Mad-cat inspired geek tools

Having been woken by the cat (who seems to be going mad — to pander to her penchant for grass, she’s got a little flowerpot in the kitchen with grass growing in it, so she can have a bit of a nibble without going outside. As if this isn’t bad enough, she now insists, very vocally, on being hand fed each blade of grass!) after only 4 hours sleep, I thought I’d start the day off gently with a coffee and a bit of updating here. So here are a few, mostly free, geek tools.

If you fancy starting your own blog, BlogComp: Blog Tool Feature Comparison Table lets you compare some of the most popular blogging tools and scripts (I discovered pMachine a few days ago, which seems well coded and thought out, and could possibly rival Movable Type in terms of features). And if, like me, you’re hopeless at keeping track of all the domain names you’ve got registered, you might want to consider managing them with Watch My Domains (Windows only, free trial available), from the makers of the super (and free) Good Keywords.

Are you having trouble deciding on a colour scheme for your site? Maybe these free online colour choosers will help:

• ColorMatch 5K will produce 6 colours that compliment your original choice;
• Color Schemer will show you 16 colours that compliment yours;
• Nebulus Palette Master will generate a 42 colour palette complimenting your base colour (site uses frames — go to products —> web tools)
• EasyRGB’s Color Harmonies generates 12 colours that compliment your value (check out the rest of the EasyRGB site for some great colour tools);
• Limov’s Colour Selector allows you to explore colours near a specific colour, where you get to define what ‘near’ means (other useful colour tools on their site too);
• Not too sure how useful Milo Vermeulen’s 24 is, but it’s rather fun;
• Mundi Design’s colour visualizer is very clever — drag the web-safe colours onto the preview area (choose the preview style at bottom right of page) to see a mock-up page with your colours.

If you need to look up an IP address (as I did with those idiots looking for formmail), you’ll like theGlobal IP Whois at cyberabuse.org, which I’ve found to be particularly good (there’s also a free downloadable version for Windows).

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