Important changes to Rainmeter let creation of new skins easier and performance conscious

As of May 20 the new beta of Rainmeter (2.3 beta r1387), a must have tool to enjoy the Desktop on windows, introduced two new features that has to be made as a "sticky note" for everyone is going to create new skins: the new @Resources folder to store Fonts, Images, and settings and the new functionality to the StringAlign option (e.g. LeftTop, CenterBottom ...), but i would like to give you the excerpt of the announcement cause is too important and it must not be unnoticed or lost:

• Major improvement in how skin "resources" are handled.
  As the first step in a re-design of how .rmskins are created and installed in Rainmeter, we are changing how resources like fonts, addons, images, sounds include files and other things used by your skin are handled by Rainmeter. This change will also completely eliminate the need for the LocalFont setting in skins.
  
  The key to this functionality is support for a new @Resources folder. So now, if a folder named @Resources is found in the root level of your skin / skin suite by Rainmeter:
  
  
  • Any font files found in a sub-folder @Resources\Fonts will automatically be loaded and available with FontFace= in your skin. No need to use LocalFont in [Rainmeter], and there should seldom if ever be any reason to distribute a skin with the .rmskin configured to install the font to the user's system. Just put the font in the correct folder in the skin and you are done.
  • Any files, such as addons, images, sounds, include files or any other resources your skin uses should be kept in this folder, and then can be accessed with a new @\ shortcut. So to load an image in an Images folder under @Resources you can simply use ImageName=@\Images\MyImage.png. To access an @Include file kept in @Resources, you can simply use @Include=@\Settings.inc.
  • The @Resources folder(s) are not scanned for skin files when Rainmeter starts, speeding up the load time for the application if you keep all the resource files for your skin in this folder.
  
  This change is going to allow us to really make creating and using .rmskins to distribute your skins much easier, eliminate version conflicts in folders like Fonts and Addons in Program Files a thing of the past, and make using custom fonts in your skins much easier and more portable for your users.
• Added new functionality to StringAlign for String meters.
  The StringAlign option on String meters now supports vertical as well as horizontal alignment. The functionality is used by optionally adding the vertical alignment to the end of the option.
  
  
  • StringAlign=Left or StringAlign=LeftTop
  • StringAlign=Right or StringAlign=RightTop
  • StringAlign=Center or StringAlign=CenterTop
  • StringAlign=LeftBottom
  • StringAlign=RightBottom
  • StringAlign=CenterBottom
  • StringAlign=LeftCenter
  • StringAlign=RightCenter
  • StringAlign=CenterCenter
  [...]

So if you have never made a skin for Rainmeter i really suggest to put your attention into it, due to the community there are many skins that will act easily as a training, not to forget the Lua scripting capabilities of this great tool. The starting point to look for new skins, as well as the main Rainmeter site, is deviantArt, forced stop for every customizer and Art conscious with a look devoted to the serious side of the whole thing.

Feel free to take a look at the skin I made for VirtuaWin, the glorious Virtual Desktop Manager for Windows, 4 RainWin. If you need help don't worry to ask and, Yes! You can drive also a pager with Rainmeter.

Saving Realtek equalizer settings for later use

Recently i bought a little great pair of speakers, the Altec Lansing BXR1220, they are USB powered and do an egregious job when listening to music, without the annoying crickle-crackle sound that come from speakers of its category, without mentioning its light cost. However to match a suitable sound i think they need some adjustement through the equalizer of the sound card. I'm very happy of my integrated Realtek 888S, and I think that many of us are equipped by a Realtek sound card, but i discovered that every time I upgrade the drivers, any setting made to the equalizer, like custom presets and other adjustements are sudden lost. I haven't found an easy way to export them, through a settings file or the like, so I want to share what i found around the web in a way as easy as possible.

The process is not difficult as it seems, it involves you to export the equalizer settings related to your sound device through the windows registry key FxProperties and rename the inside key to the new one created by the installer after the installation of the new drivers, and "re-merge" the key. But let's proceed in order. The main key that stores our devices related settings is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\MMDevices\Audio\Render

Inside this key we can find other subkeys that we'll call "mother" key, they are device related, and are the ones that changes through installations of new versions of the drivers. Inside our "mother" keys we can see a pair of subkeys named FxProperties and Properties, the first contains our equalizer settings and other customizations related to its specific device, the latter the name of the device itself, in our case Speakers. If you named your device "My favorite device #1" you need to dig through every Properties key and find the corresponding "mother" key that once identified we need to copy for later use, its value only. As shown through the screenshot the key we are intersted in is {5a6c434b-7a63-4055-bef9-8bdfa0b575fa}, and it is our mother key. Now we need to export the whole FxProperties key, the one related to the same device we just found, right above the Properties key. (exporting a registry key means to right click on it, on the registry editor, and save to a .reg file)

Now it's finally time to install our new drivers from Realtek. After that, we need to look for the newly created "mother" key relative to the device we want to "import" the Realtek equalizer settings previously saved through the FxProperties key to the .reg file, we will name it Fx.reg for convention. Once we found the new key relative to the Speakers device, in our case, we need to substitute it into the Fx.reg we previously created. Open it with your favorite Notepad and replace {5a6c434b-7a63-4055-bef9-8bdfa0b575fa} (this is the one of our example) with the new one you discovered. Close Fx.reg and double click on it to merge it with the windows registry, responding yes at the message prompt. It's quite sure that your key values will be different from the ones taken for this example, so be careful and/or save the whole main key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\MMDevices\Audio\Render before installing the new drivers.

"ATTENTION!!! you need to repeat these passages for every device you intend to keep your settings, for example for Speakers and Headphones, the common ones, we will need to copy two different "mother" keys values and to export two different FxProperties keys."

Credits
Realtek Equalizer Settings - Windows 7 Forums

Good News: Console on VirtualBox and Oneiric Ocelot

I just installed Ubuntu 11.10 on VirtualBox and I'm really impressed on both sides. It seems that everyone has worked in the right direction. Oneiric Ocelot is shipped by default with the good old vesafb and the Guest Additions of VirtualBox, 4.1.6 as time of writing, are doing its job extraordinarily. It took a couple of minutes to set the console to 1280x800 without problems.

This, for a reminder, are the steps necessary to get it: Setting my new desired resolution for VirtualBox Virtual Machine (1280x800): VBoxManage setextradata "Ubuntu 11.10" "CustomVideoMode1" "1280x800x32" (on DOS) Setting Up GRUB 2, /etc/default/grub to catch 1280x800, i uncommented only one line, no more kernel parameters nor gfxpayload and 00_header customization: GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800 (uncommented and changed resolution) Issue sudo update-grub, IMPORTANT! That's it. Fantastic! I you further want to to customize the console i suggest a little command that let you choose the locale and fonts: sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup, my favorite font is Terminus 14, very clean.

The distribution itself really impressed me, rock solid, fast, good looking, installed with LVM without any problem using the alternative download images. I have not digged into it but I'm sure that it will be really surprising. For those who still do not know, i strongly suggest to keep a close eye on Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog blog, a fantastic resource for every Ubuntu and Linux desktop fan.

set gfxpayload=keep looses functionality, black console screens again

After the latest upgrades of VirtualBox it looks like that the black console screens nightmare was returned, i thought that the great piece of emulation software VirtualBox is (it recently introduced a CPU cap limit that is fantastic), was the cause. vesafb framebuffer does not work , leading me to console black screens again, so i had to "fallforward" to uvesafb that i think is the most reliable, despite vesafb seems to work better with plymouth based configurations.

Lets figure out. Thanks to the fantastic guys at the ArchWiki i discovered that the set gfxpayload=keep that i always used to keep the GRUB 2 splash resolution at the same as the console was the reason, because initiate the vesafb or efifb on some distros. It is not a real problem if you are on a real machine it is only a little annoyance, to see your virtual machine resizing and enlarging madly. So i had to decide, without a console we can't work.

The solution is simple, every distributions has its specific settings, on Arch Linux we need to comment out the GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep line in /etc/default/grub or the set gfxpayload=keep entry in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg and remove any vga= or video= kernel parameter reference as stated in the document https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Uvesafb to keep uvesafb working. The HOWTO is really well explained as usual, you need also the v86d package to be installed and the line "options uvesafb mode_option=YOUR_RESOLUTION scroll=ywrap" in /etc/modprobe.d/uvesafb.conf on Arch Linux or /etc/modules, cutting off "options", on Debian (IMPORTANT).

USEFUL COMMANDS
#inserting uvesafb module into the kernel
sudo modprobe uvesafb
#regenerating GRUB 2 configuration after making changes to /etc/default/grub
sudo grub-mkconfig -o PATH_TO_YOUR grub.cfg file (usually /boot/grub/grub.cfg)
#rebuiding initrd kernel image to load kernel modules at startup (DISTRIBUTION SPECIFIC)
mkinitcpio -p kernel26 (or your kernel name) on Arch Linux
update-initramfs -u on Debian

File Hound, searching text inside files.

File Hound (Hound 3) is a little application that looks for text inside files. It integrates itself within explorer via the context menu giving you the ability to sudden look for text by right clicking on selected folders. It is very fast, and even if it looks "spartan" my everyday use give to this utility the best appreciation. If you need a quick look inside files without the need to create a database or to deal with cryptic and boring settings, this is for you.

Its basic functionality are: filtering files by extension, deciding the size of file(s) to look for, subfolder search, explorer shell integration with folders, compatible with x64 systems and obviously, the text to search. It looks inside any file, including binaries, giving you a glimpse of the matched text through a simple searching progress and result interface, with highlighted text. It's mainly targeted at small and quick searches because its nature, the searching process can't be stopped or resumed.

I love this little great program and i really suggest to give it a try. "Install it and forget about it", it will be a great help in critical moments. It's portable.

File Hound Homepage
http://www.jimmythefork.com