More Widget Obsession
Dec. 14th, 2005 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sepdetOkay, this is REALLY stupid. So, I got the cheapest iBook I could find as my backup, right?
Well, it was new, so it had Tiger (the latest version of OSX) on it.
I had no idea what widgets were, or why one might want them. I had noticed something in Apple ads about widgets but had ignored it.
Widgets are like the reincarnated version of Desk Accessories, except they are cute and shiny and far more functional, and since OSX is opensource, anyone can write them and offer them for free.
When you move your cursor up to a hot corner, or if you hit f12, all of these bizarre little widgets come running in from the four sides of the screen. Click away from them, hit the hot corner, or hit f12 again, and they all scatter out of sight like startled rabbits. Select a hidden widget from the dashboard and it will shimmer into existence like images appearing in Galadriel's mirror, then drag it to where you want it. You can have as many as you want, with multiple instances of any widget set to different things (useful for multiple timezone clocks). Widgets are 1 MB or less, most of them 100-400K, so they don't hog memory.
After twenty minutes of flower arranging, I had this layout, using the built-in widgets plus a few 3rd-party widgets grabbed from Apple's download site.
After hunting around on the web for a few days, I have got these.
BOW DOWN, I say! Bow down to the Shinies!
Shall I take you on a guided tour?
1. Launch anything hidden in your computer. Just swing ye cursor up there, pull down, let go.
2. Livejournal widget. Clicky little arrow to expand it to a fully functional text editor. It's got all the controls that are on the LJ site, plus buttons for text formatting and LJ-cut and so on.
3. Live earthquake monitor. Sorry, I have this bizarre fascination with geology. Night/day shadow is handy for knowing whether to say "good morning" or "good evening".
**row two**
4. World clock, with daylight/moonrise, phase of the moon, current time. Add whichever cities as you like.
5. A few random Apple decals. Everyone needs stickers. (Decal widgets are very popular, to the annoyance of real programmers.)
6. iTunes controller.
7. Widget swapper. You can save layouts of active widgets and change, so for example I might pull up all the web and html widgets when working on a web page.
8. Underneath the other widgets is a countdown clock until Shrub is out of office.
*row 3*
9. Weather. (Not my real city.) Click to expand to 5-day forecast.
10. Little yellow button makes a new post-it note appear.
12. Geeky Star Trek: TNG style calendar.
13. More stickers. That's my first Mac's icon.
14. A stamp that tallies unread messages in one's gmail box. Click to go there.
*row 4*
15. Calculator. (duh)
16. Post-it. Change font or color, scatter 'em anywhere.
17. Multi-page notepad with little checkboxes for To Do lists.
18. Character map. Find out what key combination to press, or what the HTML code is, for any character.
19. Word count, character count; now I can tell if my signature is too long!
* below the character and word count widgets*
20. Mini Wikipedia browser. Pops open when you search.
21. Dictionary & Thesaurus. (duh)
22. Amazon search.
23. Google search.
*bottom row*
24. Cafepress store monitor. THANK YOU Sky! :D
25. Othello. (duh)
26. Underneath the Othello is another insanely obsessive game called Cross Eyes. It's a slider puzzle with an odd twist -- one has to get all the eyes to uncross, by separating eyes of the same color.
27. iClip is like when you hit "copy" and "paste", except it's got 20 slots. Drag or paste things from the computer's memory clipboard into any of the bins, then hit the "out" arrow to a new one in the clipboard.
The ones I don't have visible but can summon include UPS package and flight trackers, a Tarot Card spread with teensy rider-waites (ah well), CSS and HTML and color and font tools, language translator, Latin translator, "Day in History" (built in), Google maps, hurricane tracker, IP tracker, Yellow Pages, live SOHO feed (it's from a satellite), Spirograph, live doppler radar, live Tide chart set to my local beach, URLcut, Units & measures converter, Wayback machine, Stock ticker, and Apple's gorgeous World Clock which alas is pretty but eats much screen space.
And that's after I threw out the Peeps, the red rubber bouncy ball that looks exactly like the real thing, a tiny Lite Brite board, a virtual magnetic poatry set, a talking Yoda, and a rubber chicken that works like a magic 8-ball. Many of you might also find the Netflix widget handy. And there's many little charts and gadgets for science geeks, things with periodic tables and solution mixers and graphic calculators and so on. And oh, yeah, tons of Inspiring Religious Quotes and mini-Bibles and a mini-Koran, so can Book of Shadows widgets be far behind?
Yet another example of a great idea for computer utilities that will actually decrease productivity because it's too fun playing with them. I think it is not entirely inapppropriate that some wag made a marijuana decal widget for those who wish to confess they have a problem. (I refuse to put the Steve Jobs shrine on mine.)
Okay BACK to work.
I wish I could get all of you happy widgets in your stockings to share the joy. Except I think most of you are not as nerdy as I am and would not be so excited about shinies. Then again, I'm not the only one who finds it hard to keep from spending too much money at Staples and Michael's.
Well, it was new, so it had Tiger (the latest version of OSX) on it.
I had no idea what widgets were, or why one might want them. I had noticed something in Apple ads about widgets but had ignored it.
Widgets are like the reincarnated version of Desk Accessories, except they are cute and shiny and far more functional, and since OSX is opensource, anyone can write them and offer them for free.
When you move your cursor up to a hot corner, or if you hit f12, all of these bizarre little widgets come running in from the four sides of the screen. Click away from them, hit the hot corner, or hit f12 again, and they all scatter out of sight like startled rabbits. Select a hidden widget from the dashboard and it will shimmer into existence like images appearing in Galadriel's mirror, then drag it to where you want it. You can have as many as you want, with multiple instances of any widget set to different things (useful for multiple timezone clocks). Widgets are 1 MB or less, most of them 100-400K, so they don't hog memory.
After twenty minutes of flower arranging, I had this layout, using the built-in widgets plus a few 3rd-party widgets grabbed from Apple's download site.
After hunting around on the web for a few days, I have got these.
BOW DOWN, I say! Bow down to the Shinies!
Shall I take you on a guided tour?
1. Launch anything hidden in your computer. Just swing ye cursor up there, pull down, let go.
2. Livejournal widget. Clicky little arrow to expand it to a fully functional text editor. It's got all the controls that are on the LJ site, plus buttons for text formatting and LJ-cut and so on.
3. Live earthquake monitor. Sorry, I have this bizarre fascination with geology. Night/day shadow is handy for knowing whether to say "good morning" or "good evening".
**row two**
4. World clock, with daylight/moonrise, phase of the moon, current time. Add whichever cities as you like.
5. A few random Apple decals. Everyone needs stickers. (Decal widgets are very popular, to the annoyance of real programmers.)
6. iTunes controller.
7. Widget swapper. You can save layouts of active widgets and change, so for example I might pull up all the web and html widgets when working on a web page.
8. Underneath the other widgets is a countdown clock until Shrub is out of office.
*row 3*
9. Weather. (Not my real city.) Click to expand to 5-day forecast.
10. Little yellow button makes a new post-it note appear.
12. Geeky Star Trek: TNG style calendar.
13. More stickers. That's my first Mac's icon.
14. A stamp that tallies unread messages in one's gmail box. Click to go there.
*row 4*
15. Calculator. (duh)
16. Post-it. Change font or color, scatter 'em anywhere.
17. Multi-page notepad with little checkboxes for To Do lists.
18. Character map. Find out what key combination to press, or what the HTML code is, for any character.
19. Word count, character count; now I can tell if my signature is too long!
* below the character and word count widgets*
20. Mini Wikipedia browser. Pops open when you search.
21. Dictionary & Thesaurus. (duh)
22. Amazon search.
23. Google search.
*bottom row*
24. Cafepress store monitor. THANK YOU Sky! :D
25. Othello. (duh)
26. Underneath the Othello is another insanely obsessive game called Cross Eyes. It's a slider puzzle with an odd twist -- one has to get all the eyes to uncross, by separating eyes of the same color.
27. iClip is like when you hit "copy" and "paste", except it's got 20 slots. Drag or paste things from the computer's memory clipboard into any of the bins, then hit the "out" arrow to a new one in the clipboard.
The ones I don't have visible but can summon include UPS package and flight trackers, a Tarot Card spread with teensy rider-waites (ah well), CSS and HTML and color and font tools, language translator, Latin translator, "Day in History" (built in), Google maps, hurricane tracker, IP tracker, Yellow Pages, live SOHO feed (it's from a satellite), Spirograph, live doppler radar, live Tide chart set to my local beach, URLcut, Units & measures converter, Wayback machine, Stock ticker, and Apple's gorgeous World Clock which alas is pretty but eats much screen space.
And that's after I threw out the Peeps, the red rubber bouncy ball that looks exactly like the real thing, a tiny Lite Brite board, a virtual magnetic poatry set, a talking Yoda, and a rubber chicken that works like a magic 8-ball. Many of you might also find the Netflix widget handy. And there's many little charts and gadgets for science geeks, things with periodic tables and solution mixers and graphic calculators and so on. And oh, yeah, tons of Inspiring Religious Quotes and mini-Bibles and a mini-Koran, so can Book of Shadows widgets be far behind?
Yet another example of a great idea for computer utilities that will actually decrease productivity because it's too fun playing with them. I think it is not entirely inapppropriate that some wag made a marijuana decal widget for those who wish to confess they have a problem. (I refuse to put the Steve Jobs shrine on mine.)
Okay BACK to work.
I wish I could get all of you happy widgets in your stockings to share the joy. Except I think most of you are not as nerdy as I am and would not be so excited about shinies. Then again, I'm not the only one who finds it hard to keep from spending too much money at Staples and Michael's.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 11:54 pm (UTC)Have fun on your holiday travels. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 12:19 am (UTC)