Indispensable tools for the Writer – for free

There are several tools I find almost indispensable as a writer and for the most part, I’m quite happy with the ones that I use.  Still, that doesn’t stop me from going on a hunt every so often to see what’s new out in the world of the Free because in my world according to my husband I can never have too many open source software programs to explore.  Perhaps you’ll find a few that you can throw in your own writing tool box for good measure.

Voice recognition software

Technically, this first program doesn’t fall in either the “open source” or “free” category but if you are a writer with carpel tunnel syndrome (CTS) you’ll know where I’m coming from by putting this tool at the top of the heap.   For anyone who suffers from the pain that CTS can generate, a voice recognition program is definitely indispensable – even if you don’t make your living from writing.  As much as I’d like to take on the expense of King of the Hill software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, I’ve decided to use the program that I’ve already paid for in my Operating System.  Vista hasn’t done a bad job with their Speech Recognition feature.  It was quite simple to set up and train and over all it doesn’t take too long to get use to using it adeptly.

Each tool has a job – Wire Work

“You’re only as good as your tools”. If you’re the “McGiver” type, then anything will do in a pinch. My husband is great with “McGiver-isms” and I’ve even used some of his gizmos in my work. However, if you are serious about Wire Working – the best tools are those designed for the job.

Depending upon where you purchase your tools from, will dictate just how much you pay for them – I once purchased a Ring Mandrel from a local jewelry design shop and paid $34 for it. I could have easily bought an inexpensive $9 plastic mandrel but the extra that I spent garnered me a mandrel that not only is heavy enough that I could probably break a few bones in my foot if it ever fell on it, but it also stands up exceptionally well to wire and mallet work.

Have you tried Xara Xtreme? Perhaps you should

As an artist I love messing around with Photoshop and Illustrator or any graphical program for that matter but the other day I was surfing around and came across Xara Xtreme.  I decided to download the trial version and then grabbed a few images to play with.  The ease with which you can extract images from their backgrounds was what really got me excited.

Xara Xtreme still has a few clunky operations that I’d like to see rounded out a bit more – the 3D extrude for one – now to be fair, I haven’t yet explored whether or not I can break apart images and apply the 3D abilities to just portions rather than the entire image, so I’ll be investigating that shortly.

Intuitive Tool

Overall, Xara Xtreme is quite intuitive and very easy to work with.  It isn’t Illustrator by any means and those who are strong graphics users will not find  Xara Xtreme a replacement by any means, but for anyone who wants quick work made of image manipulations – it’s worth downloading the trial and seeing if it might not be one of the programs that can enhance your work a bit or make some things that you do in other graphics tools, a little quicker or easier to manage.

Here’s a Review done on Xara Xtreme that provides an overview of the program for those interesting in learning more from a source other than the company’s website.