The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

I saw a Before You Know It (BKYI) ad from Google Adsense not too long ago on my previous Blogspot site about learning Korean with free software and so went to the BYKI website to look for the advertised free download. And, no this isn’t a sponsored or affliated post

Click this! Click this! Just kidding

Transparent Language offers lite versions of its Before You Know It langauge learning software. There are wordlists for a total of 63 languages as well as additional user-submitted wordlists in BYKI ListCentral Beta up for free download. Languages range from common ones like French and Chinese to less frequently seen languages like Tuvan. (spoken in Russia, China and Mongolia)

Each language download comprises an small downloader application which will then download 15 to 20 MB of data comprising of the actual application installer as well as the wordlists for that langauge. It does not download the actual application installer (around 12 MB) if you have already installed BYKI Lite on your computer so installing additional langauges is a breeze.

BYKI is essentially a flashcard application where words on a virtual flashcard are shown along with accompanying audio pronounication. You then have the additional option of showing the word in English or the language you’re learning and then typing the correct answer in the other language. The available modes in the Lite version can be summarized as below.

• Review It: View all flashcards in the list
• Recognize It: View a flashcard with a word in a foreign language and mentally think of the corresponding word in English
• Know It: View a flashcard with a word in a foreign language and type the corresponding word in English
• Produce It: View a flashcard with a word in English and mentally think of the corresponding word in the foreign language
• Own It: View a flashcard with a word in English and type the corresponding word in the foreign language

© Transparent Language

Review it mode (top) and Know It mode (bottom) using a Bahasa Melayu wordlist

BYKI Lite comes with around 17 lists of words per language about numbers, colours, days as well as those basic phrases commonly used in travel, meal or business scenarios.

The Deluxe version costs 39.95 to 49.95 USD per language and on top of additional 75+ wordlists over the 17 lists in the Lite version, it offers additional ways to learn a language like voice recording for practicing pronunication as well as the ability to take your lessons with you on iPods and other MP3 players.

I personally prefer these flashcard apps over audiobooks since I find that I remember things better when I can visually recgonize the word. Also, audio books usually need to be listened to in an entire episode to be fully effective.

Currently I’m working on improving my Malay, Vietnamese and German words and phrases with BYKI . From my expriences, it definitely wouldn’t make you an expert in any language since you also need to learn extra stuff like sentence structure which I don’t think is possible with BYKI. It’s a great way to see if you’re really interested in a langauge plus there’s totally no harm (and expense) trying since it’s a free download

For those interested in keeping a backup of the actual installer, run the downloader application under Sandboxie (More about Sandboxie here) and go to Contents of Sandbox > Explore Contents and browse to user\current\Local Settings\Temp\BYKI0.TMP once the Installation screen appears.

Download Before You Know It Lite or additional word lists.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Southeast Asian Langauge Resources
Introducing Lifehacker.com

Drivey by Mark Pursey is a cool application perfect for use as a screensaver or as a relaxation tool.

The graphics in Drivey reminds me of those driving simulation toys I played as a kid back in the 80s. Watching the landscape go by really relaxes me

The screenshots below don’t really do Drivey justice so download and give Drivey a test drive.

Default setting

Going home

Before sunrise

Tunnel vision

My favourite setting

Some useful keys for playing around with Drivey. Check out the other keys by pressing F1.

F3 - Toggle dashboard
Esc - Quit
1 - Change environment to very sparse road
2 - Change environment to tunnel
3 - Change environment to city
4 - Change environment to industrial
H - Change colours
K - Toggle colour cycling
C - Toggle between 0,8,16 and 24 cars
Ctrl - Speed up
Shift - Slow down

Download Drivey 0.15 (298k).

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Russ Schwenkler’s Vexel Car Art & Photorealistic 3D Car Renders
BMW Art Cars
Nissan 2009 GT-R Wallpapers
Forza Motorsport 2 Wallpapers

Saw this nifty 2nd Amendment font over at Steve’s The Firearm Blog last week. Created by Daniel Zadorozny of Iconian Fonts, the font set contains silhouettes of 46 (or is it 47?) different firearms.

© Iconian Fonts

All the usual suspects are in there like the AK-47 (P), Luger (N), H&K MP5N (K), FN P90 (B), Colt M16A2 (O) (above) with some rare ones like Calico M950 (G), Sako TRG41 (X), Enfield EM-2 (2) (below)

© Iconian Fonts

The 2nd Amendment font is an example of a Dingbat font which has symbols in place of the usual alphanumeric characters inside a font. More info about Dingbat fonts @ Wikipedia.

The selection of Dingbat fonts over at Iconian Fonts is pretty interesting. Here’s two sets that I like.

© Iconian Fonts

God of War - Symbols of warfare through the ages from the Greek Corinthian helmet to the infamous IMI Uzi.

© Iconian Fonts

Time Warriors - Silhouettes of warriors both past and present … mmm Samurai (second row, third from left):)

There’re also Dingbat fonts of US Army and Air Force insignia on the same page, togehter with many other non military-related fonts like Halls of Heroes and Illuminati.

© Iconian Fonts

Download the 2nd Amendment font via The Firearm Blog or view the entire collection at Iconian Fonts.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY
Thompson Encore .45 Single Shot Pistol
M4 Carbine Accessories
Rogue Status Firearms Wallpaper
Hornady’s Ammo Poster
Dark Horse Comic’s 300 Wallpapers

Been busy fixing www.downloadmunkey.net and thoo2.net last week. Somehow I exceeded Photobucket’s 25GB bandwidth limit last month, resulting in most images on my previous site to randomly disappear for the last few days.

As a result, I switched to a Wordpress site at Dreamhost.com. You can get your own at 22.40 USD/~33SGD for 1 domain registration + hosting for 1 year with promocode DOWNLOADMUNKEY

While fiddling with the Wordpress configuration, I downloaded quite a few plugins and I’ve compiled a list of useful ones that I’m using. I believe that Akismet should be compulsory for any Wordpress site and so doesn’t count in this list

1. Subscribe To Comments - IMHO the most important plugin to install. Allowing readers to subscribe to your comments makes it much easier to follow conversations. To place the “Subscribe to comments via email” checkbox above the Submit button, check out Derek Punsalan’s post at 5ThirtyOne.
2. FeedBurner FeedSmith - For redirecting your Wordpress RSS feeds to your FeedBurner feed so that you can track readership and other stats.
3. Global Translator - Allows your readers to translate your English site to Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish via Google Translation, Promt or Babelfish with a single click.
4. Exec-PHP - Handy for running PHP code in text widgets like those visual plugins which do not come as widgets but as code that you have to manually insert into the PHP templates e.g Global Translator.
5. Google XML Sitemaps - Create a XML sitemap for submission to search engines like Google or Yahoo!
6. WP-PostViews - Allows you to show the number of views for a post. Somehow I enjoy seeing 0 views in the posts all over this site Comes with an additional widget to show the top 10 most viewed posts in your sidebar.
7. Dean’s Permalinks Migration - I realized I preferred the date and name based permalink structure like Blogger’s permalink structure over the default Wordpress permalink structure (e.g ?p=123) a few days after I set the site to go ‘live’. This nifty plugin allows both internal and external links using the older permalink structure to redirect correctly and seamlessly to the new location.

Also check out these two useful lists of plugins and widgets compiled @ eJabs.com and debbiewhoelse.com that I found while searching for useful plugins.

Graffiti Studio 2.0 is a cool freeware application specially created by LRPD Vandalsquad for anyone who wants to experiment with graffiti art. As the official website has been online since 1997, I guess I’m late by 10(!) years in discovering this little gem

© Less Rain

Anyone remotely interested in drawing graffiti should play around with this application because unlike real-life graffiti artists, they:

• Need not look out or evade the police while concentrating on their work of art.
• Need not worry about buying spray cans of the wrong colours.
• Need not fear their artpiece being cleaned away as Graffiti Studio users get to upload their works to the Vandalsquad archives for posterity.

If you need inspiration, the archives and the most popular works are just a click away on the official site.

Some tips to get the most out of Graffiti Studio:

• Tapping Q moves the spray can nearer to the spray surface, resulting in a thicker and smaller area of paint. Tapping A does the opposite.
• Undo only resets the last spray. Therefore …
• Remember to save regularly. There’s only one save slot so the newest save always overwrites the previous one so save wisely.
• Don’t feel like a graffiti artist yet? Shake the can to get that familiar spray can sound

Below is one good reason why I should stick to writing posts instead of drawing.

(View in original size)

Download the Windows or Mac Classic version of Graffiti Studio from vandalsquad.com or mess around with the online version. (Click on the Paint Offline button and then select the PC or Mac version to download)

UPDATE (14 Sep 2008) : Graffiti Studio for Mac OSX users can be found here.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Elphonso Lam - Artist / Toy Designer / Punk Rocker
Shin Tanaka’s Cool Paper Toys
Asian Artists @ Tiger Translate 2007
STAMP SG
Simone Legno - Tokidoki