cool, free software

some free software:
A drawing program that looks to be pretty darn good: InkScape
http://www.inkscape.org/
I will be using it instead of what is probably the very first release MS Publisher. Since moving to the Vista OS, I can no longer make this archaic software work. I will probably eventually ditch all of my .pub files.

An image viewer: FastStone
http://www.faststone.org/
I don't have any fully-featured photo editing software. This viewer will replace the IrfanView I was using. FastStone seems to have a more polished interface. The key feature I needed was to be able to rotate the image and resize without losing image data and this one has them, so I didn't lose those features when I replaced IrfanView.

Photo noise grain remover: NeatImage
http://www.neatimage.com/
I didn't even know this sort of sofware existed. I'm also considering NoiseWare, but have not taken it for a test drive.

Finally a hack for some cameras: CHDK
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK/FAQ
It seems safe since it makes no permanent changes. I haven't yet figured out how to use it, but have managed to "install" it and set to autoload. I wanted some RAW pictures and my first tinkerings produced no such thing. I'll revisit after I recover from the party activities next weekend.

So I've much learning to do.