I’ve started my quest to learn how to use Adobe After Effects, and what better way to start than with Lightsabres!

The overall guiding rule here is that the software has to be free and still be actively developed by it’s makers and, or community in the case of open source software.

In many cases you’ll already have paid-for software on your system that does the same job, but if for example, you find paying $50 a year for virus protection a bit steep, I have here the answer to your woes.

• Browser – Firefox
  

Firefox is the most popular alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 26% of the market share as supposed to Explorers 65%. That might sound a big difference but it used to be bigger, in 2004 Explorer had a 91% market share.

Explorer comes packaged with Windows when you get your nice new computer and most people use it without realizing there are alternatives.

Much better alternatives as it turns out, Firefox is faster, has better features (many of which Microsoft have copied and implemented in Explorer, such as tabbed browsing), and much more customization with easy to install plug-in, (I might list an essential list of those another time).

Most importantly though it’s free and open source.

Go and download it here.

You could also try Google’s new browser Chrome. It’s also free and open source. It doesn’t yet support plug-ins, but it will do soon. It may eventually become my browser of choice.

• Virus Protection – Avira

I used to pay $50-$70 a year for McAfee Virus Protection. I was great and I never had any trouble with viruses. When I needed to start saving the pennys though I looked for some free alternatives and found quite a few.

The most popular free anti-virus software is AVG, it does a great job and they’ve just released a new version which i haven’t tried yet, but my recommendation is Avira.

I’ve tried both and in one particular case had a virus that Avira picked up and AVG didn’t.

The one disadvantage to Avira is the annoying pop-up ads that appear every time it updates. These can be closes with just one click though and are a small price to pay for a good quality, and free product.

• System Optimization and Cleaning – CCleaner

If you’ve had your computer for a year or more and wonder why it doesn’t run as fast as it used to, takes about half an hour to boot up and maybe even crash once in a while. You probably need to give it a good spring clean.

I’ve seen ads on the TV for computer ‘experts’ that with make you system run like new again and charge you probably $200 for the favor. What they actually do is probably just run CCleaner.

Again its free, will delete all unnecessary internet files (left over from years of browsing) and clean-up the system registry of files that get left behind when you uninstall programs.

It’s quite painless to use and you should see a noticeable difference in you system speed (especially if you’ve had it a few years).

Find it here.

• Spyware and Other Malicious Software Protection – Search and Destroy

The paid-for anti-virus software usually comes with this built in and for the free ones it’s usually the ‘paid’ feature. Luckily there are free and just as good alternatives.

Search and Destroy with do exactly what it says, search your system and destroy all dodgy spyware that will be on your system if you browse the net. If you’ve never checked for spyware on your system before check it now, you’ll be surprised by how much crap it finds.

Find it here.

So that’s my list of Essential stuff. I’ve enjoyed writing this so I might do another one soon with some more free software that’s not quite so essential, but just as useful.

You can also subscribe to our channel and receive an update each time we add a video.

If you have a Youtube account be sure to add us as a friend.

Here is the link.

I could write a huge list of movies that came out in 2008 that I still want to see, they’ll be lots of DVD renting going on this year

So in saying that this is my slightly warped top 5 list of movies I did manage to see.

5. No Country For Old Men

Thought this was a great film from the Coen Brothers, Javier Bardem was excellent and I had a bit of a freak-out moment when I realised Josh Brolin was one of the kids from The Goonies.

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4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Written by its leading man Jason Segel and featuring one of Val’s favourites, Russell Brand. This comedy is top notch stuff.

The best movie featuring a Dracula puppet musical that you’ll probably ever see.

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3. Once

Set in Ireland and staring Glen Hansard (the singer from The Frames), Once is a musical unlike any you’ll have seen before.

Shot with a low budget and featuring a brilliant soundtrack Val and I loved this movie and watched it quite a few times last year.  We’ve listened to the soundtrack album loads too which includes the Oscar winning song (falling slowly).

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2. Ironman

Over shadowed slightly by The Dark Knight, Ironman was an excellent film and the once troubled Robert Downey Jr was well cast as the troubled billionaire turned superhero.

Not taking itself too seriously, it got the perfect balance between action, plot and quality performances.

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1. The Dark Knight

Good and evil, peace and chaos, Batman and the Joker are two sides of the same coin.

A better film than even the biggest fan-boys dared dream it could be, The Dark Knight was the must see film of 2008 for me.

Heath Ledgers performance was simply staggering.

Is this the pinical of the current superhero movie trend, probably.

My amazingly talented Aunty Lynn sent us this beautiful painting for Christmas.

It’s a picture of Ella and me entitled “Paddling With Daddy”

I thought I’d show it off here. It is now proudly hanging on our living room wall. You can see a few more of her paintings here including the full size picture version of Paddling With Daddy.

Thanks again Lynn, it was the best present ever.

It can basically turn any website into a social network, and I though I would give it a try here on Our Life Down Under.

You can sign-in with your existing Google, Yahoo or Open id so it’s pretty easy, as most people will already have these.

Hopefully it will add some nice features to the site. Leave some comments and let me no what you think.

If you click on the Music tab at the top of the page you’ll find my album can now be downloaded directly from this site.

There is also a link to it’s itunes page, but to get it from itunes you’ll have to buy it.

Also, i’ve fix the RSS Feed now, so by clicking the tab at the top you can subscribe to updates in various ways including email and your favourite RSS reader (personally I preffer Google Reader)

If you forget and type in www.simonpither.com, don’t worry, that will now redirect you to this new address.

My advice would be to Bookmark this new address and use that.

Hope you enjoy the new look. Expect it to change a bit in the coming weeks as I tinker with it.

I discovered this game on Thursday and spent most of the day and night playing it. It’s so much fun and very addictive.

You build little (or big) contraptions to get an object to its goal. It sounds simple but the levels get increasingly more complicated and the contraptions end-up needing to be more ingenius. Val is even enjoying it too. I would highly recommend wasting some hours or days of your life playing it.

It’s free and you can find it here.

I might have mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again now.

Twitter is not that easy to explain, but pretty easy to use. It’s basically a way to sent a lot of text messages at once, by sending just 1 text message to twitter. Everyone that has signed up to follow you on there Twitter account will recieve the message you send.

From the Twitter website :

Now we thought it would be cool to get a bit of a Twitter thing happening amongst our friends and family, so go over to Twitter here, and sign up, and remember to activate your mobile phone to receive your Twitters with. You will find my account here and Val’s here. Happy Twittering!