Wight Portal

This web site Wight Portal, can be downloaded onto your desktop. It comes in it's own browser wrapper that works similar to a PDF reader like the popular Adobe reader.
But instead of only displaying text and pictures, the program that contains Wight Portal shows live web content, as if you were using an ordinary browser like Internet Explorer.

This means you don't have to search through bookmarks to find the site as all you do is click on the icon that is on your desktop.

Along with Wight Portal there's a rather tricky puzzle section that can't be got to here on the website, included here are crosswords, wordsearches and a quiz.
Each puzzle is password protected, each password is related to the puzzle, so if you get a puzzle wrong you cannot proceed to the next. 
Also featured are the County Press, Island Council, Jobcentre Plus websites.

Click the link and then click save in the box that appears and choose your desktop as the destination folder. The beauty of this program is that whenever a web page is updated the book is updated dynamically.

Chuckie Egg

If you're a fan of retro home computing, then you probably remember the game Chuckie Egg, it's a 2D platform game where you as a farmer go round collecting eggs and seed evading the funny looking flamingos (I guess they are).

I first saw this game on a friend's ZX Spectrum and finally owned a copy a few years later when it came out on the Acorn Electron.

The download is a zip file. Once downloaded and saved where you want it right click the folder and select Extract  from the menu that appears.

There's two versions included in the download. The ChuckieEggv1_1b folder contains what you might call a PC version of the game. The graphics are more modern looking and so looks like a more upto date game. The chuckie_win95 folder contains the original looking version of the game as seen on a Spectrum or Acorn Electron.
Although the folder says 'win95', it program runs fine in XP .

Hot Potatoes

HOT POTATOES is a suite of six programs for creating interactive educational exercises for the World Wide Web. These are the programs included, along with the types of exercise they create:

JQuiz: multiple-choice, true-false,
text-entry or short-answer  
quizzes
JCloze: gap-fill exercises
JCross: crosswords
JMix: jumbled-sentence exercises
JMatch: matching and ordering  
exercises
The Masher: a tool for creating  
complete units of exercises.

All of the exercises use JavaScript and HTML for their functionality.

You don't need to know anything about the programming  languages, all you do is fill in the form wizards and the software does the rest. The output is a series of web pages that you just upload to your server. But it's not just web based, you can have your output formatted so you can print it. This will take out some of  the hassle creating quizes or crosswords for quiz nights at pubs for instance.

Brain Teaser 10 on this site is an example of a multi choice quiz I made with this software. It's a great program and if you're looking to create quizes or crosswords  online or off there's none better.

{jcomments on}

How To Get A Job 101

This ebook was inspired by a few posts I made recently on a forum. It's basically a look at how you can help reduce the odds at ending up with a rejection when applying for a job.{jcomments on}

Star Download Manager

Here's a program I've been using for years, it's called Star Downloader and is a download manager.

What it does is splits the file you are downloading up into smaller parts and simultaneously downloads them. It checks the Internet for mirror sites that offers the same download and chooses the fastest. By doing this it reduces the time it takes to download. This was a godsend when I was using dial up, and with broadband it's even quicker.

Other features include the ability to pause and resume downloads, it'll also automatically resume the download if the connection is lost. You can set a timer so that it downloads at a certain time of day, once finished it will disconnect from your ISP. Not only does it download but you can set it up so it unzips the file and installs it. It will also integrate with your anti-virus and have each file scanned once they're downloaded.

Great Sounds

This is a download  taken from a forum post  illustrating how music has been more or less solely influenced by America's multi culture over the years.  The vast majority of the music listened to today has links that come from the sounds heard in this software.

Unfortunately this program only works with Internet Explorer. I compiled it before I switched to Linux, so even I can't use it.

Foxit Reader

When it comes to PDF files a lot of people plump for the Adobe reader, and why not it's a perfectly good program. The only problem I have with it is, it's size, it's massive!!

The alternative, named above is a much smaller file size and so is far more hard drive friendly.  There's a paid for version if you need all the bells and whistles, but if you only want to be able to read, find and copy text then the free version is great.

Computer Maintenance

Running the Windows operating system is a nightmare. You have to be protected against viruses and spyware, your browser clogs your hard drive with files you don't need, the filing system saves data all over your hard drive, which all leads to a machine that ends up running at a snails pace.

This is a PDF download of the article Computer Maintenance that appears in the members area. It looks at the tools that should be used regulary to combat Window's deficiencies oulined above. Included are links to where you can download the necessary programs, as well as how to install and use them.

For all you poor suckers who are runing Windows, this is a must have report.

Learn how to:

Clean the rubbish left behind by your browser and the temporary files Windows creates.

Get rid of residual files left behind in the registry when you uninstall software.

Speed up the opening of applications by re-organising your hard drive.

Once done your machine will run as it did when new.

Noble Avatar

If you're stuck for a avatar for your profile, this might solve the problem. Noble Avatar is a point and click wizard to make something like this:
Not particulary fancy but hey it's free and easy to use.