My Relationship With Windows XP

I’ve only been a “computer guy” for a short time – maybe 4 or 5 years. The only time I looked at a computer more than twice was when I played video games on it. I’m a gamer before computer geek.

My computer story never started on something advanced like Windows Vista (pardon the joke). Instead, it started with Windows XP.

As a child, my parents bought a computer to help us in school (and to play video games). I can’t recall what the system was, but all I knew it was Windows XP. To me, it was beautiful. The blue taskbar with the green Start button. The green hills background known as Bliss graced my desktop. It didn’t change because I had no clue how to change it.

I was fond of the computer. I did not tweak it, play around with the settings or modified it for that matter. I just played video games and did my homework on it. That was it.

That’s where it all began. From an old computer to something ten times powerful like Hannah Patricia. I wouldn’t consider myself a “computer lover” back then, but I knew how to use a mouse. That counts, right?

In Tech class, I found this:

It reminded me a lot of my old setup. It was a PC, CRT monitor and a mechanical keyboard. All of them had the same colour! It was beautiful.

I wanted to write this because, for some who do not know, Microsoft will stop supporting XP and Office 2003 in 2014.

Lest We Forget Windows XP and Office 2003

Keep Chewing!

Two Shades of Classic

Gather around everyone! I’m about to tell you a story!

Not long ago, I, the admin of this blog, once knew nothing about computers. NOTHING!

My computing journey began when my dad finished setting up the new desktop we had in our house. It was an Acer (not too sure) and it was standard at the time. The computer was just a rising star in the world and we needed one for school and work. It had Windows XP on it. The famous green hills background was on it and so was the green Start logo button and the blue taskbar.

Of course, I didn’t know how to use it, so I had to watch my father fiddle with this in that. At some point, he allowed me to use it (game with it, at least). I started playing those computer games that the computer had: 3D Pinball and Minesweeper.

Then, one day, my mom brought me to her workplace told me to go play on one of the computer while she took care of things. I got to play this old FPS game that lets you play as a sniper. I can’t remember the name, but the weird thing was that it was on Windows 2000. I t was an old, terrible graphics video game, and it was on Windows 2000! Back then I didn’t know that it was older compared to XP.

I really liked the look of Windows 2000. I’m impressed because it had that nice box shape for the windows, a two colour theme (blue and grey) and was running fairly well, considering I was playing a video game on it.

I guess that’s how I fell in love with the theme of Windows Classic. Our friend, tPenguinLTG (a BIG fan of Windows Classic), sent me Classic theme. When I had time, I tweaked and modified it to my liking and preferences. Now it looks like a nice Windows Classic theme: simple and elegant, yet tickles you with nostalgia.

If you’d like to download and try the theme, here it is:

Two Shades of Classic

“Two Shades of Classic” revives the old Windows Classic theme with a modernized look.

WARNING: This will not work for Windows 8! This is specifically made for Windows 7 users.

The theme consists of modifications to the taskbar and the colour scheme. It has only two colour schemes: grey and darker grey. You may tweak the theme as you wish.

Keep Chewing!

I Love Firefox Extensions

Mozilla Firefox is the most powerful, add-on friendly browser out there. It has almost 3,000 extensions and it continually grows! It’s amazing how useful these tools are for the typical and power user. You have so many to choose from and most of them are great! Here are my personal favourites. I use these, so I know that they’re good.

FlashGot

When it comes to YouTube, I love collecting videos that I find very interesting. You can use FlashGot as a tool download any video, audio or media file from any website. This is powerful because it finds whatever media file is running on the website and allows you to download it. I’ve personally used this to download a few videos, Physics videos that I find really useful for the future, computer videos, spoken word poetry videos and all four Pokémon Origins episodes.

It’s stable right now considering I haven’t had any problems with it. One flaw that I find in this extension is that it doesn’t allow you to download MP3 files from YouTube. You can only download its actual type (videos will be video files, music will be audio files etc). Other than that, I recommend it!

Easy YouTube Video Downloader Express 7.0

What a mouthful!

This extension allows to download MP3, MP4, FLV and 3GP. It’s useful for me because I need music. MUSIC!

For those who love music, this should be a very useful extension for you. Also, it’s an alternative to FlashGot.

I do recommend it. I’ve only had one problem with it because it was one of the reasons why Firefox crashed once. It only happened once. After that, it’s been smooth sailing.

AdBlock

Everyone hates advertisements. It’s a stupid, yet profitable, way of getting people’s attentions. Most of the ads online are malware and viruses too.

AdBlock blocks all of the advertisements that flash, pop or annoy you when visiting a website. It also blocks advertisements on YouTube (including the ones that run before a video). Not only does this help speed up your browsing, it also “protects” you from possible website threats.

It also allows you to block ads yourself. If you see something that you think is an ad, use their blocking tool and delete it from your screen. Not only does it take it off, but it also sends it to the developers to check it out and see if it is an advertisement. Think of it as a “REPORT” button. It’s very useful.

Roomy Bookmarks

Bookmarks are handy because it’s an easy shortcut to a website that you often go to.  The Bookmarks toolbar (default for Firefox) shows both the logo of the website, but also its name. I think that takes up a lot of space on my toolbar. I have Facebook, YouTube, Wolfram, Tech Gum, WordPress, League of Legends, ODB, Bible Gateway — the list goes on.

You can modify the bookmarks to only show the logo, but that means you have to delete the name. This won’t help me when it comes to me actually looking at the bookmarks manager.

Enter Roomy Bookmarks. It only shows the logo of the website, without actually deleting the name and title. It may not be a big deal for some of you, but it’s pretty big for me. I like having a nice, clean bookmarks toolbar.

Classic Compact 

Classic Compact is a classic (ba-dum tsss). It lets you revamp your Mozilla 24 and make it look like it was when it was nice and clean. I like this look probably because I’m a huge nostalgia guy. Anything that can bring back old memories, I’ll do it.

With its toolbar features and icon customization, you have many options to choose from. This is actually a theme that comes with an extension. The theme designs the browser while the extension gives you the customization options.

All I need now is an Windows XP theme for my Windows 7 and I’ll be happy again.

My “Two Shades of Classic” theme that I customized myself. You can also see (here) the Roomy Bookmarks and Classic Compact theme for Firefox.

 These extensions are great! I love them!

Keep Chewing!