If you look at my guide on customizing your desktop, you’ll see that one of the steps is patching the UXTheme file. An updated version of a program that does this for you was released recently. Of course, the original source needed stupid hoop-jumping, so I figured I’d re-host it here.

Download link

This version adds support for Server 2003 SP2 and Windows XP x64 SP2.

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XPero over at MSFN has been running a project called XPize, with the intent of replacing the default dialog bitmaps in Windows XP with ones that look a little more XP-ish. In otherwords… to XP-ize Windows XP.

MSFN isn’t able to support the bandwidth needed for hosting the files, so I said that I’d help out with it.

You can download the files at the following address - http://www.zxian.org/xpize

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I’ve installed a new plugin onto my site (you may or may not have noticed it) called Bad Behavior. It’s designed to keep the baddies out so that you guys can keep enjoying this site. It’s very simple to add to Wordpress, so if you’re running a blog or a CMS, you should look into adding it to your site.

Bad Behavior Homepage

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Ok… so this post is gonna have both good and bad. It’s always hard to figure out which one to start with… I guess I’ll go with bad first, then good.

The bad: I broke up with my girlfriend yesterday. We had been together for 1 year and 4 months. It’s always hard when you realize that the spark that should be there just isn’t, and that you have to tell the person you’re with how you’re feeling. It’s even worse when they still love you, and want to be with you, but you have to walk away. It’s been a strange couple of days, but I guess I’m getting through them alright. I still think about her, and I hope that she’s doing ok.

I was listening to my iPod today, and some songs from Linkin Park came up. I’m guessing that the songs there come from the feelings of the band members, and if so, that they’ve experienced similar feelings to what I have. The lyrics from “Somewhere I belong” hit home today, and got me thinking quite a bit. I’m not really sure how to describe them, but you might be able to understand if you listen to the lyrics.

In the end - there were a lot of good points in the relationship. My ex (it seems wierd to think of her that way) was a nice person overall, and would never do anything malicious, but things just weren’t right in the end.

Onto the good: there are two bits of good.

First - I’ve been working on a database for my student society (Engineering Physics) for students to upload old exams, midterms, assignments, etc for other students to use in future years. The previous “database” was just a file structure, but it was completely unmanaged, and it was often very difficult to find what you were looking for. The new system is PHP/MySQL based, and provides a solid, managed system for storing the exams. I’ve still got a bit of work to do on the front end (search by course, year, etc), but the back end and the main page work as they should. Check it out. Please don’t try to upload something unless it’s an exam… I get a validation e-mail for each uploaded file, and I don’t want to have to remove files that aren’t needed. Thanks.

Second - OH MY GOD! What the hell is DreamHost doing now? They’ve increased the disk space and bandwidth of my hosting to 200GB and 2TB, respectively. I’ve wanted to upload my “My Documents” folder to my hosting to have a proper backup, but I’ve never got around to it. As I’m writing this, I’ve got 3089MB to go, and I’ve capped the upload here at home to 20KB/s, since otherwise my internet would slow to a crawl. It’ll go faster tomorrow when I go to school (no way it’ll be done by the time I wake up), since there I can get about 500KB/s upload speeds. Anyways… now I’ve got EVEN MORE disk space and bandwidth than I know what to do with. I’m gonna see if I can take my 1337 coding skills that I’ve developed from making the exam DB into a basic image hosting service. If I can make it good, then that’ll help get me some more money… Go Google Ads!

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The title says it all.

I bought an iPod a few months ago because I was getting sick and tired of carrying around my age old Panasonic CD player (not that there was anything wrong with it per se - it was a tank). I’ve got about 27GB of music on my computer right now, and it’s frustrating when you have to predict what music you’re going to want to listen to.

Anyways… the great thing about having the iPod is that there are so many different programs that allow you to sync with your iPod. I personally prefer Winamp, and with yesterday’s release of Winamp 5.3, the syncing and iPod browsing is faster than ever.

So… what’s the problem? The only way that I know of to update the firmware for my iPod is by using iTunes. iTunes7 has proven to be a big pain in the ass for so many users (the MSN sounds cause your music in iTunes to skip), and it’s been no better for me. iTunes6 picks up on the fact that I have an iPod without any troubles whatsoever… 7? It’s seen my iPod once, out of the 20-ish times that I’ve tried to make things work. Honestly… Apple - either stop forcing people to install your shitty software, or stop making shitty software.

As soon as I figure out how to update the firmware… iTunes is gone from my system. I feel so… ditry right now…

EDIT - Well- I finally figured out a way to make things work. I found the instructions here. Basically:

1. Make sure that you have these services running
[control-panel->Admin. Tools ->services]

Network DDE DSDM
Network DDE
ClipBook
Routing and Remote Access
Terminal Services
Server

2. stop the iPodService [same location as (1)]
3. Connect your Ipod 5th gen
4. Start iTunes7.0 [automatically starts iPodService]
5. Update the new s/w in iPod.
this should not take more than 3 mins. after that, it will restart ur ipod. ur ipod s/w is updated as seen in itunes7.0.

You’re kidding me, right?

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