While I was doing that, I finally installed a test web server on my desktop again after like a year or so. The great news is that now the server is running in 64-bit mode! I really can’t want until more and more of the applications start providing native 64-bit support. If you are unclear about it’s true benefits, let Lord Jobs show it to you. Granted I’m in the Windows world, but really it’s that much better.

P.S> I have managed to finish learning how to solve a 4×4 Rubik’s cube!

Next. Vista x64 on the desktop, but that has to wait

I have been using Google Desktop (GDS) over the Windows native indexing feature. Though even that sux when it comes to code searching. I just end up using UltraEdit's 'Find in files…' feature. It would be really nice if GDS could add a few tricks like search in folder and stuff like that.

But noooo, they can't do that. Instead they can add some fancy ass feature like gadgets. For the people who don't know every Tom, Dick and Harry at the moment comes with gadgets. Not to mention the ones that are only alive for gadgets. It's freaking annoying.

Gadgets and widgets were cool and all, but in all reality I don't end up using it. And if I want to use it, I'd turn on something that only has gadgets or widgets like Konfabulator Yahoo Widget Engine or Rainmeter.

Tough from my experience, if you’re running a crawler than it’s just better to keep it running the legacy system unless you are interested in switching to Linux.

When you have many many windows open, like I sometimes do, it’s very handy to be able to see which one of the chat windows you really want to go to. or which one of the browser window is the one you want. The small screen shot of the window gives better visual cue than actually just reading each title bar at time. What more can you want? Yes, I have multiple monitors, it kicks ass.

Now if you don’t use Alt+TAB, then oh well, I’ll find you something better some other time.

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 According to k23 Bar None has been superseded by Dock Bar.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 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.

If you wanted to see more on your desktop that just a calendar and todo list, you can try out Rainmeter by the same author. My personal Rainmeter favourite is MoonShine; a neat integation of the current moon status and analog clock. Though, I did dig into the widget and added a second hand to the clock. Rainmeter’s skins are just a very wrong way of labeling widgets, as the skins define what you would have on your desktop. Though creating a widget may not be the easiest thing since notepad, you can create one using the templates and a simple text editor. This simple application looks powerful enough and lightweight enough to rival Konfabulator, provided that there were more people working on Rainmeter “skins”.

Now go ahead, spice up your desktop.