Smitty.net

In the “I learn something new everyday” department, I ran across this trick for batch renaming photos in Windows XP this morning.

Renaming each file manually is time-consuming, but using this Microsoft Windows XP technique, you can quickly rename a folder of digital photos all at once. When you use this technique on a folder, all the files in the folder end up with a single name (including a sequential number) that relates to the subject of the images.

All of the photo management software has this capability built in, but I never knew it was something that was available as part of XP. Granted it is pretty basic batch rename functionality but it is probably all that most people will need.

Do you use Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0? Are you tired of waiting forever for Acrobat to load when viewing even the smallest PDF? Then you need to upgrade to Acrobat Reader 7.0:

Experience better overall performance for faster launch times and real-time zooming and panning

I saw that this was released a few weeks ago but I was a little gun-shy after my experience upgrading to 6.0. The launch times were unbearable with 6.0. I ran some tests and with 6.0.1, it would load in 25 secs in IE and 21 secs in Firefox. Now, with the new version, it loads in right at 9 secs the first time.

You can download the new Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 here or I ran across this post that had some additional useful information.

Why can’t I just have one piece of software that does everything that I want in regards to photo management? As it stands now, I find myself jumping between Adobe Photoshop Album, IrfanView, PhotoDex and JAlbum to do all the things that I want. And even that list doesn’t quite cover everything that I really want to do.

This weekend is the 3rd annual Austin City Limits Music Festival here in Austin. While Austin City Limits has been around for almost 30 years, the ACL Fest is only in it’s third year. I went all three days the first year and Saturday of last year. Great times. Lots of great music. I was planning to go this year but my friend had to bail out this year since he’s getting married next month.

I thought I would have to miss out on the whole festival but was touring around my Yahoo account that is part of my SBC-Yahoo DSL package. Turns out that because of their partnership and me being a subscriber to SBC DSL, I get full Yahoo benefits. This includes their 2GB mail boxes and many other features including the subscription service to Yahoo’s LAUNCH music and media site. And guess what they are featuring this weekend? Live webcasts all weekend long from the ACL Fest.

Born from the legendary TV show of the same name, the ACL Festival inherits a gold standard of live performance, authenticity, and musical diversity. Over 130 artists will perform over three days for an audience of more than 150,000 music fans. You can attend, too – watch the SBC Yahoo! webcast of the Festival.

So as I sit here composing this post, I am watching and listening to Los Lonely Boys live in concert. They are playing full sets of a number of people. The picture and audio are excellent. I’m actually playing it full-screen on Glenna’s monitor about 7-8 feet away and the picture is almost as good as regular broadcast TV. So instead of sweating like crazy for 11 hours per day this weekend, I can enjoy ACL Fest from the comfort of my own house with AC and unlimited beverages.

Hey look, here comes Sheryl Crow…