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This and that, me and him, stuff about life… This is a blog after all

Colorix developements

Well, it was about time I got of my lazy ass and did something so I took a look inside 7-Zip source and added primitive support for external Icons.

It’s still unfinished and it’s implementation isn’t “perfect”, but it’s simple. I’m still working around it to provide a way to do something like “7zFM.exe /refresh-icons” (done) to make it easy for icon pack authors like myself to distribute their work.

Time will tell if it becomes a base feature of 7-Zip but for now those that want to take an early peak can check the beta, you’ll need 7-Zip 9.04 beta for it to work properly.

Update: I’ve refreshed the files with the addition of the “/refresh-icons” command line option to 7zFM.exe.

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Whoring out with a Mac

Well, it’s about time I confessed, a few days ago an opportunity popped up for me to get a eeePC priced white macbook (the one before the current model), fool that I am I accepted and now here I am with a macbook in my lap pondering how much of a whore I really am.

First of all I think I got set the record strait, I’m not a mac fanboy, if anything I’m a mac hater! They’re overpriced pieces of machinery that are tangled with apple only bullshit just because they say so, much like the iPod shuffle (it was a gift ok?) which would force me to use crapy iTunes just to put music on it (I use foobar plugin instead) instead of a simple drag files to it system, and don’t get me started on the proprietary plug, ARG!!

So I went in a bit skeptical on a one week trial to see if I liked it, using OSX because… let’s face it, it’s a mac!

Machine wise the macbook was pretty decent, I always found the 13.3” form factor ideal, not to mention the apple design is actually very clean, something I appreciate. Two things bothered me though, the one button touchpad and the keyboard layout. For some reason Apple decided to make their own Portuguese layout so unless I was just typing the alphabet touch typing was a no go, luckily it wasn’t an impossible fix as some fellow Portuguese had created a Portuguese layout for use with pc keyboards. After applying it I could touch type again as long as I didn’t look to the labels on the keys.

The touchpad was also a bit of a surprise, at first it also seemed a deal breaker not to have a second button, being a windows user I like my right click, yet OSX surprised me again with right click support by simply tapping with two fingers instead of one, not only that but there was also two finger scroll functions that were simply awesome for browsing, yet that functionality comes disabled just like keyboard navigation… retarded? Yes, but it’s the way apple does it.
With the major hardware issues resolved I moved on to try and live with OSX. People say it’s just so much simpler and wonderful, for me, it’s just different, and not that much different to be honest, OSX as it’s stupidities and bugs just like windows, so, if you ignore windows security issues (that never really affected me) I’d say they’re mostly equivalent. The applications are there, Microsoft Office, Adobe tools, Eclipse, MATLAB, World of Warcraft, basically all the things one needs for an academic life.

Still one thing I miss in windows is the freeware, with some many people using there was always a free alternative to must things,  the mac as a much lesser array of choises and most of the ones I found as been payed, time will tell.

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Colorix Update

Well it was about time I updated Colorix wasn’t it.

I’ve added the missing icons although they’re all white, I seriously couldn’t think of any color for what were basicly just several disk image formats (not even compressed). The rest was just variants of formats already included. Better then nothing I guess 🙂

Get it on the download link on the Latest Files side list.

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Lucky number 7

So it’s that time again, the new Windows 7 public preview as been made available. I’ve been following it’s progressed by installing the leaked betas on aVM to test them out but that’s always slow and doesn’t make you take your feet of familiar ground (my tuned XP desktop) to really get to know the OS, so i felt it was time to jump in on the public beta and try and use it as a main OS for a month.

One thing I think needs to be clear, Windows 7 is Windows Vista plus polish, Vista had a difficult birth, suffering from numerous issues and that showed in the final product, vista was released as a ghost of what was “promised” and riddled with performance issues and driver issues from the get go, at it’s core it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t what I and allot of people were expecting, as such I gave it a pass and stayed with XP. But stay in the “past” forever isn’t usualy a good idea so I had to see if Windows 7 was ready for me.

First hurdle was the install, Windows 7 comes on a DVD, not having any kind of optical drive in my computer for a few years now (with a fast Internet connection and a big enough hdd it becomes pointless) I had to figure out how to install it without one, odds would have it Microsoft as made it very easy to make a Windows 7 install USB pen/HDD. So following some instructions I proceeded to install it without no issues on a side partition I save for alternative OS’s, score one for Windows 7.

But eventually it came time to setup my screen cloning and that’s were things went bad for Windows 7, or maybe should I say nvidia. It seems that the nvidia drivers available no longer support cloning with screen spanning, as such I’m unable to have cloning and native resolution on my main screen since it limits it to the maximum resolution both monitors can support. I tried installing Vista drivers, using UltraMon but Vista drivers didn’t have a working control panel and UltraMon didn’t even manage to start, so as far as trying out Windows 7 Beta that was it for me, just not willing to give up the convenience of my screen clone setup for Windows 7, hopefully drivers will get better as Windows 7 aproaches final and I’ll try it again.

From the few minutes I used it some I liked, the aditions to windows managing and the show desktop corner button seem great ideas even if it seems it will take some getting used to, the new taskbar however asn’t fully convinced me yeat but without everyday use I can’t really say for sure, some of my friends with simpler setups are trying it out as well so at least I’ll get to know all the kinks of it anyways for round 2…

Update: Got UltraMon to work by folowing some instructions in the forums, although mirrowing worked it proved very cpu intencive (40% cpu usage) and as such unviable.

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To a special lady

Sometimes people fail to see how precious and beautiful something can be because it’s got a little dirt in it, a mud covered diamond is still a diamond, and sometimes that quirky person you always ignore might be awesome, but you never took the time to get to know her. Recently I’ve seen a perfect example of it in this (view) episode of the Boondocks.

I’ll be the first to admit that this episode made me feel depressed, maybe it struck a bit too close to home. I couldn’t help wish I could of prevented it some way… I really hope the real Luna’s in the world find what their heart desires and don’t sucumb to the loneliness and pain… ’cause at least we can always be alone together 🙁 .

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