Well, now that I'm older, I've found all sorts of cool things on the internet-including free programs, games, and helpful things. So I'm going to share my top 10 favorites with you, because I'll want a list of these later when I go to install them all on my new laptop.
- Noteflight. Need I say more? I love this thing. It's easiest described as Google docs for music composition. I love it and it's WAY cheaper than Finale. And easier to use and share music with people. It has a limited free version, but I'm a happy camper and got the paid version, Crecendo, on sale. And once you sign up, the first price you pay is the price you pay to renew it. I got mine for $30 a year, and it's generally $50. Next year when I renew it, I'll get charged $30, even if there's no sale.
- Gimp. Essentially, free photoshop. And it's easier to use. I've used it for my book cover When the Stars Fall as I mentioned in this post.
- Celtx. I use it mainly for screenplays, since it formats everything nicely, but it sure works great for organizing characters and the like. Wrote Twice Upon a Time on it. My only warning is that Celtx ate 5 hours of my work at the end of June for no reason even though I saw it save. So save often and in several places, and save to the cloud if you can. (I was working on Elli's laptop, and she didn't get internet access at the time)
- Audacity. It's a sound recording program and works well for all the singing videos I do. I use it for anything where I record, and it can do multiple tracks and different effects. Can be a bit glitchy, but I think that's just my computer.
- Dropbox. Yet another way to back up stuff. And you definitely do NOT want to be losing words during NaNoWriMo, not when you're trying so hard to write them.
- Spotify- iTunes+a radio. You can search and listen to any song you want. It runs through a black version of your iTunes, so the music you already have on your computer can get mixed in with the other music. It's free, you can listen to whatever you want, but there are ads every now and then. Still, it's cheaper than buying them on iTunes. They do have premium memberships that cost money to get rid of the ads, but still.
- Astrid. I'm fairly new to this one, but it's a to-do list online. You can prioritize things, assign other people to do things on the list, share it with others, and it even pops up to remind you that you have stuff due. It's even a smartphone and iPad app. A handy thing, but I'm still using the old fashioned mini notebook I keep in my purse. That way, as soon as an instructor assigns something, I can write it down, prioritize it (I use a grading system- A is highest priority, F is lowest) and write the due date. I've got lots of colors, so I color code by class and highlight due dates and things I keep forgetting.
- CCleaner- a lovely thing that helps your computer move faster by cleaning up the junk.
- Synthasia- a fun guitar hero-esque piano thing. You can play midis on it and even use your keyboard to play it like a real piano, but that's hard. There's an option of hooking it up to a midi piano to play, but I don't have that. It's just nice to see what a song would look like being played. Plus, it just looks cool.
- CamStudio- allows you to make a video screenshot. The video's not the best quality and the audio's wonky, but it works.
I'll probably come up with more, but for now, I say sianara.
I'm the one in the teal t shirt- this is from mission, so it's even worse than usual.