Technology

The 2004 Guiolympics has begun, and basically won’t end for two months. Anyone interested in checking it out can do so here.
I will probably be entering at least one or two skins. I will post screenshots here as they are finished.

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The Bitch Girls: Creepy
I hate shit like this. Radio Shack does the same thing. They finally quit asking my name now (I shop often enough to be known). Don’t have any idea what they put, but it’s not me anymore.

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Thanks to Frogboy over at Wincustomize for the news. I have been using DesktopX since it was an early beta and it is a very cool product.

Stardock has released The Desktop Aquarium.  It’s a stand alone program that turns your desktop into an aquarium full of fish swimming around. Here’s a screenshot: http://www.stardock.com/products/aquarium/aq2.jpg What’s particularly cool about the program is that when the fish are covered by windows, it doesn’t use CPU. So when you’re doing real work, the fish don’t slow down your computer. The aquarium is not just full of fish but also fully animated plants that wave gently in the background as well as having a treasure chest that controls whether the aquarium sound is on or off. The Desktop Aquarium is only $8.95 (Object Desktop users can get it for a discounted amount).

Visit Now!

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Looks like I am getting a couple of visitors from bbsmates. I have temporarily taken the BBS offline during the holidays until I have a chance to do some re-configuration. I will be putting it back on in the next couple of months. Probably close to March. I will post here once it is ready to be used again. Came up with all of my old registration keys from my old Door Games, so they will be back on as well.

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I decided to download and check out iTunes a couple of weeks ago to test it out. I am interested in finding a decent music service so that my children and myself will be able to DL stuff. I had a library of several thousand MP3’s at one point, but over the last few months I have gone through it, deleting the ones that I do not actually own. I have an LP/cassette/CD library comprised of around 500 or so albums, so have been able to keep quite a few of the mp3’s that I downloaded over the years. Eventually I will get around to copying my LP’s and cassettes to MP3, just never seem to find the time.
So I downloaded iTunes and installed it. I am not very impressed. It installs two services that run all of the time whether you are using the software or not. Damn, this is as bad as quicktime and realplayer and their damn tray icons. It takes fully 60-120+ seconds for the software to even load on my machine, although it is not NEW, a P4 1800 with over 1 gig of RAM is not a crawler.
I let the software sit for a week or so before I decided to take the plunge. I had to go through registration on Apples website and then entered my credit card info. Picked out a song, something off a live Queensr?che CD. It said it downloaded it, looked like it went through the process, but when I tried to play it, received a message that the file could not be found. I searched through the music directory, it created two directories, Queensr?che and Queensryche (no umlaut). Weird. No files in either. I had iTunes check for purchased music, it decided it needed to re-download the file, still nothing on my hard drive, but it is now listed twice in the damn iTunes database.
Tried to check for purchased music again, received the message that all purchased music had been downloaded, even though the file was NOWHERE on disk (and yes, I do know how to find hidden and missing files). Had to email their tech support, who reset something the next day. Tried to download it again, went through the entire process, still no damn Queensr?che song. I emailed them again, detailing the processes I had gone through, including going through their knowledge base and doing all sorts of stuff. This time they escalated it to their “engineering”. Two days later (today), they emailed me that they had checked the file on their end, and there were no anomolies with it, everything was fine. Also, as a gesture of good will, they will refund my .99 cents. What a deal you dickweeds, I was going to dispute the damn thing with my credit card company anyway.
One thing I am glad is that the customer service was decent. No-one acting like I was some kind of dumb-ass. Thank god. I was in tech support for several years and know the attitude well :>
Guess I will continue looking for a decent music service. Something like kazaa or Napster would be nice. I have no problem paying for the service as long as the shit works.

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I have been working ona new skin (a port actually) for the last month or two. Almost finished and ready for upload.

It is actually a port of an Enlightenment theme by Dark Alloy. I have finished most of the icons, and am using IconX to make them bigger, and resizable. Also using DesktopX for my HA bar, which uses a bit of VBscript to communicate with a COM object over the network (with my HA server, running Homeseer). I am using the CursorXP theme Prey, and the Windowblind skin is Fossils of the Machine, ported by me. The wall, eTheme, and icons are available for download from Dark Alloy’s site. The Winamp skin is steamgoth. Do a search for it at winamp.com
Should be making it available here and at wincustomize before the week is out, then I guess I need to start updating all of my old skins.

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Mormegil is getting ready to release a christmas skin he has designed. As usual, I am sure his work is going to kick ass. Look for it at wincustomize.

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Awhile back there was some interested on being able to extend HS onto the desktop using DesktopX. I have begun a preliminary DX script that is working for me on a remote PC running DX to interface with HS on my main machine:
Sub Object_OnScriptEnter
End Sub
Sub Object_OnStateChange(state)
If state = “Mouse down” Then
Dim hs
Set hs = CreateObject(“Homeseer.Application”,”pctv”)
If hs.ison (“a2”) Then hs.execx10 “a2″,”off”,0 Else hs.execx10 “a2″,”on”,0
Set hs = nothing
End If
End Sub
Sub Object_OnScriptExit
End Sub
All it does right now is to turn a light on or off based on the current status. Still have a few things to add once I figure them out, such as –
Getting the status of a device from HS and storing it.
Storing the device code so that it does not have to be hard-coded into the script. Easier to clone the object and have them for several different ones.
Setting the graphic based upon device status so that it matches the device state.
If anyone has any suggestions, or feedback, I would be glad to hear it.

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I am in the process of uploading some of my older skins from sites around the web. You can find them from the Files, or Downloads links.

I have re-added links to my blog, as well as a couple of other local sites. The HA server is available again, as is Legend of the Green Dragon.

The Photo gallery will reopen soon, as well as various skins (mine, and some of the ports that I have done)