Kaelri
Sailing (Desktop 28)
Busy busy busy! And on top of that, I've just had a head cold and surgery in the same week. (Protip: sneezing and stitches do not mix.) But I do miss my lifehacking, rainmetering comrades. I hope you'll indulge me in a small "I'm not dead" contribution to the pool.
As ever, please send questions and requests to kaelri+lcd@gmail.com. I honestly read everything I get, even though I don't have nearly enough time to reply to everything. Don't hesitate to be persistent.
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My Rainmeter theme has barely changed since last year, so there's not much to tell. The skins are slightly-modified Enigma stock, and they get the job done while looking elegant, which is all I ask of them. (If anyone's interested, the system monitor skin is reading CPU, RAM, and wireless signal strength.)
-----------------------
Trillian is my communication and message center, and I'm really happy with the latest update. I was running googsystray as my omnibus Google notifier for a while, but it eventually became too buggy and unreliable for my taste. Now, I just have Wave and Voice send email alerts to my inbox, which lets me get rid of a redundant tray app and receive all of my messages in a consistent place and format. Trillian's popups are great - very Growl-like - and give me the option of deleting, archiving, or marking emails as read, without even switching windows.
Trillian has also grown into a truly excellent Twitter client. The last version was awkward, limited, and behaved in somewhat counterintuitive ways with regard to links and @replies. But all of that is fixed now. I still wish it had support for organizing tweets by conversation, and a less convoluted way to save a search. But on the whole, I'm very happy with it, and the fact that it's integrated in my IM+email client is a huge bonus.
The skin, Sidebar, was a lucky find; it just happened to fit in perfectly with my Windows and Rainmeter themes. But Trillian is still suffering from a severe lack of third-party skins. I encourage anyone with the time and inclination to go help.
-----------------------
As you can see, I've streamlined my Firefox setup a bit. First and foremost, I've jumped on the permanent-tab bandwagon, using FaviconizeTab to keep Gmail, Reader and News open and available without taking up space. This also means that I don't really need a start page anymore, so I've ditched Fast Dial at last.
I also got rid of All-in-One Sidebar, which I just wasn't using enough to justify the clutter. Now, I'm using Personal Menu to place a single Bookmarks button in the toolbar. Aside from the address bar, there is virtually nothing else visible. As before, I access my menu by right-clicking on the chrome, or by pressing Alt to temporarily reveal the menu toolbar.
Aside from those two, I'm still running All-In-One Gestures, Fission, Greasemonkey, and Lazarus - and that's it.
-----------------------
Behind the scenes, my arsenal of always-running applications has changed a little bit. I'm still running Start Killer, Taskbar Shuffle, D-Color, Autohotkey, Launchy, and Lakrits VS, as described in this post from nearly a year ago. So I won't rehash those. Instead, the differences:
-----------------------
I've had Dropbox for a long time, too, but only as a kind of incidental tool for specific needs. I tend to be very reluctant to place my trust in a cloud service that is in any way capable of affecting files on my hard drive. But I've finally taken the plunge, and now, I've got just about all of my documents and projects living in there. And it is nice to know that I'll be able to access my active work from any computer without having to think of it beforehand. This shift has also simplified my Documents folder considerably, which is always a pleasure.
-----------------------
Yes, after years of searching, I've found my holy grail: a solid replacement for iTunes on Windows. Lifehacker gave it a writeup earlier this year, but I didn't get around to trying it until iTunes 10 came out and pushed me over the edge. While it's not quite as visually polished as an Apple product, I'm very impressed by the feature set: with the exception of sharing, it can do just about everything that iTunes can, including file conversions, iPod sync, a robust smart-playlist tool, and a clone of the album art view in the main library. In addition, it won me over with a few things that iTunes does not have:
- Built-in Last.fm.
- Built-in universal hotkeys.
- Third-party theme support.
- An independent "Now Playing" queue, which lets you create and edit an ad-hoc playlist on the fly, instead of being bound to a permanent list.
- Tabs. (I believe the UI framework is actually based on Firefox.)
- Automatic fetching of lyrics and track/artist data, which it can display in a collapsible pane.
- Can play and edit files without adding them to the library.
- The one that's most important to me: wherever possible, MusicBee stores metadata within your music files, rather than using a separate database like iTunes. This includes the saving of album art. iTunes' behavior in this regard has always annoyed me, so it's refreshing to have a media player that respects my ownership of my music.
-----------------------
I have no idea if it helps me or not, but I've been running it for a few weeks anyway.
-----------------------
Lightscreen is a very simple screenshot tool. Basically, it makes my PrntScrn key behave like a Mac's: it automatically saves the screen to an image on my desktop. I can also copy only the active window, or a manual selection, by holding Alt or Ctrl, respectively. Again, very simple, but it's a perfect fit in my system.
-----------------------
I'm amazed that it took me so long to discover DM2. It's a simple Windows tray app that gives you a huge variety of ways to manipulate your windows. I use it for exactly three things: to minimize any window to the tray, roll up any window to the title bar, and set any window to stay on top.
Much like Start Killer and Taskbar Shuffle, I consider these to be features that should have been built into the OS. Nonetheless, I continue to appreciate Windows as an OS that gives third-party enhancements such a degree of control over its inner workings.
-----------------------
Wallpaper: Sailing via Simple Desktops, modified with colorful grunge textures by Lost and Taken.
Sailing (Desktop 28)
Busy busy busy! And on top of that, I've just had a head cold and surgery in the same week. (Protip: sneezing and stitches do not mix.) But I do miss my lifehacking, rainmetering comrades. I hope you'll indulge me in a small "I'm not dead" contribution to the pool.
As ever, please send questions and requests to kaelri+lcd@gmail.com. I honestly read everything I get, even though I don't have nearly enough time to reply to everything. Don't hesitate to be persistent.
-----------------------
My Rainmeter theme has barely changed since last year, so there's not much to tell. The skins are slightly-modified Enigma stock, and they get the job done while looking elegant, which is all I ask of them. (If anyone's interested, the system monitor skin is reading CPU, RAM, and wireless signal strength.)
-----------------------
Trillian is my communication and message center, and I'm really happy with the latest update. I was running googsystray as my omnibus Google notifier for a while, but it eventually became too buggy and unreliable for my taste. Now, I just have Wave and Voice send email alerts to my inbox, which lets me get rid of a redundant tray app and receive all of my messages in a consistent place and format. Trillian's popups are great - very Growl-like - and give me the option of deleting, archiving, or marking emails as read, without even switching windows.
Trillian has also grown into a truly excellent Twitter client. The last version was awkward, limited, and behaved in somewhat counterintuitive ways with regard to links and @replies. But all of that is fixed now. I still wish it had support for organizing tweets by conversation, and a less convoluted way to save a search. But on the whole, I'm very happy with it, and the fact that it's integrated in my IM+email client is a huge bonus.
The skin, Sidebar, was a lucky find; it just happened to fit in perfectly with my Windows and Rainmeter themes. But Trillian is still suffering from a severe lack of third-party skins. I encourage anyone with the time and inclination to go help.
-----------------------
As you can see, I've streamlined my Firefox setup a bit. First and foremost, I've jumped on the permanent-tab bandwagon, using FaviconizeTab to keep Gmail, Reader and News open and available without taking up space. This also means that I don't really need a start page anymore, so I've ditched Fast Dial at last.
I also got rid of All-in-One Sidebar, which I just wasn't using enough to justify the clutter. Now, I'm using Personal Menu to place a single Bookmarks button in the toolbar. Aside from the address bar, there is virtually nothing else visible. As before, I access my menu by right-clicking on the chrome, or by pressing Alt to temporarily reveal the menu toolbar.
Aside from those two, I'm still running All-In-One Gestures, Fission, Greasemonkey, and Lazarus - and that's it.
-----------------------
Behind the scenes, my arsenal of always-running applications has changed a little bit. I'm still running Start Killer, Taskbar Shuffle, D-Color, Autohotkey, Launchy, and Lakrits VS, as described in this post from nearly a year ago. So I won't rehash those. Instead, the differences:
-----------------------
I've had Dropbox for a long time, too, but only as a kind of incidental tool for specific needs. I tend to be very reluctant to place my trust in a cloud service that is in any way capable of affecting files on my hard drive. But I've finally taken the plunge, and now, I've got just about all of my documents and projects living in there. And it is nice to know that I'll be able to access my active work from any computer without having to think of it beforehand. This shift has also simplified my Documents folder considerably, which is always a pleasure.
-----------------------
Yes, after years of searching, I've found my holy grail: a solid replacement for iTunes on Windows. Lifehacker gave it a writeup earlier this year, but I didn't get around to trying it until iTunes 10 came out and pushed me over the edge. While it's not quite as visually polished as an Apple product, I'm very impressed by the feature set: with the exception of sharing, it can do just about everything that iTunes can, including file conversions, iPod sync, a robust smart-playlist tool, and a clone of the album art view in the main library. In addition, it won me over with a few things that iTunes does not have:
- Built-in Last.fm.
- Built-in universal hotkeys.
- Third-party theme support.
- An independent "Now Playing" queue, which lets you create and edit an ad-hoc playlist on the fly, instead of being bound to a permanent list.
- Tabs. (I believe the UI framework is actually based on Firefox.)
- Automatic fetching of lyrics and track/artist data, which it can display in a collapsible pane.
- Can play and edit files without adding them to the library.
- The one that's most important to me: wherever possible, MusicBee stores metadata within your music files, rather than using a separate database like iTunes. This includes the saving of album art. iTunes' behavior in this regard has always annoyed me, so it's refreshing to have a media player that respects my ownership of my music.
-----------------------
I have no idea if it helps me or not, but I've been running it for a few weeks anyway.
-----------------------
Lightscreen is a very simple screenshot tool. Basically, it makes my PrntScrn key behave like a Mac's: it automatically saves the screen to an image on my desktop. I can also copy only the active window, or a manual selection, by holding Alt or Ctrl, respectively. Again, very simple, but it's a perfect fit in my system.
-----------------------
I'm amazed that it took me so long to discover DM2. It's a simple Windows tray app that gives you a huge variety of ways to manipulate your windows. I use it for exactly three things: to minimize any window to the tray, roll up any window to the title bar, and set any window to stay on top.
Much like Start Killer and Taskbar Shuffle, I consider these to be features that should have been built into the OS. Nonetheless, I continue to appreciate Windows as an OS that gives third-party enhancements such a degree of control over its inner workings.
-----------------------
Wallpaper: Sailing via Simple Desktops, modified with colorful grunge textures by Lost and Taken.