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In a weak moment I signed up for Stardock Object Desktop which is a set of various utilities for Windows. It's mostly a stupid toy but there are useful things in there.
Highlights:
- Window Blinds
Flexible skinning for windows which I dabbled with before. I've found one theme that has readable colour schemes (not black text on dark blackground: 90% of theme designers appear to be Goths). The one I chose makes it hard to tell if a check box is checked.
- SkinStudio
Skin editor. Very complex but it does mean I can create some bright cheerful themes to make people happy (or maybe I can't be bothered).
- DesktopX
Put objects on the desktop. Have cute fish swim across the screen as you edit. Have a transparent clock 'always on top'. It is scriptable, it supports activescript but it only enables VBScript and JScript (MS version of JavaScript) not python, apperently because they could be bothered to support python syntax highlighting in the editor.
- DriveScan
Incredibly useful tool to scan directory tree and show you where all those gigabytes have disappeared to. Shows pie charts, allows you to go into subfolders and delete stuff in place. Not a tool to use every day but good at what it does.
There is various other stuff to play with but I am wary of having too much crap installed.
One of the DesktopX toys was a text-to-speech thing using Microsoft SAM which I didn't realise existed in XP. I only have a male voice. I may try getting the desk top objects to say rude things as I move round the screen (what other use is text to speech?).
One nice thing about it is the licence: I can use it on as many computers as I like but only one at a time, like the old Borland Turbo Pascal paperback licence of the 80's.
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