Everyone can be happy on Christmas, even if they don't celebrate it for a religious belief. Have a good one.
Casper XP 2.0 keygenI say happy instead of merry because being different is more interesting.
Enjoy!
Lots of snow recently, which has been nice. It should continue on through the week. It's been very cold and windy though, which has been less than nice. Nothing like a really windy day well below freezing to make your really heavy winter coat feel like a t-shirt. I'm not stupid though, I walk to and from class through as many buildings as I can when that happens.
Stay warm!
Well a recent MUG meeting inspired me to get a few new handy utilities and programs for my computer. A few I ended up rejecting as either useless (to me) or bad, but a few good ones are definitely keepers.
GeekTool - GeekTool adds a system preference pane and provides a lot of geeky and some not-so-geeky things you can do with your desktop. Basically, you can display and update pictures (think web cams or weather maps), log files, or run shell scripts. I use it for displaying my console.log, a few relevant weather maps (Rochester weather is good to be aware of), and a webcam showing the main walkway on my campus. Although I haven't gotten around to putting too much effort into it, I was thinking of using it to display irc messages directly on my desktop. Basically, if you have a geeky nature (or just have a lot of webcams you watch), the GeekTool is for you.
Meteorologist - Again, following the weather theme, this handy app adds a new item to your menubar displaying a little picture indicating weather and a temperature reading for anywhere you want. I have it set up for my local weather, and the locations of family and other points of interest. Very neat, I glance at it every time I head out the door to go outside. But this does a lot more than just display that it's raining at 41°F, it's an actual menu with current conditions (from wind to humidity to UV index and more) and an extended forcast to up to 9 days. You can set the thing to update as often as you'd like, and do manual updates as well. If you live in a tornado or flood area, you'll also be happy to hear that Meteorologist can do anything from beep at you, play a song, or even email you in the event of a severe weather alert. Anyway, definitely worth a look if you're at all interested in weather for your area or anywhere else.
Quicksilver - Now for something different. WAY different. Unfortunately, the website for Quicksilver is very useless in describing it. It's understandable, as the concept is simple, but difficult to explain in a meaningful way. Basically, with a few keystrokes, you can open any application, file, song, bookmark, you name it, without knowing where any of it actually is. Hit the activator keys, start typing what you want, and Quicksilver will find it for you. You can also run scripts for various applications to control iTunes, create a new email just by typing in the name of the person you want to send it to, or complete any number of tasks through the use of add-on modules, of which there are many. I'm finding that I'm no longer typing in or looking for webpages that I go to frequently. I'm never touching my applications folder when I want to open a program not in my dock. I'm not even touching iTunes to get it to play my music. If you are somebody that likes keeping their hands on the keyboard and never touching the mouse, or just like near-instant access to *everything*, Quicksilver is for you. I'd recommend that everyone check it out. It's really not something you'll understand until you use it. People telling me about it did not do a great job explaining it (I'm not sure that I've done it justice either) but I just went ahead and tried it. You should try it too.
Oh, and did I mention that all of these are free?
All three are works in progress, so use at your own risk. GeekTool is less stable than most, but I think what I have it set up to do now will keep it from crashing too often. I switched to Meteorologist from WeatherPop, another handy menubar weather indicator. I'd suggest checking out WeatherPop as well, although I happen to like Meteorologist better. I also think Meteorologist will get even better as time goes on. QuickSilver has crashed on me once, I think, over many hours straight of using it. It looks like it will just get more modules and functionality as time goes on.
Anyway, I hope some of you find one or two of these useful in your lives. They sure are to me.
Enjoy!