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I first saw a glimpse of the pro triggers for the sixaxis controller about a month ago and immediately I was trying to figure out a way that I could add this much needed extension myself. I didn’t realize at the time that the extension was actually a product of gioteck. Thanks to a friend I was shown this thread over at the AVSforum that said the pro triggers were included in the December edition of the PSW magazine. Off to Borders I went to find the magazine. The one by me didn’t have it. The one by my friend didn’t have it. The next day I tried another Borders and they didn’t have it either. Finally I went to a Barns and Noble Bookstore and they had 1 copy. As soon as I got home I fired up my PS3, snapped on my new Pro Triggers, and started my favorite finger-slipping racing game Motorstorm.

Someone at Sony really should be fired or at the very least beat for making the triggers on the sixaxis controller so inward and slippery. The Pro Triggers get me one step closer to making the sixaxis controller feel less like two sticks duct taped together and more like a next generation console controller.  As soon as these triggers go on sale without needed to buy a $10 waste of tree I am all over it.

But seriously, I think everyone who has the slightest problem of their trigger/gas finger slipping off should invest in a pair of these.

I am having a great time off from work for my Christmas/New Years break.  I think it is in part because I like getting new things.  I really don’t like sitting at home but with all my new games I will be busy for quite some time.  Because I did get quite a few new things I will be writing reviews for them sometime this week.  I hope anyone who reads this is having a nice relaxing break too.

I have had quite a few articles and tools that I have been wanting to post here but I haven’t made the time to do it. So I guess I am just going to make one big post for all of them. Most of these tools came from the wonderful How-to Geek but there are a few other good ones in the mix.

First up is replacing your task manager with process explorer in Windows Vista. In XP it is usually as simple as going to options and clicking on replace task manager. In Vista there is a bit more of a trick to it if you still have UAC ruling your life. UAC is the first thing I turn off in Vista so there wasn’t any problem for me. Head over to the How-to Geek for further instructions and screenshots.

The next tip is all about drivers. First you could always see what drivers you have installed at the command line, but that isn’t very fun. I guess you could see what drivers are installed and export the list to a text document, excel spreadsheet, or something else. Or you could just transfer the drivers directly from one machine to another. This is great news if you are moving from one computer to another, or if you are just having problems with your computer and want to do some troubleshooting.

Downloadsquad makes the list of useful tools with the Revo Uninstaller. I have never heard of it before but already really like it. Not only can it uninstall your programs and search for left over files and registry entry’s, but it also has built in shortcuts like the on screen keyboard, msconfig, system properties, etc. And because the new version is free AND portable I can keep it on my usb key and take it with me when troubleshooting machines.

Downloadsquad also showed me a Universal Extractor that could be very useful for extracting files that 7-zip can’t already open. I haven’t tried it yet but I defiantly want to keep it in my bag of tricks.

You would think this post would be done now because there is already so much stuff. But I have been procrastinating for a while now on these tools.

Inventgeek had one of the best do-it-yourself articles I have sen for a while. How to make your own thermal paste from diamond dust. I really want to give this one a try on my PS3 but it is going to have to wait just a little bit. I am still a bit nervous about putting it back together. The opening up doesn’t scare me at all. It is only the reassembly.

The last two articles go back to the How-to Geek. If you support machines like I do you probably use the Group Policy Editor quite a bit in Windows XP. This tip shows you how to add it to the control panel. There is also one for adding User Accounts Utility (userpasswords2) in the control panel.

Last but not least. How to Remote Control Leopard with TightVNC brought to you by Lifehacker.

Well I am officially caught up with the articles I wanted to add here. Now I think I will try some of them out and maybe play some more video games.

I never liked that Compiz-fusion didn’t have a transparent menu setting by default. Luckily people on the internet are smart. Well, some of them. Ryan Paul (I have no idea who he is) posted a article on how to add the transparency I was looking for.

In order to set up menu transparency, users will need the Compiz Config Settings Manager, which can be acquired on Ubuntu by installing the compizconfig-settings-manager package. Users can launch the utility from the command line or from the GNOME Preferences menu. The settings manager contains a number of tiles that provide access to various plugins and features included in Commpiz. To set menu transparency, select the General Options tile and navigate to the Opacity Settings tab. Expand the Window Opacities section and click the Add button. A small dialog window will open and prompt for window specification and the desired opacity.

In the Opacity Windows text field, you have to input a pipe-separated list of window types to which you want to apply the transparency. I use the following string:

Tooltip | Menu | PopupMenu | DropdownMenu

Then I set the Opacity Window Values field to 90 to indicate that windows of the previously specified types should be 90 percent opaque and 10 percent transparent.

That is all it took. I ended up making my menu’s 20% transparent but that is all it took. His post also shows how you can set up conditional transparency for specific programs (he uses pidgin as an example).  Have fun with that little tip.

I am mailing this letter to burger king because they do not accept email correspondence and doing this sort of thing over the phone just is not as effective. If you would like to send a similar letter here is Burger King’s address.

Burger King Corporation
5505 Blue Lagoon Drive
Miami, Florida 33126

Here is the letter for your enjoyment.

Dear Burger King,

Your restaurant has done more for me than any other fast food restaurant. The invention of the Whopper and the “have it your way” attitude has changed the way I feel about fast food. I have also taken advantage of many free french fry opportunities when you thoughtfully decided to switch your fry recipe. While I occasionally enjoy the Whopper with no onions and extra pickles there is something that has been bothering me that has changed on your menu.

With all of that said, your french fry sizes are the source of my grief. The sizes on your menu are Medium, Large, and King. Usually, I prefer to order the medium size box of fries, and I then expect to receive the medium size. However, at your restaurant when I order a Medium fry, I receive the small size. The definition of medium is “neither large nor small,” but your french fry naming scheme does not indicate the correct proportions. I suggest that you rename your fry sizes to reflect their correct physical size. I do not mind if you use “Regular” to describe the small size, because I understand that people don’t want to think they are getting a “Small” fry. I also do not mind if you use “King” to describe your largest physical box of fries. But I must insist that you use the term “Medium” only to describe your middle size of french fries.

I do understand that you perhaps have a kids’ size fry that may be the smallest variation of fry size which makes your “medium” fry not the smallest. However the kids’ size is not listed on the same area of the menu with the other fry sizes and therefore should be looked upon as a “special request” or “kids’ menu” item.

Until the naming of your fries is changed to reflect the naming standards that most restaurants have adopted, I will not purchase any french fries from your restaurant.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration,

Justin L. Garrison

I will keep updates about what happens with this, if anything, on my site. Post a comment if you have suggestions on what I should say or if there is another way to get this changed that you know of.

You can also digg the story here

So I got a response back about this, a little while ago and here is what I was sent. This also came with a free Whopper coupon which I reluctantly used and thoroughly enjoyed.

December 11, 2007
Dear Mr. Garrison,
Thank you for taking the time to contact Burger King Corporation. As a valued consumer, your comments and
observations are very important to us.
Burger King Corporation places an emphasis on satisf’ing consumers’ needs. We are always working hard to come
up with new ways to meet or exceed our consumers’ expectations. Therefore we want to encourage you to contact us
with any comments you may have, positive or negative. We need to know how we are meeting your needs in order
to aim for satisfaction!
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We greatly value information from our customers regarding their
experiences at our restaurants. I hope your next visit will give us another opportunity to provide you with an
enjoyable dining experience.
Sincerely,
Christopher Vastine
Consumer Response Representative
Enclosure(s):
WHOPPER® Coupon - 1
BURGER KING BRANDS, INC.
a subsidiary of BURGER KING CORPORATION
5505 Blue Lagoon Drive, Miami, Florida 33126 • (305) 378-3535 • Fax (305) 378-7462

So after a bit of searching around I was able to use custom themes for Windows Vista. Here is what you need to do it yourself. There is a awesome tutorial on how to do everything manually over at the GuiMods forum, but who wants to do all that. All you got to do is download VistaGlazz and click the first icon to patch your dll files.

Once the patch is done you will need to restart (to reload the files into aero).

After the restart clear some space on your hard drive to download some visual styles. You are going to be looking for .msstyles files. Once you download the file you will want to copy them over to your \Windows\Resources\Themes folder and double click on them. Your “Appearance Settings” window will open and you can apply the newly installed theme and you are done. Give a few a try to find the one you like best.

Here are a couple of links to find some new themes:

Gui Modes Vista Visual Styles
DiviantART Vista Styles
AeroXperience
Neowin Forums
joejoe.org

Oh, and lets not forget about your vista sidebar. How-to Geek found some great software to apply custom themes to that too. Download the Windows Sidebar Styler and install it. I would tell you how to use the program but you can just head over to the How-to Geek for that.

BTW I am currently using Curved Sidebar and Ezlo Thin Style.

*EDIT* Just to let everyone know. It appears that with Vista SP1 RC1 build 6001 this doesn’t work anymore. The SP1 installer replaces the hacked dll’s and Vista Glazz shows that the dll’s are corrupt now. It may work if I hack them again but I need to test SP1 a bit more before I do that. I will keep this post updated with what I find.

*EDIT* I want to keep this up to date.  If you have Vista SP1 you will need to download the new UxTheme patches that Vista SP1 requires.  I uploaded the 32 bit version here.  If you need x64 or Windows server patches you can head over to where I got them. You can also patch the files the easy way with Vista Visual Master from vista123. Vista Visual Master lets you do a whole lot more than just patch your UxTheme files but you can read about all that over at their site.

Pidgin comes with some phenomenal plugins by default (see psychic mode). But there were still a couple other things I wanted to have available to me. The main thing I wanted was the buddy list to be visible but without having the “Pidgin” taskbar entry. I did a quick search and came across Pidgin Extended Preferences. It allows you to turn off the taskbar entry for pidgin so you have more room for programs you actually need. I did a couple other searches at sourceforge and found a neat current track plugin and music info plugin that seem pretty useful/useless but cool.

Let me know in the comments if you know of some other great third party plugins that you use in pidgin.

*BTW* Turns out the current track plugin doesn’t work under Vista Ultimate x86. I am going to look into this a bit more.

It doesn’t look like the plugin is working under Windows XP also. That is OK though. The author of that plugin had a link to MisicInfo plugin which does a similar thing but doesn’t support as many players.  I got it working with Winamp 5.5 under Vista without a problem.  Enjoy!

I know it is late but I don’t care. Due to the lack of good Pac Man pumpkins anywhere on the internet Beth and I decided to take it upon ourselves to make right this wrong-doing.

A couple more pumpkins just cause we had leftovers.

I should have some good pictures of pumpkins sometime this week so I will post those as soon as I get them. I also just wanted to share a few tools I found over the past week (or two).

The first I found over at Lifehacker and it is called NetDrive. It allows you to mount remote file systems (ftp, sftp, etc.) to your windows machine. You can download the utility here because I guess it isn’t developed anymore and somewhat hard to find.

Secondly there is a program called mRemote. I really want to give this one a try. It allows you to manage multiple remote desktop connections all from one program. The real cool thing is it doesn’t have to be the same type of remote desktop. You can use it for RDP, ssh, vnc, etc. It is open source so you can grab the latest version from SourceForge.

Finally there

is a how to on Wired about Usenet file sharing.

I saw this great article via Lifehacker and couldn’t resist putting it here.

I haven’t been able to test yet (no HP printer here), but if I’m reading the code right, you can actually do this right from the command line using telnet. Just telnet to port 9100 and type in the following:
\e%-12345X\@PJL JOB
\@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY=”MESSAGE HERE”
\@PJL EOJ
\e%-12345X

I also found a neat way to transfer drivers from one Windows computer to another. It is becoming less and less important to me at home but more important to me at work. So I thought I would throw it up here just for fun.

Read

*Edit* I tried out the printer hack on my LaserJet 5N and it didn’t work with the command line like I posted above. I did another quick google search and found this site that had more HP printer hacking than I knew existed. I have two of the tools attached in the zip file. Both of the attached tools allowed me to change the text on the screen and the Hijetter tool allowed me to do a whole lot more. Have fun!  HP Printer Hacking Tools