Vista's awesome Program Compatibility Assistant

I have a Windoze machine at my workplace.  It's running Vista, which brings wow experience to your computers.  Today I upgraded my VLC player to the latest version and when I open VLC, Windoze decided to save me from falling off earth into nowhere:

Windoze expects me to decide and tell if the installation went fine before even opening the app.  Before going mad, I saw the help link in the bottom that read "What settings are applied?"  Ah good, now it's gonna show me the settings used by the new app and I can tell if it's correct or not.  So I click on the link and this is all I see:

Oh well.  Using Windoze is like being handicapped.  You just get used to it over time.  If you manage to successfully move away from it, you pray you never have to go back again. 

PS: FWIW, A quick Google search seems to suggest that not a lot of people like this feature:

Random Thoughts: Ego

Thoughts like "I am weak" and "I am inferior" feed your ego as much as thoughts like "I am strong" and "I am awesome".  Dealing with ego is tricky!  (And this knowledge about ego feeds my ego too.)

Chrome apps on Linux

Update: As of version 4.0.213.1, Chrome on Linux supports applications shortcuts.  (However, it uses Chrome's icon for shortcuts instead of the website's icon.)

If you are running the pre-release dev version of Chrome on Linux, you probably know that the Application Shortcuts feature of Chrome is not functional yet.  If that is one of your favourite features, you don't have to wait till the Chrome team implements it; if you are willing to create the shortcuts manually, you can get that feature right now.

Here is how you'd create an application shortcut for Gmail (in KDE):

1. Right click on desktop, select Create New > Link to Application...
2. Download Gmail logo from http://mail.google.com/mail/images/2/gmail_icon_32.png and save it somewhere.
3. Click on the icon near the app name to change the icon.  This brings the Select Icon window.  Choose Other icons options.  Click on Browse... button and choose the icon you saved in the previous step.
   
   
   
4. Type Gmail for the name of the application.
5. Switch to Application tab.  Type /usr/bin/google-chrome --app=http://mail.google.com/ --enable-plugins for Command.
   
6. Press OK button to save the shortcut.

That's all you have to do.  You can now click on the Gmail shortcut from your desktop and it opens Gmail in its own window.  As you might have observed, you only have to change the URL in the command line and the icon to create shortcuts for other web apps.

Random Thoughts: Addictions again

Did I say every addiction fills a gap?  I guess I was wrong.  Every addiction temporarily hides a gap.  You forget and ignore the gap for a while.  When your ignorant bliss fades away, the gap surfaces again.  It doesn't take too long before you seek help from your addiction again.  Understanding and accepting to live with the addiction is probably a better, although difficult, thing to do.

Compiz and Docking Windows

OpenOffice is one among many programs that lets us dock small tool windows to the main application window instead of keeping them as floating tool windows.  OpenOffice blog explains how this is done.

If you have Compiz running on your machine, you might find that docking doesn't work anymore.  Moving the tool window near the application window won't show any sign of docking at all.  You need to disable a certain Compiz setting for this to work.  Here's how you would do it:

1. Open Compiz Settings Manager.  You can do it by running ccsm command, or choosing Advanced Desktop Effects Settings from K Menu > Settings on KDE.
2. Click on Move Window item from the right-hand side pane.  (Not on the checkbox; click on the icon or the text "Move Window" itself.  That opens the options window for this item.)
3. Uncheck Lazy Positioning option, if it's checked.

That's it.  Now you should be able to dock your tool windows.