In Windows 95, 98, and ME, we were always running out of "resources". There was even a resource monitor that would tell you what % was left.  But don't worry, Windows NT (and its descendants Win2K and XP) would take care of that...NOT. Now there's a new resource limit that causes the unwary all kinds of problems: Handles. 

If you get up over around 17,000 used on your system, it'll eventually start getting flakey just like if you ran out of resources on the old versions of Windows. And what's really bad is that Internet Explorer is the biggest pig.

I've been resetting up my laptop so it's still quite "stock" right now. I don't really have that much stuff running yet. But Internet Explorer, for some reason, feels like it needs to suck up 20 megs for each window. I have 5 Internet explorer windows open using a total of 60 megabytes of RAM and about 1,400 handles. Give it time though and it will grow.  I also have 5 svchost.exe's running using a total of ~40 megs and 2000 handles. SVCHost.exe is one of the processes that the XP theme service runs. This hiding out under that process name allows some people to claim XP themes are (ahem) "0 foot print" or use no resources and other such nonsense.  So just between those two things I've got about 100 megabytes using and 3,500 handles used. 

Of course, DesktopX is using 20 megs of RAM and 400 handles itself. But in its defense, it has a ton of ActiveX based controls floating on it right now. In watching the various Dashboard vs. Konfabulator flame wars I've seen Mac advocates make a big deal that unlike Konfabulator, Dashboard "widgets" are just web pages and that was the real innovation that others didn't have.  Ahem. Once again, this is an area DesktopX has had for years and before that, Active Desktop.  Any web page can be a DesktopX object (See screenshot of this Java clock).  What I've been playing around with is trying to find a way to have irregularly shaped web-based objects (like a round clock) on my desktop.  Alberto and Martin have done it but I haven't quite figured out how to do it.  It has to do with covering the parts you want with a transparent object that ignores the web control.  I haven't figured out how to do it despite having received 2 working samples.

Meanwhile, DesktopX 2.2 should go "gold" for Object Desktop users this next week. It's got the new graphics engine and hundreds of other features and tweaks.  For me though it's all about the overlays.  The overlay feature allows me to have all my widgets/objects pop up or disappear by hitting a hot key (like F9).  So I can cram my desktop full of widgets (calculator, stock monitor, headlines, weather, task list, sales monitor, etc.) but hit F9 and make them all disappear off my desktop and with another press of F9 have them all appear on top of whatever I'm doing so I can do whatever.  No doubt the Mac people will say we stole this from their unreleased OS feature.  For the record, we stole this idea from Tivo.   I think this feature will make DesktopX even more compelling.

This past week has been full of massive amounts of work that few people will ever notice. We're working on getting WindowBlinds working on the 64bit version of Windows XP.  It's almost done.  Plus there are some SP2 things with certain AMD chipsets we're looking into.  Stuff that few people will notice but has to be dealt with. Especially given how widespread Object Desktop based technologies are.  For instance, a certain super-hero based premium suite is expected to come out in the next couple of weeks to coincide with its movie which came out recently.  Since it's likely to be very popular, we have to make sure this stuff works perfectly.

In Windows 95, 98, and ME, we were always running out of "resources". There was even a resource monitor that would tell you what % was left.  But don't worry, Windows NT (and its descendants Win2K and XP) would take care of that...NOT. Now there's a new resource limit that causes the unwary all kinds of problems: Handles. 

If you get up over around 17,000 used on your system, it'll eventually start getting flakey just like if you ran out of resources on the old versions of Windows. And what's really bad is that Internet Explorer is the biggest pig.

I've been resetting up my laptop so it's still quite "stock" right now. I don't really have that much stuff running yet. But Internet Explorer, for some reason, feels like it needs to suck up 20 megs for each window. I have 5 Internet explorer windows open using a total of 60 megabytes of RAM and about 1,400 handles. Give it time though and it will grow.  I also have 5 svchost.exe's running using a total of ~40 megs and 2000 handles. SVCHost.exe is one of the processes that the XP theme service runs. This hiding out under that process name allows some people to claim XP themes are (ahem) "0 foot print" or use no resources and other such nonsense.  So just between those two things I've got about 100 megabytes using and 3,500 handles used. 

Of course, DesktopX is using 20 megs of RAM and 400 handles itself. But in its defense, it has a ton of ActiveX based controls floating on it right now. In watching the various Dashboard vs. Konfabulator flame wars I've seen Mac advocates make a big deal that unlike Konfabulator, Dashboard "widgets" are just web pages and that was the real innovation that others didn't have.  Ahem. Once again, this is an area DesktopX has had for years and before that, Active Desktop.  Any web page can be a DesktopX object (See screenshot of this Java clock).  What I've been playing around with is trying to find a way to have irregularly shaped web-based objects (like a round clock) on my desktop.  Alberto and Martin have done it but I haven't quite figured out how to do it.  It has to do with covering the parts you want with a transparent object that ignores the web control.  I haven't figured out how to do it despite having received 2 working samples.

Meanwhile, DesktopX 2.2 should go "gold" for Object Desktop users this next week. It's got the new graphics engine and hundreds of other features and tweaks.  For me though it's all about the overlays.  The overlay feature allows me to have all my widgets/objects pop up or disappear by hitting a hot key (like F9).  So I can cram my desktop full of widgets (calculator, stock monitor, headlines, weather, task list, sales monitor, etc.) but hit F9 and make them all disappear off my desktop and with another press of F9 have them all appear on top of whatever I'm doing so I can do whatever.  No doubt the Mac people will say we stole this from their unreleased OS feature.  For the record, we stole this idea from Tivo.   I think this feature will make DesktopX even more compelling.

This past week has been full of massive amounts of work that few people will ever notice. We're working on getting WindowBlinds working on the 64bit version of Windows XP.  It's almost done.  Plus there are some SP2 things with certain AMD chipsets we're looking into.  Stuff that few people will notice but has to be dealt with. Especially given how widespread Object Desktop based technologies are.  For instance, a certain super-hero based premium suite is expected to come out in the next couple of weeks to coincide with its movie which came out recently.  Since it's likely to be very popular, we have to make sure this stuff works perfectly.

Last month I wrote about the importance of friendship. I think for me the biggest reason why friendships matter so much is because I'm an only child. And not just an only child, the only-child of a single parent who grew up with no local extended family members for most of that time.

So for me, friends mean a lot. They're like family. And I don't mean that like a cliché.  People who have no brothers or sisters, for instance, simply cannot imagine the feelings associated with having them.  For me, there isn't that much distinction between family/friends. 

Ironically, my oldest friend who I hang out with on a regular basis has something like a dozen or two brothers and sisters. I work with him (his office is next to mine).  We've been friends since I was just getting out of junior high (which is a long time when you're in your 30s to be around someone you see every day). At some point in the distant past, he had crossed that threshold between being a friend and being equivalent to a family member.

But it goes beyond that.  Many of my "family" get togethers are with people who aren't genetically related to me at all. My Memorial Day / Labor day cookouts are always with the same group of people who are, effectively my aunts, uncles, and cousins even though we're not related at all. It's been that way since I was 5. When many of them were over at my son's birthday party last week, I didn't see them merely as friends but rather as part of my family.

That isn't to say I don't have strong feelings for my genetically related extended family members. My wife and I feel particularly close to my cousin and her husband. But growing up, with it just being my mom and I, friendships simply took on greater meaning.

Perhaps someone reading this who has lots of brothers and sisters and cousins that they see regularly will argue (correctly possibly) that I just don't understand the true meaning of family.  I can't say whether they're right or not.  To me, family is more than just genetic connection. Much more.

A good friendship, IMO, is one where you enjoy just being with your friends.  You don't have to be doing anything. Their mere presence makes the visit worthwhile.  I wonder if that is the same feeling people get when they're around their brothers and sisters. Of course, I wouldn't know.

One of the projects we're working on right now that's been quite a blast is tentatively called The Natural Desktop.  It's similar in execution to Aquarium Desktop. Aquarium Desktop has done so well that it makes sense to come up with other ideas to let people make their desktop come alive. 

So in Natural Desktop, we're contracted well known composer Mason Fisher to put together natural sounds based on what time of the day it is and current weather conditions. Those of us stuck working in-doors can appreciate having a subtle background sound of morning doves and birds chirping or the occasional cicada in the background. Or if it's raining the gentle sound of rain falling.  The second part of the project, the visual part, is a wallpaper project where we're scouting around for top wallpaper authors to put together good wallpapers of scenery depending on a) the time of day and the season.  So the wallpaper would change over the course of the day based on what time of year it is.  The last part is a dynamic weather widget which blows away any weather object that's been made so far (totally animated at all times, it's really amazing).  We're hoping to get this out by the first week of August but it depends on our success in getting the wallpapers together. 

Speaking of Aquarium Desktop, we are looking at putting out booster packs for it that provide additional fish. We've gotten some new fish rendered and should be ready in the next several weeks to start making those available. They would go right along side the existing fish that make up the Aquarium desktop.

We hope to have a new ObjectDock Plus beta ready to go in the next day or two.  Tons of little glitches have been fixed, most of which I'd never noticed but users reported and got reproduced/fixed. I will try to put together a video of ObjectDock Plus in action.  The screenshots, as others can tell you, don't really tell the story.  I'm using it probably in a very unusual way.  I have a series of ONE tab docks strewn about my screen now.  Think of them as drawers. Docks can be shaped in weird ways.  So I have various drawers on my desktop that I keep various "things" in.

It gave me an idea for an ObjectDock Plugin I'd like to see.  I'd like to see a plugin that when clicked on creates a "To-Do" item. So when I click on it, a little bubble appears and I type in what I have to do. It then creates a new ObjectDock icon with its own distinct icon.  I could then move these items to my "To-Do" drawers.  When I finish that task, I can go to the drawer and drag it off and feel a bit of satisfaction watching that "Puff".  I don't know if ObjectDock supports virtual icons (i.e. items that aren't anchored to something that resides on your hard disk). But if not, that's something I think would be pretty neat.

One of the projects we're working on right now that's been quite a blast is tentatively called The Natural Desktop.  It's similar in execution to Aquarium Desktop. Aquarium Desktop has done so well that it makes sense to come up with other ideas to let people make their desktop come alive. 

So in Natural Desktop, we're contracted well known composer Mason Fisher to put together natural sounds based on what time of the day it is and current weather conditions. Those of us stuck working in-doors can appreciate having a subtle background sound of morning doves and birds chirping or the occasional cicada in the background. Or if it's raining the gentle sound of rain falling.  The second part of the project, the visual part, is a wallpaper project where we're scouting around for top wallpaper authors to put together good wallpapers of scenery depending on a) the time of day and the season.  So the wallpaper would change over the course of the day based on what time of year it is.  The last part is a dynamic weather widget which blows away any weather object that's been made so far (totally animated at all times, it's really amazing).  We're hoping to get this out by the first week of August but it depends on our success in getting the wallpapers together. 

Speaking of Aquarium Desktop, we are looking at putting out booster packs for it that provide additional fish. We've gotten some new fish rendered and should be ready in the next several weeks to start making those available. They would go right along side the existing fish that make up the Aquarium desktop.

We hope to have a new ObjectDock Plus beta ready to go in the next day or two.  Tons of little glitches have been fixed, most of which I'd never noticed but users reported and got reproduced/fixed. I will try to put together a video of ObjectDock Plus in action.  The screenshots, as others can tell you, don't really tell the story.  I'm using it probably in a very unusual way.  I have a series of ONE tab docks strewn about my screen now.  Think of them as drawers. Docks can be shaped in weird ways.  So I have various drawers on my desktop that I keep various "things" in.

It gave me an idea for an ObjectDock Plugin I'd like to see.  I'd like to see a plugin that when clicked on creates a "To-Do" item. So when I click on it, a little bubble appears and I type in what I have to do. It then creates a new ObjectDock icon with its own distinct icon.  I could then move these items to my "To-Do" drawers.  When I finish that task, I can go to the drawer and drag it off and feel a bit of satisfaction watching that "Puff".  I don't know if ObjectDock supports virtual icons (i.e. items that aren't anchored to something that resides on your hard disk). But if not, that's something I think would be pretty neat.

I really like Stargate: SG1.  I watch it every week.  The characters are good, the stories are good, and despite every planet looking a lot like the forests near Vancouver, the universe they play in is good.

I wasn't expecting much of Stargate Atlantis so it came as a pleasant surprise that it was so good.  I mean really good. The jury is out on the characters but the story and backdrop are really outstanding.  The bad guys have to be amongst the scariest bad guys I've seen on TV before.  Think really really bad ass vampires.  Vampires who defeated the ancients, which is particularly scary since the ancients are the ones who built the stargates in the first place!

So I can safely say that I recommend giving it a try. I think they have a hit on their hands.

Stardock has released a new freeware program called Theme Manager 2004. It is the successor to WinStyles in that it enables users to manage all their skins, themes, wallpapers, and icons all from a single user interface. 

From Theme Manager, users can change their visual styles, wallpapers, or apply entire suites at once.  Users can also take a snapshot of their desktop and save it as a .suite file. 

WinCustomize.com includes a .suite section (make sure if you upload a suite that you use the LINKING feature to link to skins and themes that aren't yours rather than including them directly).

Theme Manager is part of Stardock's Object Desktop.

The average age of the typical WinCustomize user has decreased.  From 2001 to 2003 the average age remained steady at 34 years. This was a good thing as I am younger than that.  But in the most recent poll, with 5000 or so respondents, the new average age decreased to roughly 29.

Which works out because I just turned 29 again for the fourth year in a row.

Just a head's up that our testing of BootSkin and Windows XP SP2 shows that there is an odd problem.  After installing SP2, the first reboot afterwards may cause a blue screen (or other bad behavior). The second reboot seems to clear it up.  We are looking into what is causing this. It's harmless but if you're not prepared for it it is kind of scary.  We are looking into solutions but obviously many people won't necessarily have that download then.

BootSkin is a freeware program that enables you to change your Windows boot screen that works on Windows 2000, Windows XP and even the Longhorn beta. It is the ONLY program that changes your boot screen without patching the actual Windows kernel (if you've patched your kernel with one of the other programs you may need to restore to the default XP kernel prior to installing SP2 to be safe).

Nobody wants to admit their side makes mistakes in judgment.  Usually both sides in an argument share some part of the blame. But in my experience, one side usually has more of it shoulder than the other.

In terms of dealing with Iraq, it strikes me that the left has been the most cynical in dealing with the whole Iraq situation.  Some of you probably disagree and are prepared to hit the comment button and paste in Anti-Bush quote #2921 that you found on some website.

So let me put forth my case here and decide for yourself:

In 2000, Russia and France not only weren't interested in "letting the sanctions" do their work, they wanted them lifted.  They wanted Saddam's regime off the hook even though they had kicked the inspectors out in 1998 and were regularly shooting at US and British planes.

But they weren't alone.  The left was making powerful arguments that UN sanctions were killing 72,000 Iraqi children per year! The left was demanding removing the sanctions entirely because of the humanitarian cost.

So there were 3 realistic options:

(a) Keep the sanctions despite Russia and France's desire to lift them and the left's insistence than they were murdering thousands of innocent Iraqi's.

( Lift the sanctions on Iraq leaving Saddam free to do whatever.

(c) Remove Saddam and lift sanctions.

Now, if someone in 2000 said that you could remove Saddam and have a new Iraqi government with no sanctions within a year or so of work many people would have said that's optimistic to the extreme.  And if they said it could be done with fewer than 1,000 coalition and fewer than 15,000 Iraqi civilians killed total in the whole thing then that would have been considered misleading right-wing propaganda.

In fact, if some recall, the left was claiming such an intervention would likely cause half a MILLION Iraqi civilian casualties (I've got dozens of links from the time claiming the same thing).

But when the Bush administration started asserting that after 9/11, we needed to remove Saddam (argue WHY Bush wanted Saddam gone elsewhere, let's stick with the facts here) France and Russia started a new thing "Let the sanctions work." Huh? They wanted to lift the sanctions. Oh, I get it, let the sanctions work until the Americans elect a more reasonable President. Gotcha.

The left, meanwhile, argued that going into Iraq would cause half a million civilian casualties (sorry, wanted to use one more of these great links) so we shouldn't go in. Besides, the left argued, containment was good enough.  Containment would do the job. Containment? Wait a second, I thought the sanctions (now called containment) were killing 6,000 babies a month! We were starving the innocents. Now you're okay with this?

Of course, ultimately the US invaded.  And what was learned was shocking. First, it looks like there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq. At least, none that we've found. They may have been moved, they may still be hidden, or they may simply not exist.

Secondly, it turned out that France and Russia, you remember them right? The ones who wanted to lift sanctions? Turns out that they had secret agreements with Saddam for massively lucrative oil contracts.  Turned out someone's position about Iraq was about "the oillll". It just wasn't the US.

The third thing we learned is that 6,000 Iraqi babies weren't dying each month. That was just propaganda. Civilian deaths due to the sanctions are still not known but it's likely a figure close to 0.

Fourth, not that it matters given the third thing but it turned out that Saddam was taking that oil for food program and using it as his personal wallet. A billion in cash was found by US soldiers in canisters. Money siphoned off the oil for food program.  Of course, the palaces alone should make it clear to anyone that there was plenty of money available.

Fifth, instead of half a million casualties, there have been fewer than 15,000. Incidentally, I'm trying to use left-wing sites for most of my data, lest I be accused of being biased for the right on this. So I am using data that is intentionally biased the other way. I highly doubt 15,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed but if left-wingers will concede that only 15,000 have perished, that's fine since it's only 3% of the half million estimate they claimed.

And so here we are, in 2004. Iraq has a new government. Relative little damage was done to Iraq in removing Saddam and the sanctions are lifted.  But based on the behavior of the left, it's hard to conclude anything other than that they were pro-Saddam.  They wanted sanctions removed because they claimed 6,000 children died a month on it.  But if the choice was between 6,000 dying per month just from the sanctions (let alone the atrocities Saddam committed himself) or removing sanctions but Saddam had to go they preferred Saddam apparently. Even if the left really believed half a million would die in the invasion and occupation, that's only 7 years of casualties from "containment" of just small children let alone the tens of thousands Saddam was offing each year.

What gives?

So the left has a new strategy it seems, to try to deflect away from their own embarrassing errors, they focus on the one apparent mistake by the Bush administration: No WMD stockpiles found. The left didn't want to do anything constructive about Saddam (other than support him, sometimes outright) but they'll nitpick the WMD stockpiles and try to claim that THAT was why the US went in despite the people who favored going in never having made that a big issue (go ahead, there's plenty of right-wing sites on the net, go look at the articles written in 2002 and see how many even give a rip about WMD stockpiles

Sure, the links between the terrorist organizations and Iraq seem pretty solid according to the bipartisan senate report on the CIA (which slammed the CIA on pretty much everything else). 

And fine, the Kaye report stated found plenty of evidence of WMD programs existed. And that Saddam's strategy was: Wait for France and Russia to get the sanctions lifted and then go whole hog. 

But Bush said Iraq had X tons of mustard gas and you know, that was the real reason we went in.  Right? It has to be right because the left-wingers say it is and it's not like they've been wrong before...

Life rarely works out perfectly. But if events were put into a Choose your own Adventure and we had done what France and Russia wanted and lifted the sanctions on Saddam's Iraq OR we had done the US route which is remove Saddam and lift sanctions, which path do you think, 10 years from now, would yield better results?