This photo was taken on 105th Street, between Central Park West and Manhattan Ave.

There's nothing outrageous or controversial about this woman's outfit … but I'm pretty sure that you would not have seen anything like this a few years ago.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Jul 22, 2013.

Note: this photo was published in a Jul 3, 2014 blog titled "Как слушать статьи из Pocket, когда нет возможности читать/."

***************

This set of photos is based on a very simple concept: walk every block of Manhattan with a camera, and see what happens. To avoid missing anything, walk both sides of the street.

That's all there is to it …

Of course, if you wanted to be more ambitious, you could also walk the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. But that's more than I'm willing to commit to at this point, and I'll leave the remaining boroughs of New York City to other, more adventurous photographers.

Oh, actually, there's one more small detail: leave the photos alone for a month -- unedited, untouched, and unviewed. By the time I actually focus on the first of these "every-block" photos, I will have taken more than 8,000 images on the nearby streets of the Upper West Side -- plus another several thousand in Rome, Coney Island, and the various spots in NYC where I traditionally take photos. So I don't expect to be emotionally attached to any of the "every-block" photos, and hope that I'll be able to make an objective selection of the ones worth looking at.

As for the criteria that I've used to select the small subset of every-block photos that get uploaded to Flickr: there are three. First, I'll upload any photo that I think is "great," and where I hope the reaction of my Flickr-friends will be, "I have no idea when or where that photo was taken, but it's really a terrific picture!"

A second criterion has to do with place, and the third involves time. I'm hoping that I'll take some photos that clearly say, "This is New York!" to anyone who looks at it. Obviously, certain landscape icons like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty would satisfy that criterion; but I'm hoping that I'll find other, more unexpected examples. I hope that I'll be able to take some shots that will make a "local" viewer say, "Well, even if that's not recognizable to someone from another part of the country, or another part of the world, I know that that's New York!" And there might be some photos where a "non-local" viewer might say, "I had no idea that there was anyplace in New York City that was so interesting/beautiful/ugly/spectacular."

As for the sense of time: I remember wandering around my neighborhood in 2005, photographing various shops, stores, restaurants, and business establishments -- and then casually looking at the photos about five years later, and being stunned by how much had changed. Little by little, store by store, day by day, things change … and when you've been around as long as I have, it's even more amazing to go back and look at the photos you took thirty or forty years ago, and ask yourself, "Was it really like that back then? Seriously, did people really wear bell-bottom jeans?"

So, with the expectation that I'll be looking at these every-block photos five or ten years from now (and maybe you will be, too), I'm going to be doing my best to capture scenes that convey the sense that they were taken in the year 2013 … or at least sometime in the decade of the 2010's (I have no idea what we're calling this decade yet). Or maybe they'll just say to us, "This is what it was like a dozen years after 9-11".

Movie posters are a trivial example of such a time-specific image; I've already taken a bunch, and I don't know if I'll ultimately decide that they're worth uploading. Women's fashion/styles are another obvious example of a time-specific phenomenon; and even though I'm definitely not a fashion expert, I suspected that I'll be able to look at some images ten years from now and mutter to myself, "Did we really wear shirts like that? Did women really wear those weird skirts that are short in the front, and long in the back? Did everyone in New York have a tattoo?"

Another example: I'm fascinated by the interactions that people have with their cellphones out on the street. It seems that everyone has one, which certainly wasn't true a decade ago; and it seems that everyone walks down the street with their eyes and their entire conscious attention riveted on this little box-like gadget, utterly oblivious about anything else that might be going on (among other things, that makes it very easy for me to photograph them without their even noticing, particularly if they've also got earphones so they can listen to music or carry on a phone conversation). But I can't help wondering whether this kind of social behavior will seem bizarre a decade from now … especially if our cellphones have become so miniaturized that they're incorporated into the glasses we wear, or implanted directly into our eyeballs.

Oh, one last thing: I've created a customized Google Map to show the precise details of each day's photo-walk. I'll be updating it each day, and the most recent part of my every-block journey will be marked in red, to differentiate it from all of the older segments of the journey, which will be shown in blue. You can see the map, and peek at it each day to see where I've been, by clicking on this link

URL link to Ed's every-block progress through Manhattan

If you have any suggestions about places that I should definitely visit to get some good photos, or if you'd like me to photograph you in your little corner of New York City, please let me know. You can send me a Flickr-mail message, or you can email me directly at ed-at-yourdon-dot-com

Stay tuned as the photo-walk continues, block by block ...

Wallpaper: (of) Seattle Harbor, found at Interfacelift.com

Tools used:

Geektool

Yahoo Widgets

Shapeshifter

I'm not dead.

- - - - - - -

Sorry for the long absence. It may not yet be over, sadly; I still have some other projects on my plate, and desktop modding just isn't a priority. I have no intention of abandoning it entirely, however. There are still plenty of ideas that I want to play with, just don't expect a blitz for a while.

- - - - - - -

Enigma

Anyone who's e-mailed me about Enigma deserves my deepest apologies. I'm doing my best to respond to as many of you as possible, but there are still hundreds of messages that have gone unanswered, some of them for months, and I feel terrible about that. If I ever run into some money, I'll hire an assistant to respond to them all. I know it's become cliché to say something like this, but it's humbling to see how passionate and genuinely appreciative you are, and I really have read each message.

Since interest clearly has yet to die, I'm making it a goal to release Enigma 3 by the end of the year. Rather than piling on with new functions, I want to keep the focus on making it easier to set up and use:

- As I've talked about in the past, my chief objective for this is to make Enigma part of a fully-developed Litestep theme. Beyond the eye candy, this would ideally let the user switch between skins, profiles and templates using shell-integrated controls. (For those who aren't interested in a shell replacement, don't worry - the package will still and always be available as a Rainmeter module.)

- Setting modesty aside for a moment, I believe a lot of Enigma's success comes from its detailed documentation and its (albeit crude) installer tool, which made it far more accessible to the average user. The only other Rainmeter suite I've seen with any such automation is Vista Rainbar. This has been a successful policy, and if possible, I hope to continue it by streamlining the installation of Litestep and the Enigma theme as much as possible.

- I realize the existing version has some problems that need fixing. The Location skin is still plagued by servers thinking it's a web crawler and cutting it off, so the search is still on for a permanent provider. I also realize that MoxaWeather is no longer working - this is the fault of Weather.com, who shut down the convenient XML feed that we've all been using. I know there are talks going on between Weather.com and the Rainmeter community, and they've asked that skin developers refrain from exploiting a well-known loophole to fix the problem until they've worked out a deal. I'm happy to oblige.

- - - - - - -

Liquid Crystal Discourse

still exists, technically. I got to write one post, and then, naturally, Real Life™ swept in and buried it like a hurricane. I've heard from a few people who were disappointed about that, so I'm now reaffirming my commitment to the blog. My plan is to post at least once a week.

- - - - - - -

Desktop

As you can tell, another reason I haven't posted in a while is that very little has changed. I'm no longer running Google Desktop, because, well, I don't use it anymore. Autohotkey, Rainmeter and Notepad pretty much joined forces to render it obsolete.

I'm really looking forward to Windows 7, which shall, I'm sure, initiate a new stage of evolution for my dear laptop.

See the notes for more trivia.

Theme:

- NOOTO VS. Requires patched uxtheme.dll - patcher here.

- Wallpaper: Remnants, by freelancah, resized and rotated.

Startups:

- Autohotkey.

- Launchy.

Programs running:

- Rainmeter. Skin: Enigma, customized with Amana Icons.

- CD Art Display.

- Yod'm 3D 1.4.

I'll update this description to describe the individual items. I've picked up many of my favorite items after spotting something useful in the LifeHacker group.

*Featured Desktop on Lifehacker.com*

While looking at minimalistic wallpapers, I found this wallpaper and an idea sparked in my head. Wouldn't it be cool to have desktop information "reflected" in the mirrors of the wallpaper? I thought so, especially since I hadn't previously seen something like this done.

What's In this Desktop:

[Wallpaper:]

- Link. What you see in the screen shot is a slightly modified version I did to accommodate for the task bar.

[Icons:]

- Devine Icons-2

[Taskbar:]

The invisible taskbar can be found here.

[Rainmeter:]

- 10-Foot HUD

- Simple Sentence for the weather temps and conditions.

- Lines for the RAM and CPU measures

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full-Size screen shot of the desktop.

I have this entire suite bundled in a Rainstaller file for easy installation! (Scaled to 1440x900) AND now since the amount of traffic I got to download this file, I have moved a fixed installer to a file hosting site:

[Here]

If the Rainstaller doesn't work for you:

Then download the zip archive of the skins at the link below. Just copy the skins into the Rainmeter directory in My Documents and restart Rainmeter.

[Here]

Have any comments, tips, or tweaks you think it could use? Let me know!

Home improvement weekend part II: taking care of all those pesky charging devices.

Here's the Lifehacker post.

View it in full here to get a better idea of the wallpaper which is too small to come across correctly when re-sized.

OS: Windows 7.

The top bar is a CD Art Display skin called 'Subject Matter' that is compatible with virtually every major desktop resolution.

The corner clock is called, well, corner clock and is available here.

The dock icons at the bottom are Ecqlipse 2 icons on Rocket Dock

Bottom right of the taskbar is a Winamp tray controls.

The wallpaper can be found here.

Enjoy, if you need any help just ask.

My command center.

Well, heres my new desktop - probably my favorite so far.

Like? Dislike? Comments? Advice? Need some help? Just leave a comment.

Wallpaper - learntolikeit.org/blog/wordpress/?page_id=430&pid=1181

Font - Continuum Lite - www.2-free.net/free-fonts/continuum-light/32994.html

Geektool Scripts:

Day: date +%a

Date: date +%d

Month: date +%B

Time: date +"%I:%M"

AM/PM: date +"%p"

Year: date +%Y

(Note - Weather requires cURL to be installed)

Current conditions: curl m.wund.com/global/stations/*****.html |sed -n '47p' | sed -e 's///g' | sed -e 's/<\/b.*//g' | sed 's/\//g'

Current temp: curl m.wund.com/global/stations/*****.html |sed -n '21p' | sed -e 's///g' | sed -e 's/ 5 {print "CPU: " $12, $13}'

Where ######## is your location on yahoo weather (ie go to yahoo weather, search your location and paste this into the script over ########

Forecast is a modified version of Thomas Upton's Yahoo weather python script www.thomasupton.com/blog/2008/04/yahoo-weathe r-feeds-with... Simply download the file, link to it in geektool with your yahoo weather area code. Instructions on differing outputs can be found at the above website.

Uptime: uptime | awk '{print " " $3 " " $4 " " $5 " "}' | sed -e 's/.$//g';

RAM: top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print " " $8 " "}' ;

CPU: top -l 2 | awk '/CPU usage/ && NR > 5 {print " " $12, $13}'

Trash size: du -sh ~/.Trash/ | awk '{print " " $1}'

Mac HD: df -h | grep disk0s2 | awk '{print " " $3 "/" $2}'

Please contact me for battery or wireless network scripts - they are not mine and i cant find the source at the moment

Saw this awesome pic of the Flatirons in Boulder, and since Im a Colorado native as well, I decided to make a desktop out of it. How you like it!

That's Rainmeter with:

-- Backline Calendar

-- DeskCloud 2.1

-- LEXIS weather

-- a bit of Enigma

-- GoogleBar at the bottom left

Two in one day. Won't become a habit, I promise.

I immediately found myself missing the CRWS design, which is still my favorite to date. Usually, right after I compose a good design, I feel like it's the best thing I've ever done; when I don't get that feeling, I take it as a sign. (I'm sure those of you involved in any creative pursuit know what I'm talking about.)

The obvious new toy here is the iTunes skin, which I whipped up after a) realizing that the information was not quite crucial enough to warrant a taskbar, b) discovering the Helvetica font family, which is obscenely attractive, and c) months of jealousy towards those of you with a talent for integrating the wallpaper. This first foray is simple, but my hope is that the subtle angle is enough to make it blend in neatly.

In practice, I'll probably even remove the Network and Location elements, or have them hidden along with the rest of the sidebar (Toggle skin in the top-left corner). Even a mostly-blank taskbar or sidebar has the advantage of intuitively drawing your eye to whatever is there. And the psychological benefit of using a consistent, compartmentalized format cannot be underestimated. I'd expand on that thought if I were running on a few more hours of sleep than I am; perhaps it's the fodder of a potential blog post.

Anyway. I'm sure this will follow the usual pattern: I like the followup ten times as much, but everyone else favors the original. So it goes. :)

Windows XP visual style is NOOTO; all other components as seen in the original Grays (Desktop 24).

Just Rainmeter working here, Windows 7 with Glass Onion theme ( solmiler.deviantart.com/art/Glass-Onion-for-W7-202355689 )

-- Valhalla Wallpaper: browse.deviantart.com/customization/wallpaper/minimalisti...

-- an edited version of the SimpleMedia clock and weather: browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=simple+medi...

-- an edited DC2 RSS reader: ultimatert.deviantart.com/art/Desk-Cloud-2-1-Jan-15-2012-...

-- Simple Sentence for the music player: white-baron.deviantart.com/art/Simplesentencethree-175994306?

-- GoogleBar: browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=googlebar+r...

-- Music: Courtesy The White Stripes

Windows 7 prof, rainmeter (some tweaks), custom wallpaper

"What?" You asked.

Yes KOLO is synonymous with archival/presentation and most often associated with photography, scrapbooking and art projects. Their Essex Travel Book released this year seems like an odd addition to their product line-up but when you think about it, the whole idea of the Essex series is to bring the KOLO aesthetics and these associations from your archive to your everyday life. You don't carry a typical KOLO product everyday, but you can carry an Essex all the time and treat it as a process to create your final archive/project.

How does this lead to the KOLO-GTD association? If you've been a follower of Scription or lifehacker, you've probably seen my mind.Depositor and its subsequent version as a GTD index card cover. Well, months ago when I received a long awaited Essex in leather, I decided that I wouldn't want to put it into rough use as a notebook. So I employed the law of subtraction, took away the refills and elastic loops and made the cover my new GTD tool.

The medium size Essex is just right for the 6x4" index cards. Since the elastic enclosure is quite strong and I don't intend to walk around dangling this, even though the index cards are not secured inside any pocket, I feel safe enough.

The back side of the window pocket becomes very useful to hold a notepad as a temporary drop box too, how perfect! With a few more creative twist, you can secure the cards when enclosed, unfold the cover all the way to make an "A" stand so you can see your top index card in standing position, etc... I will leave this to you for fun. Don't forget to share here or at Koloist.com if you decide to GTD this way.

mind.Depositor GTD to-do Template - ruled with priority and checkbox

mind.Depositor GTD to-do Template - plain

Scription mind.Depositor index ruled in colors

Scription mind.Depositor index ruled in black and white

Enjoy!

More on Scription blog: moleskine.vox.com/library/post/getting-things-done-the-ko...

All set up messy but operational. Future plans include some pendant lighting hanging over the main surface (from the underside of the staircase), a picture rail installed on the block wall for art and inspiration and additional IKEA draw units for some of the storage slots. Also a 2 gang box was installed in the desk (behind the printer) but is not yet wired up. All wire management was done under the desk and the wires to and from the computer are neatly tucked in plastic corrugated conduit that I picked up from Autozone.

Current Version 3.0:

Computer: Intel Pentium D 940 Presler 3.2GHz LGA 775 Dual-Core Processor on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3L motherboard with GeForce GTS250, 8GB OCZ RAM and over 2.5TB storage. OS is 64bit Windows Vista Ultimate with 2 - 22" ACER widescreen monitors (P224W & AL2223W) and Creative Labs 3.1 audio.

Desk: Custom made for the space under my stairs with a single piece of 3/4" MDF and uses 2x4's for support. IKEA Expedit bookcase as the return (Right side), IKEA Expedit bookcase on left for storage/support. Lighting is 6 Hampton Bay 3-Light LED task and accent lights (~$46/3pk) mounted under the shelf. Monitor shelf above the desk is 9" deep and also made from 3/4" MDF with a Roman Ogee edge.

Overall desk size:

Width - 9' 4"

Depth - 2' 6"

Height - 2' 6.25"

Return Width - 1' 3.5"

Return Length - 4' 11"

My bed. Desk works as a nice headboard. Skyrim map had to be done.

Read how we did the $1,200 "Quilty As Charged" Garage Makeover on the Atwater Village Newbie blog.

This workspace is in my dorm room. Being a college student in a dorm, I basically had to make do with what was given to me—I am not realistically capable of choosing my own desk, etc. This presented a challenge when I attempted to create a cordless workspace, but as it turned out, the desk that I had was pretty good for hiding cables, with a little ingenuity.

Equipment shown here: 23" Apple Cinema Display, Logitech MX Revolution mouse, Apple Wireless Keyboard, M-Audio BX5a Deluxe Monitors, an IKEA desk lamp, and backlighting provided by an IKEA Dioder setup (which can show a variety of colors: purple, blue, red, green, yellow, orange, white, cyan. or, it can fade between them, or, it can go through them in succession).

This was made with a desktop image from Mantia.

mantia.me/wallpaper/tardis/

and the sign was from

konvoluted.tumblr.com/

I found a vector graphic of the St Johns logo that i altered in photoshop to give the same background as the notice.

I then used geek tool (for the first time) to place the weather and date info on the notice.

i altered the graphics for the arc clock and used the scripted from that to animate the st johns clock.

and finally i used a simple bow tie theme for the iTunes info uptop of the notice.

Misc food

receipt from Deep Ellum

blogged here

and

blogged here

Jim Bean, John Jameson, and Jack Daniels play the part of the Wise Men & Baby Jesus is an 8-hour Tylenol in a bottle-cap manger.

My shiny new Gaming Rig... it was supposed to be an HTPC but I got sidetracked when the painfully gorgeous case arrived and kept on upping the spec... This case supports some pretty serious kit. The build includes...

Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Mini-ITX mobo

Intel Core i7 3770K CPU @ 4.6 GHz

16 GB DDR3 1833 MHz RAM

2x 120 GB SanDisk Extreme SSDs (RAID-0)

2x Seagate 2TB HDD (RAID-1)

EVGA GTX 670 FTW 2GB Graphics card

Corsair Hydro H100i Liquid Cooling kit

MadCatz V5 Gaming Keyboard & R.A.T.3 mouse

Krator NESO4 2.1 Speakers

LG IPS27I-BN IPS 1080p Monitor

BitFenix Recon LCD fan controller

Update: Ooh wondered where all the views were coming from... my image has just been featured on lifehacker.com

lifehacker.com/5994570/five-best-small-form-factor-pc-cases

Foreword

First of all, a deep (and entirely unoriginal) apology for being inactive for so long. Just after last Christmas, I was hit in the face by a huge flaming chunk of Real Life, leaving virtually zero time for my pet projects. I have still been answering emails sent to kaelri+lcd@gmail.com, so if you have a question, or you need help with Enigma, please don't hesitate to send a message. I still can't guarantee a prompt reply, but it's your best bet, and it's always great to hear from people.

Since it's been so long, I wanted to reward your patience with a real in-depth post. With screenshots! So read on.

Although I've had no opportunity to work on Rainmeter stuff, I've used some of my scattered moments of free time to tweak my Firefox setup, based on experiences with Chrome, Opera, and yes, even Safari 5. The beauty of extensible browsers is that whenever one of them gets a great new feature, someone will make it available for the others in short order. This means that the most extensible, customizable browser gets a huge Darwinian advantage. And in that, Firefox is still the undisputed king.

-----------------------

Chrome

Even though I've made a lot of behind-the-scenes changes, you'll notice that it doesn't look much different from my previous setup from almost two years ago. That's because I can't really simplify it any more than it is. I've even removed the back/forward and menu buttons now, so typically, the only element that's actually visible is the awesomebar on top.

Theme: After all this time, NASA Night Launch is still the best, cleanest, smoothest, most professional dark-colored Firefox theme on the planet. If they charged for this theme, I would pay.

Search: I really feel that keyword-based search bookmarks are the perfect solution to this issue of combining the search and address bars. I could never get the hang of Chrome's way of doing things - if I type "wiki lifehacker," will I search Wikipedia for "lifehacker," or will I google for "wiki lifehacker"? An action that is so basic to modern Internet living requires a method as habitual and thought-free as possible, and keywords are the answer. All I have to do is prefix whatever I type with the corresponding code:

- g: Google

- w: Wikipedia

- u: YouTube

- d: Dictionary.com

- t: Thesaurus.com

- tr: Google Translate (This will automatically translate the text which follows.)

To set this up for yourself, copy the link location of each search into a bookmark, and type the desired prefix into the "keyword" field. Thanks again to Nabeel for introducing me to this concept.

[Screenshot]

Menu: You'll notice that there's absolutely no menu bar or button in sight. That's because I'm using a feature of Personal Menu that I've previously overlooked: adding menu items to the toolbar context menu. I can now just right-click on either side of my toolbar to access the menu. I know it sounds awkward, but it's actually very easy to get used to. I use keyboard shortcuts for most things, which allowed me to condense everything I actually use into a remarkably short list.

[Screenshot]

Status Bar: Gone, obviously, but replaced with the simplest, most perfect extension I've ever seen. It's called Fission, and it does exactly three things. First, it adds a loading bar to the background of the awesomebar, ala Safari. (You can also have it normal-sized on the far-right side, which I do, because otherwise it's wasted space.) Second, it displays the page status, also on the far right side. Third, when you hover over a link, it changes the address in the awesomebar to the location of the link. In other words, it uses the awesomebar to completely replace all the usefulness of the status bar, and it does so in the most elegant way imaginable.

[Screenshot]

-----------------------

Sidebar

I think the most dramatic addition is the sidebar, courtesy of All-in-One Sidebar. I gave Opera another try several weeks ago, and while I ultimately switched back to Firefox, I was smitten with the sidebar that Opera uses. I found it easier to use, because it's adjacent to the edge of the screen, so it requires less aiming than the regular (horizontal) toolbars, and it saves vertical space, which, as we all know, is more important on a widescreen laptop. Two hours later, I'd found this, and now, my entire interface, other than the awesomebar, has been moved to it. AiOS is wonderful in several different ways:

Hide/Show: I probably would not have kept this extension if there hadn't been an easy way to hide it when I wanted to minimize my interface. Fortunately, it offers not only a grabber on the far left (barely visible, but easy to click, since I only need to flick the mouse left), but a keyboard shortcut: F4.

[Screenshot]

Flexible Buttons: I only have a few buttons, but as you can see, they're stretched out to fill the full height of the window. This is great, because it gives each button an absolutely gigantic click area.

Sidebars: This is actually the point of AiOS. As you know, Firefox can open your Bookmarks (Ctrl-B) and History (Ctrl-H) as sidebar panels. AiOS takes this further: it lets you open Downloads, Addons, Page Info, and other tools as docked, collapsible panels. It feels good to have all of Firefox's most important dialogs in a consistent format, and if you're, say, doing a lot of tweaking in your various extensions' options, it saves a lot of time to have it permanently open.

[Screenshot]

MultiPanel: AiOS adds one more sidebar of its own, called MultiPanel. This does a couple of different things. The one I love most is that you can open a second page inside the panel. It can even render the page in a mobile format, perfect for sidebar viewing. Menus at the top of the panel also offer quick access to the page source (which can be made to open in the sidebar by default) and the "about:" dialogs, including about:config (same).

[Screenshot (Full)]

[Screenshot (Mobile)]

-----------------------

Fast Dial

Still using Fast Dial as both my homepage and new-tab page. I could save on some performance by replacing it with a homemade HTML file, but for the moment, it doesn't bother me, and it's nice for the infrequent times when I do need to move stuff around. I made the thumbnails myself in Photoshop (not that they're anything special; just jumping on the Helvetica bandwagon).

As you can probably tell from the contents, I'm still a heavy and devoted user of Google services, especially since I've finally taken the leap to browser-only messaging. Yes, I have given up Thunderbird (except for making IMAP backups, because I'm still paranoid), and am now using Gmail to manage four different email addresses from a single inbox, which, to Gmail's credit, is working flawlessly, thanks to a combination of forwarding, filtering, and a secure send-from-address feature. As for my feeds, I'm using Google Reader with the gorgeous Helvetireader skin, via Greasemonkey. And as they say, I haven't looked back.

[Screenshot (Reader)]

[Screenshot (Mail)]

-----------------------

Bookmarks

It took a bit of fiddling, but I was able to add my bookmarks toolbar to the sidebar. Here's the trick: I moved all of my bookmarks into a single, unlabeled folder, so the effect is that it appears as if it's just a button, and therefore takes no horizontal space. The only (nitpicky) downside is that it doesn't really work without the "flexible buttons" option in AiOS; it expands to fill the entire sidebar vertically, which is annoying.

One of the things I'm asked about most often is my organization scheme. It's pretty simple, actually. Writer contains the sites where I'm an active member and contributor: forums, wikis, etc. Reader used to contain my daily reading material, before I started using feeds; now it holds my archive of saved posts, news stories and other pages, sorted by tag. (I discovered this completely by accident: Firefox lets you add a tag to any bookmark folder, where it appears as a menu.) Writer is where I save the pages that I don't have time to read. As you can imagine, this grows rapidly, and I have to cull it every few weeks. Resources is a list of useful tools that I may need during the course of the day. (Click the screenshot below to see.) After that, all that's left are a few folders dedicated to each of my currently-active projects. This method has served me well for literally years. I don't know if it qualifies as a "GTD" tactic, but I certainly recommend it.

[Screenshot (Reader)]

[Screenshot (Resources)]

Readability: This is the newest addition to my browsing suite. After Safari 5 popped up last week - although Safari for Windows is still the trashiest app ever released by a developer of Apple's standing - I was reasonably impressed with the "Reader" feature, and, naturally, I tried to see if anything like it was available for Firefox. Lo and behold, I discovered Readability. It's a bookmarklet which changes the layout of any page you throw at it, stripping all the unnecessary elements and reformatting the text to your preferred reading conditions. It's lovely. (Via Soeren Says.)

[Screenshot]

-----------------------

Gestures

The last extension I'll be highlighting is All-in-One Gestures. Like AiOS, I grabbed this after being really pleased with the mouse gestures in Opera. I never really thought I'd like them, but it does save an awful lot of time, and of course, it's customizable, so you can define those gestures that are most intuitive to you. It's now just a quick swipe to go back, forward, to the top or bottom of the page, to refresh, to open a new tab, or load the homepage in the current tab. These are just a few of the functions it can be used to invoke. It even has a command to increment a digit in the current page's URL - in other words, scroll through multi-page articles with a flick of the wrist. I admit, this isn't as seamless as Opera's method, which not only finds the page number automatically, but activates it whenever you use "forward" on a page that's already at the end of your history. But this works. I don't have to think about it, which is the most important thing.

This is also a great example of how extensions can be used to enhance each other. One of AiOG's other uses is to open a "favorite bookmark." I added the Readability bookmarklet (above). So now, I can reformat any webpage to my liking with a flick of the wrist. Welcome to the future.

-----------------------

Other Extensions

I won't go in-depth with these, since they're not really relevant to my browser interface like the others are. But for completion's sake, I'm also using:

- Adblock Plus

- Firefox Sync

- Lazarus Form Recovery

- Resurrect Pages

- Shooter

-----------------------

One More Thing

Go to about:config. Find the key called "general.smoothScroll". Change it to true. Instant smooth-scrolling, no extensions needed. Cheers.

I can't help it. I'm addicted now.

I edited the Bowtie skin found here, by Abad Federico, and I got rid of the blood spatter, and changed the typeface to match my GeekTool setup.

If you want the directions to make GeekTool look like mine, read the comments on this picture

Here's something most people don't know about me: as much as I love technology, and follow the latest news from Google, Apple, et al, I actually don't buy gadgets very often. I can't stand spending money needlessly, accumulating crap that I don't know how to get rid of, and, especially, retiring a tool before I've gotten all the value out of it. I just bought my first smartphone this year. And last week, I finally retired my faithful Dell Inspiron B130, which has been my exclusive machine since September 2006.

Now, some of you may scoff. A budget laptop marketed for college students is not the kind of choice you expect from someone who is fairly tech savvy and who uses a computer pretty much 24/7, for work and for play. But after nearly half a decade of constant use, I have nothing but praise for the Little Notebook That Could. Somewhere around here, I've told the tale of how, after I accidentally deleted the boot sector during a botched Linux venture, she miraculously healed herself without the use of a Windows disc or recovery software. I never once had to reinstall the OS, never had to contact Dell support, never had a serious virus or hardware malfunction, never experienced the sluggishness, overheating and physical cruft that my friends have had with their notebooks. Guys, if you take care of your computer, your computer will take care of you.

Nonetheless, the Dell was showing her age. While the very-worn battery and hard drive could probably be replaced, a 1.7 GHz single-core processor just doesn't cut it anymore, especially if you're looking to upgrade to Windows 7. So I've switched to an HP G62x, and after a little over a week of full-time use, I have no regrets. While less mobile than a netbook, and less powerful than, say, a MacBook Pro, these mid-range workhorses can really serve you well as a primary machine, and you can get some surprising deals if you do your homework. I got this thing with half a terabyte of internal storage (no more juggling external drives to watch my movies!) and an ATI Radeon Mobility video card, which, while it wouldn't satisfy a hardcore gamer, has been a real treat for me - not least because it unlocks some Photoshop features that I could never use before. This for under $600. And since I can install up to 8GB of RAM and (someday) an SSD, I'm thinking I can make this one last even longer than its predecessor.

Anyway. This desktop post won't have anything new for the customizers. I'm just marking my switch to a brand new platform. All of my desktops up to this point - throughout all the Lightning Sunset, the browser tinkering, the Rainmeter revival - were done on that little Dell. I'm looking forward to seeing where this new vessel will take me.

- - - - - - -

Before I get into my customization details, I have to say, straight off, that Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system. I know I'm a little late to the party here, but it needs to be said. The taskbar is a sheer joy to use. Jump lists are brilliant, especially pinning files, which eliminates the need for a lot of my old hotkeys. The redesigned Windows Explorer is an incredibly sleek, refined application. Networking just works now. And there are so many little touches: if you click and drag down on the title bar of a maximized window, it will restore the window and move it with your cursor, all without lifting the button.

Really, I'd write a whole review of Windows 7 alone, if there weren't already hundreds of them. Suffice to say, I'm no longer embarrassed to be a Windows user. Not that I really was before, but you know how it is - Linux people telling you you're an ignorant slave, Mac people telling you you have no taste. Especially looking at the directions that both OS X and Ubuntu are going these days, I can say with full confidence that Windows 7 is the OS I would choose from a cold start.

- - - - - - -

Desktop

Theme:

- Visual Style: Shadow for 7 by krissirk. I tried the big names, including Appows and Shine. But this one just hit the mark. So many VS designers like to add their little frills around the edges, but Shadow is just clean, consistent and simple. The subtle Aero transparency is very professional - it makes Google Chrome look gorgeous, among other things. Just a real quality VS. I doubt it'd be much different if I'd made it myself.

- Wallpaper: Big Sky by Fifty Foot Shadows, one of my favorite wallpaper sources. I'm an incurable romantic, so the fact that this is an actual photograph, when a simple Photoshop gradient would have been just as easy, makes it somehow special to me.

Startups:

- Autohotkey, though Windows 7's built-in features have rendered many of my scripts obsolete. But I'm still using keys for window transparency, text replacement, and the How-To Geek's Alt+Drag script. I've also remapped those app keys along the side of the keyboard to make them more useful - for example, one of them summons Launchy with one press, and another shows/hides my Trillian contact list.

- Launchy. The new Start Menu search, which is really wonderful, has allowed me to streamline Launchy's index a bit. (Which is good, because the current Launchy beta is a real memory leaker, unfortunately. Hoping for a fix soon.)

- 7 Taskbar Tweaker. This thing has a bunch of features, but I use exactly one of them: middle-click to close windows on the taskbar. I used Taskbar Shuffle back in XP to do the same thing, and I still strongly believe that this should be a native function for all taskbar-oriented OSes, especially since it's become a standard in every web browser.

- StartKiller. Removes the start button. I already have one on my keyboard, thankyouverymuch.

- Dropbox. No explanation needed, I think.

- Lightscreen. Very, very handy for taking screenshots - stays out of the way and gets the job done.

- http://www.stereopsis.com/flux. Which Flickr doesn't want to turn into a link, for some reason. Hmph.

- - - - - - -

I still haven't figured out what kind of Rainmeter theme I'm going to use on the new OS, and sadly I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to muck around with it. Too busy with work, another side project that moved up about a year ahead of schedule, and some other poorly-timed events... 2011 has been a challenging year thus far. But we'll see where I end up on the currents.

Many thanks to Mr. Alan Henry and LIFEHACKER.

The Still Sunset Desktop - lifehacker.com

Geektool + Mac OSX

__

Wallpaper: interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details/2553/lake_night.html

Geektool: Clock, Date, Weather, Weather forecast.

Font: Josefin Sans Std

Menu bar (Black color): Nocturne

iTunes info: Mousqueak

Fun with Geektool + Yahoo Widgets

It's nice to make smooth transitions on Apple's iOS and Mac OSX platforms. Hidden in the middle is a rare Black MacBook version 1.4.

(Added to Macro Mondays for the theme: Mailboxes)

I thought about filling it with real SPAM for this shot, but a) it might've looked too contrived but moreso b) my neighbors'd kill me for random meat juice oozing into their boxes.

lifehacker.com/5473299/catalog-choice-rids-your-mailbox-o...

This is a re-creation of Hawk's and Woodztream's desktop.

I contributed:

-The left set of data and it's scripts

-The iTunes Now playing (custom)

-Dock icons (custom)

-Used Magic Menu 3.0 to auto-hide my menubar.

Click Me to view a larger size.

Wallpaper by Hawk

Font: STHeiti

Data: Geektool

-----

Check out my work at CarbonMade(dot)com.

i sometimes like to work stood up, and came across a post on instructables with one of these so i made my own. there is a slight wobble but that's due to the cantilever on the tripod that allows you to flip to portrait a small block of wood to steady this and i will have a much more solid feeling desk. it will also be useful as a table for sitting while using the laptop

Uploaded from Streamzoo

Its name describes in an onomatopoeic way the feeling one gets upon installing and using this wonderful OS after a lifetime of Microsoft OS. I toyed with Linux in the late 90's but became consumed by University studies at the time, and reverted to 'easy' old Windows 95. Having spent the entire previous evening reinstalling Windows XP, not including all the software, it was refreshing to spend just a couple of hours tonight adding this. My first impressions are very good - hassle free automated install, very usable straight away. Why should I ever use Windows again? Windows Vista Ultimate = $400, ubuntu = $0. Hmm. Tricky one.

How bad can an OS be when it will multitask its own installation with games?! I was particularly impressed that on hotplugging my digital camera, the system recognised it with no input from me and offered to import directly into Picasa after downloading. Superb.

So my new Shuttle XPC now has triple-boot capability: Windows XP,Windows Vista RC1 and Ubuntu. Neat, eh?

EDIT: Some people were asking for the files: ge.tt/1EjlwuN/v/0

**This is not guaranteed to work on resolutions that are not 1920 x 1080**

I recently saw an awesome Lifehacker wallpaper article linking to the site 50 foot shadows where I found the background image: fiftyfootshadows.net/2012/06/06/going-nowhere/

I immediately came up with the idea of using the steps as a sort of shelf but the angle of the picture made it hard to use simple Rainmeter skins...I really liked the picture so I decided to go a different route; these are the steps I took:

1. Using photoshop, I placed text layers on the image and then rasterized them

2. I then used the perspective tool in photoshop to make it seem like the text was at the same angle as the stairs

3. I copied the parameters of the perspective transform I used and created a new image for each number 0-9 with the same transform applied to each along with a gaussian blur

4. Using rainmeter and some clever formulas others thought up, I broke up the date and time to single digits and used dynamic names to reference different images depending on the time and date

The process may seem complicated but it really isn't that hard; it probably took me about 5 hours of work to figure out how to use photoshop and then to code it

My resolution is 1920x1080 and I don't really feel like going through the steps to recreate this for other resolutions, but if someone wants to use the same process then they are welcome to!

Questions and comments are greatly appreciated! If enough people would like the files I can upload those too, just let me know

Now used for my business cards

Close in shot shows how back edge of glass glows courtesy of the LED strip. The strip was purchased from www.superbrightleds.com and then I put it in a strip of 3/8in channel section aluminum which fits snugly on the IKEA Vika Glasholm glass top. The glass lamps are also from IKEA (Grono). Speakers are Logitec which I got in an open box sale at Best buy for about $40. The mouse is a Logitech MX anywhere mouse which works beautifully on the glass. Typically optical mice do not work well on glass even when its frosted underneath like this. I tried several mice before finding that the darkfield technology in a handful of Logitechs laser mice is the only reliable way to go on glass.

One more minor update on the setup I've been mucking with.

In practice, I'd never be using all of this at once. I don't like redundancy, so having three clocks, two system monitors, etc. isn't something I'd do. But I think this is a good portrait of the suite that I've built for myself.

In terms of progress, I've finished converting almost all of the "Enigma" Rainmeter objects into compact widgets that will fit within the pseudo-taskbar on the bottom. (I actually made the bar by stretching a screenshot of the real taskbar, and I have to say, it's nice for everything to be consistent.) Both are set to 80% opacity.

I'm not sure where the "Notes" skin's place is in this setup. I might end up having it invisible except on mouseover.

The wallpaper, which I'm sure will turn some heads here as it did mine before, is Flaws of Fancy by derekprospero.

Again, all software information is listed on the original Wing (Desktop 14) page.

©2012 Susan Ogden-All Rights Reserved

View on Black

Let me just begin by saying, i absolutely despise pompous people.

OK....now that i have said that, i can move on to telling you what brought that on! Or......i can ask you all for YOUR definition of BOKEH! Since i like to be thorough about finding things out, i decided to look on the web, and also ask your humble opinion.

Here is a definition that i found on the web:

"The term bokeh is an anglicized version of a Japanese word used to describe the portion of a photograph that is out of focus behind the area of principal focus in a picture. When you see a portrait that has a creamy soft background and a nice crisp focus on the person being photographed, you are seeing bokeh. The shape of the highlights—sometimes round, hexagonal or other geometric shapes—is determined by the shape of the aperture in the lens.”

Lifehacker Photography / JASON FITZPATRICK

SO...i maintain that ANY out of focus section of a photo beyond what is in sharp focus (even with the lack of little balls of light, that are in this picture) is in fact Bokeh. Given this explanation, It could be the soft almost distinguishable shape of flowers or the smooth blur of colors created by whatever is behind the subject, created by the DOF of the lens. Yes, it IS DOF of the lens....but, if it is not clear, it is bokeh. Am i not understanding this explanation???

Now, i do not throw around the term pompous lightly....matter of fact i have come across very, VERY few people that fit that term strongly enough for me to tag them...but the person who wrote on one of my shots, sort of rubbed me the wrong way, and so i had a look at said persons profile. It fit the definition of pompous enough for me to tag him with it, and have no regrets :)

The old me would have just been annoyed and taken it as me doing something wrong, posting the shot on Bokeh Wednesday. However, the new me has decided that since HE is not in charge of the definition of Bokeh, and the shot i posted fits the definition above, i feel justified in answering him with a smug, "Live and Learn :p” . Some people just think they know it all....and i think after reading his profile, he should just take his toys and go home, because he does not belong on a friendly, fun sight like this!!

HMBT, my friends!

My moonwalk desktop.

On the bottom left near my start button I have a Google Search bar, so local and online search are in the same area. Beside that I have IKONKO 2's mail skin connected to my Gmail account (I don't get much mail), and immediately following is the weather.

On the right side of the screen I have Growl for Windows set up for notifications, so all I needed was the Dropbox, Rainmeter and Volume status bar icons. Time and Date are thanks to IKONKO 2's skins, and so are RAM usage and Recycle Bin info. I like keeping my bin empty, so a desktop indicator on its contents (however simple) was very welcome.

In front of the Stormtrooper is my To Do so that it is near the centre of the screen to maximize attention on it.

Stuff used:

- Wallpaper

- Rainmeter

- IKONKO 2

- Elune

I thought one of LifeHacker's featured workspaces was really cool:

lifehacker.com/5852857/the-single-cord-workspace?tag=feat...

So I made something that reminded me of it. All of the elements that went into it are listed in the picture :D I believe all of it can be found on deviantART, with the exception of the dock itself.

Woody Desktop?

___Rainmeter___

-> Enigma

link: kaelri.deviantart.com/art/Enigma-103823591

-> illustro (default theme with rainmeter)

link: rainmeter.net/RainCMS/?q=rainmeter101_gettingstarted

-> Elementary

link: col-darby.deviantart.com/art/Elementary-Rainmeter-1-4-185...?

-> Elegance 2

link: lilshizzy.deviantart.com/art/Rainmeter-Elegance-1-0-21450...

___Wallpaper___

-> Woody Wall by BSA-Danny

link: browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&...

___RocketDock___

-> Mnml Icon Set

link: browse.deviantart.com/?q=rocketdock%20icons&order=9&a...

Good morning, everyone! How are you today? I hope you all fine and health.

What is your most fun and healthy activity in the morning?

Water is Worth Loving, BSSR House, 2008-2010, Maastricht Region, Netherlands.

In designing - by Dutch architect Wiel Arets - the ILBAGNOALESSI dOt collection particular attention was devoted to assuring that the individual elements did not distract from the original intention of cleansing the body …

The composition of the whole is based on the individual strength of its parts. Each of these has to fulfil its purpose without being dominant in the process. All objects should serve relaxation in every detail.

The formal composition is very subtle and is the same for every object, so that the object is what is noticed first. It is only on taking a second look that you notice how perfectly adapted the objects are to their use.

Vika Alex drawer unit and a kitchen drawer organizer is great for pens and stationary. I prefer this over desktop pen holders. Other drawers hold my tablet for photoshop, USB cables, printer paper, envelopes etc...

Scription Chronodex Weekly Planner Jan-Jun 2013 Released

Alright, haven't gotten much time to take better photos or explaining too much, I guess Chronodex lovers already know how it works. It was a thrill that there were 72,841 downloads of the 2012 version and I hope many of you are as inspired as I am on everyday basis using Chronodex! Thank you for being part of it.

This time I've included a yearly dial featuring our beloved Vitruvian Man. Each division represents the correct number of days in that month, with reference to the week number in the inner most dial. If you want to plan ahead of the entire year of 2013, it should be a good visual representation of how you want your year spent, just color the weeks or the day divisions and remark radially, you are in control.

If you are new to Chronodex, check out story behind: Scription Chronodex Weekly Planner 2012 - free download with the cost of a prayer.

To interact with fellow Chronodex users, take a peek here:

Chronodex Facebook Page

Chronodex Flickr Group

The Fountain Pen Network thread about Chronodex

Lifehacker's cover of Chronodex

And now the download link of the Jan-Jun 2013 version:

Free of Holidays version Jan-Jun 2013

Middle East version without dates or holidays

Undated version, modification by Paul David Krishnan from Malaysia, portrait mode, dotted grid, 4 Chronodex cores on A4 sized paper to be printed and folded in half: PDF

Blank Chronodex Daily GTD, two A5 pages on one A4 paper: PDF,JPG

Blank Chronodex Daily GTD in "GhostWriter Notes" iPad app's "paper" format, works for Noteshelf too: JPG

Blank Chronodex core, two cores on blank A4 paper for any of your customization: PDF, JPG

Enjoy! Shoot me comments to make the next cool implementations.

More on Scription blog: scription.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/scription-chronodex-we...

From top left to bottom right:

- 2015 BatBook (?) Air 13" w/ InCase Icon Sleeve

- Grid-It Organizer with:

. Macbook Charger

. MagicMouse

. Western Digital Passport Ultra 2TB

. PocketJuice 7800mAh powerbank

. Assorted (?) Type-C and microUSB cables.

- iFixIt Essential Electronics Toolkit

- Moto 360 1st Gen charger

- LG headphones

- Anker SportBud BT headphones

- Casio fx-82ES Sci Calculator

- Kindle

- Faculty notes, Star Wars pencil case (because I'll never grow up, full with a bunch of pens, correctors and the sort)

- Incase Compact Backpack

This is the latest screengrab of my desktop. All transparency is controlled with Powermenu.

Thanks to Kaelri for Enigma 2.0 and for inspiration on my Firefox browser.

This is the more efficient approach I've adopted recently -- I basically keep the monitor at a fixed height that works great for both sitting and standing, and then just put a plastic bin and wooden shelf under the keyboard / mouse to raise them when I want to stand. Very crude, but very effective.

Ergonomically, the only two other things I've done are to make sure I'm taking care of my back -- using a pair of shoes with good arch support, and having a cheap bar stool that I got on Craigslist, that I can lean back against as a way of changing up my posture when I'm standing. Like I said...crude, but really effective (and basically free).

Used:

- different Wallpapers from Slurpaza @ deviantART

- Rainmeter

- Rainmeter-Skin Enigma

# Sidebar: Graphs for System & Network; Volume Control

# Taskbar: Feed-Reader 1-3 in "Mini-Mode"

# Shadow Opacitiy set to 20; Sidebar Width set to 200; Maximum Text Width set to 700

- Rainmeter-Skin Circuitous - Recycle Bin

- Rainmeter-Skin Soul - Seperate Task Launcher (adjusted vor alternating greylevels)

- Rainmeter-Skin Elegance2 - Clock & Date

- Rainmeter-Skin Elementary - Weather

- Rainmeter-Skin DINAJ - "Do You Need A Jacket"

- Rainmeter-Skin Arcs - well... shows pretty much everything

- Fences to hide Desktop Icons

Now available to everyone:

www.architectrio.com/architectrio.zip

Everything seen here is Rainmeter. Also included in the zip file is a custom Rainlendar skin and a matching CD Art Display skin, in addition to the fonts used.

Need help editing your skins or just want to discuss a new theme you've been dreaming up? Join us over the Lifehacker Desktop Customization Concept Development group: groups.google.com/group/lhdesktops?hl=en