I love my fonts almost as much as I love my morning coffee (which, for a resident, means a lot) — but after I started looking into exactly why Paint.NET started hanging with after trying to select a font, I started finding out that fonts as a whole may be a problem for general computer efficiency.

I don’t have a fast PC. Its about 4 years old, and at 2.3Ghz / 1Gig Ram its pretty slow. Everything loads slow; multi-tasking often gives it angina, and having more than 10 tabs open on Firefox often pushes it into frank heart attack mode.

What I’ve discovered — through LifeHacker, natch, is that having thousands of fonts on your PC can be a top 3 reason why windows become laggy.

According to a study, “fonts” were sandwiched between Norton Antivirus 2006 and followed by Yahoo Instant Messenger.

So — I tried it out.

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Paint.NET is a (very) small paint application that is currently making the ’rounds around the blogosphere.

A few thoughts.

* its about 3 MB: pretty small for a windows app, until you recognize that it needs a .NET framework, which is 20MB and is a pretty slow install. Since .NET (as I understand it) is a library of functions that a program can use, the ‘3MB install’ is a bit misleading

* its fast: this is true; it loads quickly (ONE MISSIS — *) and it closes quickly. It uses not a heck of a lot of resources as well.

* there are tutorials: man, the existence of tutorials are so important it cannot be overestimated. Not only do the tutorials show you how to do “stuff”, but it also illustrates what the program is capable of

* its limited: if you’re used to Photoshop, there’s a learning curve, as I’m learning myself. There are quite a few things that are similar (layers), and others that are not (no blending options?!)

Now, I’m talking from the point of a ‘web designer’, and not a photoshopper here (so I’m not going to talk about “RAW” capability — although it has none, or the ability to get rid of red-eye and so on).

But the more and more you go through the tutorials, the more you begin to wonder — is Photoshop making me “lazy”? Because to do relatively easy and “built-in” functions such as a gradient fill in and shadows take multiple steps, or require separate scripts(!) to do transparency tricks. Answer: “no”. Rather, Photoshop has gone through multiple iterations to include a few really useful tools … that Paint.NET doesn’t seem to have (correct me if I’m wrong here, folks).

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So today Chris Pirillo rants a little about Vonage, which I think is a good thing. God knows there are enough ads for it everywhere, and the hype machine is ramping up with their new dongle.

I’m a bit of a tech-nut/ geeked-out-spaz, so I’ve often thought about a VOIP service as an alternative to our current almost-monopoly here in Toronto Canada (Bell, now Rogers as well).

I mean $39/ mo with unlimited calling and lots of free extras sure as hell beats our current bill every month (almost double that). But having said that, VOIP isn’t for me — and may not be for you either.

Here are my reasons.

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So on my machine, portforwarding is kind of a must to get the p2p factory working right.

If its not done right, there is a noticable difference … d/l rates can go from 5kbs –> 100kbs if done right.

Currently using uTorrent: great, because its small footprint (compared to azureus), and ease of use.

There is another post on this topic somewhere (I may have to actually input into this system!) but my tips goes as follows

1) Make sure that the network IP is correct!
a) Start –> Run –> cmd –> “ipconfig”
b) Determine the ip for this machine
c) 192.168.0.3 is the most common one
d) It will dynamically change if your computer reboots.
Go to NetRouter, and change the port forwarding so it recognizes the computer you’re operating from …
… that is, give THAT ip address!

2) For uTorrent anyway — UNDO the “uPNP”
a) For some reason uTorrent tries to automatically “map” the port, which� may not be as effective as “port forwarding”, therefore (since it does this trhough upnp) UNDO this!

http://www.pando.com — one of the new web2.0-ish personal p2p services, allows you to send large bulky files pretty effortlessly.� However, it requires a small download-of-a-client.� Apparently, it works by (I think) two non-competing ways; both the sender AND giant “telenodes” can act as a ’sender’ of sorts of the file.� I think the telenode will act if your computer isn’t on, or isn’t running Pando.� I haven’t bothered looking harder than that.� At any rate, the sending rate is pretty good … it vascillates between 5kb — 300kbs pretty quickly; nevertheless … its able to send about 300mb/h –> 300mb/60min –>5mb/60sec –>80kb/s … not too shabby!

Have tried this with Darren, Dorothy and Jason, all to great success so far.

NB, you can even “forward” a file once you’ve “sent” it once, saving you the bother of ‘uploading’ it or ‘packaging’ it.
However — the uploaded file only stays valid for about 14d, otherwise you’ll need to do it again.

Razer Diamondback (Razerzone.com is down(!)) Plasma Limited Edition for $70.

1600DPI, 5.8MP, 6400+ FPS capture, 16Bits, high motion dettection 40 inches per second

Also note:

“Razer was not only one of the first to be bold enough to release a 1600dpi mouse, but have taken it a step further with the plasma and have added the first ever infrared optical sensor for optics powered by Razer Precision.? Yes, that means it is invisible.? No more red glow emanating from the bottom of the mouse.? The bottom features some rather large Teflon feet for smooth tracking on any surface.”

Reviews:
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/razor_diamondback_mouse_4.php

http://www.extrememhz.com/dbplasma-p1.shtml

New Speakers!

Logitech Z4 — 80watts or 40watts each.

The last one was getting all crackly and stuff.

I think it was because I have started playing half-life 2/ counter-strike source agian … maybe the sound of guns going off or something.