Some of the Australian Media are Mentally Retarded
You apparently can gather a bunch of knobs and perform a stupid chant and gain national media coverage. Assuming its for the ‘right’ cause. This is insane.
Linux
Dear Linux, I’m trying my best to love you, but it’s just not working…
More Windows XP Themes
As an addition to my earlier post on Windows XP Color Schemes, I’ve found a few other themes. The first is the Windows XP Royale Noir theme. The other is the Windows XP Zune theme. Both look cool, and make for an interesting change to boring blue, silver and green.
Blogged Post
This post is purely to validate this site for Blogged Blog Directory.
Cadbury Old Gold Chocolate Ad
I saw this ad in the movie ads before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I had to laugh at the ad’s absurd punch-line: a Mayan King gives a wacky gulp-like look as realises their impending genocide at the hands of the Spanish. And all because of their delicious chocolate! Bah-boom.
Liberty and Encryption
I love technology, and frequently visit tech-centric websites such as LifeHacker and gHacks. I eventually had to re-format my hard drive once and start with a fresh installation of Windows XP, so full of programs my PC was. One particular program that caught my attention was TrueCrypt.
Films That Teach Philosophy
Brave New Traveller has a post on ten films that teach philosophy. I have seen a few of them but there are some that I might have to have a look at.
Windows XP Color Schemes
If you’re using the standard ‘XP Style’ theme (technically known as Luna,) you only have three options for Color Schemes: Default (blue), Olive Green and Silver. If you’re not sure how to get to these options, right-click the desktop (directly onto it where no application windows are in the way,) then select the appearance tab.
The thing is, these three colours are pretty boring. I wondered if it was possible to change them by downloading additional Color Schemes from the Microsoft website or from some creative users. The answer is that it’s not that simple.
Themes are specially protected within the Windows XP file system, so it’s not easy for users to ‘tweak’ or add to them. Two companies, Stardock and TGTSoft have come out with commercial programs, WindowBlinds and StyleXP, respectively, that allow you to change the themes in XP, but if you simply want to change the Color Schemes only, without radically altering the theme Windows uses, these programs don’t offer much help.
Whilst doing a search on the Internet I came across an article from 2001 in which the author indicated that Microsoft was planning to include a number of additional Color Schemes in XP but never got around to it. That is why we only have three Color Scheme choices.
When checking out that article, I discovered a link to another website, one by ‘Kaptain Caveman.’ His website includes a description of how to add additional Color Schemes to Windows XP. After you follow the tutorial, you should now have seven additional Color Schemes for Windows XP. The latest version of the necessary UXTheme Patcher (version 6), which is mentioned in the tutorial, is available elsewhere.
Additional note: You can probably see that the images on this page are ‘out of whack’ and the text isn’t properly ’sitting’ around them. I am not sure why this is occurring, but it’s got something to do with WordPress and the way it displays things. If you know how to fix it, I’d appreciate the advice. It looks normal when viewed in the Visual editor built into WordPress so I don’t know why it isn’t displaying properly.
Update: Unfortunately, it looks as though Kaptain Caveman’s website is down. Maybe it has used up its monthly bandwidth limit or something. Try again some other time maybe. I’ve changed to the links to the Google cache of each relevant page rather than leave the links broken.
The Intelligence of Film Critics
In light of the near universal acclaim of the anti-Catholic propaganda piece Deliver Us From Evil,1 it’s no secret to me that many film critics are either stupid or gullible. I guess they have their niche area of expertise and fact-checking is not a part of it. That’s no surprise given they’re there to critique the artistic merits of a film not it’s historical accuracy. Still, a bit of scepticism wouldn’t go astray.
News Busters (not the most credible sounding website around, but they do link to the actual review) notes another critic falling too easily for an anti-Catholic conspiracy theory when reviewing the pseudo-documentary Bloodlines.
- See, for example, the Rotten Tomatoes score for Deliver Us From Evil. [↩]
The Pope’s Visit to Australia
As part of World Youth Day 2008, Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit Australia. The visit will undoubtedly attract media attention and I am going to speculate on what to expect from their coverage.
We can expect:
- The standard fanfare that accompanies any world leaders visit. This will include the mention of the number of Catholics worldwide and the age of the religion.
- The expense of the visit and whether it’s justified for the taxpayer.
- A number of individuals who have been sexually abused by priests will be interviewed for their opinions. No doubt a number of claims of cover-up will be made and uncritically accepted by the media.
- A comparison of Catholicism with ‘pop Christianity’ variants such as Hillsong Church and commentary on the appeal of one versus the other.
- Comment of the Church’s views on contraception and whether they may be causing harm in combating HIV.
