Software I Like

It’s the moment you haven’t been waiting for: a big post about Windows software! I happen to think most of this stuff is pretty rad. I know the appeal isn’t universal, though, so I’ve organized this post in descending order of mass appeal. It’s a five-star scale, with five-stars being “everybody try this” and one-star being “you might find a use for this”. Some of these things may be multi-platform, but if you don’t use Windows, you may as well skip everything after the 5-star section. If something in that section is Windows-exclusive, it’s up to you to find an alternative for your OS! A few ways to do that: the Lifehacker app directory, alternativeto.net, or Google.

Side note: this is partially inspired by the website The Setup, which interviews smart people about how they do what they do. I’ve learned some neat things there, but it may not be worth going through the archives unless you use OS X exclusively. Other main reason: I want to tell people about neat and useful things!

***** 5-star software *****

f.lux
Available for every platform ever created, f.lux takes your geographical location and calculates the sunrise and sunset in local time. Then it tints your screen to simulate the natural cycle of the sun. The red hue at night seems weird at first, but it’s something you can’t live without once you get used to it. If you use your computer in the dark, do yourself a favour and try it. I find that I sleep better, my eyes hurt less, and I actually get tired later in the evening. I actually wasn’t using f.lux for a while - it wasn’t in my startup folder for some reason. I realized something was wrong when I was on my PC at 3 AM, fueled in some way by that disturbing blue glow, trying to read all of the things there ever were. After turning it on again, I got to see the benefits all over again. So yeah, download this.

LastPass
LastPass is the closest you can get to real password security these days. It’s infinitely better than your browser’s built-in password manager, and I want you to use it. Please? I don’t even know my passwords anymore, and I don’t need to! Life is good.

AutoHotKey
What to say about AutoHotKey? It provides a sky-high programming language to easily manipulate things that would be painfully complex any other way. The corollary to this is that it’s a programming language, so you’re limited by the problems you want to solve with it. My current uses:

  • a hotkey to “keep on top” any window
  • handling a drop-down terminal like in Quake or an Elder Scrolls game
  • turning the right Alt button into a Ctrl key
  • remapping Alt+N to Ctrl+Backspace in order to delete whole words without reaching for the backspace key

Lifehacker has a ton of posts about AutoHotKey, though. So look there for some inspiration.

Rainmeter
I love Rainmeter. I love it violently, with every fiber of my being, every second I use my laptop. A quick look at the most popular skins on DeviantArt is all the explanation you’ll need. Exciting new features are on the way: Rainmeter 2.3 brings the option to define a margin around the screen that’s reserved for Rainmeter - maximized windows can’t use the area you define as part of the DesktopWorkArea. This is a fantastic addition, and it’s something users have needed other utilities for until now. Rainmeter is everything I want in software: sexy, lightweight, and highly configurable.

WorkRave
WorkRave is a neat tool I found recently that I highly recommend if you spend hours at your PC. WorkRave lets you set a certain length of time for taking short breaks to rest your hands (I do 15 seconds every 10 minutes) and longer breaks to stand up and stretch/exercise (I’m doing 5 minutes every 55 minutes). It’s partially a health thing, and partially a time-management tool. Did you know you’ve been reading stupid crap for an hour? Do you actually want to be doing that? Go for a walk, stretch your legs, think about what you’ll do after your break. I actually found it quite helpful during Reading Week, and I was grateful for the breaks whenever I was working on a tough problem. Instead of breaking my flow, it helped me focus when I was actually working. Definitely check it out.

**** 4-star software ****

Anki
Anki is, put simply, a digital flashcard program. But it’s also a tool for spaced repetition of anything you happen to want to learn. Spaced repetition may be the second best way to learn, topped only by applying your desired skill in some useful way. One of my professors introduced it to the class as a way to study, and I’ve gotten into it since then. I’m using it for most of my classes, and the Anki decks will accompany my class notes in the future. Your mileage may vary, though - creating the Anki cards is part of my studying, too. I know what the cards are actually trying to say, and I rehearse background info that’s not on the actual card. It doesn’t cost me anything to export my decks, though, so why not? Here’s an article with some guidelines for using Anki, particularly outside an academic/testing related setting.

Microsoft OneNote
This is the only paid software on the list, oddly enough. I’ve posted about OneNote in the past, and I still love it. OneNote has a ton of features-you-never-knew-you-wanted that make editing a little bit faster - they’re simple but appreciated. My notes export to PDF and MS Word documents in a decently attractive format, so I can share them for your viewing pleasure, and for the benefit of students with disabilities that make it difficult for them to take their own notes. I’ve never tried Evernote, but I’ve never wanted to - OneNote is perfect for my needs.

*** 3-star software ***

QTTabBar
I use QTTabBar so frequently that I don’t remember what options I actually use. I can’t use Explorer without it anymore. Download it and look through all the sweet, sweet options it provides. Its most noticeable feature is tabs: how can you live without them? But it adds lots of other useful things, too. Double-click the folder background to go up to its parent folder, hover a file to preview its contents, and many more. Using a light Windows theme, I recommend the Firefox 3 theme if you use a light Explorer frame, and my personal pick to go with the dark background of my Explorer is a mix of two styles: the background image from Adagio and the tab image from NOOTO. Using the settings provided by NOOTO’s creator, I think.

RescueTime
It requires some self-discipline, but using RescueTime definitely helps keep me on task. Although I may have cheated a little by defining my hours of Emacs research as “very productive”. Lifehacker has a brief-ish guide on how to set up RescueTime in a way that works for you. Try it out for a bit - my one recommendation is not to get too attached to the premium features. Unless you need to distinguish between 5 hours spent in MS Word and 30 minutes spent in 10 different documents, a free account is still great. Bonus for laptop users: it’s quite light on resource usage.

Dropbox & Dropbox Folder Sync
I started using Dropbox to access shared files from the DM of the Cognitive Science D&D group, but I stayed because I can easily make backups of things like Rainmeter skins and other tweaks I’ve made. The Public and Photo folders have their uses, too. While the option is still available, you can score some free, permanent space upgrades by testing the photo upload feature. I got 5 gb from it when it first came out, so I’ve got plenty of space - unlike every other Dropbox user, I’m not pimping my referral link!

** 2-star software **

WriteMonkey / Q10
“Distraction-free writing programs” that offer minimal features and, more importantly, minimal UI. WriteMonkey is more frequently updated and provides more features, but I couldn’t quite get it to calculate things like page lengths correctly. They’re worth trying if you get distracted when you want to write, but they don’t have the pure text processing power of other programs.

Soluto
Soluto is occasionally useful, but it’s worth installing to look at your boot times. I’m not sure how the “delayed start” feature works, but I’ve had no problems with it. Soluto doesn’t solve the problem of slow boot times, so much as it highlights the actual culprits for you: all that terrible software you installed with the default options checked.

* 1-star software *

KatMouse
This is a small utility, but a useful one. It only does one thing: makes your mouse scroll whatever it’s currently hovering over. Saves you from having to put a window into focus. I know, you might not have this problem, but if you ever do!

Miranda IM
My multi-client IM program of choice. Best for masochists with hours to waste tweaking. I almost wrote a quick-start guide for it, but then realized nobody would care. Let me know if you care! I still use it over Pidgin almost entirely because of a contact list theme called Malice Tab that gives me a small visual dock for my contact list. Sexy, lightweight, and (with enough blood, sweat, and tears) configurable.

PhraseExpress / Texter
I don’t actually want to recommend either of these pieces of software. PhraseExpress is a resource hog, but it does work. Texter is, disappointingly, the exact opposite (it will break, inexplicably, after prolonged use). But text expansion is extremely cool - being able to type common words and phrases with a few keystrokes would be great for taking notes, or any other situation where there’s common vocabulary/phrases. There are good options for other platforms, but nothing that works for me on Windows (on a desktop, you might like PhraseExpress - but configuration is rough). Check Lifehacker’s posts on text expansion if you’re still interested - I think there’s are some good options on OS X, and maybe something workable for Linux.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker
This is a great tool that bundles many useful registry hacks (both enable and disable) in one convenient UI. It works on Vista and Win7. Check it out, for sure. Personal highlights: disable automatic restart after Windows Update (“Security Settings”), everything under “Additional Tweaks”, especially removing arrows from shortcut icons and removing the ’-Shortcut’ suffix on new shortcuts. Take ownership and ‘open command window here’ are occasionally useful, too, and also under “Additional Tweaks”.

Right-click menu editors
I have two categories of tools here: one for Firefox, and a handful for Windows (Fast Explorer, ShellNewHandler, the somewhat inferior ShellMenuNew, ShellMenuView, ShellExView, and OpenWithView). It’s the same idea either way - remove the useless clutter from the right-click menu. I don’t use LibreOffice file formats, so I don’t need the right-click “New” menu to offer me six file formats I don’t even use. You may not care! But I enjoy this level of control.

I finally installed Firefox 4 today, removed old/outdated/unnecessary extensions and tweaks, and found some new ones to make it even sexier than before. You can’t really tell from this screenshot, but tabs will get smaller and smaller as I open new...
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I finally installed Firefox 4 today, removed old/outdated/unnecessary extensions and tweaks, and found some new ones to make it even sexier than before. You can’t really tell from this screenshot, but tabs will get smaller and smaller as I open new...
ZoomInfo
I finally installed Firefox 4 today, removed old/outdated/unnecessary extensions and tweaks, and found some new ones to make it even sexier than before. You can’t really tell from this screenshot, but tabs will get smaller and smaller as I open new...
ZoomInfo

I finally installed Firefox 4 today, removed old/outdated/unnecessary extensions and tweaks, and found some new ones to make it even sexier than before. You can’t really tell from this screenshot, but tabs will get smaller and smaller as I open new ones to prevent overflow. Just tested it - I can have 17 tabs open before they get lost. I’m ok with that number.

I won’t list everything I have installed, but ask if you like what you see! Also, I don’t have a comparison shot of FF 3 because I didn’t think about it. If I use system restore to go back and get a screenshot, can I use it to come back to the future?


Rainmeter skins at the top are edited Gnometer skins (remove icons, unnecessary text, etc.) except for the CPU/RAM. Skin in the right corner is LinePlanner, in the left is InputNotes. In the middle is an album art skin called ClearShadow that I can no longer trace. It’s the best I’ve found, though.

As for the theme, I’m using Appows Work Minimal. Or Classic. Not sure which honestly. Either way it’s dark and sexy. Tabs in Windows Explorer are from QTTabBar, and taskbar icons are edited using 7Conifier.

edit: also I guess you can’t see anything because tumblr doesn’t let you view pictures larger? that kind of defeats the whole purpose, doesn’t it

Because I worried (or hoped) that someone might worry about me and not get the joke, no, I don’t actually think I have a ton of mental illnesses. Sorry guys.

        If you still think self-diagnosing is a good idea, check out my notes for today ‘cause my psychology professor spent a good ten minutes telling people not to do it. I didn’t write much down because that would be useless, but there you go - diagnosis is complex and you don’t know anything about doing it, so don’t even try. She didn’t mention it, but I wouldn’t go into a meeting with a psychiatrist/therapist/whatever and say “so I think I have x, y, and/or z” because they’ll look for symptoms of that and probably jump to conclusions just like you did. “You’ll see what you expect to see,” after all. Unless you want to be diagnosed and get meds because you’re sure they’ll help/don’t care if they don’t help, in which case, feel free to continue.

        As for the actual reason I’m posting today, I wanted to mention again how much I like WriteMonkey. I like it as much as I liked Q10 when I was working on essays last semester, except a bit more, because it fixes problems Q10 had and adds a number of useful features. For example, something I’ve gotten used to using as a project-specific todo list is comments in my programming assignments - and WriteMonkey allows you to keep track of comments and dims them out a bit to set them off from the rest of the text. It lets you set progress goals (I think for the entire project) and then track partial progress, as in how much you’ve done in one session and stuff. It can do lookups for stuff on google and dictionary.com and stuff. And I haven’t used it yet, but you can create tags it calls “jumps” and automatically find them in the text - so you could have like @[INSERT IDEA] or #[INSERT TODO] or whatever. It also tracks your most frequently used words! So that’s pretty cool, and you can see “hmm, I used the word "something” twelve times, that’s not good".

        Also, Ninite has made it possible for people to embed installers in their sites and show only certain programs, which is pretty neat because you can say “here are the programs I recommend using” and people can take whatever they want and just install them without any crap.

Recent UniNotes4

So we’ve been covering some cool stuffs in my psychology class recently. You’ll find my notes on motivation (why I became a hermit to do well in school), personality development (raise your kids not to be dumb), and stress (spoiler: it’ll kill you). Next couple of weeks will be mental illnesses - your depressions, schizophrenias, etc. Everyone’s favourite topic, really. On that note, I’ve self-diagnosed myself with every anxiety disorder except Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (though I’m only lightly OCD) and just about every personality disorder. Hopefully they can medicate those away for me.

        My other class this semester is phonetics, which will be boring to everyone who isn’t a linguist, aka just about everyone. And if you are a linguist you already know phonetics so you probably don’t care. So that sucks I guess.

        But my other other class this semester is philosophy! And that is pretty cool and you’ll probably find interesting stuff in the notes for that. The topic is “Mind, World, and Knowledge” and so far we’ve done Knowledge and we’re about to move into Mind. I can’t really organize those in any meaningful way for you, unfortunately, but check ‘em out anyway. Some of it is boring, some of it isn’t.

        The best thing from PHIL 1301B, however, is definitely Pyrrhonian scepticism. There are three basic parts to Pyrrhonian scepticism: making no assertions, the method of opposition, and the four modes of acquiescence.

  • Making no assertions means that the Pyrrhonist doesn’t claim to know anything - they simply describe things the way they appear
  • The method of opposition is comparing opposing ideas - different religions, or superstitions perhaps, or even political ideas - and because they tend to be equally convincing, judgement is impossible and peace of mind is achieved - this is my new way of looking at my religious beliefs, because it sounds better than “apathetic”
  • The four modes of acquiescence just mean the Pyrrhonian sceptic accepts the laws and customs of their culture, their feelings and biological needs, their instincts, and the expertise of others in order to live their lives

        Check out the last three (or four if you read this on monday) days of notes for more on this. The only really valid criticism we’ve covered would have to be that knowledge of skills - something the Pyrrhonist accepts as “know-how” because it doesn’t involving making assertions - at some point has to involve a bit of “know-that”, or regular knowledge which eventually becomes equivalent to assertions. So being a doctor doesn’t just mean knowing how to treat your patients (know-how) but there’s also knowing facts and things to help you treat your patients (know-that).

        I’m writing a paper about scepticism and how, as far as I can tell, Pyrrhonian scepticism is a perfectly tenable (fancy word for “it works”) position. So COME TEAR IT APART so that I can include that criticism in my paper! However please do check out the notes in case I’ve screwed up somewhere.

edit: also I’ve replaced Q10 with WriteMonkey for writing in peace

edit 2: if you google certain things, my notes show up as results - awesome, except when I’m looking for answers and find my own notes

Productivity Tip: Leechblock4

I’ve been working with it for a few weeks now - almost a month, I think - so I’ve come to a definite conclusion: Leechblock, a firefox extension for FF 3-4, is awesome. If you prefer chrome, there’s a similar extension called Chrome Nanny or something like that. Here’s what they do:

        You set up a list of sites that keep you from doing your work. Be honest: add all the sites you use to procrastinate, all the sites that distract you. You can use * for a wildcard: *.tumblr.com will block your dashboard and any individual person’s tumblr. Then, set out a list of times where you want to buckle down and work. I set mine up to block whenever I’m in class, and almost all day on friday, saturday and sunday (the days I have no classes). During that period of time, the sites listed will be blocked, and by default replaced by a screen saying “You can come back when the site is no longer blocked.” You can set it up to redirect to, say, google or something. Or a file on your computer that says “GET BACK TO WORK”.

        As far as other features go, it has plenty: you can set up multiple “groups” for blocking, so you can set up different sites to block or different times to block on different days. You can manually enter a “lockdown” mode, which keeps you out of the sites in the group for whatever period of time you specify. You can also set up a timer and have Leechblock kick you off after that time is up: right now, I have Leechblock set up to give me 45 minutes every three hours to screw around on facebook and reading RSS feeds and stuff.

        You can set up different options for “how to block” a specific group of sites: it can actively block pages from your sites (when the site is going to be blocked, it will refresh the page and block it), you can prevent access to options for that group when it’s being blocked (sites can be added to groups under the right-click context menu), and in firefox 4 you can prevent access to your addons page so that you can’t get into the leechblock options. You can also set up a timer in the status bar to tell you how long before a site is blocked, and display a popup message x seconds before a site is going to be blocked.

        Honestly, after one weekend of having my favourite sites blocked all day, I stopped wanting to play Echo Bazaar. After a couple of weeks, I’ve forgotten what my daily routine used to be - I have to go into the bookmarks menu to remind myself to play BvS and check on tumblr. It’s actually really nice to get up in the morning and spend two hours working, instead of getting up and spending two hours reading RSS feeds. Ideally, I’ll uninstall Leechblock and have that same resolve to get to work. Then, since I’m actually doing work when I have the time, I’ll have more time to relax and talk to people and maybe live a little.

Turn your PC into a universal console4

I’m not going to lie, I’m a console gamer through and through. I grew up with a controller in my hands, and I just don’t connect to PC games as much. I know that plenty of people like to game with a mouse and keyboard, so I’ll let you know right now that the second half of this post is not for you.

——————————————————-

Part one: XBMC

        XBMC is a media center program that started out on the original Xbox, and has since grown to become a great media center program that would look absolutely gorgeous on your expensive new TV. It works on Windows, Linux, Mac, and if you really want to get your hands dirty I expect you could still install it on your old Xbox, Wii, or PS3. At least, if it doesn’t work on PS3 yet, it probably will in a few months.

        Plenty of people are building cheap PCs to handle all of their entertainment, putting XBMC on it, then hiding it somewhere in their home theatre. So if that sounds good to you, go check it out - it works perfectly well independent of what this post is really about.

——————————————————-

Part two: XBMC as a console

        Since it primarily runs on a PC, you may not feel like you’re gaining much by using XBMC as a “game console”. Isn’t that what USB gamepads are for? The answer to that is yes, and if you’ve ever used an emulator or played a PC game with a gamepad, the only thing you’d gain by doing this is a larger screen - since in theory you’d be using XBMC on a TV bigger than your monitor. If you’ve got a laptop you could just plug it into your TV, and win forever!

        But I still thought this was really neat because it would take all the trouble I’ve had with PC gaming - either using keyboard+mouse (meh) or setting up a gamepad every time I want to play (meh) - and give me that console experience I love. Basically, XBMC just acts as a sexy launcher for your PC games and for any other game you can play with an emulator. OF COURSE these would be perfectly legal backups of games you own, or games that are hard to purchase these days, etc. etc. You can have everything from arcade games to PS2 games on your PC if you’ve got the hardware for it, so by extension you can have all of those integrated in your XBMC box.

        Honestly, I’ll probably set this up at my dad’s one of these days. We just moved the home theatre into the basement, so we can sit around the fireplace and watch movies and play games and etc., and my brother’s PC is pretty close to the TV. Or I could just use my laptop. Either way, it’ll be cool. And we’ll go from watching some awful movie he got in the mail (Netflix will send out DVDs and it saves bandwidth) to playing a NES game and it’ll be great.

How to read my tumblr

Over the holidays, literally half of my friends asked me about my “tumblr thing.” I’m glad that more than one person is actually reading it now, so to make sure everyone who finds my “tumblr thing” keeps reading, I’m going to lay out the three main ways to keep track of my new posts.

The simple way: Bookmark the site.

The convenient way: Make a Tumblr account and read it on your dashboard.

The nerdy way: Subscribe to the RSS feed.

        I’m sure you know how to bookmark a site, but the main problem with that is that you have to keep checking my ugly site and never know when there’s a new post. Eventually you’ll end up forgetting or just miss posts completely.

        The tumblr dashboard shows you all the new posts by the people you’re following, which is great, and that’s what I do. Probably what most people do. It’s easy to post your own stuff and follow a whole bunch of people and keep up with their posts.

        If I were only reading one person’s tumblr, though, I’d probably just use RSS. I think the easiest RSS reader to use would be Google Reader on a computer, but if you’ve got a smartphone of some kind I’m sure you have an RSS reader in there somewhere.

        As long as you check your RSS reader/tumblr dashboard, you’ll see the brand new posts at the top of your list and it’ll be great.

My vacation’s going pretty well. I’m catching up on my Read It Later list, I checked out a number of to-do list managers (spoiler: I realized I didn’t need any of them), and today I’m going to keep reading and start organizing music in my library. As far as what I’m reading, yesterday I read The Little Prince, a few Lifehacker articles, and a number of Click Nothing articles. Reading more of the latter today.

        Highlights of the day, which I definitely recommend: LastPass - a cross-browser password manager - a program that tints your monitor based on time of day. LastPass is pretty nice, it integrates nicely into your browser and can autofill forms for you and hang onto personal info and stuff. Most interesting is their Security Challenge, which checks all your passwords and kicks you in the butt about having bad ones. It can also generate randomized passwords for you - such as 8DIy@!Y2%EtO - but the downside to this is that you will never remember these on your own, making you rely on LastPass forever. The reality is that you need to know the password (what if you want to check your e-mail on another PC?) but you’re more likely to lose the password to a database compromise (oh snap Gawker) than to a brute force attack. Anyway, have a strong master password and then modify it as needed.

        Second recommendation is Flux - a program that tints your computer monitor to simulate a natural light cycle. In the morning, it’s the usual bright blue-white that’s guaranteed to wake your brain up and stop the melatonin flow. Later in the day, it’s a warm red that is a lot nicer on the eyes. It seems really drastic when you use the preview of the entire cycle at once, but if you change it to the slow setting (takes an hour to transition) it’s very subtle. When you first come to your computer and it’s a strange kind of red, it might throw you off, but it’s… oddly comforting. Trust me, it’s good for your eyes and your brain, so try it out.

        Third thing that may not be any use to you is custom address bar search engines in Firefox and Chrome. If you’ve used chrome, you’ll know that typing something other than a website will automatically do a google search. Great, but it gets better, because you can add search bars from sites and access them with a keyword (at least in Firefox). Go to a site, right click any search bar, and click “add a keyword for this search”. I did this for a french translation site - so I type “enfr bus” and it gives me the translation for the word. You could do this for your favourite torrent tracker, for a blog, whatever site you visit that has a search bar.

        You can also add keywords for your bookmarks by right-clicking and going to their properties - type f for facebook, t for tumblr, w for wikipedia, whatever. It’s pretty good. You should do it.

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        Went to a family supper last night, but it wasn’t actually an awkward sit-around-and-chat kind of affair. We ate our food and rushed out to a coffee house at my cousin’s high school to see him play. Some of the music was bad, some of it wasn’t, eh. Honestly I don’t have much to say about the whole event! We didn’t spend hours together and it wasn’t horrifically awkward, so… Yeah, I guess that’s it. In a few days I may have a good story to tell.

So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do...
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So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do...
ZoomInfo
So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do...
ZoomInfo
So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do...
ZoomInfo
So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do...
ZoomInfo
So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do...
ZoomInfo

So here’s the big post I planned to show everyone the cool stuff I’ve been doing, which was supposed to have instructions for you fine folks to set them up for yourselves. Ideally, it would be so easy even my dad’s friends who read this could do it!

        So I tried to get a few people to test the Rainmeter setups, and had a few failures and a lot of indifference. This after I spent three hours writing instructions for it instead of studying >.> So I realized I should just share my Rainmeter setup with anyone who actually wants it. Let the rest of you figure it out on your own like I did *shakes fist*

        So I decided not to spend even longer writing instructions for Miranda IM, which I love despite its HORRIBLE, HORRID, HATEFUL, IMPOSSIBLE TO NAVIGATE community and resources. I’ve got it set up and you can all be envious of my setup unless you really like it in which case I’ll help you unlike the jerks on the Miranda forum. Apparently they’re helpful on IRC but screw that.

        First picture is my default set up - uses Gnometer, Enigma for CPU/RAM, and ABP for the launcher/notes. I’ve moved the notes skin to the other side of my screen for symmetry and giving myself more room for unsorted files. The taskbar is set up using the Appows Work Classic theme for Windows 7, and the start button replacement is from the Appows suite, with Start Killer hiding the default Windows button.

        Second picture is an excellent Persona 4 HUD. Your party in P4 typically has 4 members but I can’t think of anything else to measure - the ones there are measuring CPU/RAM and HDD Space/Battery.

        Third picture is the Superbar skin. Quite simply the best Rainmeter taskbar I’ve seen. As in, you could actually use it as your taskbar. I’ve been working to make use of my taskbar, though, so I don’t really want a replacement right now.

        Fourth picture is my Miranda IM contact list - little tab always on top of my windows, expands on mouseover. I love it. Uses the modern contact list and Malice Tab skin.

        Fifth picture is my Miranda chat window - uses IEView (Adium SL Glass) and TabSRRM (x1).

        Sixth picture is Assasin’s Creed: Project Legacy on facebook. From my perspective as a console gamer (its target audience), it’s the “best” facebook game I’ve played so far. It’s certainly not the “best” social game I’ve played - it fails all the social requirements of the usual facebook games. That’s exactly what I like about it. No “get help from your friends” stuff, pretty much no social anything really, which suits me just fine. The interface is slick, and they spent the time and money to write multiple bits of text for each mission.

        Oh, there’s one thing it does that I really like about it in comparison to your usual facebook “RPGs” like Mafia Wars: you have stats other than strength/defense and energy/PvP energy. You only have one energy pool, first of all, and second of all your stats are (mostly) useful bonuses. Every stat point you put in increases your maximum energy, then your first stat increases your max for every 10 points you put in (useless). Second stat increases the number of things you can craft at once (+1 for every 10 points). Then you have a stat for bonus money and a stat for bonus chance to receive item drops.

        Anyway this post is finally up and now I feel better.