…what is happening here:

As my vacation comes screeching to a halt, and I prepare to go back to normal life, I can only come to the conclusion that vacations are well worth the time and money. At the same time, too much vacationing can be more tiring then refreshing.

I feel that we’ve spent the ideal amount of time in NYC, and I’ve enjoyed it immensly. I am getting more ready tho, to get back to the humdrum of normal life.

I’ve been using John’s Background Switcher for a little while, and have really liked it. The new version (3.4) raises the bar with many new features.

Take a guess at what John’s Background Switcher actually does… Yeah, that’s right, it switches your desktop background. It’s by far the best app in its category. What differentiates this freeware gem from other similar apps is a broad range of services from where you can automatically get pictures from. For me, this is the feature that elevates it from a gimmick to something useful.

Online services currently supported:

• flickr
• phanfare
• smugmug
• picasa
• facebook
• yahoo

Especially cool, I think, is the ability to make collages, all dynamically downloaded and automatically created. For example, every morning I have a new desktop background, composed of pictures from facebook friends.

Downloading pictures from facebook gives you ALOT of options:

• my photos
• my friends photos
• one of my friends photos\albums
• some of my friends photos
• photos with me in them

While what this simple program can do is fantastic, perhaps more amazing is how simple it is to set it all up.

John’s Background Switcher has lots of really cool features. Make collages the way you want to, with customizable montage options, like the Postcard mode. Change the size of the pictures, and choose how often you want them to update, plus many more innovative settings, like optional auto border color selection based on the color of the picture, and full support for widescreen, and dual monitor setups. sweet!

Below, 2 random scrapbooks from all friends in facebook.

John’s Background Switcher is completely free (the developer accepts donations) and works great on all Windows operating systems from 98-Vista. Download it here.

I was foolish enough to do a flickr search for pupusas. From seemingly nowhere, I now have this very strong yearning for pupusas, yet all the while I remain perfectly aware that it’ll be 4 months until I eat some.

On a completely unrelated note:

4 guys. 21 dirty bins. 1 day.

I write this, on a Monday morning, having gotten up at a rather late hour. I dare say today’s prospects are looking better then most Monday’s.

In a little while I will drive to a friends house. Edna will be there, so it’ll be a great party. Later in the afternoon I may very well hang out with some cousins, and then tonight I might eat out.

Hey, maybe Mondays aren’t soo bad after all.

Todays post, is a bit different from my normal posts(read: nonexistent).

Creative labs, known in years past as the developers of some really great sound cards have just messed up in a huge way.

They have been selling sound cards with the “Certified for Vista” stickers, yet the drivers function horribly. Many of the advertised features of said sound card, simply don’t work with the Vista drivers. Creative announces that they have drivers FOR SALE($10) that fix some of the Vista problems.

A single man form Brazil, known on the Creative forums, as daniel_k made changes to the free Vista drivers developed by Creative, enabling features, that though advertised on the box, didn’t work in Vista. Without access to the source code, he also managed to fix most of the stability issues in Windows Vista. The driver he put together got well over 100,000 downloads.

The genius minds at Creative Labs, and issue a statement ordering daniel_K to cease and desist. They go ahead and remove all of his posts on the Creative forums. The story makes quite a uproar in the tech community, making the front page on many popular sites, like digg, slashdot, wired and engadget to name a few. It seems that Creative Labs wants customers, after buying expensive sound cards, to BUY drivers, just to get the advertised features.

Anyway, since then, probably because of the bad press this move generated, Creative Labs have recanted on their stance. They issued another communication, stating:

“However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties… We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development.”

That post alone, has gotten over 341,000 views. It contains over 2,400 replies. Most of them coming from people who took time to register, simply to state that they will never be buying a Creative Labs product again.

There are many many unhappy customers, as can be seen here. The statement can be viewed here.

Accidents happen. Sometimes they are funny. Not always though. Usually they build memories.

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Friday night was a evening of various random activities. All around, we had a blast. The evening was lots of fun, primarily because deep down everyone is a child at heart. Some people apparently didn’t have to dig very deep to get to the child part. Below is a vid of some parts of the most interesting events. Like any Hollywood film, the boring part is first, with the moderately exciting/humorous bit at the end.

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yeah, what he said.

Yesterday was the youths New Years party. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but it ended up being loads of fun. We ate lots of pizza, snacks, pop, and coffee. After we had most of the eating part out of the way (or so I thought) we were told to go pick a object from the table. Objects ranged from books, music, cameras, cars, bats, toy guns, dolls, balls, stuffed animals etc. Then we were numbered off into six different groups. Each group had 10 minutes to prepare a skit with the items each member had earlier picked up from the table. The skits were lots of fun to watch and somewhat embarrassing to act in. My group did a skit involving:
1. Sheet music of a love song
2. A trio who sang above mentioned love song
3. A young lady very fond of the name “John”.
4. A toy horse
5. A redneck auctioneer selling the toy horse.

Don’t you just see the story line? The skit wasn’t rehearsed, was pretty much all improv, and it defiantly didn’t make a lick of sense. Not to me, not to anyone. But you see, that’s the beauty of it though, that late at night, people will laugh at anything.

Anyway, later on nearly everyone got to (or had to) play a round of “eat the ice cream on your plate as fast as you can with your hands behind your back”.

John, Craig, and JoshD were the winners of the first three rounds. They met in the final round, which was the“eat the cold spaghetti on your plate as fast as you can with your hands behind your back-and try to not “cutz” it all up” round. John gulped his down like a man and was rewarded 2 chocolate bars for his efforts.

All the late nights at Labette caught up with me, and I came home around midnight, long before the party died down.

*EDIT* John has written a excellent post in which he goes into much more detail. Check it out.