If you’ve been watching way too many Space:1999 re-runs like I have lately, you might have gotten the urge to travel through space and explore the universe. If so, here’s a neat little portable app to help you do that; it’s called Celestia and it’s available at portableapps.com. Here’s an image of the Moon:

The portableapps version is for Windows, but if you go to the Celestia web site, you’ll also find versions for Mac and Linux.

Here’s a fun little weekend project to do: make a wall sized poster to decorate your room.

There are two portable tools to help you do this. The first is Rasterbator, which now has a portable version of their online image rasterizing software. Check out their gallery for inspiration and to get an idea of how the images will look like. You can play with the size of the dots to get different effects and sharper pictures.

The second tool you can use is posteriza. This software produces picture quality images (it’s not made of dots like the Rasterbator).

One of the biggest gripes I have with my iPod Classic is the fact that it does not play AVI format video files. 3GP Converter is a Windows-based lightweight and portable software for converting your videos to several formats, including iPod.

After you unzip the download, click on setup.exe to select your preferences. If you’re converting for iPod, scroll down the list of models and select “Model: MP4, for iPod“.

Then, run the 3GP_Converter.exe and drag your AVI files in the top area where it says “Drag and Drop Files Here“. Don’t forget to select an output directory.

3GP Converter does an excellent job at converting videos and it’s really easy to use.

Textwedge is a portable text file splitter. Text splitters have various uses, but they are invaluable if you have an iPod and love to read ebooks due to the 4 KB file size limitations it imposes.

How to Split eBooks for your iPod

Step 1: Open up Textwedge and select Dialogs from the main menu.

Step 2: In the Dialogs menu, select Configure Standard Splitting.

Step 3: In the dialog box, enter 4000 bytes in the Maximum chunk sizes text box.

Step 4: Now you’re ready to load and split a file. To do that, select Load & Split from the File menu.

[UPDATE: See TextWedge File Splitter for an easy-to-use solution for splitting text files for your iPod.]

I recently got an iPod Classic, and I hoped it would make a good ebook reader to replace my very excellent but dying Palm Tungsten. Well, it turns out it isn’t; there are no reading features important to obsessive ebook fans: no automatic scrolling, no screen reverse (black background, white text for nice relaxing nighttime reading), no bookmarking and no support for multiple file formats – only text (this is almost as frustrating as its lack of support for AVI video files!). But worst of all, text files have a size limit: 4 KB!! You can load any size text file on your iPod, but when you view it, it will truncate it and show you only 4 KB worth!!

Not to be outdone by my iPod, I was determined to find some workarounds. I wasn’t able to find portable (i.e. no install) software solutions yet, but if anyone knows of any, please let me know!

iPod library (Windows) takes care of managing your ebooks: you can convert from PDF, HTML, TXT, LIT into split-up text files that resepct the size limit and you can use it to add and remove ebooks (although this is just as easily done using Windows Explorer and going to your Notes directory on your iPod).

There is also an online solution at eBook Hood for converting (that is, splitting up your document into smaller text files) your text, RTF, HTML and RSS feeds.

If your MP3 player (non-iPod or iPod) displays photos but not text, you can download this utility called eBook to Images (Windows). This software turns your books into graphic files.

Finally, you can head over to http://ebookhood.com/catalog to download free, ready-to-go books for your iPod.

Portable Apps has released a portable CD Ripper and converter called BonkEnc.

Download at: www.portableapps.com

The app is easy to use, runs on Windows (and Linux with Wine) and offers support for 32 languages! And it only takes up about 4 MB on your flash drive!

Lifehacker blog pointed out this nifty little stickies app for Windows called Hott Notes. A free app with lots of neat features like alarms, checkboxes and a desktop manager so that you can archive your notes and manage them more easily. Make sure to select the Portable Edition from the author’s website if you want to carry it around on your flash drive.

I have been typing like a maniac since installing the awesome Q10 editor – a simple full-screen editor whose slogan is: your inner critic will hate this editor. This small (400 KB, or 900KB for the spell checker version), completely portable editor is for Windows only.

Opening up Q10 blackens your screen, and displays eye-friendly orange text, reminding me of my beloved old 286 computer. You can change these colours as your moods dictate; the background and foreground colours are customizable, as are font and font size. Another cute touch is the typewriter sound effects, which can be turned off for your more introspective writing moods.

Q10 is really great for writers who need to track word, pages, paragraphs or character counts. The values are all updated in real-time, and can be displayed at the bottom of the screen to help cheer you on. It has autosave (customizable to save every x minutes or every paragraph, etc), autotext, margin settings, paragraph indentation, spell checker and more, without being distracting. It provides save status too (an asterisk denotes an unsaved document), which is a must for obsessive writers like me.

Another handy feature is the timer. If you’re a procrastination expert, writing in timed sessions really helps get the job done! I usually use Instaboss, which is based on the Dash method (work a certain amount of time, take a break, repeat); however, having the timer within the same app is even better! You can even set targets, like 250 words or 1 page for example, and it will let you know, unobtrusively in the status bar, that you’ve reached your target.

Q10 is restful on the eyes, helps you to focus on your writing and gives you helpful tools and feedback, like a timer and real-time word counts, that help stimulate your writing. It makes writing fun again!

BPM Notepad is a really simple portable app that allows you to automatically scroll down a text file at variable speeds for hands-free reading. It’s especially targeted to guitar players who need to scroll down a tab while playing – really useful!

Platforms: Windows, Linux
Size: about 2 MB

I recently talked about a single-pane outliner, and decided to try out a two-pane outliner called The Guide. It’s a lot more feature-rich and mature compared to TKOutliner. Outliners are great for planning out your writing, storing information and even managing your to do lists. The Guide is great for planning your outline and offers a second window so that you can continue working and expanding your ideas. It has the look of a Windows help file but of course allows full rich-text editing and allows you to change background colour (for those who get headaches staring at a white background). Another really nice feature is that it can act as a lightweight wiki, storing all your information in one place : you can add internal (and external links) and can easily find information with the useful search features.

The Guide is completely portable, and less than 1 MB! All your work can be exported to RTF format.