Open source software
used in this site and for my work
All of these were run
under Windows. They run identically
under Linux. Macs can be iffier.
When downloading for use
in Windows, be sure to look for the
"Windows binaries" with a .exe or a .zip extension. .Zip files need to
be unzipped first (using e.g. pkzip). Then the install file, which is
always something obvious like "install.exe" or "setup.exe", can be
clicked to start the actual install. (Windows XP has an unzip utility
as part of the operating system.)
Update Dec. 2005.
I switched over to Linux (Fedora
Core 3) almost a year ago now. The programs below really do
run identically under Linux. Running Linux has been fun and
interesting. Sometimes more of one, sometimes more of the
other. One of the nicest things is how viruses slide off like
I'm coated in teflon. Linux GUI frontends still aren't ready
for people who are uncomfortable with using the command line or
occasionally messing about with the operating system. The GUIs,
(gnome, kde, both bundled with the operating system) are
getting close, but they're not quite there yet. If you're old
enough to remember DOS, Linux is currently easier to handle than that,
and if DOS didn't scare you too much, you'll have no big problems with
Linux. To me, it's worth a lot just knowing that my computer
isn't whispering to Bill what it thinks of the software I'm using.
A phenomenal program by
Ton Roosendaal and with contributions
by the community. Takes quite a bit of learning, but can take you as
far as your talent will go. A copy of the documentation is a must, and
buying it supports the Blender project. Online tutorials and support
forums (at www.blender3d.com,
and two of the biggest at www.elysiun.com
and www.blenderman.org)
are
also essential tools for learning the program. For my animations, two
tuts at elysiun: faces by Torq and clouds by Cog, were particularly
useful.
Also the very underlinked (and hard to find) relative vertex key tut by
jeaninmontreal.
Blender installs with a double-click in Windows.
Update Dec. 2005.
blenderman.org is no more! Aargh. What a shock. I
haven't studied the following links carefully, but it looks like they
have the same general info and more.
Blender
functionality forums at blender3d.com and the excellent blenderblog.
Resulting animations were
converted to Flash format using a
combination of Rad Video Tools
by Jeff Roberts and Wax 2.0
by Satish Kumar. (It's a long story.) Flash animations were embedded
using the FlashObject
embed method by Geoff Stearns,
except on the home page. On the home page, I'm using a script kindly
provided by Jackson Cochrane (Warren86) at webdeveloper.com that allows
different clips to load first, and I'm suffering from ignorance
about how to put that script and Geoff's together. The core of the home
page script uses Drew McLellan's flashsatay
method. The flash preloader was modified from the good stuff available
at Colin Moock's Flash Actionscript site http://www.moock.org/asdg/codedepot/.
Starfield image in one of
home page clips modified from images
of the Dwingeloo 1 galaxy by S. Hughes, S. Maddox, et al., Isaac Newton
Telescope, 1994.
JAlbum 5.1
-- Web Photo
Galleries -- 
A slick, versatile way of
getting your photos on the web. By
David Ekholm. Much easier to use than the one in my version of Adobe
Elements (which is, admittedly, a million years old) and much more
customizable. In addition to the Calochortus
collection, a much larger set of plant pictures from California, Fiji
(mainly orchids), and other locations, are available at Paul
Kores web site.
The "skin" used is Exhibit Plus 1.2. Double-click installation.
Update Dec. 2005.
They're up to version 6.0, and it's even better and more
beautiful. I love this program. And the skin I used
is now up to version "ExhibitPlus" and is also even better.
Gimp 2.0
-- image
processor -- 
Full-featured image
processing program. Takes a lot of disk
space. Installation requires gtk libraries to be installed first, but
both that and the Gimp are just a matter of downloading and
double-clicking. The newest stable version of Gimp (i.e. 2.0) is
supposed to be free of issues when run under Windows. I've been using
it for a few months [update: for over a year] with no problems.
Previous versions crashed under
Windows
regularly, although they worked well under Linux. The name stands for
Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
Nvu 1.0
-- html editor -- 
These
pages were mostly written using a (by now) antique version of
Dreamweaver. However, Nvu (for New View) has come out recently and is
at least as easy to use as commercial software. It is
full-featured and fast. My only problem so far has been a
spot of
trouble applying style sheets due, I think, to the fact that I don't
know how to use the program very well yet. Definitely worth a close
look. Double-click installation.
Update: Dec. 2005.
After nearly a year using Nvu for everything, it meets my
needs in all respects. People who want to make heavy use of
Flash or other plugins without coding their own html will be happier
with one of the commercial programs. All others: get Nvu.
It's beautiful.
Open
source "Office" software put out by Sun Microsystems and the community.
I've been using it since version 1.0, and currently 1.1.2. (I see on
their site that they're up to 1.1.4. In open source software, these
minor version numbers often reflect major changes.) The word processing
element of the suite completely replaces Microsoft's Word, and reads
and writes Word formats without any issues. The Powerpoint counterpart
works fine by itself, but does have conversion issues if you try to
read or write MS Powerpoint files (some fonts don't transfer
correctly). (At least, it did in April 2004. May be fixed by now.) I
haven't used the other elements of the suite. Takes a LOT of disk space
(well over a hundred megabytes). Version 1.1.4 includes an html editor
that works for basic pages. Double-click installation.
Update Dec. 2005:
OpenOffice has come out with version 2.0. Powerpoint
conversion issues have disappeared. MSWord conversions have
been completely flawless and transparent for
my work. (Very long
documents, but easy formatting. I use headers, page and date
fields, indexes, tables of contents, formatted images, and all that
works fine.) There is no reason at all any more to deal with
Microsoft's silly registration schemes or anything else. OO
is completely interoperable with Microsoft Office documents and a joy
to use. Get it now!
And last but not least: Firefox
These are, respectively,
a browser and mail program. They are
so far ahead of Internet Explorer, all I can say is run, don't walk, to
download and start using them (if you haven't already). Web sites come
up about three times faster. For those blankety-blank sites that
misbehave outside of IE, there is an extension to Firefox that allows
you to view pages as if in IE (only if you're running Windows or MacOS,
of course). Open source programs are currently less
prone to viruses, but once the whole world is using them, hackers will
attack them too, so that's not something to count on forever.
Double-click installation.
All of these programs
rely on contributions of time and/or
money to remain viable. If you find them useful, please do what you can.
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A
"productivity suite"