Welcome to www.feroxy.com

News/Commentary Sites

These are news websites that I like to visit at least once a day.

• The Register - Tech news site.
• Ars Technica - Tech news site. Also have good longer articles and reviews from time to time.
• BetaNews - News of new beta software releases.
• NeoWin - Another tech news site, also covering software updates/releases/patches etc.
• Slashdot - Tech news and discussion.
• Warp2Search - ..yes, its more tech news. Useful for finding out about firmware upgrades too though.
• Digital Spy - Television and media news site. Covers the US shows as well as UK productions. Very busy forums too.

Blogs

These are some blogs(gy) sites that I like to read.

• Wil Wheaton - Actor and writer and geek.
• Damn Interesting - Like it says, Damn Interesting articles covering people, events and technology.
• Television Without Pity - Detailed recaps of TV shows with a snarky, sarcastic, biting edge. Fun to read for a different perspective on the episode you just saw. (Operates largely on US schedules, so spoilers abound if you are a non-US viewer)

Webcomics

Online comic strips I read.

• Penny Arcade! - Long running gaming related comic.
• xkcd - Random, funny, sometimes insightful.

Audio Podcasts

Audio Podcasts that I listen to regularly

• Mack Murphy PI - Old style radio serial detective fiction, but with robots and stuff.
• CastaBlasta - TV, movies, games, comics. Reviews and discussion. Probably contain spoilers for the US shows not yet aired in the uk, so check the show notes first.
• Stack Overflow - Weekly conversations between Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood about software development.

Video Podcasts

Video Podcasts that I listen watch regularly. These are but a mere summary of what I download and watch. For a more complete listing, you can check out my feed list exported from Miro (right-click, save as). On that note, I do recommend using miro to subscribe to these. You can import my opml file as a starting point and delete what you dont like or you can search within the Miro guide itself or add the rss feeds directly.

• This Week In Tech - Hosted by Leo Laporte and a variety of guests. twit.tv also hosts a variety of other shows.
• Revision3 - Not just one podcast, but a whole series of them under one banner. Available for download as audio only or a range of video formats. Below are my favourites:
  • InDigital - General tech and gadget podcast showcasing the latest available and upcoming technologies.Discontinued
  • PixelPerfect - Tips and tricks and generally how to get the best out of Photoshop. (Often transferable to GIMP too)
  • Diggnation - Discussion of the weekly top stories on Digg with Kevin Rose and the Human Helium Balloon.
  • Systm - Show about electronics and hobbyist projects.
  • Totally Rad Show - Geeky type discussion of movies, tv, games comics, books. All sorts.
  • Tekzilla - General tech show, covering basically everything from hardware, software, websites and whatever else is going on in tech.
  • popSiren - More of a tech culture type show I guess.
  • Internet Superstar - errr interviews mixed with surreality.
• The Linux Action Show! Podcast - Hosted by 2 Linux enthusiasts with discussion and commentary on the latest news in the Open Source world.
• DL.TV (Digital Life) - Tech news podcast, also showcasing hardware, software and games with a bunch of tips thrown in. A bit of everything basically.
• Epic Fu - A bite of internet and geek culture. Showcases bands, artists, websites, apps and anything kinda cool and/or fun and interesting.
• Cranky Geeks - John C. Dvorak and guests discuss the latest in tech news. Often with humour.
• TeXtra - 10 minute video tech news bites and commentary.
• Cnet Loaded - Like TeXtra before it and also presented by Natali del Conte. Short news bursts 4 times a week.
• WebbAlert - Similar but different from TeXtra. Video tech news read by Morgan Webb, with regular game editions of the show too.
• GeekBrief.TV - Technology products news, websites, software and whatever else.
• TED Talks - One of the most interesting and inspirational podcasts I subscribe to. Short (usually 20 mins) talks on a variety of issues, technologies, philosophies, art etc. RSS feed.
• Play Value - Series about the history of video games. ON Networks has a variety of other shows too.
• Terra - Videos about the natural world and environmentalism.
• Experiment of the Week - Science experiments and demonstrations. Technically it's for kids, but I love it. RSS feed
• NasaCast - All the latest news from NASA
• Hidden Universe - All the findings from the Spitzer space telescope. RSS feed.
• Fora.tv - Topical discussion, Q&A sessions with authors. Wide range of topics.

Some honourable mentions: The Onion News Network, Beautiful Places in HD, Ancient Places HD, Wild Chronicles, HAK.5, BSOD tv, CSS-Tricks, Meet the GIMP!, Inkscape Tutorial Screencasts.

The rest can be found in my feed list, all ready for import into miro.

Misc. Stuff

Random interesting stuff.

• Desktop Wallpaper - Some desktop wallpapers I made, in various sizes.
• HTMail - I've been using this for about 5 years now. It is an Opt-In emailing list, where each email that you are sent earns you a little bit of money. They are very nicely behaved and don't spam you with a deluge of email. Now paying by paypal as well as cheque. It won't make you rich, but who can argue with some money for doing  very little.
• Ciao - Something else I have been a member of for a while.. The website itself is about members writing opinions about products and services they have bought/used and I almost always consult it when researching a product I'm considering buying. Writing your own opinions means other members can rate the usefulness of what you have written and thus earns you a little bit of money. They also allow participation in online surveys which again can pay varying amounts (could be 15p to several pounds per survey)
• SuperGenPass - Javascript based password generator, which creates passwords for websites based on domain name and a master password. Can be used as a bookmarklet in modern browsers or the web based "mobile" form. [Local SGP | local SGP Mobile ]

Favourite Apps

This is a list of the various apps and utilities that I like and recommend for use. I have a preference for using freeware and open source programs where possible.

• Mozilla Firefox - A free open source web browser which is a better alternative to Internet Explorer, featuring tabbed browsing and popup blocking as standard. Extensions allow functionality to be enhanced even further.
• Mozilla Thunderbird - A free open source email client, sister app to Firefox.
• Xnews - A freeware usenet newsgroups reader.
• Openoffice.org - Free and open source office suite, as an alternative to Microsoft Office. It comprises of a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing and presentation apps. Features include export to .pdf and .swf
• Filezilla - A free and open source FTP client.
• Nvu - A web site authoring program, based on the same mozilla codebase as Firefox and Thunderbird.
• 7-zip - A file compression utility similar to winzip. It can work with lots of different conpressed files, (.zip .rar ...) as well as compressing files using its own compression format .7z, which can create smaller archives than .zip can.
• Ad-Aware - Spyware detection and removal. Always use the download update reference file feature before doing a scan.
• Spybot: Search and Destroy - Another spyware remover. Always use the update feature before doing a scan.
• Media Player Classic - Versatile open source media player, superficially resembling the old windows media player 6.4.
• Irfanview - Image viewer/convertor, supporting practically every image format out there. Get the plugin pack listed there too for completeness.
• POPFile - Junk email (spam) classifying app. It sits between the email client and the server and marks emails coming in as  spam, allowing the email client to filter it. Close to 99% accurate for me, after training.
• The GIMP (win) - Open Source image editing program. A useful replacement for Photoshop or Paintshop Pro for most people. User interface may take a little getting used to.
• Inkscape - Open Source vector graphics editor. It operates using the SVG file format, but can import JPEG, PNG and other raster image formats as well as other vector image formats. You may also export your creations to a PNG file.
• Digiguide - Not free, but for £9 a year, its a very handy television schedules lister for windows. You can setup reminders for your favourite shows and it also highlights shows you might like. It will also autoupdate itself silently so is always up to date. Well worth having.
• Foobar2000 - An audio player with wide support for many audio file formats. Has a very spartan user interface compared to other apps but the emphasis is on audio quality over skinning ability. useful also for the ability to perform naming and tagging, as well as transcoding your files to different compression formats.
• Getright - My download manager of choice. I believe it is unlimted shareware although I registered it years ago.
• NotepadEx - A replacement for the standard windows notepad app. Most importantly for me it has the ability to properly handle text files with UNIX style newlines, as well as other minor functional enhancements over standard notepad.
• PSPad - An editor geared towards programmers. With a tabbed UI and syntax highlighting for a range of languages, I use it when I do web dev stuff.
• iTag - This app allows tagging of photos (think flickr) by writing the tags into the iptc headers of the image file. The image itself remains unaltered but the tags follow the image around wherever you copy or send it since they are a part of the file and not in some other app specific database. As a bonus, flickr is able to read these tags when you upload to that service. I use this extensively to add tags describing who is in the photo and where it was taken, and this data becomes searchable with apps like Google Desktop.
• ExactAudioCopy - An audio CD ripper, considered as one of the best. Use with AccurateRip to ensure perfect rips. I Recommend reading the excellent guides to setting up EAC
• Foxit Reader - A small, free and fast PDF reader. An excellent replacement for the now awful and bloated Adobe Reader.
• Launchy - An application and file launcher activated at any time by pressing Alt+Space and typing the name of the application or file. Can also index firefox bookmarks and launch in the same fashion.
• Miro -This is a feed aggregator for video podcasts, alerting you to, and automatically downloading new episodes as they are posted online. Still not perfect, with some bugs and UI clunkiness to work out, but I use it daily for my video podcasts needs.
• TV-Browser - Open Source alternative to Digiguide. It's written in Java and it's a little slower and chunkier than digiguide, especially on when first loading, but other than that it's very comprehensive and usable. Website is in german but the app itself does have an english translation. There's lots of plugins and the usual ability to create reminders/favourites and all that. It's very much worth a look.

My Other Sites

Some other sites I'm connected with in some way.

• Invisible Danger Clan - Web site of the online gaming clan I belong to.
• AFSMG - A fan web site for Sarah Michelle Gellar
• Padchuckr - gaming blog

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