Tech Tip Roundup

ObjectDock is like the Mac OS Dock, only for Windows. I use it as a suped up quick launch menu cause, well it’s cooler. Oh and I like handy the weather info too, just hover the mouse and you get current conditions and the 5 day forecast or click on it for full details.

Sometimes I can be a little OCD about the order of my applications in the taskbar. Apparently I’m not the only one since someone made this cool tool called Taskbar Shuffle.

I still do basic maintenance on our vehicles but I have a hard time remembering when I did things. So earlier this year I setup a spreadsheet in Google Docs. I started with an Excel template and customized it a bit. So far it’s been great, in fact it’s time to change the oil again. Too bad it didn’t help much with the snowmobile oil leak and engine seizing incident.

All this blogging lately (both reading and writing) has led me to change RSS readers. I was just using Thunderbird for mail and news on my work machine, but I needed something I could access anywhere. So I changed everything except work only stuff to Google Reader. Then I added the Reader to my iGoogle and now it’s a breeze to check from any computer.

I’ve tried using the Gimp several times over the years but always found it easier to stick with my old standby in PaintShop Pro 5 (from like 1999), or the simple to use Paint.Net. However recently I wanted to learn some advanced editing techniques and it was either Gimp or buy PhotoShop, so the Gimp it was. I just followed some online tutorials and things went nice and smooth. I still use the simple programs for quick edits though.