I'm so excited! So much cool stuff is going on! DesktopX 2 is nearly done, SkinStudio 4 and Icon Developer are coming, and WindowBlinds 4.2 is in the wings.

WindowBlinds 4.2? WindowBlinds 4.2 is going to allow people to load up their own IE and Explorer toolbar icons along with replace those ugly progress dialog animations that have hung around since the Windows 95 era.  When you download a file or delete a file or copy something you get that old animation of files moving to a folder or whatever that is absolutely ancient.  Now you'll be able to make your own, upload them and mix and match them with your skins!

If you saw The Matrix Reloaded you undoubtedly noticed that the movie had some...issues. Well, the on-line humor site, The Editing Room, has a spoof screen play of the Matrix reloaded.  Read the full thing here.

But here are a couple of highlights:

INT.  WELL-LIT, NON-NOIR WHITE ROOM

KEANU enters a white room, the walls of which are covered
in monitors.  A chair spins around to reveal THE EXPLAINER.

                        KEANU REEVES
            Who are you?

                       THE EXPLAINER
            I am The Explainer.  I designed the
            matrix screenplay.  Unable to
            decently explain the convoluted plot
            well, I have resorted to putting
            myself here in the final act and
            having you ask all of the questions
            the audience wants to ask.
                 (dramatic pause)
            You must begin by asking your own
            questions then gradually switch to
            asking those of the audience, in
            order to not make this scene any
            more awkward than it already is.
            Concordantly, while your first
            question may be the most pertinent,
            you may or may not realize it is
            also the most irrelevant.

                        KEANU REEVES
            Why am I here?

                       THE EXPLAINER
            Many years ago, shortly before the
            success of Speed, you sold your soul
            to the devil in exchange for a
            promise of notoriety that your
            piss-poor acting skills do not
            deserve. This series is the
            actualization of this promise.

                        KEANU REEVES
            What was the Osiris? And who was
            that kid in zion who kept pestering
            me?

                       THE EXPLAINER
            You will find the answers to these
            questions by purchasing The
            Animatrix, a collection of nine
            animated shorts from some of Anime's
            top directors.

                        KEANU REEVES
            Alright.  Well, what was that crap
            Glora said about vampires and
            werewolves? And how did Jada Pinkett
            Smith get to Laurence Fishburne
            during the car chase? And what the
            hell happened during the power plant
            takeover climax that-wasn't?

                       THE EXPLAINER
            You will find the answers to those
            questions by purchasing the Enter
            The Matrix game, available for
            Windows, Playstation2, Xbox, and
            Gamecube. Enter the Matrix features
            awesome gunplay and spectacular
            martial arts that bend the rules of
            the Matrix.  This game isn't just
            set in the Matrix universe--it's an
            integral part of the experience,
            with a story that weaves in and out
            of The Matrix Reloaded.  Enter the
            Matrix is the story behind the
            story.

                        KEANU REEVES
            Fine! Then tell me this, what the
            hell is with Hugo Weaving saying he
            and I have some special connection?
            And how come I can control machines
            in the real world? And will we win
            the war if I don't choose the door
            to my right?

                       THE EXPLAINER
            You will find the answers to these
            questions when you watch The Matrix
            Revolutions, coming later in 2003.

                        KEANU REEVES
            I hate you.

                       THE EXPLAINER
            Perhaps you should drink more
            Powerade.

                        KEANU REEVES
            Just answer me one question.  We're
            not going to find out that the real
            world is in another matrix, are we?

                       THE EXPLAINER
            Christ I hope not.
 

Hilarous! Read the whole thing.

WindowBlinds 4.2 is coming out in November and it has some really cool new features in it.

1) You will be able to change your IE and Explorer toolbars with it. But even more to the point, you will be able to do this separately from the actual visual style. That is, will be able to mix and match toolbar icons and visual styles. A new section on WinCustomize.com and elsewhere will be created to allow users to upload their own custom toolbars.

2) Progress animations will be replaceable. There are about a half dozen of them. Those file copy, file delete, file move, download animations you see in dialogs. Like toolbars, you'll be able to mix and match them so that skin authors don't feel forced into having to make these since they are .AVI files which not all skin authors will be able to make.

These two items will have tons of user options available as well to make it convenient and easy to decide what toolbars and animations to use and when to use them.

In addition, WindowBlinds 4.2 will work on Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. WindowBlinds 4 was initially only on Windows XP. During that process we found ways to make WindowBlinds use even less memory than before so 4.2 not only will have more features but it'll use less memory while doing it.

There have also been various tweaks to fix little buglets that users have reported.

 

I've decided that I'm not an atheist. That doesn't mean I believe in "God" per se but being an atheist requires faith as well. We don't know how the universe got here. Oh, we have theories that go something like this:

Around 14 billion years ago there was a gigantic explosion from a source that was theoretically smaller than an electron. As hard as it is to imagine, the universe isn't growing to fill up some "void" because there is no void. There is nothing else outside of our universe. One of the many things we don't know is whether the universe expansion (which seems to be acceleration last time I checked rather than slowing down which was what they belief was when I was a kid) is systemic. That is, whether it occurs from time to time and repeats itself. Who knows. I do know I don't have a clue how the universe's expansion could be accelerating. It seems counter intuitive.

On the other hand, not knowing any of these things isn't likely to make me throw up my hands and say "Well, God must have done all this". I don't know means just that -- I don't know. So I guess that makes me an agnostic. But to be honest, I would like to believe in God very very much -- particularly a Christian God. Christianity is one of the easier solutions. If you believe Jesus Christ is your savior you're all set. But again, I don't know. Is he my savior? I do not know. I believe he existed. But I don't know whether he was my savior or not.

When I was younger, I used to debate with people who would come to my door. Eventually people stopped coming to my door. I'd invite them in, my wife would make lunch for them and bring them tea or a soft drink or just water and chat. They were very nice people and sincerely wanted to convince me in the validity of their beliefs. And so we would sit across from each other on our living room couches. Each of us armed with our bibles bookmarked to the hilt. They would then try to demonstrate the errors of Evolution and the proof behind Noah's Arc and other things. Meanwhile, I already owned the book "A scientific guide to the bible" that was the source material for many of their arguments along with various counter arguments. "A Scientific Guide to the Bible" contains things like "The missing day" (No, there is no way to determine whether there is a missing day), "How evolution violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics" (No, that only applies to closed systems, Earth is not a closed system, the sun is a massive energy source), "Evidence of the flood" (No, Plate Tectonics explains that and if Noah and his sons were the only surviving males of a so-called world wide flood we'd all share the same mitochondria DNA and no UV won't make the kinds of genetic differences in 4,000 years or 40,000 years for that matter). And so on.

So eventually they stopped coming. I didn't debate them because I was trying to squash their faith. I debated them because I wanted to be convinced. I don't consciously choose to be agnostic. It is a matter of looking at the evidence available to me and coming to a conclusion. I don't consider evolution a "theory", I consider it established fact. I also don't consider evolution to contradict the bible. Heck, the Old Testament is based on Judaism and Genesis is pretty dramatically altered from what is preached in Judaism. So there's no reason to believe we should take the modern English translation of the bible literally. Not that it matters anyway because for me, personally, the bible doesn't add up. As a collection of stories that (generally) try to make us better people, it is successful. But as a way of trying to understand life and the world, I don't think it works there. As time goes on, evidence mounts against such things in my view and so I'm left again with the "I don't know".

I don't know:

• How life began on Earth other than it probably got started around 3 billion years ago in single called life forms.
• How the universe came to be in the first place.
• Whether there is a supreme being in the universe.

The evidence available doesn't allow me to make a definitive conclusion. If I had to guess, I would bet that if there is a supreme being, it is not interested in us in any personal way. But on the others I have no idea. Despite what some though a few decades ago, some electricity through a methane atmosphere won't create amino acids and even if they had, amino acids need a lot more help than just existing to get life. But like I said, not knowing the answers to these things doesn't automatically open the door to a super being being the answer. It's not like religion wins by default. I suspect my grand mother didn't know how the television worked. Probably didn't have the foggiest idea. But I am certain that she didn't believed it was magic.

The problem with religion is that people get so militant about it. Ever heard of the atheist group calling themselves "The brights"? That's pretty arrogant. Especially since atheism requires faith. Where some would throw up their hands and say "God did it" the "Brights" throw up their hands and say "Nothing did it". While I suspect there is no "God" in any sense that we think of one, I'm not prepared to go to the step of having faith that that is the case. I just don't know. On the other hand, excessively religious people bother me too. Not because they're religious but they suffer from a similar kind of arrogance as "The brights". These are the people who buy into the canned "anti-science" arguments and spit them out as fact when in reality they're just parroting nonsense. You can identify those people because they readily identify themselves "Well, you know that many TOP scientists (what's a "top" scientist?) have 'proven' evolution just doesn't work 'scientifically'." Yea, well unlike the parrots many people have actually looked at both sides at great length and made their own conclusions thank you very much.

But in the end, I just don't know. And that's why I'm not an atheist. I guess I'm an agnostic. I don't think I'll ever know. I don't foresee a day when they'll discover something that will prove one way or the other. Though admittedly, if they can create single celled life forms in a lab that might seriously persuade me that life, as we know it, occurred spontaneously as opposed to some sort of "intelligent design".

Btw, for the email starts pouring in from atheists, I realize that many atheists term themselves as such because they have rejected organized religion hence "a-theists". I am using a definition that not all agree -- atheists believe that there is no God. I am taking the view that I do not know whether there is a god and don't have a belief either way at this point hence I'm using the term "agnostic".

My wife and I and friends played paint ball today. There we were in our camoflauge battling it out. What a work out. I realized something today. I am way WAY out of shape. My wife did remarkably well, especially considering it was her first time out there.

How many guys are lucky enough to have a wife who will shoot at them with a gun? Er, nevermind.

Right now JoeUser just strikes me as being really slow. At first, I thought it was all the database stuff. But now, the home page is done at an HTM and it's still slow for me. The Joeuser header bar at the top shows up and sometimes it stalls on me there and I have to hit refresh.

Seems CSS may not be so wonderful after all.

Is anyone else running into this?

Jark, admin of deviantART has a very good and thorough review of iTunes. Highly recommend you check it out.

I've now added us to Blog Street.

What I like about Blog Street is 1) It's a really good idea and 2) It really let's you see just how many blogs are out there.

"Oh we're getting quite close to cracking the secret to immortality"

So we hear anyway from scientists who are exploring the secrets of anti-aging. Basically there are a handful of theories on what causes aging and how we might stop it. One of the more promising ones is gene therapy. Through gene therapy we can restore our tissues to the healthy adult level and hence delay or completely stop the onset of old age.  I have a number of books around here that talk about various strategies, today, that can be used to slow down aging (caloric intake being the biggest - those empty calories will wear you down my friends).

Many on-line sellers are now selling human growth hormone (HGH) as a mechanism to delay the onset of old age.  I don't know if they work or not. There's a site dedicated to keeping up with news on whether we will be able to eventually stop aging or at least slow it down to live hundreds if not thousands of years.

But according to a neurologist friend of mine, don't expect to live more than 120 years. The reasons are ones that rarely get talked about. What he said was that the brain begins to break down pretty rapidly in most people around 80 years (with a few exceptions). What we call Alzheimer's is just one of an entire world of forms of dementia waiting for us. 

He contends that it's quite likely that we'll figure out some way at some point to make it so that we're no longer dying of organ failures, heart disease, or even cancer. But in the end, dementia will get us. To that I asked, "Well, don't you think we'll cure Alzheimer's?" Which he responded, "Oh sure of course. And then something else will pop up similar to Alzheimer's that will take decades to cure. And then something after that, and another after that, and so on with each one getting harder and harder to treat."

Or put another way, we may solve our heart problems but our brains are going to be the death of us yet. So if you're thinking you may live to 150 years due to medical technology, think again. At best, your body may last to 150 years but your mind won't.

 

For fun, last night I started putting together my own iTunes like desktop.  I used Object Desktop. Object Desktop is a suite of several programs that allow you to totally customize Windows. There were 4 programs from Object Desktop that I used together to create this not counting ObjectDock (at the very top).

First, I made use of ObjectBar. ObjectBar is one of the lesser known Object Desktop components. It currently suffers from a severe case of featuritis. Let me explain:  Sometimes programs gain so much flexibility and features that they become unwieldly. This is where we are with ObjectBar. ObjectBar can make any kind of desktop UI. Which sounds cool but it means that creating these bars is a pain in the butt. For users, ObjectBar works pretty well but even there, it has the problem of trying to make it "easy" to modify it which only serves to makes it that much more complicated for people who just want to use the finished thing (for example, when I right click on an item I get a huge menu of options).  This is something we're working on with ObjectBar 2 which is due out later this year.

That said, ObjectBar is a fantastic piece of technology that can work very well.  For one thing, it can automatically use any WindowBlinds visual style. This can save a lot of work.  So I downloaded a Longhorn ObjectBar theme from WinCustomize. I modified it up a little bit for my use.  Notice how ObjectBar (it's the bar part on the left) displays my most frequently used programs, my system tray, and tasks seamlessly together. Only ObjectBar can do this anywhere nearly this well.   

Then I used WindowBlinds to handle skinning the Windows GUI. I found a skin that looks something like iTunes and used that.  I also used DesktopX to provide the enhanced Windows icons (I'm using icons made by Foood applied via IconPackager which is also part of Object Desktop).  And then used WindowFX to provide the shadows to my windows. I have mine set to only show when I'm not dragging the window. I'm pretty performance sensitive so I don't want this stuff slowing me down.

And then I used the freeware program, ObjectDock. ObjectDock is really just a program launcher. But you can download skins and themes and icons for it to dress it up and make it look and behave however you want (I usually have mine dressed up to look and act like my OS/2 program launcher).

So there you have it, my iTunes desktop. Have fun!

I really think Apple has a winner with iTunes. Going around the office today, Apple made over a $100 in the first day just from Stardock employees via iTunes. I also think that iTunes is going to make people take a serious look at the Mac. Its sleek interface is both polished and well designed. I've used it on my Mac for over a year but on Windows, its good UI just stands out immensely when compared to its competitors.