AmIgA moNtH

   _____            .__                             _____                    __   .__     
  /  _  \    _____  |__|  ____ _____               /     \    ____    ____ _/  |_ |  |__  
 /  /_\  \  /     \ |  | / ___\\__  \    ______   /  \ /  \  /  _ \  /    \\   __\|  |  \ 
/    |    \|  Y Y  \|  |/ /_/  >/ __ \_ /_____/  /    Y    \(  <_> )|   |  \|  |  |   Y  \
\____|__  /|__|_|  /|__|\___  /(____  /          \____|__  / \____/ |___|  /|__|  |___|  /
        \/       \/    /_____/      \/                   \/              \/            \/

June 25th, 2017

It has been a while since I last wrote about applications, seeing Amiga Month is almost over, I thought I would include one that gets used often on my Amiga. It is called "Scout" and it gives me a lot of needed control on my Amiga. Think of it like Window's task manager, or the kill command in Linux. That is what I mostly use it for, but it has several features that could help out an Amiga Guru, I'm sure.

[Scout application]

Here are tasks running on my computer right now, I have highlighted wireless because that is the one I have to close out of often. Wireless, is a little program that loads up the driver for my wireless PCMCIA card - and if I don't close out of it, and pull my wireless card out of the PCMCIA socket it crashes the entire system.

The reason the card has to be removed, is because the interupts that the card uses, are the same ones that WHDLoad uses. If I have the card inserted while trying to play games on WHDLoad, the games crash. Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of, that disables the card via software, so it must manually be removed everytime.

Scout is my go to device whenever I have a pesky program that has crashed, and will not close, every Amiga out there should have this application installed.

[Power Windows]

Here is yet another invaluable application I use, WorkBench 3.1 does not have anyway to minimize the windows you have open, this program "Power Windows" makes minimizing your windows possible. When you are dealing with a display smaller than 800 x 600, this is especially nice to have.

The alternative is to keep cycling through your windows, or close out of them, and reopen them repeatedly. Power windows is a time saver, and I like how it organizes all of the minimized windows and applications up to the right of my screen, where they are easy to access. As much as I love this applications, it can flake out at times, it has crashed my computer a few times when minimizing some application, such as scout - but I have gotten a feel for it, and know how it behaves, I haven't had a crash with it for a while now.

For applications that I can't take a screen shot of, there is Tools Daemon, which puts a tool bar on the top of my screen. This makes finding and opening applications much easier, I have all of my applications sorted by type, such as "multimedia", "Internet", "games", and so on. I even have some of my applications set, so a speech synthesizer will alert me with what is opening.

There are other ways of configuring workbench for ease of use, some people use doc bars, others have their right mouse button configured to open a menu, there is even a windows style start menu. but for me, I like the good 'ol fashion style Toolbar to open applications. It sort of reminds me of the older MacOS.

"Click to front" is another application I find useful. I can double click on any window I have opened and it will bring it to the front of the screen. Without this little applicaton, I would need to move windows around to find, and hit a tiny little button on the upper right of each screen to bring it to the front of the display.

My icons are all from a program called MagicWB, which uses another program called MUI which enhances windows. Without MagicWB, most of my icons would be 2 bit color, and while they do have a cool nostalgic look to them, my preferences are something a little more advanced. Alternatively, there is NewIcons, which also look fantastic, I had that set on my computer first, but I like to spruce things up now and again.

[Personal Paint]

Here is PPaint, a drawing program for Amiga that was very popular in the 90s. I am far from an expert with this program, but it is my favourite out of what I have tried, especially since it can save and load in many different file formats.

This is the program I usually use when images need to be resized, it is the one I made my horrible dragon in ;p It is also the one my daughter uses to draw the end of week picture with.

You can't really compare it to modern paint programs, it just is a relic of it's time, but many people have created really fantastic art with it, and still swear by it. For my daughter, she likes newer programs, and it shows, she really is a fantastic artist, after Amiga Month is over, I'll probably upload some of the drawings she has made, they are great. To say the least, I am jealous of her talent ;)

[Gauntlet III]

And for now, I'm going to play a bit of Gauntlet III. What can I say, I'm enjoying this game the more I play it. It is a shame there is no way to save your progress though, I sort of did earlier, by creating a save state, but after closing out of the game and reopening, it had issues. Bleh, I'll work on that later on. For now I game!

btw, the wallpaper on my desktop (first picture) that you can slightly make out, is of GoldenBoy, a hilarious Anime I suggest any of you who are 18+ to check out. A coworker introduced me to the series back in the 90s, he was a huge fan and had every episode on VHS.

-=Return=-