Monthly Archives: May 2005

Change in inevitable

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People say that ‘only thing constant in this world is change; it’s inevitable’. It’s so bloody true. But that does not make me less afraid of it you know. This weekend I felt like I just left college. When I graduated, I didn’t feel this way. But this time I did. A bunch of my good friends graduated and most got jobs. Two of them is moving to Wachington DC. Granted it would be great when I go thru DC, but it still sux that they won’t be 20 minutes away. Another just went to Seatle for an internship, and one went home for the summer. Not to mention that another is going to San Diago soon from the looks of it. The four of us who are still here thru summer might not be here thru fall. One goes to work with Google in August. And the other one is looking for jobs in the Bay Area also.

It’s kinda crazy you know. Having all your friends spread out like this. Granted that there is still one of my friends who is going to be in Atlanta next year. But he has a girl-friend, so you know, I can’t always spend time with him. Life’s changing. I’d need something else to take my time. I’d need someone else to keep me busy. I’ll need someone else to go clubbing with. I’ll need some company.

My life is turning a bit uncertain as it moves on. I’m going home this August and I’m desparately hoping that I come back and things just won’t go crazy. I know that I would be depressed for a good long time. I’m going home after four years. Even that is a scary thing you know. Things changed in four years and I won’t even have time to let it sink in completely. I’m going only for 2 weeks. I’m going all the way across the world for two freaking weeks. of which 4 days would be just travel time.

May be I just need a girl friend. It’s just that I can’t really find one, well, not that I am looking. Anyway, I think I’ve bitched and moaned enough. I wasn’t planning on posts like this in the new chapter of Bid Chronicles, but this just had to be done. Take care everyone and live happy.

Bar None and dotWidget

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Looks like when it rains, it pours. As if the last two posts about widgets and launchers were not enough. Last week while cruising thru the net at low altitudes I bumped into k23 Productions. Though I have to say that most of their products are out of developement but they still have some neat stuff.

Firstly, there is Bar None. Like every other launcher, it lets you choose what you want on it of course, but unlike others the bar completely shrinks down to this one rectangle that’s always visible. I’m actually using it at work. Though I always feel like there is a bunch more settings that I would love to add to it. Fortunately, it’s under GPL, unfortunately I don’t really have much time in my hand. According to k23 Bar None has been superseded by Dock Bar. Though Dock Bar really just looked like it’s going to be something like RK Launcher.

Next, they have dotWidget. dotWidget is obviously something like Konfabulator (which by the way is going to hit version 2.0 in 9 days). I just tried it out briefly, so I can’t really conpare between the two in terms of usability of creating new widgets, but they both look very similar. The downfall of dotWidget however is the aviability of pre-made widgets. Since the program is only in verion 0.6, its widget collection is actually quite small. But still, some people just like to be different you know.

I promise no more widgets and launchers until Konfabulator 2.0.

RK Launcher

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Now you might be thinking what kind of name is RK Launcher, and quite frankly I thought about it too. And then I found out that RK is Radu King – the developer. So it’s like saying Bid OS or something like that. Now that the name is clarified, what exactly is RK Launcher?

RK Launcher technically an evolution of Yz Dock. Developement of Yz Dock was discontinued becuz the author was told (by Apple none the less) that the dock was becoming too much like the actual Mac OS X dock. Now no matter how much a stupid reason it was, not sane person wants to go for a legal battle against a big company all by himself. The links to Yz Dock downloads were unavailable for about two years. Till now there are forums that doesn’t let anyone post download links to it.

If Apple thought Yz Dock was getting really close to their’s, they would probably go bonkers when they see RK Launcher. Now this application makes me think that when it’s finally version 1.0, I might actually hide the Windows Start bar permanently. Few cool list of things include:

  • dock item magnification
  • minimizing applications to dock
  • positioning options that you won’t see in Tiger
  • customizing application icons
  • bounce effect on application launch
  • hiding the Windows Start bar
  • etc. etc. etc.

Currently you can find version 0.3 beta on the official site, but Radu King also releases nightly builds in the AquaSoft forums. The nightlies (dubbed 0.4 alpha) are stable and actually much better than the 0.3 beta. So, yeah if you feel like it, give it a try. And you can get beautiful PNG icons to go with your applications at Weboso @ DeviantART. Enjoy.