Was able to get a little more Minecraft recording done over the weekend, and here is the fruits of my labor.  Today’s episode is all about cleaning up the main room above the mines to give it a more home-like feeling.  I’ve put down floors, fancy walls and get some more of the basic necessities up and running. Feel free to leave your comments either here or on YouTube – and while you are at it – subscribe to me on YouTube too!

Here is a little more about the program from the developers:

GridMove is a program that aims at making windows management easier. It helps you with this task by defining a visual grid on your desktop, to which you can easily snap windows. This program comes bundled with some predefined grid templates, that can be easily swaped, but also has ways of creating custom grids or sharing grids made by others.

GridMove really helps keep your desktop organized.  After playing with it a few days, I have found just about the perfect setup for myself and I can tell my workflow has increased a lot.  Some of the additional features include:

• 3 different interaction methods to suit everyone’s likes
• Several pre-made grid templates that can be easily swapped
• Ability to set windows on top and maximize them vertically or horizontally
• Full keyboard support, which can organize windows with one hotkey press
• MultiMonitor Support
• Customizable hotkeys
• Customizable interface
• Possibility to create dynamic custom grids

Want to give it a shot? Go download it for free (for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7) from the official GridMove website.

The interface of this music player is very familiar if you have used iTunes or anything similar to that in the last few years.  You have your tracks listed in the main window, different folders and collections in the far left pane and you can also use it to listen to internet radio too.  Internet radio providers Last.fm, SomaFM, Magnatune, Icecast and Jamendo are all supported.

Clemintine has a lot of great features, here are a few worth mentioning:

• Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
• Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
• CUE sheet support.
• Visualisations from projectM.
• Lyrics and artist biographies and photos.
• Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC.
• Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organise your music.
• Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz.
• Download missing album cover art from Last.fm.
• Cross-platform – works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Native desktop notifications on Linux (libnotify) and Mac OS X (Growl).
• Remote control using a Wii Remote, MPRIS or the command-line.
• Copy music to your iPod, iPhone, MTP or mass-storage USB player.
• Queue manager.

If you are looking for a new way to listen to your music and your current music organizing program is giving you the blues, be sure to give the Clementine Music Player a download. It has a familiar interface and is really easy to use.

Here is a little more about the program from the developers:

The software allows various background colors, with optional gradient effect, to be set for the desktop notes. You can also customize the font of each note and set it to be semi-transparent so it will not fully cover up your desktop background or icons. To fully protect your privacy, the software encrypts the login password with the irreversible SHA algorithm and also encrypts data files.

You can also style Efficient Sticky Notes to match your wallpaper or desktop, search through past notes you have taken, and recover notes that you may have accidently deleted by mistake too.

Want to try the program out for yourself? Head on over to Efficient Software and give it a download!

This problem has happened to us all.  We try a program, decide we do not need it but something goes wrong when we try to uninstall it.  Either the uninstaller of the program in question was poorly written or Windows is borking something up in the process.  If you want to uninstall the uninstallable then you need to check out  Revo Uninstaller.  This program promises to uninstall almost any program out there.

Revo Uninstaller does have a premium version with a few more perks, but today I will be looking at the free version of the software. Here is a little more about the uninstaller from the developers:

The Uninstaller tool lists the installed programs and components for all and current user. With a choice of views, as well as a context menu, information on program components is available: program properties, their registry entries and links to manufacturer’s web site, for a start. The "Search" option finds installed applications just by typing the first few letters of their name. Revo Uninstaller Pro scans for leftovers with even more advanced algorithms that are so precise, fast and very effective in search for leftovers of Windows Services, Drivers, File associations, Shell Extensions, COM components, Windows Installer components, program settings and more!

As you can see from the picture above, this program scans your computer and tries to find all the program you have installed and will allow you to uninstall any of them.  This comes in handy when you run into a program that simply will not uninstall itself from your PC.  If the program is running but you do not know what it is called or how to reach the settings for it you can use Hunter Mode.  Hunter Mode brings up a simple target that you can drag and drop on top of the program giving you trouble.  Once you do, that program will be uninstalled.

Pick up the free version of Revo Uninstaller for the next time you run into an uninstalling problem on your own computer.

Looking for a minimalistic way to keep track of what you need to get done? Wunderlist is a great application for the job.  I have tried many of the to-do list mangers out there and Wunderlist is by far the best looking, and possibly one of the most functional I have used.

Once installed, the first thing you will notice is that this is a great looking program.  It is very stylish and sleek. 

On the right side menu, you can add categories of to-do lists you need to create.  For example, you could have one named personal (for your personal to-do list items) and the other named work (for your work related projects). Then all you need to do to add things to your to-do lists is type out a short message in the box labeled, "Add your task here" and then hit the Enter key on the keyboard.  Add stars to give certain to-do list items more importance and clear things off by clicking on the check mark box to the far left. 

Now, that is not to say Wunderlist is without its flaws.  One thing that bugged me was there was no real documentation on how you use the program.  You just pretty much have to figure it out. Right now, there is no way to sync your usage either to a mobile device (however, that should be coming soon). Wunderlist also needs to be able to minimize too.  I’d rather it live by my clock rather than take up space as another item in the task bar.

Pick up the task management application Wunderlist (available for both Mac and Windows) and let me know what you think.

I am a junky when it comes to notes.  I love taking notes, I love having notes, and really notes are how I am able to get as much as I do done on a day to day basis.  With that said, I thought I would give Notes on Top a shot.  This freeware program for Windows gives you a simple way to create a checklist and always keep it on top of your other windows.

This application is a smart and easy to use notes program. With it by your side, you always have access to your notes, while you are working away at your desk PC.  The notes can also be divided into several user-defined categories too.  So, if you have a hard time keeping track of what you need to do or have done before, this lightweight program would be your perfect companion. 

There are no bells, no whistles – just a simple program that does its job and does it well.  The requirements are pretty simple to give Notes on Top a shot.  You just need to make sure you have Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

 Download Notes on Top and let me know what you think.

When you go to set up your first blog though it, you will notice that it supports a wide variety of services. You can blog through Windows Live Spaces or set it up to work with an external service – like an installation of WordPress on your web hosting account.

The fact that it downloads part of your theme to show you how your blog post will look on the Web (via the Preview tab) is also a really nice touch.

Here are some of the other features worth mentioning:

• Image border treatments (including Instant Photo)
• Crop and tilt photos
• Insert multiple photos
• Toolbar alignment commands enabled for images
• Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
• Insert and publish video to YouTube
• Server-side tagging (for supported blogs)
• Type-down filtering in the Open dialog
• Twitter, Digg and Flickr Plug-ins
• Improved blog account setup

If you are using Windows, there really is no better blogging tool out there.  I have tried a lot of them, and time after time I keep coming back to Windows Live Writer.

Pick up Windows Live Writer today and give it a shot.  If you have a better suggestion, I’d also love to hear about it in the comments.

Tired of searching for new wallpaper monthly or even weekly, to keep your desktop decorated?  Maybe you are looking for a program that will do the work for you?  John’s Background Switcher will take your boring desktop and decorate it with photos from a number of different sources automatically.

Once you have it installed, the first thing you will want to do is select a new default set of pictures for it to grab wallpaper from.  You can add pictures from your PC, Flickr, Facebook, Vlad Studio, RSS feed, Phanfare, SmugMug, Picasa, Webshots, Google image search, Yahoo image search and Bing image search.

Here is a little more about John’s Background Switcher from the developer:

JBS sits in your system tray (down by the clock) and changes your background at the time interval of your choosing. You tell it where to get pictures from and how to show them – maybe you just want to see one photo at a time or maybe you’d like to see a ‘Snapshot Scrapbook‘ of photos thrown across your desktop. It’s up to you and you never know what’s coming next!

By default your switching options are set to every hour, scale and crop to full screen, and to use the same picture on multiple monitors.  These three settings can be tweaked though to fit your needs.

Go download John’s Background Switcher and tell me it isn’t the best background switcher for Windows out there today.

I have mentioned in the past having trouble with using my old Logitech Precision gamepad with some games, or have said I would love the ability to use it with some flash games that are out there.  Xpadder, a free program for Windows, has saved the day for me.  Xpadder is a kind of keyboard to gamepad translation too.

The main purpose of this freeware is to simulate keyboard key presses or mouse movements using a gamepad.  Xpadder comes in handy when you want to use a controller to play PC games with no joystick support, like old DOS games, flash games, and more.

Here are some of the features of Xpadder:

• Full keyboard and mouse emulation
• Rumble support for capable controllers
• Constantly updated controller database
• Multiple profile management
• Advanced fine-tuning options
• Low CPU and memory usage

So with Xpadder, I can play games like Super Mario Bros X and Super Mario Crossover with no issues at all, using my cheap USB controller, rather than the keyboard.

Want to give it a try?  You can download Xpadder for free, at Xpadder.com.