ripping DVDs. An Atom processor on the ION platform works perfectly well to deliver content, so it doesn’t need to be a beast.
Review your CPU choice to see if there are lower-power options available, some of the new processors require 95+w to run, mine works fine and only draws 45w, the Atoms only draw 10w. That means less heat is being generated so you need less cooling, which means the computer can run quieter (and you can have a smaller case).
If you plan on doing any transcoding (and some of the add-ons to strip adverts do this too) bear that in mind when picking your CPU, you can get around this by scheduling the work to be done overnight to minimise impact too.
- Regular Servicing
HTPCs are not for the faint-hearted, this isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ piece of kit, it’ll need you to keep it running (installing updates, rebooting, finding drivers, etc) and it will freeze and crash occasionally, it’s not as slick as a bought solution. The pay-off is you can do a lot more with it and the options are endless, plus you can upgrade at will, rather than being locked to the hardware.
I’m not sure I’d recommend one to someone who isn’t prepared for that and knows what to do when you find it non-responsive after a Windows Update or it blue screens midway through playing back a movie (i.e. the relatives, you’ll be doing endless support).
26th January
Part of the reason for the Building a Cheap Media Centre article was to use some of the research I had done leading up to building a media centre for my brother (as a birthday present).
Anyway, I thought it was time to get around to writing up my experience with that build.
This build came in for under £400, I could have shaved more off if I had used the included remote that came with the tuner (but I wanted to be able to wake the machine using it) and had bought cheaper case fans.
The Hardware
Case: Antec NSK 2480
PSU: 380w included in the case
Mobo: Asus M4A78-VM
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e
Cooler: Stock AMD supplied with CPU
RAM: 2 * Kingston 1gb DDR2 800mhz
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 500Gb
DVD: LG GH22NS40 SATA Black
TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD 500 (dual tuner)
Keyboard: Nexos 2.4Ghz Wireless Multimedia Keyboard with TouchPad
Remote: Generic Windows MCE IR remote look-a-like
Other: 2 * 120mm Sharkoon ‘golfball’ case fans
Continue reading…
24th January
