Ninite installs and updates your PC's programs all at once

A friend of mine introduced me to a website called Ninite. Trust me, I didn’t want to click the link while I was at work, either. Especially not when it come in an email that said nothing more than “you’re welcome. 😉” Still, I gave it a shot, and wanted to give this a plug as well. Again, I’m not normally in to tools and applications, I’m more about real techinical information you can use – but this may be helpful to people who build lots of machines.

Ninite.com is the reverse of last week’s mentioned PC Decrapifier. It installs multiple applications on your computer at once. When you first head to their home page at Ninite.com you’re greated with a large page of checkboxes. Check the applications you want to install, then click the large “Get installer” button at the bottom of the page.

The next page showed me a page of installers I had selected with another big green button that said “download installer.” I clicked on that and away it went. Now, I ran this on a computer which I had been using for a while with several outated applications on it. I can easily see the benefits of using a tool like this to roll several applications out to a new computer that never had anything on it before, it sounds great and simple – but it also touts itself as an application updater, and I wanted to see how well that feature performed. To my jaw dropping surprise? Like a charm. In less than five minutes, I was notified that the work was complete by this Window:

Ninite detected the application that did not require updating and did not bother downloading the installers for those applications. This saved both time and bandwidth, especially considering some of the applications I had selected were on the substantially sized side of things! So there it is, two weeks in a row I’m plugging an application to batch uninstall programs, and a program to mass-install programs. Hopefully next week we’ll get back in to the really geeky stuff!

2001 – Lit – Atomic


Lit was a one hit wonder from my high school years. Most famous for My Own Worst Enemy, they also put out Zip-Lock and Miserable as well known singles… but after that, for most people, they just faded away. I really enjoyed them, both before and after their rise to fame. So much so that I think their follow up album, Atomic, was one of my favorite albums of all time. I have something positive to say about almost every single track on the album.

It starts out with a crowd cheering, although it’s not a live album – the first track builds the anticipation and introduces Something to Someone, a track which immediately juxtaposes their fame with feelings of being alone.

Track two, The Last Time Again, all about the fun and not-so-fun moments around boozing your brains out and waking up with a hang over. It’s an enteraining song that puts a funny spin on what many would call a serious situation. This is followed up by the track Addicted, which is more about the inability to leave a relationship that you know is bad for you. Lipstick and Bruises follows that up, which, contrary to what your first impressions of the the title might be, is more about the passionate reasons that make it hard to leave someone.

I can’t say enough good things about the other tracks on the album. Happy in the Meantime, Drop D, Sunny Weather, Next Time Around, She Comes… each of these is just another alternative rock love song with more energy than most bands put in to an entire album. Each track could’ve been a success, but the genre was busy being taken over by the emo charts by the time this album was released. Happy In The Meantime is the one departure on the album, which is somewhat slower, acoustic song that you may have heard at least once before. “It’s just another reason why, it all comes down to you and I. We’ll another drink, waste some time with me, we’re happy in the mean time.”

Play this album in your car, with the windows down, and do your best not to enjoy it from beginning to end!

What are Microsoft Points?

Microsoft points are a form of digital currency created by Microsoft for use in the Xbox Live Marketplace and Zune Marketplace. Microsoft points are different from Gamerscore in that you must actually purchase Microsoft points by charging them to a credit card or buying redeemable points cards available in many retail stores. Microsoft uses the symbol . Continue reading “What are Microsoft Points?”