About Anything » tools

Free Icons

Al Stevens — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:30:06 +0000

I hate making icons. And I’m not very good at it — drawing something that looks professional on a 16 x 16 canvas is not a skill that I’m ever going to have. We needed some icons for a new web site recently and after a bit of searching found them — and more, almost 1,000 of them, available for free under Creative Commons.

They are available for download at: www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/

Pure Text

Al Stevens — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:05:17 +0000

For years I’ve suffered through posting web content that was sent to me in MS Word format. A cut-and-paste from Word carried all of the Microsoft-supplied gunk that I’d then painfully edit out by hand. I eventually adopted the trick of cutting from the Word doc, pasting to Notepad, cutting from Notepad and then pasting one more time. It saved the cleanup steps, but was still a pain. I finally stumbled over Pure Text, a simple Windows app that removes text formatting from the clipboard. After I installed it, life got a little easier — and that’s what tools are for.

It’s free, available for download at: www.stevemiller.net/puretext/

After you install it, right click the tray icon, select “options” and check “Automatically run Pure Text each time I log on to windows.”

One thing well

Al Stevens — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:19:03 +0000

My collection of simple tools is growing. Most of the posts in this category are about techie tools that do only one or two things, but do them well. They’re specialized and make life at the keyboard easier, sometimes more fun and often less time-consuming. When I find a new one, after adding it to my own collection, I end up sending a few messages to friends and colleagues, but then I forget who I’ve informed and who I haven’t. So, I’ll start posting them here — along with a brief comment about why I like each.