A Short List of Useful Windows Programs

I made this list useful of Windows programs for my own reference, but I thought I'll add a bit more description and share it online in case it helps anyone else. I didn't include programs which everyone knows about (e.g. Microsoft Word, Spotify, various messaging apps...), nor programs for specific things which, if you are into that thing, you most likely know about (e.g. Affinity for photo editing, DaVinci Resolve for video).

Every program on this list is free, some are open-source, and they all work on Windows. Some of them have Mac or Linux versions too, just check their websites to be sure.

Utilities

Flow Launcher: Multifunctional but minimalist search window – this is what the Windows Start Menu could have been. It stays hidden and out of your way, but you can press Alt+Space (or other hotkey of your choice) to launch it and instantly search for installed apps, files and folders. You can also use it as a calculator (it automatically copies the result to your clipboard), for terminal commands (e.g. > regedit launches the Registry Editor), and to directly search bookmarks, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and various other sources. This page lists some of its most useful features, but there are many more. It also has themes, like the translucent theme shown here.

TeraCopy: The native Windows Explorer copy-paste function is good enough for most purposes, but when I need to copy large volumes of data, such as backing up my hard drive to an external SSD, I use TeraCopy. It has some handy features like the ability to pause a transfer, set up a transfer queue, and automatically shut down my PC when the transfer completes. At other times, I deactivate or uninstall it; otherwise each time I paste a file, Windows asks if I want to use TeraCopy or Explorer.

FreeFileSync: Speaking of backing up, FreeFileSync is what I use, every few months, to sync my hard drive to an external SSD. It can be set up to scan and sync only files which have changed, which is faster and cleaner than wholesale copy-pasting or overwriting.

LocalSend: I use this to transfer files from my PC to Android phone, and vice versa. You can open LocalSend and drag-drop files or folders into it. But usually it's even faster to simply right-click on an item, and LocalSend comes up as one of the sharing options.

WinDirStat: I haven't actually used this program, but if I ever need to free up space on my hard drive or external drives, I believe it will be useful. It can scan your drive and display files and folders as proportional blocks (larger blocks mean bigger files). It can even scan for duplicates, though I believe there are other dedicated apps which are more efficient at this particular task.

Docs and media

Foxit PDF Reader: My default PDF reader. It has some basic features like highlighting and comments, but when I want to do more, e.g. merging, deleting or rearranging pages, I use PDF24. There's also a browser-based version, but I prefer the app for privacy.

ExcireFoto 2022 Light: Photo organization and searching. Later versions are paid, but I'm happy with the 2022 free version for now. It lets you create collections, rate and tag photos, search across folders – many of the things that people use a Lightroom catalog for, but at 0% of the price.

HandBrake: Video transcoder for converting video from or to nearly any format. It's also good at compression; I use it to get my DaVinci Resolve exports down to a manageable size before sharing them online.

Snipping Tool: Print Screen on steroids. This comes pre-installed with windows, but I include it here because it does a lot more than just take screenshots. For example, it has a timer if you want to take a screenshot after a few seconds, a text extractor for OCR, and a colour picker which can display the hex value of any on-screen pixels.

Bandicam: Screen recording software. Snipping Tool can capture video too, but Bandicam has some additional features which are good for demos and tutorials. For example, you can customize how the cursor looks, add sound effects for mouse clicks, and display keystrokes.

Plex: Turns your computer into a streaming hub for other devices on the same wi-fi network. I have movie or video files on my computer which I sometimes want to watch on a smart TV. I used to do this via native Windows screen-mirroring, but I recently discovered Plex (thanks, Google AI) and it has been an absolute game-changer. Once you add your media files to the Plex library, it displays them in a Netflix-like interface, and even includes posters, synopses, cast and subtitles. The TV remote can be used to play, pause, skip – basically the experience is just like using Netflix or any other streaming service, but with locally-stored files.

If you have any more recommendations, let me know!

Tintin, Enhanced

I have a new lock-screen background for my PC which is from the cover of a Tintin book, Red Rackham's Treasure.

I found the wallpaper online, but the image quality was not very good. So I asked ChatGPT to improve the resolution, make the lines crisper and get rid of the jpeg artefacts, but without changing the content.

ChatGPT's first attempt (Edit 1) was too cartoonish – flat and oversaturated. I then requested a do-over, specifically asking it to preserve the hand-painted look of the of the original, and its delicate, less saturated colours.

This last version (Edit 2) is what I now use as my lock-screen. (My active wallpaper is a painting of Guanyin, which you can see in this post.)

Here's a comparison of the three versions:

...and magnified detail:

If you look closely, Snowy's left year is not quite right, and the black reflection lines on the glass have white segments in between which were not there in the original. But these are things which I could have fixed manually, or through another round of prompts. Overall, I was really impressed with how well the AI managed to clean up the image while preserving the organic look of the original.

Pokémon Amidst Hindu Gods

I was invited to someone's house which had a room with various Hindu deities. Among them, I spotted a little kite (it's at the bottom left of the photo below):

The kite had Pokémon characters, which I thought was a pleasing cultural reversal of Lakshmi Amidst Pindou.

Two Changes that Worked

Last month I wrote about habit stacking, which has helped me stick to a daily home-workout regimen.

Two years ago I tried maintaining a wall chart for daily exercise, which worked for a while but eventually failed. This was partly because I sometimes did my workout elsewhere, e.g. at work, while my chart was at home, and as the chart became a less accurate reflection of my habits, I began to backslide on updating the chart and eventually on the exercise itself.

I then tried a phone app called Loop Habit Tracker. I really like the app. It has a clean interface, all the features I need, and (almost) nothing more. But of late, habit stacking has been working well for me, to the point where I feel I don't need the app at all. Still, I like the app so much that I want to try and find some other use for it.

The Guardian has a reader-submitted series called The One Change that Worked. When it comes to daily workouts, habit stacking, for me, has been the one change that worked.

* * *

Speaking of reader-submitted content, this is rather belated, but I was quoted in the Guardian liveblog for the Argentina vs Switzerland Football World Cup game. Screenshot below (the first post is for context; I omitted a few posts in between).

Here's a photo of the flower shop in question:

* * *

Another 'change that worked' is an app called ScreenZen, which has helped cut down the time I spend on social media.

I only use one social media app – Instagram – but I was spending more time on it than I wanted to. Android phones have a native app called Digital Wellbeing, but it only allows you to set a daily limit. In practice, I found that I was often hitting my limit with several hours left in the day. This meant I had to either stay off Instagram for the rest of the day, or override the app which defeats its purpose.

ScreenZen allows you to set a per session limit (mine is 3 minutes). Each time I try to open Instagram, it shows me this screen, which makes me pause and consider if I really want to.

Then, after 3 minutes of use, the same screen pops up again, at which point I generally close the app and get on with my day.

While scrolling through social media, it's unfortunately all too easy to get absorbed and lose track of time. ScreenZen's reminder periodically snaps me out of that stupor and prevents me from binge-scrolling. Ever since I installed it, I have been staying comfortably within my Digital Wellbeing-imposed daily limit.

Home Improvement for Doves

Earlier this year, a pair of spotted doves nested in a corner of our balcony. The location was precarious, and their nest was rickety. Still, they somehow managed to lay eggs, which even hatched.

Unfortunately, that was while I was away; otherwise I would have tried to somehow reinforce the nest. One day there was a storm, and both chicks fell out of the nest and died.

Now the doves have nested again, in a different corner of the balcony. The new nest was equally precarious, but one day while the doves were away, I put a piece of cardboard under the nest, and further reinforced it with rope and a metal clothes-hanger. I hope they have better luck this time.

Edit: It seems dove nests are flimsy by design. There is even a subreddit called r/stupiddovenests.

Pangrams

Two years ago I wrote about mechanical keyboards which I use with my PC. But the OG mechanical keyboard is a typewriter, like my Japanese-made Royal 202 (previously featured here).

The typewritten sheet has four pangrams – sentences which use every letter of the alphabet at least once. A perfect pangram has no repeated letters, so it contains every letter of the alphabet once and only once.

Wikipedia has several examples of English pangrams, as well as pangrams in other languages. Here are my four favourite pangrams and why I like them, in decreasing order of "perfectness":

Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.
26 letters

My favourite perfect pangram. Wikipedia explains it thus:

cwm is a loan word from Welsh meaning an amphitheatre-like glaciated depression, vext is an uncommon way to spell vexed, and quiz is used in an archaic sense to mean a puzzling or eccentric person. Taken together, it means "Symbols in the bowl-like depression on the edge of a long steep sea inlet confused an eccentric person".

Although it uses obscure words and contrived grammar, I prefer it over other perfect pangrams which rely on abbreviations, contractions or proper nouns. And of course, it has the word cwm. One time I wrote a post about a cirque lake (as I called it), and Tommy commented, "I couldn't imagine posting a pic not just of a cwm, but of a cwm in Wales, and not using the word cwm in the accompanying text."

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!
29 letters

This is the shortest pangram I know of which, to me, still sounds sort of natural – like it could be worked into, say, a fantasy novel, without seeming obviously forced or out-of-place. And it scores high on eldritch quality (if that were a criterion), nicely captured by u/joabaldwin in this digital drawing.

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
32 letters

Perhaps the most natural-sounding pangram on the Wikipedia list. At first glance it can even pass for a sentence that might occur in the wild, although if you stop to think about it, "five dozen" is an odd phrase. Unless the jugs come in packs of twelve, which is possible.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
35 letters

Longer than the other examples, but it's the first pangram I ever learned. It's popular for a reason – rolls nicely off the tongue, and scores high on whimsy.

Lakshmi Amidst Pindou

My Chinese friend Muzi recently became interested in Hinduism. She says her favourite goddess is Lakshmi because she is "nonchalant" (Gen Z turns of phrase can be so amusing).

I gave Muzi a little terracotta figure of Lakshmi, and she put it on her dresser alongside various pindou characters. Pindou (拼豆) or Perler-bead craft is apparently trending among young people in China.

Coincidentally, while I was procrastinating over this post, my friend Beverley also posted an arrangement of a female figurine amidst (mostly) Chinese objects. I thought it pairs well with Lakshmi Amidst Pindou, so I asked Bev's permission to share it. A cute detail: the song playing on the iPod is Blink-182's All the Small Things.

Weight Update

Earlier this year I wrote that my weight, for the first time in my life, had crept north of 60 kg, and that I was trying to get it back down. I then neglected to post any updates, no doubt keeping my readers on tenterhooks.

Well, long story short, I got it down to the 59 kg range, then went on a long holiday to Malaysia where I ate out a lot (they have amazing food), and ended up at over 61 kg.

Now it's back under 60 kg, and I plan to keep it that way.

It seems that for me, the most reliable way to reduce weight is to cut down on rice. Just a few days of eating bread, chicken soup and boiled veg for lunch, instead of my usual generous portion of rice, helped me lose around 2 kg. Unfortunately, humans just need rice – or at least, I do.

But that's if I'm trying to lose weight. If I'm just trying to maintain my current weight, it seems I can keep eating rice, as long as I do some light exercise – which I should be doing anyway.

I like sports, but I've never been one for going to a gym or working out for the sake of it. Lately, to help me stick to a light daily exercise routine, habit stacking has been a very useful strategy.

My electric toothbrush has a two-minute cycle with short pauses after every 30 seconds, which is super helpful as an exercise timer. While brushing, I do squats for the first minute, and calf raises for the next minute. This way I'm doing some lower-body exercise at least twice a day.

I shower twice a day, and before each shower, I try to do ten pushups. While boiling water for my coffee, I do some toe-touches. While watching movies or YouTube videos on my computer, I do a few minutes of skipping or light jogging on the spot. And before going to sleep, I do some reclining hip stretches, though I haven't settled on a specific routine yet.

A pretty light regimen, all things considered – but it's better than nothing!