Yay for New Posts!

Hello!
Can it be? Is it true?!? Yes! A new post!
(and a bunch of goodies, too!)

First, things first,
I am sorry for taking so long to post. I was bogged down with school work/finals. I had five finals (One I didn't know I had until three hours before!) and an OS project due on finals week!

Now to open the box...
Pandora's Box, that is...
Pandora is a website that is dedicated to delivering music tailored to you! And it's written in Flash (woohoo!!). This means you get all the beautiful and crazy vector transitions you should expect from a professional graphic software/actionScripting language (I spent about 20minutes just pressing TAB on the login form).
How does it work?
Well, you sign up (free, unless you want the non-ad version) and start by telling it what you like to listen to. Pandora then creates a custom playlist. You keep listening, checking what you like and don't like until Pandora knows what kinda of music you like. It's very similar to mercora (for those of you who remember it before it sold out). Mercora had a great little program that you installed on your system and could broadcast your music anywhere! then they started charging their customers to listen (Oddly, I only used it to listen to my own music).
So why is it better?
Well, the best thing about Pandora is that you don't have to install jack! Nada!
Just go to the website, login, and listen! Also, once you get a great playlist made,
you can share it!
And your friends don't have to login to listen (wonderful idea!!). Also, you can "minimize" (I consider that confusing) the player to detach it from the current browser window and place it in a custom smaller window (and it does it all without skipping a beat in the music!).
:-)
A++ Software!

UNIX to Come
My next post will hopefully be on Pipes, Shared Memory, and Fork()ing in UNIX (yuck).
;-)

Mountain Dew MDX

Energy Drinks Are Back!
With the new Mountain Dew MDX!

Of all the craziness, they have come out with an energy drink from the people who started this caffeine craze!
Mountain Dew has the "MDX"
Their new slogan is, "Be Nocturnal"
lol

You can log onto their website and play the flash games, or watch the video ads
(I know my sister will love the second one)
:-)

Honestly, after trying it,
I can't taste a huge difference between it and mountain dew. Most energy drinks are really carbonated, but this tasted just like normal dew.
But, at $1.72, it's a really good deal (where most drinks are $2.09 after tax).

If it came down to it, though, I'd just grab an Amp.
(Speaking of which, is "Amp" a competitor of MDX? Very odd, since they are from the same company... I wonder how the target audiences differ)
But the little bottle is nice, since you can take it into computer labs (they require that your drinks have a cap before you sit in front of the computer).
Weighing in at 14oz, it's a cross between the huge energy drinks and the micro-cans.

I was talking to another computer science major
(Luke, from the TAGD team). He was telling me that the way you can spot a good energy drink is if it tastes like Science. I don't really know what he meant since, when I think of science, I think of beakers full of formaldehyde with frogs and pig livers... But if tasting "science-y" is the scale for good energy drinks, MDX fails. It doesn't even seem to wake me up more than mountain dew.

Sad day.
;-)

LiteStep

Howdy All!
Well, my current job with the university is going well. I get to meet a lot of professors and researchers. It's pretty cool. The other day I saw a guy sitting outside my office. He was working on his laptop. Now, I really like looking at other compsci major's computer setups. It says a lot about the nerd. This guy was using litestep instead of explorer.

I was shocked!
The last time I used litestep was back in the 98/ME days (one of the few things that would make windows ME stable; lol). It was nice to see that it had come a long way since then!
I, of course, immediately went home and downloaded it. :-)

Wow, has it changed a lot since I last played with it. It now has a special theme package that automatically checks and downloads required modules with the theme you want to use. It's really awesome!

Maybe it's because I've been playing with DSL
and other liveLinux distros, but it seemed a lot more intuitive this time around. Each theme totally changes your litestep experience.

For those who are unfamiliar with litestep
Litestep is an explorer replacement. It used to be a shell replacement, back when explorer was the windows shell. Now explorer operates as a file manager and... explorer (if I'm correct).
Anyway, it changes your "Start bar" and desktop to give the end user more options. It's pretty neat. :-)

Here's what my computer currently looks like:

Now, let me explain what is, and isn't lightstep. The bottom menu is litestep and so are the right menus. The CD-cases and system information (bottom left and bottom right respectively) are konfabulator widgets. The top-right toaster is a miranda plugin called "pop-up"
Litestep does not handle windows styles.
In order to get the ability to skin your windows, you will need to use windowblinds, styleXP, or unlock your style handler to accept non-Microsoft signed styles.
The background was made by yours truly... I was bored, so I filled one of my glasses with scope. :-)

Yeah, I have an OS test Tuesday (The class is really fun, but the book is uber-boring).
later