13 November 2004 Saturday
current desktop screenshots; bblean
As intended, here be the screenshots… bblean is the shell, ‘joeblade’ is the name of the skin (i don’t remember where i picked it up.. but it’s one of three-four that i especially like.. i’m rather comfortable with this one though.) (be warned.. the three of these open up full-size (the first three are 1600×1200))
screenshot of my current desktop (panel alpha).
As I’d said, there are four available ‘desktop screens’ with bblean… i’m pretty sure this is a unix design.. so both the screenshots here are taken in the same ‘session’, but different panels/desktops.
i do like the transparencies that are optioned all over bblean’s menus… the menus could have a few additional options built in, such as ‘sort by date’ and such.. but i tend to use the ‘command line’ plugin that’s up in the top left corner. it’s not really a command line, but will respond to shortcuts that i plan in a text document. so i have ‘qq’ goes to my folder of ‘quick launch’ icons, and ‘winamp’ opens winamp, and ‘video’ opens my folder of videos… etc.—it’s a really long text document at this point.
screenshot of panel beta (one of four) of my current desktop
i depend on the system resource display up in top left to gauge when my system is memory leaking or some app is hogging anything… if so, i call up task manager and hard-kill. that IP address is incorrect, but i never notice it anymore. my aim/chat utility generally goes up in the top right (i fluctuate between miranda and gaim and original aim (i do run my msn accunt on the former two, but hard-uninstall (can’t do it through normal add/remove programs option) msn messenger from my computer every time i install windows—i abhor programs that open when i don’t tell tell them to, attach themselves to other programs (outlook) despite my objections, and run background processes with no reasonable way to shut them off. this is also why i’ve killed itunes from my machine (twice) and will not be quick to bring it back)).
what else… i run a destop wallpaper rotator.. usually changes every minute (or whatever setting i set).. lately i’ve just kept this wallpaper up though. i don’t know where i got it.
screenshot of last year’s pre-bblean desktop
i wanted to show you a screenshot of my desktop pre-bblean. i relied heavily on icons..i don’t really miss them anymore in terms of navigation and productivity, but they were pretty and novel. that screenshot is a year old, though.. at one point, i was running two instances of the icon dock… one vertically on the left and one on the bottom (different icons in each, of course).. and that was pretty functional and pretty pretty, but the truth is that all these docks and stuff are add-ons, and every add-on is just one more thing to use resources and one more thing to crash. without the docks, i came to rely pretty heavily on no less than three rows of the little icons in my ‘quicktask’ bar. and i lived on the addressbar (which worked like a browser addressbar, so i could call up webpages and also any folder on my computer).. so all of that was good.
the final count on this registry scan was 406 problems
when i found that old screenshot, i also came across a screenshot i’d taken of one of my registry scans… so here it is…illustration of my relationship with my computer..sometimes ;) my computer and i mostly get along, actually. i think if i just had tons more space and tons tons more processing power (and good non-leaky, non-obnoxious applications) then the world would be a far more splendid place.
and that’s that.
![iching: Fêng - Abundance [Fullness]](https://ferrydust.com/images/21.gif){kind=small}
Comments on current desktop screenshots; bblean
I’m trying to get OpenBox3 to a state where I like it. I can’t find any panels I like so I might just axe it. OpenBox3’s menu is very easily configured so I’ll just tinker with that I think.
Plus, I broke something with my latest update, and KDE is going a little haywire. I think it’s due to something in the network initialization, but I haven’t quite figured it out, yet. That’s what I get for running Gentoo unstable though :-).
Ooooh. Livin’ on the edge! On the other hand, you learn quite a bit from breaking things and fixing them, so as long as it’s done deliberately, I guess I”m coming out ahead. (Plus, obviously it’s working a LITTLE bit… I got the wireless up by hand, and this gives me a chance to play with OpenBox.
Anyhow, great screen shots. I really like that shell… better than Litestep too I think (I never really synced with the NextStep, AfterStep, WindowMaker, etc style of docks and menus. But the *Box’s I loved from the start.)
it will take sukoshi getting used to though, so you’ll want to give yourself time to play with it when you first start using it.
re: laptops: what’s the gist you’re looking at? i mean, i’ll find an awesome computer anyway, but give me the top five (or so) key features to go on.
e.g.: small and light, minimum 512 ram, minimum pentium 4M or comparable, sxga or better screen, touchpad
So, you’re not too far off already :).
I would investigate and see if you can’t replace Explorer as the shell. It was relatively easy in Win98. I believe I remember that it was possible in NT, but that’s when I switched over and my knowledge of XP is pretty fuzzy on the internals. The reason I say this is that Explorer is a hog. In the past I’ve had more problems with that than almost anything else. MS finally wised up and I believe they started watching for the explorer process to die off and restart it so it didn’t leave you in the lurch like it did in 98, but it still can be a problem. Without Explorer and sitting on the NT/XP core it’d probably be pretty fast.
Sounds cool though. I’ll have to see if I can get it to work at work. It would be pretty cool to have some sort of sane environment (well okay, that’s biased. Explorer works for some folks, just not for me.)
It might take a little getting used to, but it makes the transition to unix (if that’s a destination) a whole lot easier, and even if there isn’t that desire, a good shell can make your general day-to-day life a lot more pleasant. (I suppose this is to your other commenter. You’re a true believer already, Alicson :-).)
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