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Yeah, I just use an alliteration for a title.  I’ve read that they draw readers in.  So, we’ll see about that.

Anyway, on to the actually article.  This article is about FireFTP.  FireFTP is a free, open source FTP client that allows you to access FTP servers right inside of Firefox.  Since Firefox is cross-platform, so is FireFTP, allowing you to use it on Windows, Linux, and Mac machines.  FireFTP is a full functioning FTP client that not only allows you to transfer files, it allow you to sync directories while you’re working, and CHMOD (change file permissions on web servers).  So, if you’ve been looking for a solid FTP client, give FireFTP a try.  I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

A couple of friends of mine (Linux enthusiasts) asked me the other day why the screen shots I was showing them were in Windows.  And they had that betrayed friend look on their face. I actually felt bad for using it when they asked the question.  But when I went to explain my reason to them, I found that it was legitimate and could not be helped.

I’m really into programming and development and all that.  And I know what all you Linux advocates are going to say.  We have IDEs!  We have everything you need to program!  Yes, that’s true.  Linux does have programming IDEs, and everything I need to program.  But, there’s a difference between needs and wants.  Linux doesn’t have everything I want to program.  It quite simply doesn’t have a Visual Studio equivalent.

As a programming noob, I enjoy writing my C# with code completion.  I enjoy visually designing my programs.  I enjoy the ease of usability customized with great functionality and customizability.  Those are all the reasons I love Linux, but are the same reasons I can’t be on it every second of my programming life.

I’m also very into game development, and one of my favorite programs is RPG Maker XP, which I wrote a post about earlier.  This program is only available on Windows,  so in order to work on my game I have to be on my Windows partition.

Another program I use is Paint.NET.  I use this to do Pixel Art for my games.  This too, is only available for Windows.  Some of you may say, “What about The GIMP!?” LEt me tell you about The GIMP.  If I have to go to the taskbar one more time to select a tool, because The GIMP runs five different windows, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.  Doing that just causes me so much frustration.

When it comes down to it.  The three programs that I use the most besides a web browser, can only be used on Windows.  So why wouldn’t I use it?

Screamer Radio is a program that I’ve recently found that allows you to listen to many different internet radio stations and record music off them.  I’ve been listening to it for hours now, and I have to say that it is very useful when it comes to discovering new music.  I listen to music constantly, so I sometimes get tired of my usual library.  That’s where Screamer Radio comes in.  With it, I can tune into many different internet radio stations encompassing every genre known to man.  I can also record the songs that I like in an mp3, wma, aac, or an ogg file.

This great windows only app was created by David Zidar, a systems developer in Stockholm, Sweden.  I’d like to extend a public thank you to him, for creating this app and making it freeware.  As the Windows world has been missing quality free programs.  Make sure you check out this great free internet radio program for Windows, and aid David in his quest to dominate the world.

I for one, think that all default icons are sort of lame, the Vista icons were cool and refreshing the first time I booted up my Ultimate Edition, after two more times of starting it up I though they were lame.One time while exploring a my Battlefield 2142 CD I looked in the autorun.inf file and immediately noticed how easy it was to change the icon of my removable drives. It is so simple, and the icon will show up on any computer you pop that drive or device into. All you have to do is open notepad and type exactly what is in the screen shot below. You will most likely want to replace the values after the equals sign, the label(title) can be anything, and the icon, obviously, must be the full name of the icon including the .ico extension.

Mine looks like this:

After you finish typing all that up, save the file as autorun with the extension .inf (autorun.inf). Next, place both the autorun file and the icon file on the drive and then unplug it. When you plug it back in it should say whatever you typed for a label and show the icon you’ve chosen. If you like, you can also choose to hide these files, that way they won’t get in your way either.

Before:

After:

This Predator icon is from Iconshock. When you sign up for their free offer, you get a new set every fifteen days, and of course, one right when you sign up. My set was the AVP set. That’s a pretty good deal if you ask me. You can also pay to download the ones you want. Okay, enough friendly advertising… I’d really like to see what other people come up with, so if anyone actually does this, it would would be cool if you could show me.

Foreword

This guide has been written with Ubuntu Gutsy(7.10) in mind, but should work for any other OS as well.

Intro

I’ve read several complaints stating that Ubuntu Gutsy’s partitioner was unbearably slow when resizing a Windows Vista NTFS partition. There were also some people asking why it wasn’t slow with Windows XP’s partition. The reason Gutsy isn’t slow when resizing the XP partition is because Windows XP and Windows vista have different versions of the NTFS file system. So basically, something in the code is written wrong, which makes the resizing of a Vista partition painfully slow. But there is another way of doing this without taking a 5 hour coffee break to install Gutsy. You can partition your drives right inside Vista itself. Using this process, I was able to partition, install, and tweak Gutsy in under an hour. Here’s the process I used to partition my hard drive:

Steps

Click Start
Go To Computer and Right-Click
Select Manage

Select Disk Management under Storage in the left hand hierarchy.

Right Click (C:)
Select Shrink Volume

Choose how much you want to partition off, and go.

That was easy wasn’t it? It’s also a heck of a lot quicker than waiting for Gutsy to do it.

Here’s my partition table after partitioning:

NOTE: Having certain features, such as thumbnails, enabled in Vista only allows you to partition a certain amount off your drive, so beware.