Delve Into Lunacy

I’m not actually sure how new this is since I only found it last week, but since the world revolves around me I’m considering it new. Anyway, Microsoft has a full blown theme available on their Zune site which includes a visual style similar to the Royale Noir one that I covered in my last post (here). Due to the more matte-looking finish and smaller font I like it better than the Royale Noir one.

Note: The download of the full blown theme can be obtained here. It is in a nice and easy to install package but includes a dog-ass ugly background (which of course you can change). If you want to skip that you can find a ZIP file containing just the new visual style further down in this post.

Below is a comparison of the Start button between the two themes. Normal is just how the button looks the majority of the time as part of the Taskbar. Hover shows what it looks like if you hover your mouse cursor over it. Selected is what it looks like when you actually click on it to open the Start Menu.

I’ve never been a big fan of the color orange in general, but I think looks okay with the charcoal color that’s used throughout the rest of the Zune theme.

The next image is comparing what the Start Menu looks like under each visual style.

Side by I side I just think the Zune theme looks a little more crisp, whereas the Royale Noir theme looks a little washed out. I also like how the orange arrow button for All Programs stands out a little more than the green one does.

In this next image you can see how active and inactive title bars look between the two themes.

There isn’t as much of a difference between inactive and active window title bars on the Zune theme as there is on the Royale Noir one and that did take a little getting used to. This is also where you can really see the difference between the two fonts. I’ve shrunk down this image which results in both fonts appearing a bit squished, so it’s not completely accurate but you get the point. Overall, I just think the Zune font looks a little classier and is more readable. The downside with the font being smaller is that if you’re using some god awful high resolution then it might start getting a little tough to read. I’m running at 1920×1200 on one of my home machines and it is still plenty readable however.

This last image shows the difference between the Control Panel window in each theme. If you’re using the default folder setup in Windows XP, which shows the Common Tasks panel as seen on the left side of the window, then this will also affect things such as Windows Explorer.

Yet again I just think the Zune version looks a little crisper and like how the orange color makes the title bars in the Common Tasks panel stand out better.

Okay, so now that we are done comparing the two, here is how you can install just the Zune visual style without the background image and what not that comes in the official download.

First, you’ll need to download the ZIP file from here: Zune Download.

Once you have it downloaded, extract the Zune folder to the <Windows Install Directory>\Resources\Themes\ directory. Your Windows install directory is normally C:\Windows or C:\WINNT.

Now go to the directory you just extracted and double-click on the zune.msstyles file. This will open a Display Properties window where you will just need to click on the OK button.

Once it’s done applying you’re finished.

** Update ** If you tried downloading the ZIP file in this post prior to 11/12/06 and received an error stating that the ZIP file was corrupt, go ahead and try again. I’ve posted a new ZIP file that shouldn’t have that issue any longer.

By default in Windows XP you have three choices for themes: blue, silver and olive. Personally, I’ve always used olive but I never was a huge fan of any of the three. Now normally if you wanted things like the taskbar and window borders to be a different color you would have to use a third party application that "skins" the entire desktop. Unfortunately, any of those that I’ve ever tried just tend to eat up lots of memory while running and usually never produce the best of results anyway.

However, the other day I ran across a blog site (here) where they had discovered an official prototype theme called Royale Noir that was intended for Windows Media Center but was never implemented. It is very similar to the Longhorn palette, if not identical, which I personally fell in love with the first time I saw it. The best part is since it’s an official theme you don’t have to use any third party tool to use it.

Here’s a compilation screenshot to show what the taskbar, system tray and active/inactive window borders look like.

If you would like to use the theme you’ll need to start by downloading it here: Royale Noir Download.

Once you have it downloaded, extract the Royale Noir folder to the <Windows Install Directory>\Resources\Themes\ directory. Your Windows install directory is normally C:\Windows or C:\WINNT. You can see an example of the full path in the image above.

Now go to the directory you just extracted and double-click on the luna.msstyles file. This will open a Display Properties window where you will want to change the Color Scheme value to Royale Noir as shown in the image below.

Click on OK. It will start applying the new theme which can take a little time so don’t get impatient…it hasn’t locked up or anything like that. Once it’s done applying you’re finished.

Well, I’ve finally started ripping all my CDs again. I’ve done it multiple times in the past, but since the last time I did it I’ve accidentally deleted some of them. I also discovered that FreeDB isn’t even remotely accurate half the time (and if iTunes uses something besides FreeDB then whatever it’s looking at is equally as bad). Also, I wanted to actually scan the album art and embed it into all the files.

I’m starting with the new stuff that I hadn’t previously ripped and then I’ll begin going through all my old CDs again. After that I get to organize all the miscellaneous songs that I have as well. Needless to say it’s taking me forever but I’m at least making progress. Currently, if I’m moving quickly then I can finish off four or five CDs per hour. If I have to hunt down translations of song titles or something for foreign stuff or what not then that pace drops off significantly. With as many CDs as I have I figure I should be finished sometime around 2036.

Anyway, I’ll keep exporting a new list of what I’ve completed to date and make it available on here if anyone is curious to see what type of music I’m into. The link to the Excel file is below.

Update: I no longer keep this file up to date so it has been removed.

Well, I’ve now finished adding all the "WP-XXXX" plugins that I was planning on adding. Both of these last two went in pretty easily. With WP-Print I had zero issues and besides making the image a hair smaller, there wasn’t anything else I needed to do to it. In a final version with a future theme I might want to add a link on the "printer friendly" page so they can get back to the site without having to use the browser’s Back button.

With WP-Email I had surprisingly few issues. I figured I’d have all sorts of trouble getting the actual emails themselves delivered properly but that worked straight out of the box. There were only two problems that I had and both were pretty easy to fix. The first was just needing to update the permalinks structure in the Options screen again after activating the plugin. For some reason, prior to doing that, when you clicked on the email link it would just bring up the "Page Not Found" page and not the email form.

The second problem was when the success, failure or error pages were displayed after sending an email, the sidebar and footer were all fucked up and over on the right side of the message. It ended up just being that in the "Email Options" page where you can modify the layout for those items there wasn’t a closing </div> for some reason. The value appears in the string that is set by default so I’m not real sure why it wasn’t there. Adding it fixed the problem though.

The only thing I might change with WP-Email in the future is adding a link to go back to the main page right below the success or failure message. There is one in the sidebar, but in this case I just think it might look better to include one in the content section as well. Also, if I someday use the pop-up version then I’ll need to modify the window size so that you don’t have to scroll at all.

Anyway, I’m getting close to having the basic setup of the site finished at this point. I finished making my changes to the Widgets plugin last week to show a different "Meta" section (it’s the Navigation section in the sidebar) and added the FallenBlossom logo link. I need to update the About and Contact pages which will include setting up the "Custom Contact" plugin which creates contact forms. After that I believe I’ll be done and ready to start working on my own original theme.

Well, since I started posting again I would say my posts have been fairly tame in comparison to my old ones. Of course, everything up to now has been geared toward the migration of hosts, getting the site up and running, etc. It seems technical posts just don’t allow for quite the same level of rancor that other topics do.

However, I’m at the point now where I just have to get some things off my chest. Due to there being so many things that get my panties in a bunch on a regular basis, I’ve decided to start a series of posts simply called Things That Piss Me Off (TTPMO for short).

My beef tonight is with open source projects. I fully understand the spirit and what not behind open source projects and there have been many apps created with the model that are absolutely wonderful in what they do or in what they provide to others at no cost. My complaint isn’t with those, but more with some aspects of the model itself.

The first is the complete lack of control over what appears out there. It seems like 99.9% of all projects started fall into one of the following categories: went no further than picking a name for the project, died halfway through development never to be touched again, or those that are coded so horribly that you would be better off hitting yourself in the head with a hammer rather than download them.

I realize that this problem is endemic to other things besides open source, but it’s easy to go back from something like a dead page on Geo-Cities or skip over a dead profile on a friend/dating site for example. With applications however you are investing more time and effort into getting them downloaded, installed, etc often to just realize you have wasted a few hours of your life that you’ll never get back. Is there a solution? Probably, but I don’t need to come up with one to justify my ranting.

The second thing that chaps my ass is the developers themselves. I know there are some great people out there working on open source projects, but unfortunately they never seem to be the ones I run across. It seems to be a model that really attracts the biggest, self-important jackass developers that exist. Then they all seem to end up working on things I get interested in.

For an example, go to a forum site for a project and enter something in the area that they set up so that people can provide suggestions. It doesn’t matter what your suggestion is, how well thought out your posting was, etc. You can just pretty much expect to get flamed by the developers, or one of their sycophantic followers, as either being: retarded, a n00b, or a dumbass for posting something that they already thought of but just haven’t documented anywhere.

Since I’m a helping type of guy and just in case you do decide to post on a forum somewhere, I’ve kindly provided a template that you can use to at least help lower the chances of being flamed.

[quickcode:noclick]Dear developers,

You are gods among men and I wish I had a womb so I could bear your children. There are no programmers that have ever had the skill, wisdom and imagination that you show in every line of code that springs forth from your Cheetos and nicotine stained fingers. This is by far the best application ever created and henceforth I shall use nothing but this app even though it only does one particular thing.

Now keep in mind that I’m borderline-retarded, know absolutely nothing about anything and am already well aware that I don’t deserve to be in the same general cyber-vicinity as you, but I have a [question / suggestion].

[Enter question or suggestion here.]

Forever indebted to you,
[Enter your first name.] - aka Stupid Moron

P.S. - If you ever need a kidney, lung, chunk of liver or an eye you can have mine…even if I don’t match as a donor.[/quickcode]

Now in case the “Stupid Moron” moniker fits you, make sure you replace the things in brackets and don’t just copy-paste-submit. Moving on.

There is plenty of other stuff about open source that pisses me off but the final thing I’ll bitch about today is documentation. Jesus Christ on ice skates…how fucking difficult is it to: a) put comments in your code and b) write some basic documentation that is at least slightly helpful?

Standard documentation typically seems to consist of a readme file that just has the following things in it: the name of the app, the names of the developers and the name of the joker that wrote the readme file. If you’re lucky, you might also get a line making note of the current version of the app. If you’re incredibly lucky, you might get some half-assed installation instructions that will still require you randomly renaming files, moving things around, etc before you can get it working.

As for in-code comments, if there are any at all, then they typically consist of things like "Bad stuff happens" or "This does the work". What exactly possesses a person to even bother if they are just going to write crap like that?

Well, now that I’ve written a book on this topic I should wrap it up. Stay tuned for the next issue of TTPMO where I will most likely be bitching about over-hyped sites.