David Cumps

With my new laptop I got a screen with a 1920x1200 resolution, so I went out looking for wallpapers for the resolution, because my existing ones degraded in quality with that size.

My search led to Deaddreamer from which I have my current wallpaper as well.

But nowadays he got so many good ones, so I picked up 5 1600x1200 wallpapers. And now I want a random wallpaper each time I logon.

Having some spare time (very rare) I created something small myself, I'm sure there are tools out there to do all that.

Originally I wanted to use PHP to get a random number and set the wallpaper, and then call the php script with a bat file and set it as a scheduled task. But that kept popping up a dos prompt each time it set it, and my wallpaper disappeared after boot (some bad registry settings).

So I used KiXtart to set the wallpaper and then link it with a shortcut which would run minimized.

That worked for one paper, but when I tried the RAND function in KiXtart, it didn't go well.. But I had the php script and bat still there so I let that make a random number and then kill the KiX script with that number as argument.

Result:
Shortcut to wall.bat, which calls wall.php, which makes a random number and calls wallpaper.kix with the number, after which my wallpaper is set, and saved in registry.

I have to shortcut Run as minimized and on logon and every hour, and now I got a nice random wallpaper implementation.

Overly complicated? Maybe, If you have php installed, it's a small solution, otherwise you need a 1.3Mb dll and 24k php.exe in the same dir, which isn't really something bad.

I have zipped everything and written the steps to install it out in a Readme.txt for everyone wanting it as well. I also included the php.exe and dll.

Download it here: RandomWall.zip (706Kb).

And now I have sweeeet super-detailed wallpapers auto-changing without any special timer programs running, but just the Scheduled Tasks :)

Here are my wallpapers:
ddr_0075_vertical_theory_pure.jpg
ddr_0075_vertical_theory_decay.jpg
ddr_0088_v1r2a_1600x1200.jpg
ddr_0091_bioforge_1600x1200.jpg
ddr_0086_21st_century_kaos_1600x1200.jpg
(convert them to .bmp first, not sure if it's required, but whatever, bmp is nicer, no need for desktop to go in Web mode)

One thing I immediately do on a new pc is get it personalized. This includes changing icons and wallpapers, but also resource hacking the run box and hacking the uxtheme.dll to support custom themes.

Today I'll talk about implementing the Watercolor theme I have been using for a year now, and got a lot of mails on where and how to get it.

First you have to modify UXTheme. This used to be somthing "difficult" but now it's easy. Get the UXTheme Multi-Patcher and run it.

As always, and on the left side of the blog, I'm not responsible if something goes wrong, everything you do is your responsability.

Normally, according to the page I just linked, this doesn't work on XP SP2 final, but I ran it anyway and it worked. Just make sure you wait for the Windows File Protection box to come up.

Next you get the Watercolor theme, unzip it and run WatercolorLitev211.exe, it'll install the theme and you can select it from the Desktop Configuration control panel. It packs with several colors, I either have it set to Blue or Ergonomic.

Enjoy your sweet new theme :p

A screenshot from a previous posting demonstrating the theme:

During the holidays I recreated our internal school site, and reformed it to a place for students.

And one nice thing for everyone is: it's public from now on!

Well, actually, let me explain. The informational part is public, with the interviews, news, pictures, etc...

The (new) community is also publically viewable, but not registerable.

And students of our school get extra features, like accessing their homedir from home, reading plenty of internal school stuff (like, when not to waste time coming to school when somebody is sick :p), along with the ability to join the community.

One small disadvantage for a lot of readers... It's only available in Dutch.

If that isn't a problem for you: visit Studnet!

What does this has to do with IT (besides the creation)?

Well, it has an interview section on it, for which I did 5 of them already, and they are about IT. Here are the links:

Jan Tielens - About the tasks of a .NET architect.
Wouter Sergeyssels - A look inside a hosting company, Nucleus.
Patrick Verbruggen - Processes and the future of programming in the Western world.
Tom Mertens - Installers and the future of passwords.
Gerd De Bruycker - Microsoft Communication Channels (MSDN, TechNet, several magazines, user groups, MVPs, ...) and how it is to work for Microsoft.

If there are other Dutch-speaking people reading this and who believe they would add value to the site with an interview, please contact me. The target group is students, preffered interview channel is MSN/ICQ.

I recently got a new laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600) and installed Windows XP Pro on it (with SP2 installed already, yes :p).

One thing I hate about this, is that it includes IIS5 and you can't install IIS6 on it (not that I know of).

Why is this bad? Because you can only have one site... Which is something I got way to much used to running Windows 2003.

Luckily enough, Davy Belmans thought the same, so he developed IIS Admin.

It's a very nice tool, very small, and sits in the tray bar, allowing you to easily add new sites, and switch between them.

Yes, switch, because even with multiple sites configured, you can only run 1 at the same time apparently.

If you run Windows XP, and you don't have a way to get multiple sites working, get this tool, otherwise, comment and tell me how ;)

On 9 September 2004 there is a Hands-on Workshop on TDD organized by BENUG.

The location info only indicates directions for cars though.

I just called Compuware to get some info for train- and bus info. So, everyone coming by train, this is what I got:

Get the train to 'Leuven'.
Overthere is a bus with number 358, every 20 minutes.
Take that bus and it should stop right at a Q8 station, right after it passed a firemen-building.
It should stop right in front of Compuware.

I'm going there by train ;) Hopefully I'll find it easily.

int you = new int(), nothing = new int();

First of all, sorry for not posting much lately. It's a very busy time, I just finished working for a month, gonna buy a new laptop, a Dell.

Didn't have that much time (and energy) to do much computer related things, and if I did something it wasn't worth blogging about it (and yes, I usually set my standards pretty high :p)

But here is a little teaser, a small list I gathered some years ago, all based on true events:

Bad IT people:

• Can not press CTRL-ALT-DEL properly
• Lose their command prompt
• Can not configure their e-mail client
• Do not understand <form>
• Can not put RAM in the right memory banks
• Do not understand https://
• Can not install & configure IIS
• Deny that Google is the best search engine
• Can not use command line 'ftp'
• Do not understand what dual-boot means
• Can not open a .pdf file
• Forget to check the power supply on failure
• Can not use MS Excel
• Believe that MSN is the only IM
• Do not know the difference between their LAN IP and external IP
• Are scared when their cpu load is at 100%
• Do not know what extensions are
• Put their pencil in a pc cooler
• Believe that Hotmail is a program
• Can not see extensions
• Destroy their mobo and CPU by installing a printer
• Do not know what their source code is
• Can not open unknown files
• Burn 1.8Mb on a 700MB CDR
• Do not known what a proxy is

I just started collecting various links about Microsoft that might be usefull to someone.

You can find the current collection at http://microsoft.zoekinfo.be.

If you have a link you find usefull and believe it would fit on that page, please leave it behind in the comments!

Thanks