User:Quidmeister
From BB4Win Wiki
The internet is so vast it's not surprising that one finds a wonderful software nugget quite by accident. Sometimes you'll google for specific information and all you get are false trails. Other times you start out looking for one thing and get sidetracked onto something pleasant. I keep my ears open for cool-sounding software from people I respect. That's how I found bblean and xoblite.
I've looked at so much lame software for PCs and Macs it's not funny. I mean it—it isn't. It's a waste of time, at best. These days at least, testing software under a stable, protective OS like Windows XP means you won't crater your file system. Usually. But there's spyware, malware and other dubious crap to look out for. I pretty much gave up testing cool screensavers, 'cause many of them are loaded with malware. Here is a good clean screensaver link, by the way. (these seem to work great w/ nvidia, not so well w/ ati)
Anyway, nuggets: in September 2005, tomshardware.com had an interesting article titled Pepping Up Windows. This article turned me on to cygwin and litestep, among others. I was especially taken with litestep, the alternative shell. Man, I spent many hours looking for—and trying out—themes for this skinnable shell. Problem was, most of them didn't work. LS has neat features, but there are multiple versions of every extension. LS can download the proper extension version (from a server) for your newly installed theme (when the server is listed properly and it's up). Suffice to say, many hours were used searching, downloading, testing, and debugging. I got about twelve cool themes running well—and discarded at least eighteen. I still have LS on my system, but I rarely use it. Bottom line: LS is cool when you have a good theme, but too slow for comfort. Plus they have too much junk that you don't really want.
The best thing about litestep was that, while searching for usable themes, I happened upon deviantart.com. Now, that's a fine site with tons of great art, but it's exactly the kind of time-waster I need to avoid—no disrespect to dev-art.com, I just need to discipline myself. On deviantart.com, I found a very good—working!—litestep theme called 'reluna'. The author's handle is marriedman. (He is phin666 on lostinthebox.com, but not active) On his diary pages he raved about something he recently found called bblean. I downloaded bblean from sourceforge.net and away I went. I searched for more info: found bb4win.org, lostinthebox.com, xoblite.net, and shell-shocked.org. Wow, there's a lot to sort through. There's a nice community of helpful folks at lostinthebox.com.
I am totally addicted to blackbox. I need to try the latest strain of xoblite. P.S.: I am a night owl—a habit I need to break--Quidmeister 3:20, 31 March 2006 (CST)
