shivan.org

The desktop on my home computer greatly amuses me:

I love the wallpaper. The screenshot shows a dual-monitor desktop with the taskbar on the right monitor. Windows games all tend to display on the left screen. Putting the taskbar on the right makes it easier to open and use other applications on the second monitor while games display on the first.

Things that I have learned over time:

• I’ve found that minimizing and maximizing windows while dealing with multiple applications leads to wasted time and fustration. Virtual desktops and either high resolutions or dual monitors should be considered a must for any serious computer user. The whole window management scheme seems broken somehow and I have not seen anything that seems like a fix.
• I find that I develop a mental map of where application windows are and become irritated when something deviates from that map. I also tend to use virtual desktops as a task oriented area. Each virtual desktop tends to deal with one task and so when I’m forced to change which task I’m focused on I change virtual desktops. The windows associated with the previous task are left preserved on the other virtual desktop and the new task is on a different desktop. In the course of a work day you may often need to switch back and forth between multiple tasks and I find using virtual desktops for this makes sense.
• Using your desktop as your entry point into applications (aka application shortcuts) or the computer’s file system (aka dumping files onto the desktop) encourages the whole minimize/maximize brain damage. How do you get to the desktop when you have several applications open? You either start minimizing or end up smacking the “show desktop” which is just a “hide everything now!”.
• Every operating system provides a start menu and taskbar or similar functionality. You can launch any frequently used application or open any part of your file system within one or two clicks. They are always visible and do not require you to unbury your desktop to gain access.

Hint for Windows Users: Virtual desktop functionality is available for Windows in many forms. The software that ships as part of the Nvidia graphics card driver set includes such functionality and it is quite usable.

Ladies and gentlemen… I hereby present the best use of a blog ever:

pandafix

Please take note: Excessive cuteness present on the linked site.

I want to meet the retard who decided this would make a great idea for a pundit discussion:

Caption: ECONOMIC DISASTER IF LIBERALS WIN THE “WAR ON CHRISTMAS” (Crooks and Liars)

Ok… So first they make up some conspiracy that liberals are trying to kill the true reason for christmas (aka the birth of Christ). They get all upset because some people prefer to say “Happy Holidays” instead of assuming everyone is a practicing christan. Oh the nerve of all those non-practicing christians in this country!

So FOX News gets some pundits on and gets their head asshat Bill O’Reilly to start blathering on about some crusade against Christmas which simply didn’t exist to begin with. Then they have the retarded pundit discussion whose topic is shown in the above image.

So now I’m left trying to figure out what exactly is FOX’s logic. If the vast liberals conspiracy (*vomit*) somehow is successful in killing the true religious meaning of christmas and they somehow turn it into a secular holiday it will ruin the economy. People won’t buy as much at christmas and it would start a downward spiral and ruin our great country. Some how crass commercialism where people generate massive amounts of debt to buy things to make themselves and others temporarily happy (aka the massive accumulation of material wealth) must now be a concept central to the average christian american. God wants you to spend yourself into debt each and every christmas to celebrate him and Jesus’s sacrifice for our souls by being a FOX watching credit card using moron.

I’m sorry, I must have missed that bit at Bible School when I was a kid.

These days I am pretty secular but I had no problems saying “Merry Christmas”. I enjoy traditional christian music for its aesthetic and emotional qualities and didn’t mind it being played in public venues, etc. But all this has made me realize that perhaps I shouldn’t be so comfortable with these religious references. Perhaps there are downsides to being tolerant to them when they are being used by radical religious elements as a reason to mock and ridicule opposing viewpoints? Perhaps it is against my own self interest as a secular american to not fight against such concepts because of their abuse by evangelical radical christians as shown by mouthpieces such as FOX News and certain elementals of our current federal government?

I have to feel sorry for whoever was in charge of this project:

(click the picture for video)

More information on what happened can be found here. Make sure you have your sound turned up while viewing the video as the voices make it all worth it! (Originally spotted on boingboing.)