Royale Noir theme for XP

I've been using the Royale Windows XP theme (the one that comes with XP Media Center Edition) on all my XP (MCE and Pro) machines for a while now. I just found (via Digg) that there's another variation of the Royale theme available -- Royale Noir. In classic Digg fashion, it's sensationalized as a "hidden XP theme." Whatever its history is, it looks cool. I haven't bothered to dig up screenshots to compare, but it looks very much like the black theme that will come with Vista.

You can download the theme here. I just took the RAR version available from multiple links/mirrors from the Digg article, and re-compressed it as ZIP for those of you who don't have PowerArchiver/WinRAR/etc. The installation instructions (which, by the way, are not from me) are included in the zip file.

(By the way -- the background image in my screenshots is my dog Sydney -- and it doesn't come with the theme.)

Lost and Found

When I bought my house last year (1 year and 1 month ago today, come to think of it), I "lost" my GPS receiver in the move. I knew it was in a smallish (baby AT) motherboard box, and I was pretty sure that box was inside another bigger one, and that the whole thing had successfully made the trip from my old apartment to my house.

I enjoy geocaching and like to use my GPSr on road trips, so I've really missed it. I've torn apart my garage, attic, closets, and everywhere else I could think of looking for it. I thought I had dug through every box in the garage and attic and closets at least twice over the past year, and I was starting to consider buying another one (this time the spiffy color version of the Legend), but I wasn't ready to drop that kind of cheddar (about $250) for something I knew I already had somewhere.

Today my dad called me to ask what model GPSr I had, whether I liked it, etc., because he wanted one for his upcoming camping/hiking trip to Cold Mountain next week (I'm not going this time... that's a different blog post for a different day). Of course this conversation made me miss my GPSr even more, and I was determined to find it today.

So after I got off the phone with him, I walked out into the garage and picked the first box to be ripped apart and thoroughly searched. I moved some junk off the top, opened the top-flaps, and -- there was a smallish motherboard box. With two more motherboard boxes underneath. I didn't want to get my hopes up, because after all, this was the first box, and the closest to the garage door. What are the odds that I had overlooked it for 13 months?? But, like a kid at Christmas, I opened the box, and there was my GPSr!

So the moral of the story is: ok, there's not really a moral to the story. I'm just happy to find my long-lost stuff.

I can't wait until Google is able to index my real stuff. Infinite privacy issues aside, sometimes I could really use a search engine for all my personal belongings.

Graduation

It's official: my dog graduated from Puppy Kindergarten (a.k.a. Basic Dog Obedience) last night. She even got a certificate!

Understanding Code

This is an oldish post from Jeff Atwood's blog (Coding Horror), but I keep coming back to it. In a nutshell, he says that developers spend most of their time understanding code, a significant portion of their time modifying existing code, and the least amount of time writing new code.

I've often found myself rewriting functions, components, classes, etc. that work perfectly fine as they are. I've done it more instinctively than intentionally, and after reading Jeff's post, I realize that I'm really doing it because it's my way of ensuring that I really understand what's going on in the original code.

I do it most often when I'm working with code from another language that I don't know very well, or don't like. By rewriting it in my preferred language (C#), I make sure I know how it works, and I end up with something that I can more easily maintain (since it's in "my" language).

And sometimes I rewrite within the same language -- especially when I'm reworking my own old code -- to refresh my memory about what the function or application does, and to use the spiffy new techniques and optimizations I've learned since I wrote it the first time. It's also very handy for fixing those "what was I thinking when I wrote that?!?" bits of code. You know what I'm talking about: the snippets that compile and run fine, but in an unnecessarily complicated or horribly inefficient way. I like to pat myself on the back when I reduce 5 or so lines of crappy code to one slick statement, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was my own crappy original code.

Ruben's Tube

This video shows a cool demonstration of a Ruben's tube physics experiment. I wish we had gotten to do more demonstrations like that in high school (or college) physics. It makes Winamp/Media Player/[insert preferred media player here] visualizations look even more boring than they already are.



[Edited 2006.10.26: Apparently the video I originally linked to on YouTube has been moved or removed, so I'm updating the video with what appears to be the same video, also hosted on YouTube... We'll see how long this one lasts. If it breaks again, and you really want to see it (believe me, you should), try a Google search for "Ruben's Tube". -jw]

First Entry

I think there's an unwritten rule of blogging that every blog has to start with the obligatory pointless first post -- "hey, I'm blogging now, this is my first post!" Or maybe it's a written rule -- I don't know; I haven't done the legwork to find out.

So anyway, here I am, getting this pointless first post out of the way so I can get on with... other pointless posts.

I'm interested in programming (primarily using the .NET Framework) and music, and I'll probably be writing a little about both here (in addition to any other random subjects that may fall out of my head).