Free Software

Free Software ©

By Michael Casey

I don’t know about you but I do like a bit of free software, and no I’m not talking about ladies knickers either. I mean the programs that you can get off the Internet, the browsers and so forth. Some are faster than others and they have better defences from all the rubbish out there in Cyberland. An adblocker is so useful, as is the ability to click and make something your desktop background, in my case it’s a house from Rightmove.co.uk, I usually pick B17 with a radius of 1 mile, this is where I hope to live when my boat finally comes in, though in my case it’s the Titanic.

Word is like water for me being a writer, though some may choose another word beginning with W, yes Worker as Mr Corbyn would call me, what were you thinking of? I have  Word2010 we got it from a nice Northern Irish company, if anybody wants to give me the latest super duper version I will be very happy, though I did get Libre Office 5 off the Internet just in case of emergencies. You have to have another word package just in case your own package does not work.

You can also get photo viewing software off the Internet too such as Fuji MyFinePix Studio, if you have kids you will no doubt have 1000s of photos of their childhood. In the old days we all had bookshelves of photo albums, nowadays they are on a hard drive on the computer. Behind me up a corner on the bottom shelf of the book shelf are my own original photo albums, I even had dark hair they are so old, I was 20, really 20. I rescued them from a plastic sack under my bed to a place of honour at the bottom of the book shelf next to our Miele vacuum cleaner. We did have boring vacuums but they kept on breaking so in the end we upscaled to a Miele, though I am not allowed to use it as I am just a man.

   

With software you can have fun changing people’s faces and colours, nowadays on tablets you can do the same thing. See software is good, it makes you feel good about yourself, I am talking about the fact I wear women’s under-ware now, what I hear ½ of you exclaim, while the other ½ say I just threw that sentence in to see if you were listening. Maybe I was or maybe I wasn’t, cross dressing is fun after all, it makes my wife cross when I wear her clothes.

There is a bad side to everything, not just cross dressing, ask Eddie Izzard, I won’t speak to him myself. Where was I, I got lost on the page, perhaps I need some satnav to bring my sentence structures  back to where they should be, the point. Ok I’m back to the point now, if you download any rubbish you get a VIRUS, and that’s a right pain in the butt. You can lose everything, such as your mind, your work, your business.

So to start with an antivirus is a must, Avast, Avira, AVG are just three beginning with the letter A, Microsoft has its own one too. You can get free versions as well as full featured ones. 360Degrees  is a Chinese one, that’s super dooper but it has issues with some Microsoft programs, you can have fun trying the software and see if it does what you want it to.

As for browsers Firefox is nice but so in Safari and Opera, does anybody actually use IE or Edge. The thing about software is that it is monitoring you so that they can sell you stuff or advertise to you. Does that make Cortana the local gossip and spy, the little old lady at the back of the church who bitches about everybody as she queues for Confession. You have to make up your own mind on that.

 It’s the same with email, they don’t read it, but they scan inside it, just so they can advertise to you. Try sending a message with the subject line of Michael Casey Birmingham Comedy Writer On Amazon and put a few lines in the message content,  

 http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1     

then send it to a few friends.

Now this is two things, firstly you are spamming your friends telling them to buy my 10 books, that’s the joke within a joke. But it is also something which will be scanned by your email provider and within days you’ll get messages from them with some vague connection to me. I get messages about funerals, and life insurance, I don’t know which order they should really be in, all because they have scanned my emails.

So you get free email accounts that promise never to read your mail, but they all do, of course I would use Hillary Clinton’s server but there is no room on it, besides which as so many emails get lost, my local butcher may lose my order for a Christmas Turkey.

However the good part of free email is that you can store your words of wisdom on the cloud inside your email. So my books are in my email accounts, so if my PC gets hacked and some days it’s so slow I think it is being used as a BodNet, anyway my 10 books my 900,000Words plus are safe on the Cloud as a precaution.  I have to check the chicken in the oven I’ll be back.

Well my chicken is nearly cooked, 3quid  from Aldi, bird in a bag, just cook for 1hour 40, should feed 4 with loads left over. Free Software  is like the chicken it should feed your mind and provide amusing conversation while you consume it, you may argue over who has the leg and who pulls the wish bone. Most important of all scan it before you use any software, otherwise you’ll be stuffed like the chicken. Security is Everything.