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Although each of these applications could be in a category of its own - such as "Office Suites", "Text Editors", or "Virtualization" - I just don't have enough recommendations to justify that. So... here they are on the "Miscelaneous" page.

Name	Description	Comments

LibreOffice	An application suite like MS Office including: Writer - A word processor like MS Word Calc - A spreadsheet like MS Excel Impress - A slide-show tool like PowerPoint Draw - A graphics editor like MS Visio Base - A database tool like MS Access	In the future, LibreOffice could re-merge with its OpenOffice cousin, but as OpenOffice seems to be circling the drain, that doesn't seem very likely.
WinSCP	An FTP and SCP file management tool that includes a full explorer or commander-like interface that even allows remote editing.	I have trouble imagining a better file transfer tool.
PuTTY	Terminal emulation through Telnet, SSH, and serial ports.	Plenty of behavior and connection options, but limited DEC terminal emulations (only VT100+ and VT400).
Notepad ++	A much more versatile replacement for the Notepad included with Windows. Includes many language-sensitive cues and blocking capabilities.	Could almost be considered a development environment - but not quite.
Joomla	A Content Management System that somewhat insulates a designer from hand-coding and architectural issues that distract from content development.	With respect to WordPress and Drupal, Joomla is good balance between ease-to-use and customizable. This site relies on Joomla for back-end processing and provides a decent management interface for the author (me).
Foxit Reader	An excellent, compact PDF reader that installs almost instantly and runs faster than Adobe Reader. It’s also better for filling out and saving forms.	It even includes free-hand markup tools, text conversion capabilities, and a virtual printer for creating PDF files.
VirtualBox	Oracle's well supported hypervisor allows a wide range of hosts and guest operating systems. Some features include hardware-assisted virtualization, snapshots, guest extensions, and network share emulation for host access.	In addition to it's own "VDI" disk images, it can use ones created for VMWare (VMDK) and Microsoft's Hyper-V (VHD). Extensions supporting USB 2.0, RDP, and PXE require a license only for commercial use.
Turnkey Linux	In combination with a hypervisor like VirtualBox or VMWare, Turnkey Linux virtual appliances greatly simplify installation and testing for a wide range of products. These include Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, OpenVPN, OpenLDAP, GIT, OwnCloud, Sugar CRM... and over 80 other pre-built servers.	Easily one of the most useful and timesaving resources in existence. It literally takes 5 minutes to install and start running most of the appliances. My Joomla development environment is hosted on one of these running in VirtualBox on my desktop.

There really isn’t much to say about this section. It's stuff I happen to find funny. Perhaps you'll agree on one or two of these links...

If you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings, you can appreciate the research effort that went into some of these theories. You’ll also wonder how people have so much free time on their hands. These collected usenet posts typically range between bizarre and hilarious.	Tolkien Crackpot Theories
In order to deal with an ongoing news shortage, the Onion has been making it up for over 25 years. Whether making highlighting stupidity, exploring the depths of bad taste, or just rambling psychotically, this pseudo-newspaper is clearly a succesor to the National Lampoon of the 70's. Here are links to a couple of their more restrained articles - and one that was actually taken seriously.	Lobbyist for America NHL Ice Making Kim Jong-Un
The Bulwer-Lytton (bad) Fiction Contest was inspired by the line “It was a dark and stormy night...” from the novel Paul Clifford. Contestants try to write an equivalently awful opening sentence for a hypothetical novel - with results that range from horrible to hilarious.	Bulwer-Lytton Home Yearly Winners
If you've seen the movies, you'll recognize the dialogs. If you haven't, close your browser and go watch them; you have a serious cultural deficiency and may not survive long otherwise. In any case, here are some script fragments with Chico and Groucho characters that I found online - three of which are from the same site: marx-brothers.org	Night At The Opera Duck Soup Horse Feathers Animal Crackers

While a couple of these items may be useful, some are just ummm.... curiosities. Maybe they're not quite as curious as a cat-less grin, but I have spent more than a few minutes exploring these sites. Hopefully something here will catch your attention as well.

Hacker slang from the 70’s at MIT and Stanford was the original content of this file. More recently, various terms have been added from PDP, Unix, PC and other tech cultures. It is also available in print as The New Hackers Dictionary - but the file is more up-to-date.	The Jargon File
This was one of the main distributions of alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54GL router. Depending on the options you chose, it could be a commercial hotspot, an asterisk PBX, a file server, a web server, a firewall, and of course, a really flexible router. Although the 54GL is antiquated by now, a variety of modern hardware is supported - it's even preloaded by one manufacturer.	DD-WRT
These are just plain good to have on-hand. While not exactly entertaining, they print out nicely - so you can stick them on your cubicle wall.	ASCII & HTML Tables
Previously called "Asterisk: The Future of Telephony", it now has a somewhat less pretentious title. Unfortunately, the free version is only available in HTML format (the original 2005 edition was a pdf). Asterisk actually IS quite popular, but like most infrastructure components, you won't notice it unless it breaks.	Asterisk: The Future of Telephony
Apparently, these exceedingly solid, well insulated, and inexpensive buildings are made of just polyester/vinyl sheeting, polyurethane foam, and spray-on concrete - with a bit of rebar for good luck. If I was living in a vacant lot instead of an existing house (and didn't have rectangular furniture) I’d definitely consider one of these structures.	Home Sweet Dome
Credit card numbers are typically 16 digits long. The last four are usually printed on receipts. The first six can be looked up in the BIN database. Let's see... That leaves a grand total of SIX digits that are still secret. Of course, the last digit is a checksum for the previous 15 digits - making those “secret” 6 somewhat less so. But since everyone is so honest, there's nothing to worry about...	BIN Database All About Credit Cards

Like the Caped Crusader’s utility belt, the Internet seems to hold an infinite variety of tools and gadgets that you can easily use through your browser. While an exhaustive list would just be the Google search results for "web utilities", here are a few examples I find particularly interesting and/or useful.

This site offers a several standard IP tools like Traceroute, Whois, and NSLookup all in one place. Conveniently, the default “Express” option automatically does a traceroute, a DNS lookup, a Whois lookup on the DNS host, and a Whois on the specified IP address. This is really handy if you have trouble with these kind of functions behind a firewall.	Network Tools
In addition to having a number of “lookup” tools like the previous example, Whatsmyip.org provides several port scanners that let you check how good your firewall is. Be sure to read the "Attention" note at the bottom.	IP Port Scanner
Of HP’s 10c series calculators, only the 12c is still being sold almost 30 years after its introduction. If you want a classic Financial calculator (but don't have $70 to spend on one) the 12c has been well emulated at this Brazilian site. Incidentally, emulators for other HP calculators - like the 15c and 16c - are also available on this site.	HP 12c Emulator All HP Calc Emulators
With all the major Google products like Streetview, Chrome, and Gmail, the really simple stuff can be easily overlooked. Within Google search there are certain fact-based queries that return "rich answers" without linking anywhere. Stock quotes, weather, sports scores, unit conversion, and census data are a few of the things you get by just typing key words and hitting Enter. For example, if you're hungry try: “1611526157 to hex”.	Google Rich Answers Calculations Cheat Sheet General Cheat Sheet
Static. That’s all it is. But it’s amazing how many uses such true randomness can have. Most stuff from random.org is free and really handy when you need random numbers, strings, dates, locations, prices, sequences, etc., etc....	Randomness
I suppose there are some legitimate reasons people distribute unprintable PDF files - the file is all over the Internet, but they can’t stand the idea of it ending up on paper... hmmm... I suspect, however, that many people just check the wrong box before saving their pdf document. Assuming the contents aren’t confidential, this service will fix that type of file.	PDF Unlocker

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