Screen Saving and Locking

I use dual monitors and I liked the windows screensaver that cycles through your images. However, that screensaver only works on one screen (at least for me) and I am using two. I found the google pack screensaver which will get the images on both screens (and do some other nifty stuff, like an photo stacking effect and specifying multiple image directories to draw from.) I use a modified version of the screensaver that removes the google logo and doesn't require you to download the entire google pack.

Here's the link.

If that link doesn't work, use this one.

Oh, and there's another screensaver related thing I did. We all know how to set the screensaver to turn on and lock after "x" minutes. And we (probably) all know how to lock windows manually (I use the built in win+l shortcut myself.) But... how can you turn on the screensaver and lock windows manually?

If you run the screensaver by double-clicking it (or executing the file without any options), it actually runs in its "test" mode, so the computer isn't locked. In order to get it to run AND lock the computer, use a batch file (text file that ends in .bat) with the following text:

 ::initiate screensaver of choice
 "[insert path to google screensaver program; i.e. C:\gbsaver.exe]" /s

 ::lock the workstation
 %windir%\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

I mapped that batch file to "win+;" using PS Hot Launch and it has worked very well for me; instant screen lock and a nice showing off of pictures to my friends to coworkers. I bet they really apreciate that.

I do realize that since I'm using LCD monitors, screensavers don't really save the screen. With CRT monitors, screensavers changed the image on the monitor so that no image got "burned" into it (my wife's old crt had an error message ghosted into it.) With LCD monitors, it just wastes power and probably wears down the life of the LCD. This tweak was for fun; I have the monitor power off after 10 minutes or so anyway. I mainly use it to show off my cool images and getting rid of the boring lock screen. Also, it helps me not feel so bad about downloading so many wallpapers, but never using them. Read more about screen savers and their history at wikipedia.

Changing That Green XP Start Button

Here's all the best information I could gather on changing the look and feel of the Windows XP non-classic start button. You know, that annoyingly green button on your side bar. I'm pretty sure that somewhere there's a program that you can simply run to do this all for you. But these instructions are all "do-it-yourself"... meaning you'll be playing with the registry and system resources. I think it's pretty fun, pretty simple, and gives you a better idea of how Windows works. Have fun and say goodbye to your bright green start button! And good luck trying to think of something better to put there, I just got replaced the button with a line and an all black windows logo icon. And that's all I have to say.

Changing the color of the start button

Changing the text and image on the start button

- Image Replacement tips from Yuki (above link) -

I would like to comment about the shape of the start button icon.

There are some examples of customized start button icon in the web; they all are rectangular in shape. But you notice that Windows default flag icon is not such a shape and it "blends" to the start button.

This blending is produced by an "alpha channel" in the default bitmap image. To see it, open the bitmap in the explorer.exe with ResHacker, choose "Action -> Save(S) [Bitmap : 143 : 10xx]...", and save it as .bmp file. Then you can open it with an image processing program such as Photoshop and see the alpha channel in the channel palette. You can not see it by simple copy and paste from ResHacker to Photoshop.

Alpha channel is a grayscale image hidden in the file that indicates the "opaqueness" of the entire image. White means complete opaque, black means transparent and gray indicates semi-transparent with its darkness.

You can create your own image with an alpha channel like the original. Don't forget to check the "Include alpha channel" checkbox in save dialog of Photoshop. Save your own, replace it with original bitmap in explore.exe and you can have your beautifully "blended", custom shaped start button icon.

The size of default icon is 25 pixels in width and 20 pixels in height for "Luna" theme (ID=143), but you may notice a complete black (transparent) region of 5 pixels width at the rightmost of the image. Apparently, this region is intended to make a space between the icon and the following text. So if you make an icon with no margin (or no alpha channel), the icon sticks to the text. This is not beautiful, of course. So the default size of Luna theme icon can be explained as 20 * 20 pixels with 5 pixels space. Curiously, the default icon for "Classic" theme (ID=176) is 16 * 16 pixels, without any space. Luna theme can be space-consuming. This is probably for considering generalization of wide-screen. The size of icon is not restricted to 25 * 20, so you can create smaller icon instead.

By the way, I think it is dangerous to overwrite explorer.exe without testing. You can test it by Ctrl-Alt-Delete, quit explorer.exe, run your own such as C:\WINDOWS\explorer2.exe as a new task, and see it.

You can rename explorer.exe while it is running. So you can easily rename explorer.exe in simple safe mode with explorer. Command prompt is not necessary. Safe mode is necessary to bypass system file protection. Go to C:\WINDOWS in safe mode, rename explorer.exe to explorer_orig.exe , rename your explorer2.exe to explorer.exe and restart the PC.

Introduction

Hey all, I'm Jonathan Discar and this is my blog. Due to the influence of reading many blogs recently (mostly, the influence is from Steve Yegge) I decided to start up one of my own. I could go on and on about why I did it if I wanted to bore you, but basically the decision was made because I want to improve my typing speed. I don't have much important to say right now, but I'm hoping that'll change someday. Until then, I decided to mostly share stuff I've found entertaining or handy. It shouldn't be very complicated or controversal, but hopefully it'll be useful to some people and not entirely boring and personal. So, computer techy tutorial and link highlights mostly. We'll see how this goes. After a while, when I finally really realize no one is going to read this and th blog becomes truly just for me, I'll be way more loose and babble on endlessly about random thoughts: worse than I'm doing now. I'll see, I'll see.

Oh yeah, this is me: I'm currently 23 years old and I'm a programmer. I primarily make stuff using Ruby and Java. My personal projects tend to be programming automation tools, websites, and tinkering with new technologies. I like to tinker with stuff and I spend my free "zoning-out" time surfing for random infomation, reading some book or another (usually in the genre of sci-fi, fantasy, manga, or programming), playing video games, or watching japanese anime and the occasional tv show, usually a sitcom. I spend the rest of my free time cleaning up and hanging out with friends. Nope, no traditional hobbies with me. Man, what a very vague bio.