Audacity, the musicians crescent wrench, using Dropbox to keep files sync’d between a Mac and PC computer plus more…

Ok, Im not the first person to write about these products, and Im sure if you search YouTube or Google there is about ten tons of more info on all I will be talking about. But, heck – give this article a read – I will get right to the point. =)

Audacity has to be one of my most ran to tools when I am finishing up a song. Some programs just dont give me what I need. But either through plugins or just the stock tools you get when you install the program. Audacity always seems to come through and get the job done.

Fade ins, Fade outs, volume adjustments to knock down peaks, normalize, equalize and many more. Download it, install it and when you have a problem go to YouTube and search for “Audacity <problem name>”. You will get the job done trust me. Plus if you get used to using it, and move from a PC to a Mac or Linux distro there is a version for all.

Dropbox.. Ok this has to be one of the coolest programs out there today if you use more than one computer during your daily grind. You install it, wait for whatever you drop in the Dropbox folder to sync with the Dropbox servers. Then you can access it from any computer with an internet connection with your browser, or it will auto sync with any computer you have the Dropbox software installed on.

As an added bonus you can even get public links from items you put in the dropbox\public folder and share them with the world! If you click the Dropbox links on my page, both you and I will get an extra 250mb of storage space. So what ya waiting for? Sign up and learn to love Dropbox – I know you will. If you don’t. Please leave a comment below and let me know why. I will try to come up with a solution if I don’t get to many comments.

Passwords, passwords, passwords.. You just have to have em, and you need to have different ones for the different services you use on the internet, and you need to use different ones for different sites if you don’t want Joe Bloe from Cocomo.Com buying stuff with your paypal account. Writing them on your monitor isnt a good idea, neither is having them on a paper or digital notepad. If someone gets physical access to your house our your computer they will have all your usernames/passwords.

“One more point to ponder for those who use the same password everywhere. That is the best way to get all your accounts hacked at once”

Enter Keepass! Ok, this is some cool beans software. You have one password to get into it. I make mine longer that 7 characters so they are harder to crack. Something like “MyDogIsAPainInThe@r$3” – and the only place I use this password is for Keepass. Once you have Keepass open you can start adding entries with the urls to sites you have to log into, usernames and passwords. This sure makes bill paying a lot easier! Just double click a username or password and its on your clipboard for a short period of time so you can paste it into your login/password fields. There are versions of Keepass for just about anything.Whats really cool is if you put the keepass database in your dropbox folder you can access all your passwords from all your computers, even iPhones,Android,BlackBerry and Windows phones!. I wouldn’t download your Keepass database on a public computer then try to use it, that wouldn’t be too wise. I personally use KeePass Classic on PC’s and this on my Mac. I found the cool Mac version when I googled up this cool post at BallOfLightning.com.

Rock on! And keep busy!
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