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Not house, but away from Blogger. You can now find this blog at Tumblr.

Same blog, different look and feel. And more videos.

See you on Tumblr!

RSS and Visual Styles

Hi again!
Well, this is a first, I'm writing a blog post for the second time in as many days.

Had a nice day today, it wasn't too long or boring, so that was good.

Today I'm going to tell you about two things-- RSS and Visual Styles.

Really Simple Syndication (or RSS for short) is like a news feed for websites. If there's a website that posts frequent updates (like a webcomic, a news site or a blog) you can subscribe to the RSS "feed" for the page.

"But Andrew, what does it do?"
Okay. Say you subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog. You'll see a little link to each blog entry. You can mark items as "read" so you'll only get notifications for ones that are new.

"Okay, but how do I recieve a RSS feed?"
In so many ways.
First, and easiest, is to create a "Live Bookmark" in Firefox. If you're using Firefox (and you should be) it is frighteningly easy. Let's take a look at my blog for an example. Screenshot tour!

Once you've clicked that icon, you should see a drop-down menu saying
Subscribe to Blogular Blog - Atom
Subscribe to Blogular Blog - RSS
They both do the same thing, but pick Atom. It has a few advantages.
Next, you'll see a page that looks a little weird. You'll see all the blog posts, and then at the top, a few options. Leave them, and click "Subscribe now"

Done.

Now, apparently Internet Explorer does this too. But...it's Internet Explorer, and that's reason enough to switch to Firefox.

Now, if you don't want to use a Live Bookmark, you can use Google Reader (or any other web service) Google reader is easy, too!
Go to the homepage and create a free Google Account (useful it works on Blogger, Youtube, Gmail and every other Google service) Then log in and start adding feeds. Just click "add a subscription" It's really easy, just enter what you think the feed might be called, eg. "digg" Select the correct feed and you're done! Because it's a website, you can access your feeds from ANYWHERE with an internet browser.

There's also desktop RSS readers. They work the same way, but they're actually a program that runs on your computer. I use ReadAIR Follow the instructions on the site and you're in business.


That's it for RSS, onto Visual Styles.

In (literally) all of my screenshots, I've had a custom theme running, instead of the default "Luna" XP theme. How? With the magic of Visual Styles.

Microsoft, during the development of XP, had the idea of letting people choose between different styles for the window-frame and taksbar etc. Then they dropped this idea at the last minute lost forever.

Not.
Step 1:
Patch your uxtheme.dll file. This is the file that manages what theme is running. By default, it is set to only allow themes Microsoft made. Let's change that. Follow all instructions exactly, I won't be held responsible if you accidently stuff something up.

Okay, that's the hard part out of the way. Now you need to find a Visual Style. The best and safest place you can find them is DeviantART. Here's a link to the Visual Styles section. Find one you like and download it.

Then, open up the folder (or unzip the contents of the archive to somewhere you will remember)

Find a file that looks like this. Double click it, and hit "OK" in the next window. Done. Dusted. Change your style as much or as little as you please. Have fun.

DISCLAIMER:
The instructions I have provided are for Windows XP. Because I use XP, I don't know if these work with Vista/7.
I have patched my uxtheme.dll file twice. Nothing bad has happened. Still, you should take any instructions you read in the installation of the uxtheme multi-patcher seriously. Nothing terrible will happen, but just remember that you are replacing a system file.

That was a long one, eh? I hope you've found the guides today helpful, and I hope you have a good weekend.
Song of the Post is "Together in Electric Dreams" by Phil Oakley.

Bye!

Hello again!

Hi there!

Back to school this week, that sucks. On the plus though, it's been a decent week and it's gone pretty quick.

Hey guess what?
11 weeks in this term. 7 days a week times 11 weeks is 77 days. Subtract weekends and you have 55 days in total. Take off the last 5 days (it'll be a bludge) and you've got 50 days. Only one day left in this week, 46!
Only 46 days of school left! Yippee kai-yay!

What else?
I wanna go see Up. It looks sweet and funny, and from what I've heard it's sad too. So, that's like excellent, right? Might go see it with some friends next weekend.

Hey, you know what sucks? The English Basics textbook. I find it insulting to my intelligence. I mean, these are questions we were doing in grade 5, and the teachers this year are all like "Oh my god guys, this is srs business."
Aurgh.

Aahhahah, meanwhile, I've changed my desktop layout again. Bwahahaa!
Here's the screnshot...

What do you think? Nice? Rainmeter provides the clock in the corner, that's rocketdock with some text icons at the bottom and the regular takbar at the top. But what's different? Well..
The CD Album Art is from a gorgeous program called CD Art Display. It grabs the song info and cover art from iTunes (or Winamp) and displays them on your desktop. You can even pause/play, and go to the next and previous songs from CD Art Display.

Notice how the icons on my taskbar are all teeny, just the icons? That's the work of a nifty little program you can find here.

If you want the wallpaper, icons or visual style, send me an email and I'll get to you.

Oh, and just so you know. DeviantART is where I get ALL of my nifty wallpapers, Visual Styles, RocketDock skins and a metric crapload of other stuff too. Link!

Fairly short entry today, but less is more!

Tata!

Hey-o!

I apologise for not posting a new entry in a while, procrastination, homework and Dexter have been filling my time.

So what's new?
Well, my laptop's undergone yet another makeover.
Let's take a look at my desktop...

As you can see, it's pretty light. Taskbar hidden, desktop icons hidden with Fences. But what's the rest of that stuff? WELL.
You guys know Launchy, I introduced you a few weeks ago. I'm using a custom skin, which you can find here.
Then, below, Rocket Dock. I don't know if I've talked about it before. In fact, no, I don't think I have. Link! Don't need the taskbar because windows minimize to the dock!

"Uhm, hey Andrew? What's that huge sidebar and bottom thingy?"

Oh, I thought you'd never ask.
Meet rainmeter.
Rainmeter can display pretty much any information on your desktop. I've got system stats, a calendar, a to do list, the time, how long my laptop has been on for, and a little application launcher for my top 5.

Nifty eh?

Oh, and Picasa. Picasa is a photo managing program from google. It's good, just lets you organise your photos and touch them up. Free, good software. How delicious.

What else?
Well, it's all good and fair to have fun with your computer. But you've got to tidy up as well. Here are two programs I use to keep my laptop clean as a whistle.

CCleaner.
Every time you install or uninstall a program, every time you visit a website, everytime you download something, everytime you open a document, your computer creates little temporary files that serve no other purpose. Now, this wouldn't be an issue, but these files don't go anywhere. They stay there, take up space and slow down your computer.
Enter CCleaner. CCleaner will clean up all of those temporary files, and get your computer "going gooder"!

Defraggler.
This one is made by the same company as CCleaner, a company called Piriform. We'd like to imagine that our computers store files in neat little rows, with no gaps in between. And that's how it starts out. But inevitably, you're going to delete some files here and there, uninstall some programs etc, etc. Unfortunately, this just leaves empty spaces between data. This means that when your computer needs to access a file, it takes longer to get through all the gaps as well. Defraggler, enter stage left! Defraggler gets rid of those gaps and makes your computer faster! Defragmenting takes a while, but you'll notice the results immediately.

I apologise if this post was a bit nerdy, but I think it's important people know how they can optimise their computers.

Link of the day is Lifehacker.
Lifehacker descibes itself as "tips and downloads for getting things done"
That's exactly what it is. It's a light website that helps you improve productivity, avoid little annoyances, beautify your digital world and stay up to date with the latest in cutting edge software. I just sounded like an ad for a second there, sorry. Anyway, it's a really good site. Have a look around, I guarantee you'll enjoy it.

I'm not listening to any music right now, but I'm watching George and Martha with my brother. George and Martha is a really funny show about two hippos who are "just friends" and their neighbours, including the two crocodiles Oscar and Wilde (just two male friends [pfahahahaa!]) and Penny, the snoopy Flamingo.

Alright, bye for now! There might be a while before my next post, I'm going to be in Queensland on holiday.

Bye!

Aww.

Hey, you know what? I was about to write a really angry post, something along the lines of "Argh, Microsoft can burn in hell!"

But I really can't be bothered. I mean...meh.

It takes a lot of energy to be angry.

Here's what I've been up to lately:

-I've switched from Windows Live Messenger to Trillian. It's a much nicer IM program, and it has tabbed conversations! What this means is that all of your conversations are in one window, but in separate tabs. Isn't that nifty? It also lets me chat on IRC, so thats a plus. Here's what it looks like:

-I went up about 4 Nerd levels--I've started programming. Like, not crazy intensive "Oh my god, technology!" stuff, but just tinkering around. My language of choice is Ruby. It's a fairly new language, but it's fairly easy to learn.

-I installed Yahoo! Widgets. Yeah, it's a bit of a memory hog, but it's super useful. Have a look at my current desktop setup..

Wow, that picture is like...10x bigger than I was expecting. Anyway..

Oh, you guys are probably wondering what those little window thumbnails are.

It's a nifty little program called miniMize. It grabs every program you minimise and turns it into a little thumbnail on your desktop. You can double click that thumbnail to bring it back up. It's very useful, especially if you're like me and you have many of the same program open at once.

Aside from that, it's pretty much same-old around here. My brother's 21st is tonight, so we've been running around like headless chooks getting everything ready. I love organised chaos. Hah!

Oh, I got an expansion pack for the Sims 2. It's great that they're so cheap now because of the release of the Sims 3. If you ask me, the Sims 3 doesn't look that good. I mean, wooh, no loading screens, but the sims look really ugly now. The more realistic you make things, the uglier they get. How depressing.

Anyway, thats about it for today. Leaving you with the link of the week and song of the day...

Link of the week is wordle

Wordle lets you make tag clouds for anything. It's sort of funny to see the most common words in something. Let me jus say that the tag cloud for this blog is quite amusing (most common word? "really")

Song of the post is "Drop Dead Gorgeous" by Republica. Great song, makes you want to get up and dance. You're lucky you couldn't see me just then, I was typing and bopping my head in time to the song. Not a pretty site.

Alright, bye! I've got a party to get ready for.

Weekend (yeeha!)

So we've come to the weekend again. Everyone have a good week? Have fun?
Haha, me neither. But really, isn't Friday great?It's like you're on roller skates all day, gliding through time.

Hmm, getting a bit sappy there, let's get down to business!

In tech news, there's some interesting stuff going on.I've heard some rumours that Microsoft might go into producing computers, as opposed to just the OS. If they can pull it off, I reckon they could get a similar stranglehold like Apple does.

Speaking of Apple, apparently a MacBook touch is in the works. If you're a bit confused, don't worry, I was too when I heard it. Okay, imagine the iPhone. Make that the size of a computer screen, drop the phone and install Mac OS X Leopard on it. Eeek. I think this is one of those products that could either go really well or really poorly. On one hand, people might go nuts and spend, spend, spend, but on the other hand, people might just not feel the need.

Taking a break from computers...Did anyone see that clip of the American finance reporter calling Kevin Rudd a serial killer? Here's the link in case you haven't heard about it yet.I dunno. Aren't finance people supposed to be smart? Meh. The camels are feral, and unless America wants to swoop in and "save" them in a giant act of show-boatery, I don't see any other option.

Or maybe I'm just heartless. Either way~

You know what I'm sick of? This weather. I mean, bloody hell, were you out today? It was really damn cold. And hail too! What the hell, mother nature? I understand it's winter, but was all that necessary?I'm longing for summer. I want to make myself some iced tea, sit around watching Mean Girls with friends and having a great time. Instead, I'm stuck inside listening to the SBS news and watching people sign in and out of MSN.

Hey, John Hughes died. You know who he is? You probably won't. He was a movie director. He did some great movies, I've seen a few of them.The Breakfast Club? Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Home Alone? Maybe you've seen them, maybe not. But he was a great director, and I think it's a shame he's dead.

Ah well. Que sera, sera.

I dunno. You see people weeping in the street when a celebrity dies. Why?

I mean, okay. Maybe you met the celebrity and really connected with them. Or maybe they inspired you. But unless it's one of those two, I don't really get it.

Again, maybe I'm just heartless, but whatever!

I'd like to catch up with some firends this weekend, but homework is such a bother. Ah well. We'll have to organise that Ghostbusters shebang soon...

Link of the day is a two-part package.

The first is a video courtesy of Pierce. Throughout history, mankind has enjoyed the finer things in life. Fine art, good food, entertaining tales and, of course, old ladies booting children into the distance.

Second is also a video, but a bit different. How hard is it to interpret body language? This hilarious video makes it easy!

Also introducing a new feature today: Song of the post.This is the song I was listening to when I finished the post. Here we go...Ooh La La by Goldfrapp.Youtube link.

Alrighty then, bye for now! Many thanks to Pierce for some great ideas in writing this post!
Adios!

Sunday Thoughts and Drifting

Hi,

in a really mellow mood today, isn't that funny? I don't have anything to bitch about, so today's entry is just going to be sort of a stream of thought style.

I got iTunes working on my laptop, so I'm now able to actually listen to music! Yeeha!

Wanna know why it wouldn't work before? Okay!

This used to be my brother's laptop. He installed a program called QuickTime alternative. I don't know why (pfft!) You know how iTunes needs QuickTime to run? Well, when I got to installing iTunes, it stopped working right where it was meant to install QuckTime. Why? Because the creators of QuickTime alternative chose to have their programs use the same registry files as apple QuickTime, causing an error when installing.

I got rid of QuickTime Alternative and now everything works! I'm so glad, I've been listening to music non-stop since I installed it.

In slightly less interesting news, I've plugged an external monitor into the back of my laptop. It's a considerably better screen, so the colours are brighter and everything is more crisp. Right now, my little computer set-up looks like this...

This means that my laptop is always at about 45 degrees open. I'm looking into an external keyboard + mouse, but this is fine for now.

You know what's great about no homework? The absolute laziness that it brings with it. I mean, of course I haven't turned into some desk-potato (I don't even have a desk) but it's nice to be able to relax and kick back.

Does anyone else feel that the whole Mac community is a bit creepy? That whole "I'm a Mac" thing seems a bit like the mantra of some cult...

Or I'm just paranoid.

I think a little bit of paranoia is healthy, don't you? You've always got to be a little suspicious of your surroundings. Be aware!

Catching up with friends means new things in today's world. It could be meeting up for a movie or it could be finding each other on Facebook. With technology, socialising looks very different from the outside.

"Hey Andrew," you ask "What music are you listening to right now?"

Well, I'm listening to a little playlist I've made up on iTunes. It's a mix of my favourite songs, just ones that put me in a pretty good mood. Here are the first 10 songs:

1|Take a Chance on Me-ABBA

2|Dos Gardenias-Buena Vista Social Club

3|You're So Vain-Carly Simons

4|1,2,3,4-Feist

5|Paper Planes-M.I.A

6|My Rollercoaster-Kimya Dawson

7|Broken Dreams-Basement Jaxx

8|Ma Baker-Boney M

9|Suddenly I See- KT Tunstall

10|Ring of Fire-Johnny Cash.

So there's a little peek into my musical taste for those of you who were interested :D

It's bye for now!

Here's the Link of the Week:

(I should probably re-name Link of the Week, seeing as I post more than once a week. Hmm..)

Fine then, here's the

Link of the Day!

This is a Japanese kid's show called Jagainu Kun. When you translate it, it's pretty much "Dogtato" It's a show about a dog-potato called Jagainu, and his girlfriend Haripotato (a hedge-hog potato" They live in Veggietown, and they have many firends, like Croconion, Strawbatty and Cucumbird. It's a really random show. Like, so random, that at one point, there's a character called Cox (a corn-dog) who yells out "COOOORN!" everytime he jumps in the air. Yes, this is a kids show. And yes, it is really random.

Bye for now! See you next time!

EDIT: 4th of August:

Thankyou to Pierce who pointed out my atrocious spelling and grammar in this blog post. It's all gone now! (I think!)