La Page Links

Chess

Permian Basin Chess Club: The Permian Basin Chess Club was established to promote the royal game of chess around the Permian Basin area of West Texas. The club is an affiliate of the United States Chess Federation (USCF). We conduct monthly officially rated chess tournaments for USCF members and weekly informal club meetings where everyone is welcome and you need not be a member to participate.
We welcome everybody who loves the game of chess, from beginners to masters, young and old!; USCF TD signin; USCF - PBCC page; USCF - MCCC page; US Chess Federation - Member Services Area
The Free Internet Chess Server: Play chess online with HUNDREDS of different people from all over the world, for FREE. Any time night or day. If you think you've played chess online when you went to Yahoo Games or Pogo, think again. Most of their users are "internet game players" who learned chess off-hand in the same manner as learning Tetris. If you want a real game, at any level, you have to go where there are real chess players. FICS has a java interface too, but to get the full experience you need to download-install-configure a Graphical Client Interface for the server. I recommend Babas Chess Client.

STC Bunch: There are many opportunities to play blitz games online, but if you're interested in playing more thoughtful games in which each player has a half an hour or more for their moves, then this is the place for you! We organize slow tournaments, advertise tournaments run by others, and provide a monthly newsletter. Membership is free!
We can be found in channel 90 on the FICS, ICC, and Chess Live servers, so why not join, introduce yourself, and meet some of the hundreds of other members, from all over the world, of the STC Bunch!

Info

Chesscafe.com: Monthly columns by chess personalities
The Week In Chess: Update of what's happening in the world of chess
chess.about.com: A little of everything about chess
Chess Graphics: Chess art
On the Origin Of Chess: Speculations on the origin of the game.
Chesshistory.com: History of the game and the players, warts and all.
Enpassant: A collection of (mostly) free chess software

YouTube - Majnu2006's Channel
YouTube - Brucewallace2's Channel
YouTube - Chessvideos's Channel
YouTube - Madcapslaugh's Channel
YouTube - Grobchess's Channel
YouTube - ChessNetwork's Channel
Chess Killer Tips
YouTube - JRobichess's Channel
Chess Videos TV: ChessVideos.TV offers hundreds of free chess videos made by beginners to international master players. Watch and learn or upload your own!

games

365chess: Free, searchable chess game database, chessboard interface.
NICBase: Free, searchable chess game database, chessboard interface.
Chess Opening Explorer: Free, searchable chess game database and community.
chessopolis.com: This is a web interface to the chess file archive of the University of Pittsburgh Chess Club. Lots of games here.; The purpose of this this-site is to make a database with chessgames available for downloading. At this time there are 16842608 games in the database.
chessgameslinks: Links to game download pages all over the world, in may languages.
mark-weeks.com: Download whole high-level tournament and championship match games.
chessgames.com: Search over 431,000 chess games
Chess Tournament and Match History: Download whole high-level tournament and championship match games.
Pgn Mentor: Download games by player names
G. Ossimitz: Chess Page: Download "Annofritzed" (annotated by Fritz chess program) games in Chessbase format. View in free Chessbase Light.
Chesstempo.com: Tactics training, puzzles, basic services free
Exeter Chess Club: A page for people interested in teaching and learning about chess.

Buy Chess Stuff

chesshouse.com
wholesalechess.com
thechessstore.com
thechesspiece.com
chessexpress.com
amchesseq.com

Freeware Links

Free Windows® software and services I've used and can recommend

= Best

Arasan

Free chess playing program

AxCrypt

Right-click integration with Windows Explorer makes AxCrypt the easiest way to encrypt individual files in Windows.

ATnotes

ATnotes are dragable and resizeable notes that you can stick anywhere on the desktop. Some of the nice things about these handy little notes, is that they are autosizing as text is entered and they offer custom font, background color, text color and border color for each note. ATnotes can also be associated with single or repeated alarms for each note including visual and audio alarm signals. Reminder notes can also be hidden until a specified date/time or minimized to the first line of text and restore the note size to fit the whole text Any URLs, e-mail addresses and file shortcuts in a note can be opened with your browser, email client or with the associated program. In addition, ATnotes offers hotkeys, network sending, search within notes and more.

Audacity

Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

AVG Free

Download AVG's award winning free antivirus, AVG was recently awarded PC Pro's Software of the Year Award 2007 and PC Authority's Highly Commended Award.

BabasChess

BabasChess is a new revolutionary Internet Chess Client for Windows. It combines ease of use with powerful features for advanced users; integrates a fast and customizable playing environment with a powerful PGN viewer/editor, chess engines support for analyzing positions and amusing chat features

BulkRenameUtility

Bulk Rename Utility is a utility which allows you to easily rename files and directories, based upon extremely flexible criteria. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and subfolders....plus loads more!

Bullzip Printer

The BullZip PDF Printer works as a Microsoft Windows printer and allows you to write PDF documents from virtually any Microsoft Windows application.

Not quite as complete as PDFCreator, but more user-friendly.

Calcute

Upgrade your regular Windows calculator: replace it with this unobtrusive scientific tape calculator. With sleek functionality, it improves upon traditional calculators. It can take very little space on your desktop if you want

CCleaner

CCleaner is a tool to clean your system from temporary and unnecessary files that accumulate over time. This also includes rather thorough cleaning of Internet and PC usage tracks like browser cache, recently used files, web sites visited and more. You can select the items that you want cleaned and also specify cookies that should not be deleted.

Cdex

A utility which can record Digital Audio (DA) tracks from CD and store them as WAV or MP3 files, and convert between WAV and MP3 files. USE THE STABLE VERSION.

Clamwin

ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge. virus def files

Convert

Convert is an easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!

Crimson Editor

Crimson Editor is a professional source code editor for Windows.

This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size (so small that it can be copied in one floppy disk).

While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java.

Eraser

Eraser is an advanced security tool, which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard disk by overwriting it several times.

Erunt

Registry Backup and Restore for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista. Run this before any install and quickly and easily UNDO your registry changes after the uninstall. Really works!

The Free Internet Chess Server

Play chess online with HUNDREDS of different people from all over the world, for FREE. Any time night or day. If you think you've played chess online when you went to Yahoo Games or Pogo, think again. Most of their users are "internet game players" who learned chess off-hand in the same manner as learning Tetris. If you want a real game, at any level, you have to go where there are real chess players. FICS has a java interface too, but to get the full experience you need to download-install-configure a Graphical Client Interface for the server. I recommend Babas Chess Client.

Firefox

Web Browser - Good, and FREE. The combination of IE, Outlook and Newbies is why viruses work on the internet.

Firefox Add-ons

NoScript | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

Tab Mix Plus | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

Toolbar Buttons :: Firefox Add-ons

Adblock Plus | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

Clear Private Data... (Add-Ons) | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

Download Sort :: Firefox Add-ons

DownThemAll! | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

ShowIP :: Firefox Add-ons

BlockSite :: Firefox Add-ons

Themes and Extensions

Mozilla Downloads

The Font Thing

In order of usefulness
A great font manager, a few quirks, but the best I've found, apparently abandonware.

Freecommander

an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager, Dual-panel technology - horizontal and vertical, Optional tree view for each panel, Built in file viewer to view files in hex, binary, text or image format, File viewer inside archives too, Built in archive handling: ZIP (read, write), CAB (read, write), RAR (read), Nested archive handling, Easy access to system folders, control panel, desktop and start menu, Copy, move, delete, rename files and folders, Wipe files, Create and verify MD5 checksums, File splitting, File properties and context menu, Calculation of folder size, Folder comparison / synchronization, Modification of file date and attributes, Folder / program favorites, File searching (inside archive too), File filters for display, DOS command line, Multiple language support.

GNU Privacy Guard

GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC2440. GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key management system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories. I rate it a 3 because of user unfriendliness, not quality of encryption services.

HTTrack

If you have a need to download entire web sites....

Irfanview

Freeware graphics viewer and editor, the very best. How people live with a computer and do not use this program is beyond me.

md5summer

MD5summer is an application for Microsoft Windows 9x, NT, ME, 2000 and XP which generates and verifies md5 checksums.

Notetab

Free text editor, fully configurable, feature rich, great for html, great replacement for notepad

NTRegOpt

NTRegOpt is a registry compactor that improves system performance by compacting the registry, removing any slack space that may be left from previously modified or deleted keys. The program does not modify any registry entries, so it is safe to use. Also supports commandline switches for unattended runs.

Openoffice

I used to recommend (sort of - one bullet) a product on this page called MS Word Viewer. It is a Microsoft product for viewing and printing MS Word Docs for people who don't own MS Word. I get the feeling it is Uncle Bill's answer to acrobat reader, only it doesn't really work, cause Bill wants you to get frustrated and buy Word. This product is better - from their web site...

OpenOffice.org is both an Open Source product and a project. The product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.

PDFCreator

PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDFs easily from nearly any application. With the PDFCreator Printer driver you turn any program into a PDF-machine.

Pdfexchange Viewer

The Worlds best general purpose PDF creation and manipulation Tool

Pegasus Mail

Freeware email client, fully configurable, virus resistant, with spell-checker. If your not tired of Outlook, your into self-punishment. The combination of IE, Outlook and Newbies is why viruses work on the internet.

Process Explorer

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Sage

TheSage is a complete dictionary and a multifaceted thesaurus of the English language. It runs locally, and does not use your Internet connection.

Spybot -- Search & Destroy

Spybot -- Search & Destroy effectively detects spyware, adware, key loggers, Internet dialers, browser hijackers, and even some trojans. includes

7-zip

7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, ISO, MSI, WIM, NSIS, RPM and DEB formats. Light, Fast, Free, Open Source, includes context menu and command line interfaces.

Spyware Terminator

The name is self-explanatory.

Startup Manager

Startup Manager is a program that provides you the possibility to manage the Windows startup procedure. It offers you the possibility to control which programs automatically start up and more.

SuperAntiSpyware

The name is self-explanatory, defs

Tiny Spell

Occasionally you need to check spelling in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that. This is when tinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check and correct the spelling in any Windows application.

Truecrypt

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux

TweakUI

A Microsoft product that makes Windows a little more bearable.

ViceVersa

Compares two folders and synchronizes differences, check your back-ups

VLC media player

Don't put up with Windows Media Player if you don't have to! VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Whisper FTP Surfer

A professional FTP client featuring an IE5 style user-interface including an address bar, explorer history and favorites menu. Features include multiple server connections, drag-and-drop, server file editing, smart reconnect for unreliable connections, find files, find-in-files, HTTP downloads, execute FTP commands directly, "Send To" menu support, etc.

Winboard

XBoard and WinBoard are graphical user interfaces for chess. They display a chessboard on the screen, accept moves made with the mouse, and load and save games in Portable Game Notation (PGN). They serve as front-ends for many different chess services. Simplest and easiest to install and use, free PGN reader/writer.

Xenu

Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Will check pages on hard drive and report abandoned files. Generates HTML report

Xmplay

XMPlay is an audio player, supporting the OGG / MP3 / MP2 / MP1 / WMA / WAV / CDA / MO3 / IT / XM / S3M / MTM / MOD / UMX audio formats, and PLS / M3U / ASX / WAX playlists.

ZoneAlarm

ZoneAlarm® Free Firewall, the best free user-friendly firewall on the planet.

Computer Related Info

meebo.com: meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you're at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!
Cookie Tester
Test Your Pop-Up Blocker
Current IP Check: Simple IP address read
PC Flank: test your online security, firewall and browser
auditmypc.com: Firewall Test, Web Tools and Free Internet Security Audit
Speakeasy: Broadband Internet Connection Speed Test
Multimedia tests
WhatIs - file formats