A few days ago I got an IM from someone about Dementaecon. Anyhow, this conversation made me finally get around to fixing the icon package. There were serveral icons that for some strange reason were black silhouettes at 128x128. Anyhow, this made me take notice to how long ago I released Dementaecon. That in combination with this person's very flattering words made me want to start another package. I'm not sure if I will at this point or not. I really don't have time for hobbies at this point in time, especially when they aren't very fun. When working on something I think I spend 90% of the time flipping out at my computer trying to process things. I'm limited to my laptop, which I don't even like to consider a computer, it's more like a type writer with a monitor. I've been meaning to get a real computer for awhile now, but just haven't had the money for it.
So why did I decide to start-up a JoeUser account... well... it's 6am, I'm on a typewriter with a monitor, and am stuck using 56k for the time being... so that should be sufficient reasoning. I do semi-regularly pop on WC and check out some of the featured articles. About two weeks ago a fluke happened and explorer shell opened, this along with me just reading a few articles gave me some drive to start one of these blogs...
Anyhow this was the first time I had seen the explorer shell on my computer for over 2 years. I thought to myself "hey this is really simple, and doesn't seem as sluggish as I remembered it,". I started wondering where my quest for efficiency spun wildly out of control. The 10% of the time I'm not cursing at my computer, I'm making menus and hotkeys to try to make it more effective. Over 2 years ago I found myself unsatisfied with the windows launch bar, I wanted something that could more easily open programs. So I started using a program which if I recall correctly was called "go!" which was a launch bar on steroids. I found this to be too bulkly, and there was no way to quickly open/dismiss it without using the mouse; laptop = touchpad = forget that. Then I came across Serenade Shell. Great shell replacement, my only gripe with it was that it wasn't the best with multiple monitors, and well it seems to have been abandon which is a shame.
Serenade was highly configurable, it was something entirely different that most other shells I came acrossed, as most are just beefed up explorer shells. There were times I'd just spend days at a time entering aliases(word?), reconfiguring the interface, making skins, etc etc. Until I had it perfect. It was so incredibly fine tuned, and so very effiecent. Problem is at this point it was about as functional as brick would be as shell. Again, laptop... that brick might actually be a more effective computer... So I had the option of slimming down my Serenade config, or going on the hunt for a new shell.
This brought me to BBlean, a BlockBox port for windows. It's blackbox so you know it's sleak, it's light on resources, and adds functionality to windows. Great! right? no... now I found myself missing all the extras I had in Serenade, the countless custom menus. So I downloaded every plugin I could find for BBlean, and found BBinterface. While BBinterface is great once you have everything set up to your liking, seting it up is a bit of a pain, at least when compared to other shells. It actually took a few days, not hours, until I was finally happy with the set up. Now at this moment I was running both Serenade (with a lighter configuration obviously) and BBlean, and finally I decided to set BBlean as my default shell and rid of Serenade.
This is when, for a brief moment, the explorer shell could be seen on my computer. I was then reminded of why I rid of it in the first place: the launch bar. BBlean doesn't even have a launch bar... I'm still using BBlean, but it makes me question, what the hell happened? What am I doing? I've gone through so many various windows enhancement programs over the years... the only one that's really stuck is macromaker. I'd love to use Windowblinds, but my computer just can't handle it.
Moral of this story, sometimes we need to step back and take a look at the basics which we've deviated from to see if were still on track. For me, I left the basics because of a launch bar... one which I don't have right now. However after the pains of configuring all the BBplugins I don't really need a launch bar... though it would be nice. However it is lighter on resources than just about every other shell I've used, and it doesn't get confused by multiple monitors. I did eliminate a few programs, DesktopX for one. I had quite a few widgets but I'm not sure why... I realized that while neko the kitty is awsome beyond words when it's using 8+ meg of ram out the meer 192 you have it's not quite worth it ='( .