Those Mad Ideas #WriterlyWednesdays

Those Mad Ideas

You know sometimes we writers have mad ideas - oh boy did my darling sister (Sophie's Blog) have one :). She decided, in her wisdom, that it was time to create a database of all her fiction, from ideas through to finished novels, including fanfiction. So she jumped into Airtable with both feet.

Of course the next thing she did is drag me along for the ride ;).

It's actually a really good idea, because I had no clue how many drabbles I had scattered around this blog alone, let alone elsewhere. It's going to take work, but it will be so useful in the end.

So far I have learned one valuable thing - I use the name Jack for characters far too often. I don't think I have any major novel characters called Jack, but I have so many in drabbles and flash fiction. Clearly I like to abuse Jacks ;).

Do you have any names for characters that always pop into your head?

There's also part of me that loves cataloguing. I suppose it's my inner librarian - not that I have the skills and training that my friends who are actually librarians have :). My skills lie in databases since that was my speciality before this whole writing thing.

Do you have skills from your "proper job" that help with writing, be it for profit or for fun?

I like Airtable - it makes some things much easier than your average, from the ground up, databse. However, it does freak me out a little that it kind of pretends to be a relational database, but hides things like many to many relationships and indexes :). The fact that it pretends its primary key field is a name also rubs me the wrong way, but since it does not in fact have to be unique I know it has proper one hiding in the shadows.

Now all I have to do is convince my brain not to vanish into this database for days at a time. I shall have to be firm with myself and only do a little bit every day until it is done :).

What things do you have to ration so you actually do some writing/work?

My father has had his final round of chemo now, which means his treatment is finished and its all about recovery now. His consultant is incredibly pleased with his progress, which is a great weight off all our minds. I'm hoping to get back into the flow of proper writing and marketing and, y'know, all this author stuff again now. :D

To all whose families/friends are going through similar things, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I wish you love and hope and patience, as well as a healthy dose of good luck.

Best wishes to all. To the writers: may your words flow and the feedback be joyous. To the readers: may you find stories that fill your heart with wonder and enjoyment.

10 Free Software Packages I Cannot Live Without - #TipsTuesdays 31

There are some pieces of software that run on my computer on a daily basis that are not simply the obvious ones like Word and Photoshop and McAffe. I find them very useful, so I thought I would share.. What's even better is all of them are FREE :).

10 Free Software Packages I Cannot Live Without

Some of these I use solely for work, some solely for pleasure, but nearly all of them are all started up almost every day.

Calibre - eBook Management Software

Calibre not only manages all your ebooks for you, including your devices if you wish, but it also converts between formats that do not have DRM. If you wish to read your Kindle books on your PC in PDF format, Calibre can convert them for you in a flash. It will even do them in bulk, just leaving out the ones with DRM.

It has a very use friendly interface and it updated regularly. There are also plugins, for example, one that can help you keep your Goodreads profile up to date or another that can download fanfiction for you etc.

It is completely free to download and use, with a donate button for those who can afford to give a little back to the creator.

PSPad - Text Editor

PSDPad is a freeware editor that allows you to edit all sorts of text based files. For example it is very good at HTML editing and CSS editing as well as simple text file editing. It allows you to have as many files open as you wish at a time and it's search functions are very easy to use. This is my go to text editor.

As you can see it has a great coloured interface and you can have the text wrap or continue all on one line as I have in the above image.

As I said, the software is free and they also have a donate button for those who can afford to give a little for such a useful program.

Audacity - Recording Software

This is the software I use to make all the recordings for SoundCloud and Youtube. It has a very user friendly interface, everything is easy to adjust and understand. Best of all it has a really useful noise removing filter that comes in very handy when recording anything. All you have to do is remember to record some silence at the beginning of your recording and then it can remove the underlying hum from everything.

It's completely free, with the usual donate option and it has all sorts of plugins, including saving to mp3. This is a great piece of software for those new to recording and those who have been doing it for a while.

Malwarebytes - Anti-Malware

This piece of software is brilliant. It is the only one that is not 100% free, but the premium version is well worth it.

If you download it for free it will scan your computer and remove any malware from it. It is a good idea to do it twice or even three times the first time you use it, because malware can be tricky, but it is very good at disinfecting any machine.

If you pay for the premuim version it also runs realtime and prevents any new infections. It blocks malicious sites known for trying to add malware to your machine and it also scans once a day like a virus checker to make sure nothing slipped past. It even warns about software that isn't technically malware, but that you might not be aware of or want on your system.

yWriter - Novel Writing Assistant

Now if you've been here before I know you've heard me mention yWriter before. It is a great free novel writing package which is being updated all the time. I love it so much I wrote an entire post about it here, last year.

Once again it's free, but you can register it for $11.95 to help the developer spend more time making it even whizzier :)

FileZilla - FTP Software

With the cloud and Google drive and everything else out there these days, FTP seems a bit old and clunky, but I still use it regularly. Well, these days sFTP - so it's secure. I use it to update our Wittegen Press website and to upload files for use in posts on sites that do not offer large storage space etc.

I've been using FileZilla for years now and it's a very reliable FTP solution. It has a nice site manager functionality and it has clear and precise error messages if anything goes wrong. Best of all it's free. As ever there is a donate option to help the developers keel developing.

VLC Media Player

VLC is quite simply the best media player for just about everything and it's free. It will play everything; it plays most codecs without needing to fiddle around and download anything; it can repair files; it runs on literally everything.

I have never looked back since I first downloaded this player and I have never needed to look for anything else. It is distributed and maintained by a non-profit org which you can donate to if you wish.

Nitro Reader - PDF Reader

The simple reason I love this PDF reader is one function it has that is so very, very useful. You know when a friend of a colleague sends you a PDF and you need an image from it? Nitro lets you export all the images from any PDF document. It's brilliant.

There seems to be a pro version and a free version of this now. I have the free version and it's really good, does everything I wish it to.

KeePass - Password Safe

This program helps generate safe passwords and then keeps them for you so that you don't have to remember them all. It's really useful - just never, ever lose your master password :)

It's completely free and even open source, with the usual donate button if you feel so inclined.

DVD Profiler - DVD library

When I first used this software it was completely free, these days it's free up to 50 DVDs, but then you have to buy it. Since it's only $14.95, it doesn't exactly break the bank :).

I've been using this for a long time and it's very, very good and I couldn't keep track of my DVDs and Blu-rays without it. You can add you DVDs in several ways - the easiest being by EAN (barcode), but you can do it by title and inserted disc as well. The database online is huge and many users help to keep it up to date as well, so it's forever growing.

You can also upload your collection so that you can give the links to friends so they can see what you have. It even has borrowing facilities for you can keep track of who has what. I wouldn't be without it.

Do you have any little gems of free software you use all the time?

How To Rename Multiple Files with Windows Powershell #TipsTuesdays 28

Greetings and welcome to my blog on this Tuesday. Just recently I have been sorting out my file system, and while Windows is not bad at it, the usual interface is just not powerful enough. Then I found Powershell.

How To Rename Multiple Files with Windows Powershell

Now I suspect many of us look at Powershell, which is a command line interface, and shudder a bit. I have only rarely used such a thing since I finished my PhD more years ago than I care to admit. Let's just say when I started Uni we were using green screen terminals with UNIX and leave it at that :).

We have lots and lots of image files and the like on our NAS box and the filenames were all over the place. Now had I just wanted them to be the same name with a number, Windows could have done it easily, but:

1. I'd have had to do each directory individually.
2. I wanted to keep parts of the names as they were.

So I asked Google how to do it and it said Powershell was the answer.

Now it's all well and good to check out the info on Powershell, but it's somewhat complex. I have a degree in Computer Science and some of it still made me go 'huh'. Hence I thought I would just give a few examples.

First, a couple of Provisos

1. Always check your Filter to make sure you are only editing the names of the files you really want to (this will make sense in a moment :)).
2. It's a good idea to test your change on a few isolated files before running it on large numbers just to make sure you haven't done something stupid (I managed to rename a whole bunch of files to something unintelligible at least once :)).
3. If you have mangled a command and want to get rid of it without having to delete it all, using the <esc> key will wipe it from the command line.
4. If a command is running and you wish to stop it (for example if it is taking too long or you've realised you've made a mistake) then hold down the <ctrl> key and click the letter c.

To Open Powershell

1. Right click on the start icon.
2. Choose "command prompt"
3. Type Powershell

To Setup the Look of Powershell

I found the text too small when I first started Powershell, but this is easy to remedy.

1. Right click on the bar at the top of the window.
2. Choose "Properties"
3. Use the tabs to change whichever elements you wish to.
4. Click OK

Navigating in Poweshell

If you have multiple drives you may need to use <drive letter>: to change to the correct drive. For example our Photos are on W: as you can see in the image below.

To reach the correct directory (folder) you use the command cd (change directory):

cd temp - will take you to the subdirectory called temp.

If you're not sure of the directory names you can use dir to list everything in your current position.

Or you can do cd then a <space> then use <tab> to cycle through all the sub-directories of the directory you are in.

To go back up a directory type cd ..

Add A Number to the Beginning of Each Filename

This is the one I found most useful. You know when you have a whole directory of files and you need to number them sequentially, but the filename has other information you don't want to lose?

For example, say you have all the episodes of series and part of the filename is the title of the episode, but you also want an episode number so you don't have to use the date to sort them to see them in order.

This is the script you need (and Powershell does allow you to just paste it in):

$originalFiles = Get-ChildItem .\ -Filter *.mp4 | sort -Property LastWriteTime

$x = 1

ForEach ($originalFile in $originalFiles) {

    Rename-Item -Path $originalFile.FullName -NewName (($originalFile.Directory.FullName) + "\" + $x + ' ' + $originalFile.Name)

    $x++

}

This should only be run in the directory where you wish to rename the files.

• $originalFiles is set to all the files you wish to rename using Get-ChildItem.
• Change the -Filter *.mp4 to whatever the files you wish to rename are e.g. -Filter *.jpg would bring back all files with the jpg extension, -Filter *.avi as the avis etc.
• sort -Property LastWriteTime sorts the files in date order - but you can sort them by any of the properties that show up when you use dir, e.g. Length or Name as well.
• The loop then goes through each file $originalFile of the files you selected into $originalFiles.
• $x is the counter and $x++ adds one to it each time it goes through the loop.
• This version adds a number $x and a space ' ' to the beginning of the filename. If you wanted to add more, for example, something to indicate that the number is the episode number you could replace $x + ' ' with 'EP' + $x + ' ' or 'SeriesName EP' + $x + ' ' etc 

Partially Rename All the Files in A Directory

You might wish to change something in a whole string of filenames. For example, say the name of your favourite artist was spelt wrong in a whole bunch of files, you could correct it in one go.

Get-ChildItem .\ *.mp3 | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace "Adnam Lambert", "Adam Lambert" }

This will go through all the mp3 files in a directory and change Adnam Lambert to Adam Lambert, while leaving the rest of each filename intact.

If you had a whole heap of files in different directories with the same mistake you can go through all of them by sitting in the top directory and running this command:

Get-ChildItem .\ -recurse -include *.mp3 | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.name -replace "Adnam Lambert", "Adam Lambert" }

Powershell is incredibly powerful and there are lots of sites that can tell you way more about it than this little post. Here are a few I used to become familiar with it:

• Powershell Regular Expressions
• More about Regular Expressions
• Specific Example for Finding Large Files With Useful Explanations of the Code
• More Info On Batch Renaming

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I don't guarantee I can answer them, but I'm willing to try :).

The Most Useful Piece of Software - Adblock Plus #TipsTuesdays 22

The Most Useful Piece of Software

Adblock Plus

So today's Tips Tuesday is very simple it is a piece of advice for every user of the internet. I am sure most of you already know, but I didn't realise how useful something like this was until a friend mentioned it. Since I installed it, so many things have become easier.

The piece of software I am talking about is Adblock Plus.

It is a FREE plugin for many browsers including Safari that blocks ads on websites for you. Thus making your browsing easier. Often it is the ads that try to put Malware etc on your computer or tie up you browser with pop-up windows that won't go away etc.

It is also configurable, so if you do want to support a site because you know it has unobtrusive ads and the site deserves the revenue you can add it to the whitelist.

This plugin makes browsing:

• faster
• safer
• much less annoying.

If you don't have it yet, I thoroughly recommend it.

For those with Smartphones and Tablets, there is also AdBlock Browser for an ad free internet experience. Since I don't have a smart phone and my tablet is Win10, I haven't tried this one, but if it is as good as the browser plugin, it's awesome.

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A Cheap, Reliable Media Player and Streaming Solution - Raspberry Pi 2 + Kodi - #TipsTuesdays 19

A Cheap, Reliable Media Player and Streaming Solution

Raspberry Pi 2 + Kodi

Wittegen Press

$3.29 | £2.19
Amazon | Other

Rob and I have a NAS box for much of our media and we like to be able to watch it on the big screen upstairs. We have been using an Amazon Fire Stick, but that is wireless and has started not to get on with the Sky wireless router - the other night it finally refused to talk to it at all. In fact most things except for the actual Sky box don't seem to get on with the wireless router.

Hence we needed a wired system to view all our stored media. There are off the shelf options, but none of them did everything we wanted or had hang ups we didn't want to deal with.

Our solution, a Raspberry Pi 2 with a Linux install dedicated to Kodi Home Theatre Software, or rather OSMC as the nice people that developed it named it. Rob also bought this remote sized keyboard to control it so we don't have to have a normal keyboard lying around. (The remote is less than stellar, the touch pad is quite awful in fact, I don't recommend it - but there are others out there).

This post here: BUILD A KODI MEDIA PLAYER USING RASPBERRY PI 2 explains exactly how to do it and it works perfectly.

Wittegen Press

$3.98 | £2.98
Amazon | Other

We tried it out on a Raspberry Pi that Rob had lying around and it also worked, but it was slow because the poor little thing had barely any memory and a tiny processor, hence the reason for the Raspberry Pi 2, which is quad core and has 1Gb RAM.

The good thing about Kodi is that not only does it support almost every media format as well as music and photographs, but it also has plugins that can stream from various sources like iPlayer and the Smithsonian etc.

The only thing that was a little tricky was playing vobs - it has a delay. This is because it's processing the mpeg-2 codec in software not hardware. To get round this you just have to go purchase the hardware mpeg-2 codec from the Raspberry Pi Store for a whopping £2.40 :).

So far we have had it running for nearly a week and it is working really well. We also have other friends who have been using a similar system for quite a while now, with no problems. This is definitely a solution for those who are a little tech savvy, but I had to mention it because it works so well.

Review: Aimersoft Video Converter Ulitmate - Very Easy to Use Software

Aimersoft Video Converter Ulitmate

Very Easy to Use Software

So I have used various video converters finding that many have issues with certain conversions, but are really good for others. When it comes to Aimersoft's Video Converter Ultimate, I have yet to find something it does not do well. There is a free trial version for those who wish to try it out like I have been doing. The trial will only convert a certain percentage of your file, but it is plenty to check the quality and speed of the product.

The interface is very good and easy to use, giving preview options in very obvious places. This makes it very straightforward to decide which media you wish to convert without having to mess around with further menus or preview panes.

Likewise the conversion formats are given in very visual ways with precise and concise explanations as to what they are so you don't have to guess what you want to output the file to. The choice of audio track and subtitle options are also right there and easy to use.

As with all video converters, it takes a lot of CPU when it is running, but it seems to be fast and converts files simultaneously, so it doesn't hog your processor for too long. Doesn't cause machine lock up either, which I have had with other converters.

Very use friendly and efficient product.

I love this Chrome plugin - OneTab

I love this plugin for Chrome. OneTab is simply brilliant. Someone recommended it on Tumblr (sorry, can't remember who) and I decided to try it because when I do things in Photoshop sometimes I have to shut down my Chrome tabs or actions and other memory heavy functions run really slowly.

I used to do this as follows:

1. Click to bookmark all my tabs
2. Choose where to put these bookmarks
3. create a new directory for them - hopefully with a sensible name
4. Promptly forget where I bookmarked them.

And of course, half the time I would forget which set was which because I couldn't be arsed to figure out a useful name ;).

OneTab does this all for me. With one click on the OneTab icon in a window, all the tabs are saved as links on the OneTab tab. You can even name the different groups if there are a selection of links you want to keep for longer in a sensible manner.

This is per window, so if you have two or three windows like I do when I am working on different research, the tabs are saved as separate groups.

Then you can restore all the tabs at once if you want to, or a tab at a time. A tab group opens in a new window and a single tab opens as a new tab in your current window.

We all know Chrome will eat memory when it can - not as badly as IE, but it chomps away and doesn't give it back. It's brilliant for those moments when you realise you have 80 tabs open and Chrome is running just a tad slowly ;). On click and you can select which tabs to reopen and save the ones you don't really need now for later.

It also lets me reduce Chrome to one tab - duh, when I leave the computer so that if Ruby (one of my kitties) decides to prance on my keyboard it's less likely to do something silly ;).

It even had import and export functionality, so you can back up your URL groups if you are paranoid ;).

I love this plugin ... did I mention that yet, because I really do? :D

Audacity - The Wonderful Free Cross-platform Recording Software

I'm part of a promotions group called BooksGoSocial - they have very reasonable prices and will tweet about your book and promote it on their mailing list and lots of other wonderful things. However, the best thing I have found about this promotion service is their author group. I am learning so many things thanks to the advice of other authors and the wonderful author who started the whole thing: Laurence O'Bryan.

One of the things BooksGoSocial has to help their members promote their books is a SoundCloud Channel for book excerpts.

That got me thinking because SoundCloud offers recording options, but I always like to get things perfect before going anywhere near online. I know lots of people already know about Audacity, but I thought I'd make a post about it anyway for those who don't.

Audacity is the answer for anyone trying to record sound quickly and easily. There are many wonderful things about it, and here is a list of why I love it.

• Great user interface - very straightforward
• Multiple tracks
• Noise reduction filters
• Lots of other filters
• Easy set-up
• Exports to mp3
• Is FREE unless you wish to donate
• They have a wiki with all the tutorials and help you need.
• They also have a manual with everything

I used to use a headset mic to record, which works perfectly well, but now I use this ProSound USB Podcast and Vocal Microphone, which gives a much clearer sound. Mine came from Maplin, but they are available all over.

With the noise reduction filter, however, standard headset mics work fine.

This is a detailed post by How To Podcast with lots of useful information: Audacity Tutorial for Podcasters. There are also many other useful posts on the web, just ask Google :).

No1 tip (found on a podcasting group):

The first thing to do when making any voice recording with Audacity is to record several seconds of silence. The most useful thing I ever use is the noise reduction filter and you have to set up a noise profile for this to work. The recording of silence is in fact the noise you will later remove, so I always make sure to never skip this step. This part of the wiki tells you what to do after that.