Madagascar music video

Here's a music video of Reel2Reel's "I Like To Move It" featuring the stars from Madagascar.

Free Music Tutorials

Want to learn how to play music and write songs? Look at these free tutorials and resources.


Here is the entire 1st edition of the ebook "Basic Music Theory: How to Read, Write, and Understand Written Music" available for free! The second edition is available to purchase as well.

At the Berklee Shares Web site you will find free individual self-contained music lessons developed by Berklee faculty and alumni to download, along with a library of MP3 audio, QuickTime movie, and PDF files that is free and open to the music community around the world.

Here is a FREE Online Course in Songwriting by Rein Menke. Subjects range from how to make good rhyme and rhythm in lyrics to choosing subjects, style, etc.

Everybody Dance Now!!!

The highest rated downloadable videos are of people doing amazing physical feats! Be it dancing, sports or music etc. Check these out - some of them are phenomenal!

Scala Multimedia Directory

The Scala Multimedia Directory is one of the largest and most complete multimedia directories on the Internet. Scala has taken on the duty of maintaining the popular GMD: German National Research Center for Information Technology site, adding entries and collaborative maintenance.

There are links here to websites specialising in 3D Animation, Presentation software, Audio, file conversion, digital photography, DVD & digital video, Multimedia standards, Web management, slide shows, tutorials & utilities to name just a few. Definitely worth checking out!

Index.dat Suite

When looking at the website for the "B Gone" content filter in the last post, I also found this little gem.

Index.dat Suite allows you to view and delete index.dat files, temporary internet files, temp files, cookies and internet explorer history on your system.

Index.dat files contain information on every website that you have ever visited. Microsoft have never given an explanation as to what these files actually do, but they can potentially be a source of information to others should your machine be hacked. If you do banking over the internet on a regular basis I would definitely recommend giving these files a regular clean as well.

Porn Blockers/Child Safe Content Filters

I had a request for some Porn Blocking content filters. Here are some links to free programs that are available.

Naomi is an Internet content filtering program, intended for families and parents in particular. It constantly monitors all Internet connections for inappropriate materials, and immediately closes down the browser if encountered. The programs considerations include obscene or violent contents; pornography and erotism in the form of images or texts, as well as sites that popularize drugs, gambling, terrorism, hate propaganda and more. The program uses a built-in filter list (which cannot be modified) as well as heuristic scanning and semantic analysis of web pages and links. It recognizes more than 10 major languages and supports the ICRA labeling system. The interface is password protected to prevent unauthorized disabling of the filter. Naomi`s biggest strength is that it is completely fool-proof and fully automatic, with no additional configurations (other than picking a password), it supports any browser or Internet application and does not change any of your settings - on the downside, it does not offer any control over the filters. The filtering worked well during tests.

Parental Filter is a specialized parental control filter that enables you to block porn from your web browser. It uses a built-in database of web sites that are blocked, as well as a list of keywords that it scans for on web pages, and blocks them if a they are found. You can specify a list of sites that the user will be redirected to instead, and also customize the list of blocked sites and keywords. Parental Filter provides a password protected interface, can run fully automatic in the background. The program is very effective and works well.

B Gone is a content filter for parents, children, and anyone else wishing to keep their internet experience pleasant. This program allows you to block site's, based on keywords in the browsers caption bar. The interface, and program is password protected using our own custom encryption routine, designed and written specifically for this program. This program is great for those wishing to keep their children away from porn sites, or simply preventing porn popup's appearing when entering or exiting certain site's. It could also be used (and is more than capable), to prevent someone accessing a certain website, or group of website's.

File Sharing Sentinel is free Parental Control software designed to block file sharing software such as Kazaa, Morpheus, Bearshare, etc. Protect your children from predators lurking in file sharing networks, also prevent them from being exposed to thousands of pornographic files. File sharing can be costly, the music industry is suing users of file sharing software for copyright infringement. Computer viruses found on file sharing networks can damage or destroy your computer. File Sharing Sentinel prevents spyware from installing on your computer.

SafeGuard Content Cleaner is a system cleaner that includes increased filtering and cleaning capabilities to detect and protect against all the latest and most dangerous types of graphics, pornography, content, and files.

What to do with an old 486 PC!!!

Don't throw away that old 486 PC just yet! Here are four websites you can go to to turn it into a cool "old school" gaming machine!!!

First of all download and install FreeDOS. FreeDOS aims to be a completely free 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system.

Then get SEAL a 32-bit graphical user interface (GUI) for DOS. It supports many advanced features, such as a dynamic linking system (XDL), sound and other multimedia functions (SFA), multilingual support, and more!

As an alternative to SEAL try Quikmenu3. It's nagware but it's a great little DOS GUI that allows you to set up buttons to launch all your favorite DOS programs. QuikMenu also contains a full assortment of utilities (including a powerful file manager for copying, moving, deleting and renaming files and directories; calculator; phone/modem dialer and database; calendar; macro recorder; ASCII text editor; and more).

Then go to DOSgames.com to download and play over 400 of your favourite DOS games, free!

Prepare for a massive 80's Flashback!!!

Image Viewers and Management Tools

Image/Graphic Viewing software is a must-have application to have on your PC. While Windows XP comes standard with thumbnail and filmstrip views in explorer, and earlier versions of Windows has the Wang image viewer, they simply just don't do everything that a good graphic program should. Here are the two best freeware apps I've found for viewing, sorting, converting and editing graphics and image files.

Irfanview: I've mentioned this app before in an earlier entry but it's just great software that is probably the most popular and feature packed free image viewer for Windows. It has been around for many years and keeps getting better.

Some features of IrfanView: Preview option, Drag & Drop support, fast directory view (fast moving through directory), slideshow, batch conversion, print option, change the color depth, scan support, cut/crop and many many more.

Supported file formats: JPG/JPEG, GIF, BMP, DIB, RLE, PCX, PNG, TIFF, TGA, RAS/SUN, ICO, AVI, WAV, MID, RMI, WMF, EMF, PBM, PGM, PPM, IFF/LBM, PSD, CPT, MPG/MPEG, MOV and Photo-CD(Overview Photo-CD support) as well as Flash/Shockwave format. All this for (currently) only 874kb.

I LOVE this program because it's lightweight and extremely fast! I've also found that it will open troublesome image files that some of the professional graphics programs can't. I also use it for creating slideshow playlists. The great thing about creating a playlist is (like an audio playlist on Winamp or Media Player) files can be chosen from different directories and drives and sorted into the required order. Great for use with a data projector at parties and public services.

FastStone Image Viewer is an image browser, viewer, converter and editor with an easy to use interface and a nice array of features, that include resizing, renaming, cropping, color adjustments, watermarks and more. It also includes an intuitive full-screen mode that provides quick access to EXIF information and thumbnail browser via hidden toolbars that emerge when you touch the edge of your screen with the mouse. Other features include a high quality magnifier and built-in slideshow with 60+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image frames, scanner support, histogram and much more. FastStone Image Viewer supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA as well as digital RAW formats (.CRW, .NEF).

This viewer/editor is a gem! I have never encountered such a superb, well-rounded viewer/editor before. The coolest thing is that the menus pop up when you move your curser to edge of the photo you are viewing. No other program does that. It is simply a joy to work with so many features. All other programs in this FastStone series are highly recommendable as well. Get this!!!