Latest news

11 Jun 2008: Calling all motorists to Strike, Save money on Fuel, reduce obesity and maybe even save the Planet!!! Walk, Bike or take Public Transport. I'm using my bike now for all local journeys. Soon the politicians will be begging us to use our cars again as tax revenues drop.

Links:

• OpenOffice
• Sourceforge.net

Welcome to ePlaice ...

This website aims to provide some hopefully, helpful experiences of using your home PC for a variety of tasks. The aim throughout is to, as closely as possible, provide an independent view although I have to confess to having a bias in favour of Microsoft particularly for software development. At first sight this would seem to go against the free and open source theme but if you look through some of the software pages you will see it is very possible to develop and use first rate applications for the Windows platform which need not cost a penny.

As time goes by it is has become clear to me that free and open source software is here to stay with products now available for non-commercial use that can compete with the best commercial products. In fact I regard this as a very healthy sign that the major players now have some competition and know that if they want to sell software it has to have something extra. Of course many people will still go for the big name, just as they would go for the 'designer' label, so if you want to spend out there are still many opportunites. On the other hand if you are a personal user with a tight budget then there are many opportunities for saving some of your cash.

At the same time it also became obvious that it would be difficult to avoid a bit of blogging. So, apologies in advance if you find a bit of cynicism, possibly some humour depending on your taste, maybe even some political comments but the emphasis is always on PC (meaning Personal Computer as opposed to Political Correctness) and Windows XP which apparently stands for eXPerience but can often be eXtremely Problematical and lead to eXPletives. My new Dell Laptop has come with Windows 7 Professional and so far it has exceeded expectations in every way, so I shall be moving this website from being XP oriented to Windows 7 oriented over the course of 2010 as I gain experience.

C# NET 2.0 Development and Beyond

I became a little bit tired with the direction that Delphi was going and decided to have a look at some alternatives. It did not take long to latch onto C# and SharpDevelop as a viable alternative. However, at the moment no-one can pretend this is a (RAD) Rapid Application Development environment, although it could well be heading this way. I am particularly keen on using ADO NET in conjunction with MySQL so most of the discussion on the "SOFTWARE" web pages deals with transferring Borland Delphi database applications to the ADO NET framework.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

This is definitely one of the most exciting developments to hit the world of computing since Windows 3.0. Originally code named Avalon it is the graphics foundation for the Vista operating system. However, even if you just have plain old XP you can still take advantage of the new graphic applications both for stand alone applications running on your PC and for Web applications running on the net. It certainly was a bold step to incorporate WPF into the Vista operating system, but actually I prefer the operating system to be buried in the background doing a quiet and efficient job managing the system resources so that the applications can take centre stage. I have also had a go at Silverlight (WPF/E) and even though this is still in its infancy it is surprisingly easy to get this up and running on your web pages without any special tools; although undoubtedly to develop your own application certainly needs some tool support.

Office Software

An essential part of the desktop is a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Presentation Graphics, and a Drawing package. All of these can be found in OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems and if you try the new version 2.0 you will see how it measures up to Microsoft Office with the added benefits of being free and open source. Having used this package through the early development stages I am now at a stage where I have confidence in using some of the modules for everyday personal usage.

Security

Security is going to remain an issue with any operating system and the current Windows XP and web browsers present the average user with many loopholes that have to be addressed to protect against potential threats. These days hacking into someones computer is no longer a game, but a growing area for fraudsters to gain a living at your expense. I have gained quite a lot of experience using a combination of commercial and open source products to improve overall computer security. Common problems I have found are badly set up Firewalls, uncontrolled start-ups, uncontrolled spam and Spyware running unknown to the user.

Audio Software

Here are some tips on transferring music from your old vinyl records to digital and then to Compact Disc. There are also reviews of some of the various Music Players on the net.

Photo Section

I have always been keen on photography (who isn't?), and have spent a few hours on scanning slides and old photos into digital format. So, now I have an SLR digital camera I thought it was appropriate to include a section on how to use your computer in conjunction with your digital camera to get the best usage, by means of Storing, Viewing, Editing, Sharing and printing your photos.

Finance

I wanted to show off some of the fancy charts and graphs that are possible using Silverlight. So I started a little finance web page in which I hope to cover some of the hot topics as they hit the news. This is more of an education for me rather than 'hi guys - here's how you can make/save lots of money!'

Travel

No site is complete without a few boring photos and I'm afraid mine is no exception. It started out as a trial of the Coppermine Gallery software which then developed into showing some photos of recent holidays. Then I saw Blogger and the Lightbox Javascript and I thought it would be fun to put the two ideas together. So now you can see both a travelogue and a mini slideshow combined.

Further Topics

Other topics that are covered include an ebooks section, where I have been experimenting with converting plain text to XML and then on to PDF. You can see an example in the download section. For the future I am considering including some pages concerning my other sports and hobbies; definitely tennis and cycling.

Contact and Acknowledgements

You can contact me at eplaice with any comments or requirements for clarification you may have. I am not a professional reviewer and all the views expressed are based on my personal experience of using the software. Wherever you see a recommendation you are strongly advised to check it out yourself, but remember you should not be out of pocket since all the software can at least be tried for free.