My current desktop setup.

Looks pretty cool doesnt it?  It's an interactive Heads Up Display (HUD), with current time, date, weather info, network and disk usage statistics, functional media played controls, links to commonly used folders, programs, and websites, and more.  I love the look and functionality of it.  So much cooler than having icons cluttering up my desktoip.

To achieve this you need 2 things, rainmeter and a skin called jarvis.  Rainmeter is available at: http://code.google.com/p/rainmeter/  and the jarvis skin can be found at: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=jarvis+rainmeter+skin#/d36eee6

Once you download and install both of those, you can customize the skin by right-clicking different sections and going to variants, which will allow you to open up a .ini file where the variables are stores, so if you installed photoshop(for example) to a different directory than default, you can point the link to your installation.  You can customize all the clickable links and point them to wherever you like.

Unfortunately the media player controls seem to only work with winamp, but i installed winamp just so that part of the HUD would work.  It was worth it in my opinion.  I might still do some more customizing on this later, but we'll see.  Let me know what you think.

Some Useful Effects

People like me to post blog tips so here's a couple I picked up recently.

Pop Goes the Comment

Yesterday I was asked how make comments appear in a smaller, popup window, so today I'll cover that.  It won't make for a very long post but I'm always happy to answer questions, so keep em coming if anybody has anything else they want to know.

Adsense 101

Well here I am again with not much to post about, so I'll just answer a question from yesterday.  I was asked "could you do a tutorial on adding the ads to the bottom of the page because I don't want them in my face when I'm commenting and I would like a sleek look."  Many of you probably know this already, but for those who don't I'm always happy to answer questions.

After the Break

Want to make your blog load faster?  Want to help your followers who have a slow connection or are opening up 50 blogs at once?  A couple people have asked me how to make a blog display an intro paragraph with a link to read the full post, and I think it's a great idea for a tutorial.  It's also really easy.  Click to read how.

Clearing Things Up.

I'm feeling kind of lazy tonight so just a quick tutorial on making the background to your posts invisible, so it doesnt block the view of your blog background...

Squeaking my Mind.

A few people have mentioned my new Squeak a Comment logo, and I'd like to say thanks for giving me something to post about.  It's so much easier when I don't have to think of a topic myself.  I might cover reaction buttons too if there time, or maybe tomorrow.

A word of caution, don't attempt this if you haven't selected a layout.  If you're using default settings I'm pretty sure your code is different.

A few posts ago I covered making a banner for you site using cooltext.com  I used the same site for the post a comment message, because you can use a picture instead of just text.  So I'm not going to go over all of that again, but if you need help go back and see this post.  Just make the text a little smaller when creating your pic for comments.  I used the same style and font so it would match the site banner.

...so anyways, take your picture and upload it somewhere.  i used http://www.picturestack.com/ because it's easy and they keep your pictures indefinitely.

So, you got a picture uploaded with your new message?  Good.  Now lets put it in your blog.  Log in to blogger, go to design, edit html, and check the box for expand widget templates, as seen here:

hit ctrl+F and look for <data:postCommentMsg/>  this appears in 2 places and you'll need to replace both of them.  so when you find the first one replace it with <img src='http://www.picturestack.com/878/814/octcooltext50yS7.png'/> but make the address point to the picture you just uploaded uless you want to use mine and have people squeaking on your blog too.

After you change that, hit the button for find next occurrence and change the second one too.

Once you've changed all the codes from <data:postCommentMsg/> to <img src='http://www.picturestack.com/878/814/octcooltext50yS7.png'/> then hit preview(you won't be able to see the change in the preview but just make sure you don't get any errors) and then hit Save Template and your done.  You should have a nice new comments graphic/text thing.

You don't have to use an image, you can supposedly just replace <data:postCommentMsg/> with text that you want it to say, but i got errors when i tried to do that.  your mileage may vary.

You may want to change your footer to match your new Comment entry text if you're doing a theme, like AnonyMOUSE making everything say squeak or whatever.

This is easier since I don't think you need to change any code to do it...

this'll bring you to a nice little popup where you can change these settings.

While you're there I might as well cover reaction buttons too.  You see it a couple settings down in that last picture but theres a bit more to it than that.  If you want these, go ahead and check the box, and/or click edit next to that setting to change what the buttons say.  Now if you're using the default blog template, they should just show up, but if you have a custom layout its back to the html editor and expand widget templates(see above).

 This time find the code: <data:post.body/> and immediately after it paste in the following code:
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
<b:if cond='data:top.showReactions'>
<table border='0' cellpadding='0' width='100%'><tr>
<td valign='center'><span class='reactions-label'>
<data:top.reactionsLabel/></span>
</td>
<td><iframe allowtransparency='true' class='reactions-iframe' expr:src='data:post.reactionsUrl' frameborder='0' name='reactions' scrolling='no'/></td>
</tr></table>
</b:if>
</span> 

 I put my code a little further down it looks like but I don't recall why...anyway, here's mine so make yours look something like this:

Preview to check for errors, save it and you're done.  That concludes this post because I really don't feel like writing anymore.  I hope this helps somebody out.  It's not too difficult and I did my best to break it all down into manageable steps without making this post too long.  Let me know how it works for you if you try it.  I know it might seem like a lot but I covered a few different mods so...get what you can out of it.

Stumbling in the Right Direction.

This is sort of a follow up or correction to my last post about StumbleUpon.  I'm still new to blogging and while the method i discussed yesterday does work, this way is better.  A couple people asked about other buttons like reddit, and similar services.  This handy trick should cover all services in one fell swoop and hopefully we'll all get even more traffic! 

So apologies to anybody who used yesterdays method, you can leave it there or just go back and remove that line from your code.  Lets get to it.  I haven't even tried this out yet, so I hope things go according to plan, as I know sometimes putting these things in a gadget can reduce functionality.

1.) Log in and go to design then add a gadget:

 2.) Search for: Sociable, click the +

3.) Set options, I recommend vertical to maximize visibility of this gadget, but horizontal looks better IMO.

4. Add it and preview changes, to make sure it works.  If you see this, save changes.

Wow, that's a lot of services for 4 easy steps.  Also I noticed yesterday that if you put the stumbleupon code into it's own gadget element, it will only get people stumbling to your main page.  Not with this gadget!  This gadget lets people stumble to each post that's submitted, as seen here:

That URL is for a post, not the main blog!  So this gadget rocks, and it's easy to add!  Now I just gotta make accounts for some of these services so I can submit my pages and get people "liking" em.  Just made a technorati acct and they want me to put the code: ESWAZ7P9PXFW into a post, so just ignore that. :)

This is probably enough for one post, but you see those reaction buttons at the bottom of my posts now?  If you don't know how to add those, I'll cover that in tomorrow's post if there's any interest in the subject.  I thought they were cool.

Enjoy the extra traffic sources!

Another Whiteknight Post!

Anonymouse Blog is filmed live before a studio audience...  

On today's show we'll cover interior decorating!  OOH! AH!

Umm a few people have asked me to go over some tips for tweaking the way a blog looks, so I'll cover some basics of that, maybe change/improve mine a little bit as I go.  We'll see how long this gets and maybe I'll make a part 2 or something if there's enough interest in it.  I have more helpful tips for getting more views to your blog too, but that post keeps getting pushed back as I get requests for things and try to help out.  So lets see what happens here...

Ok, first up I guess I'll cover simple banners.  Why use plaintext for your blog title when you can have it in 3d or glowing green or something.  If you have leet photoshop skills feel free to skip ahead but I'm personally too lazy for that so go to a site like http://cooltext.com/ and you can generate a neat banner with your blog name.  This is pretty easy to do, just click on a banner style, i chose "nova" and then change the text and colours if you want as seen below.  click render when you're done.

This will take you to a page where you see your new banner and under it a link titled Download Image.  Click the link and save it somewhere.  Then hop over to blogger, log in and follow along with this pic to go to Design and click edit for the header thing.

This should take you to the following screen, where you should click browse,select the image you just created, set the setting to "instead of..." and click save.  See pic if you get lost:

Hmm I liked my old one better...oh well, i'll fix it later.  That was pretty easy though right?  I don't really feel like doing this right now, but I'll cover a few more basics now and then see how I feel maybe do some more stuff with it tomorrow.  Also keep in mind the size of the banner you create, I had to resize mine in paint, but that shouldn't be too hard for you guys.  If you need help let me know.

Ok, some other random tweaks.  Backgrounds are easy. Fire up your favorite search engine; I use bing or google, and do an image search for something related to your blog or just something shiny and pretty, whatever.  save it. and go to the design tab and click template designer:

forgot to circle it in paint but i'm too lazy to fix that...moving on.  I don't even know what to make my background so I'm just going to keep the current one and reupload it.  (EDIT: just changed mine, thanks to http://epicwallpapersandart.blogspot.com/ for the new one.)  first off when you get to template designer, pick a template that goes with the general color scheme you want to save yourself some work.

then go to the background tab/button/thing on the left...Click that part where it says none and then you can browse the default choices or click upload to upload the one you just downloaded.

The scroll with page option (see below) determines what happens when users scroll down your page, does the background appear fixed or can they scroll down in the background too.  set it however you want.

then click apply to blog in the upper right corner and you have a shiny new background.

Ok, that's the basics.  If you want more on this subject I can follow this up with more tomorrow, or you can play around with it yourself and try tweaking little things like font colours, just don't use anything hard to read. If most of you know how to tweak your settings already I'll go on to posting some other more helpful tips for everybody.  

I feel like this stuff is pretty self explanatory but I know some people wanted me to go over it, so I don't mind helping those few who asked.  Feedback is always appreciated.

So tune in next time and i'll be back with some more umm...words and pictures!  Same great time, same great channel, and now a word from our sponsor...