Non-Horrible Software: AxCrypt

The most you'll need to see of AxCrypt is this right-click menu and the password prompt.

AxCrypt (free, open-source, partially portable) – A seamlessly integrated file encryption utility. It’s getting rare that a genuinely useful bit of security software for Windows isn’t some ad-laden tie-in to a costly subscription product. They pop up ads, make loud noises when they update, and seem to require constant attention because they are, after all, ads themselves. AxCrypt, on the other hand, hardly calls attention to itself at all.

An example: To encrypt a Microsoft Word document, right-click on it, select the appropriate menu option, enter a password, and the file is encrypted as a .doc.axx file. After that, you’re essentially done. Any time you need to open the file, you enter your password, and the file is opened — as a .doc — in Microsoft Word (this is the ’seamless’ part). Under the covers, AxCrypt has decrypted the file, appropriately renamed it as a .doc so Word doesn’t freak out, and launched Microsoft Word per usual. When you’re done, AxCrypt re-encrypts the file, shredding the temporary .doc first, with no further prompting from you.

Boiled down, this means that any encrypted file basically acts like any other file on your computer, as long as you have the password. It’s almost like AxCrypt isn’t even there. There isn’t even a splash screen. How marvelous.

That’s not all. Right-click a folder, and you can encrypt (or decrypt) every file within it, or even securely shred the whole works. You can open encrypted files on machines without AxCrypt by using a portable AxDecrypt program, or embed a decryption routine within the file itself. AxCrypt has you covered in nearly any situation in which you may want to encrypt files. All this, in an install size that would fit in an email attachment. Utterly indispensable.

Non-Horrible Software is often very small in size and sharply focused on its main use case. It is elegant in function, design, and intent. If you don’t like or need the software, removing it is simple and it leaves no mess behind. No nag screens, bloated runtime dependencies, needless skins, online activation, or other nonsense. Requirements are similar to those of tinyapps.org. Growing list of Non-Horrible Software is available right here.

Non-horrible software: SumatraPDF

SumatraPDF isn't exciting at all. It's perfect.

SumatraPDF (free, open source, portable) – A fast, no-frills PDF reader. For a while, FoxitPDF was great for reading PDFs compared to Adobe’s overweight desktop ambassador, Adobe Reader. Now, FoxitPDF is experiencing its own irritating feature creep, including built-in advertisements for the paid version. Unlike these two jokers, SumatraPDF is a completely non-commercial, portable, free, and open source PDF reader. It made my favorites list recently when I found out that it now automatically recalls the last page of every PDF it opens, which saves much time flipping through pages.  Even if SumatraPDF is too feature-free for advanced use, it’s still worth keeping around because it’s fast and as free of irritants as cotton underwear.

Non-Horrible Software is often very small in size and sharply focused on its main use case. It is elegant in function, design, and intent. If you don’t like or need the software, removing it is simple and it leaves no mess behind. No nag screens, bloated runtime dependencies, needless skins, online activation, or other nonsense. Requirements are similar to those of tinyapps.org. Growing list of Non-Horrible Software is available right here.

Pocketmod Makes Pretty Neat Little Organizer Things

I originally discovered the Pocketmod service some time ago on Lifehacker.com. It’s an interesting little online utility that creates disposable pocket organizers that you print out on plain paper, scribble on, and throw away after about a week or so.

This is my current PocketMod setup. (I dream of a day without CamelCaps.)

The joy and guilt of PocketMod is in this disposability: it’s incredibly basic and shouldn’t last for more than a week (unless you laminate it for some reason), then, you toss it. There’s a certain elation in keeping a full-featured organizer that doesn’t need batteries, is free, and fits in a wallet. I wouldn’t try synching it with Outlook, though.

To use PocketMod, you design it yourself from a drag-n-drop Flash app, print it out, cut a slit in it, fold it, write on it, refer to it occasionally, then toss it when you’re done. It’s beautiful in its customizability, cheapness, and disposability.

It’s also ugly in its disposability and bowing to our evil capitalistic and productivity-monitoring overlords. Fine, whatever.

Me, I use one about a week every six months or so, then go back to being an organizational wreck. Better than buying a $20 planner every year that ends up with 312 blank pages.

Visit PocketMod.

View doctorfrog’s current PocketMod.

iTunes 9 Is Hideously Ugly, Part 2: Let’s Not Look At It Too Much, Then

This is an update to my earlier post, in which I smugly and fecklessly skewer Apple’s visual redesign of their cross-platform music store/music management mega-app, iTunes.

Here’s the update: It’s still ugly, still visually inconsistent with both Microsoft and Apple operating systems, and the ‘fade to pale’ action when the app is not in focus is still terrible.

Fortunately, there are at least a dozen apps out there that allow you to control iTunes without ever having to look at it. Here, I’m quickly covering three programs with three different approaches:

• ExTray – has hotkeys and album art, but is somewhat clumsy.
• hktunes – has basic hotkeys, is super small and focused, but limited.
• bbBroamTunes plugin for Blackbox (my personal choice) – offers more flexibility over the other two and is bug-free. But, it’s not as easy to configure, and only works in Blackbox.

Quickly Toggle Mouse Sensitivity Settings with Mat

This post is a dual plug, for both the simple software solution Mat (Mouse Acceleration Toggler), and for the DonationCoder.com forums.

Mat doesn't have a GUI; it just eats, shoots, and leaves.

Download Mat here.

In short, this utility allows you to alter mouse speed and acceleration settings with a simple Windows shortcut, rather than having to open the mouse properties dialog and adjust a slider or tick a box. Just create a shortcut to the program, add your desired parameters to the shortcut (see the above screenshot for an example), and launch the shortcut anytime you need a specific mouse speed setting. I use it to toggle between a basic touchpad and a rather sensitive gaming mouse.

This utility is small, free, and best of all, immediately stops running once it completes its task.

How I Got Someone to Make This For Me, or Why DonationCoder.com Is Pretty Awesome

I have a mouse that I use for gaming, but otherwise, I prefer to use a touchpad to save my wrist some wear and tear. The problem I ran into was that my touchpad is of a different sensitivity than my mouse, and in Windows, both devices use the same mouse settings. The result was that when switching between the two devices, my pointer would either move very sluggishly, or go flying across the screen. I knew I needed something simple that could quickly toggle these settings for me.

iTunes 9 is Hideously Ugly

What? No! What is wrong with you?

Now, I am not a graphic designer, nor a professional UI guru, and am, at my best, a completely false artist. But Apple software on Windows has long been designed with great pains to import, inject, and invade the visual style of Apple computing into the Windows domain. They call it a halo effect. It’s supposed to make you want to ditch your current PC and buy an Apple. It’s why you can’t look at brushed metal without shuddering, recalling 1998’s Quicktime slowly coming to life after having hijacked your media file preferences (if it wasn’t that, it was RealPlayer, another insidious and sluggish piece of tech).

But at least with iTunes 8, I could bear seeing the music player in the background. It was even nice seeing the album art out of the corner of my eye. Now, I can’t play a single track without minimizing the player. It’s that 1980’s stone-washed jeans look it gets when it’s not the foreground app. Why is it so bright? Why is the background white in Apple’s newest (and more or less worthless) album view?

What’s worse, is that this ugliness is likely deliberate. It’s the app, calling attention to itself. It’s that same halo effect nonsense: lookit me, I’m an Apple app! No, wait, don’t click off of me, I’ll get brighter! Shut up. Go to the system tray, until I need to fast forward to the next track.

And yes, I could switch to a different music manager, but a) I have four years of historical data sunk into iTunes: ratings, Smart Playlists, playcounts, etc. b) I have an iPod, c) It’s not worth the money or effort to rig up a whole new music player with all my preferences, and d) there are a lot of things that iTunes actually does very well with minimal fuss, Podcasts for one.

So go be smug somewhere else. This is a legitimate complaint, iTunes 9 is  inexcusably ugly. As the screenshot shows, even Mac users hate it, and they have fewer choices than PC fans.