Clock rainmeter skin loses time4/15/2024 ![]() ![]() I built one, and it works, and I learned a few things by doing so. For example, I’ve been playing around with 12V tube pentagrid converter circuits recently, simply because I’ve never done it before. I do lots of things I never talk about here, especially if I need the word-energy to get some fiction written. (It was.) I haven’t given up on physical tinkering by any means. It’s a fair criticism, and in fact I have a physical pocket watch that I like a lot, but I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with using a picture of a watch on my screen–especially if it was easy. Maybe you should get a real pocket watch, and hang it in a little glass case next to your computer? □ I went back to building things and doing stuff in the real world, and only use the computer when I have to, as a tool for getting something else done. Up to that time, I had indeed become a computer geek that had to keep buying the latest machine, trying the latest programs, and spending endless hours tinkering with them. ![]() The computer changed from a tool for doing stuff into an end in itself an excuse for *not* doing anything else. Now, they sat on their butts all day, staring at a computer screen. He groused that his techie friends all used to DO stuff build geodesic domes, make ham gear, fly rockets, etc. I’m not being critical, Jeff: But it reminded me of George Ewing’s essay on “Where have all the techies gone”. It’s ironic to see an expensive high-tech computer being used to display an antique pocket watch. C’mon, people: What are the chances? Sometimes luck just happens. Bang! The watch on my wallpaper now keeps time. I centered Pocketwatch over the face of the pocketwatch image, and then un-checked the Draggable setting on Pocketwatch’s context menu. (The Pocketwatch skin is the face only the blotter has the whole pocketwatch.) I quickly installed Rainmeter and Pocketwatch. The face of one was precisely the same size as the face of the other. On a hunch I did the obvious: I took a 6″ steel rule and measured the size of the Pocketwatch widget on the screen, then measured the static pocketwatch image on the blotter wallpaper. It looked a little bit Stickley (as does much else in this house) and I would still have it running had I kept Rainmeter across the last couple of Windows reinstalls. There are myriad skins for Rainmeter, and while I was experimenting with it back then I ran across a clock skin called Pocketwatch. The widgets are basically skins, and the output can be drawn in easily parameterized ways. A widget engine is an app that runs without a conventional windowed UI, and allows you to display frame-less output on your desktop. ![]() It was mentioned on one blog or another that I followed back in 2008 or 2009. There’s a widget engine for Windows called Rainmeter. And then I remembered something I had seen a long time ago and forgotten. (Days later, I found a version of the blotter wallpaper without the watch.) If the watch had to be there, it had to work. The only thing that bothered me about the blotter wallpaper was the pocket watch, which (while well-drawn) was just an image, and always read 3:37. It’s followed me around ever since, though I’m not sure the quadrille paper for it is available anymore. When Borland laid us off they told me I could have it, since they were just going to dump it (and everything else in my desk) anyway. It was basically a faux-leather frame surrounding a pad of 17″ X 22″quadrille paper, which I have always liked for sketches and off-the-cuff coding. I had a desktop blotter at Borland that was an Ampad Efficiency Deskpad 24-003. If you’re widescreen, you might consider this one instead. Egad, it’s 1600 X 1200 too–no need for me to do any resizing. Just clicking around, and alluva sudden I was looking at this. Jim Strickland and I have been tossing ideas around for a drumlin airship, and I wanted to see what other people had done in that area. I stumbled across it while looking for art depicting steampunk airships. A couple of people have asked me where I got the Windows blotter wallpaper discussed and shown in the photo on my Januentry. ![]()
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