Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has over 20,000 books online that are free for the download. The number of volumes keeps increasing. Many of the books are copyright free, which means they are older books. There are plenty of classics to choose from and some of them include illustrations.

The secret of being boring is to say everything.
:: Voltaire

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
 As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
 Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same;
 Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
 Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

Í say more: the just man justices;
 Keeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -
 Chríst. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
 To the Father through the features of men's faces.

:: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Those pesky files you can't delete

I am disturbed by the increasing number of uninstalls that finish unsuccessfully because a file is locked or in use. Part of the uninstall process should anticipate and deal with those issues. There are options, however, so don't fret. Here they are, in no preferred order:

• Stop explorer.exe, go to the command line to delete your file, then restart explorer.
• Boot from the Windows cd and go into recovery mode. Then go to the command line to delete the file.
• Use the program Unlocker. It's freeware and it's easy.
• Use the program Process Explorer from sysinternals. Use the search tool (ctrl F) to find the file, then close the handle of that file. Now you can go to the command line or File Explorer and delete it.

There is a handy article from the folks at Geeks Are Sexy which provides more details for each of these strategies.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.
:: Friedrich Nietzsche

Xplorer2

Xplorer2 is a powerful, tabbed, dual-pane file manager with more features than the default file explorer that comes with windows. There is also a lite version that is free but still is packed with most of the features of the full version. Download it and give it a try.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
:: Voltaire