I've been trying to keep a journal for a while.  Actually longer than I've been trying to keep a blog, though I've been as successful with one as the other.  That is... not.  I saw a tweet from Jesse Meecham about OhLife, and checked it out.  It seems like a good idea- something in my face might help.  Basically, you sign up, and it sends you an e-mail reminder every day at 8PM to write about how your day was.  You reply, and it appears in your area on the site.  A pretty simple idea... I'm hoping it will work.

http://www.ohlife.com

I just discovered Readability, a bookmarklet that makes it easier to read content that is normally surrounded in clutter.

I'll be honest: I haven't used it yet and I don't have time to look into it and make a decent write up about it, but I thought the good folks here would find it interesting.

Here's a video for a quick introduction: http://vimeo.com/3445774

It has been mentioned here on DC before: Lower The Lights? Easier To Read Websites?

Thanks to Ashraf at dottech: http://dottech.org/f...eeware-reviews/17960 "NirLauncher: Portable application launcher for 100+ portable NirSoft (and SysInternals) programs"

http://launcher.nirs.../utilities_list.html

As some of you know I've caught the board game bug.  More than playing them I enjoy reading about them and thinking about the different mechanics and game design ideas.

I'd like to start a thread collecting various sites and blogs that review board games.  Here's a few to start us of -- fellow board game fans please add more.  I'll link directly to the sites or to DC threads about them:

• BoardGameGeek.com - All things boardgame site with tons of user reviews
• The Dice Tower (Tom Vassel Video Reviews) - One of the best known video review sites
• TheGameCrafter - Cool new site to help you make and sell indie board/card games, with reviews of indie games
• The Great Game Gate - Lots of game descriptions though not very opinionated
• Obessed Board Gamers - Nice long reviews with detailed rule discussion
• Board Games with Scott - Recently switched to a more academic format focusing on comparison of games with certain mechanics to great effect
• Drake's Flames - Good opinionated reviews
• Cracked LCD - good reviews
• BoardToDeath - The funniest review intros

1. Newsletter Editorial

It's 96 degrees out here and time again for another DC newsletter.  The heat seems to be getting to everyone because we've had a couple of arguments flair up on the forum lately, but things seem to be calming down now that the weekend is here.

If you have any interest in scanning software, the one thing you don't want to miss in this newsletter is the link to the giant review of VueScan written by a DC member last week, with some serious scanning tips.  We're also giving away a few copies of VueScan this month to celebrate the review.

DC member skwire has also been up to his usual tricks and has released a bunch of new free utilities based on user requests that you can download.  See the Coding Snacks section below for the new ones, including a cool context menu extension that lets you right-click on an image file and show it's geo-tagged location in your web browser.  This edition of the newsletter also has a big section devoted to announcements from DC members about software projects and blogs that they are working on -- we love to highlight member projects so don't be shy about posting on the forum if you are working on something interesting.

I was also thinking we might take this newsletter as an opportunity to encourage people to check out some of the posts on the forum that have not yet had any replies, and see if any are worth commenting on.  Check the link below for a list of all threads which have not yet had a reply posted.

And lastly, let me remind all coders and friends of coders, that we are approaching the final months of the year when our NANY (New Apps for the New Year) event is going to start kicking into high gear.  Join us by pledging to create and release a new application on January 1st of the new year, and become one of the proud custom mug carrying few who have participated. We need more participants -- so spread the word to your coder friends, and and if you are a coder looking for a kick in the pants to get you to finally finish that project that's been sitting half completed on your hard drive, or to finally implement that idea you've been daydreaming about for years, now is the time!

Martin over at ghacks has written several write-ups of programs that let you customize the context menu in windows explorer / file managers.
Today he writes about and older program called "Fast Explorer 2008", but he has written a whole series of other short articles on similar programs, all worth checking out. 

• ghacks on Fast Explorer 2008 - http://www.ghacks.ne...plorer-context-menu/
• ghacks on Context Menu Enhancer - http://www.ghacks.ne...plorer-context-menu/
• ghacks on XP Context Tools - http://www.ghacks.ne...xt-tools-to-windows/
• ghacks on File Menu Tools - http://www.ghacks.ne...context-menu-editor/
• ghacks on Your Menu - http://www.ghacks.ne...ndows-7-contex-menu/