First up this week, a question for Outlook users: In the calendar you have, by default, the Navigation Pane displayed on the left. In the menu it indicates this is a toggle that uses the shortcut ALT+F1.
We’re using Outlook 2003 Service Pack 2, and when we press ALT+F1 nothing happens. We are also running a tool we absolutely couldn’t live without, Caelo’s Nelson Email Organizer Free 3.1, but we don’t think that’s the problem. Any ideas anyone?
Our second topic is stuff you don’t need. Yep, when you start poking around in Windows, it is staggering what you can find that is running but doesn’t need to be. What brought this topic to mind was finding the Java Update utility, jusched.exe, running on one of our PCs.
This piece of code doesn’t take up much processor power, but its average working memory is about 692KB and its peak working memory is about 2,032KB. That doesn’t sound too bad, but when you’ve got a dozen or more unnecessary processes just hanging around, you could be sacrificing 20MB of RAM or more!
Maybe it is our old-school background that makes this waste of resources so irritating. Back then a byte saved was, well, a byte saved; you bit packed data where you could and actually optimized code performance. But we had long sideburns and wore bell-bottoms, so it proves what you win on the swings you loose on the roundabouts.
In most Windows PCs you’ll find a veritable cloud of “quick” launchers and helper utilities for applications such as iTunes, WinZIP and WinAmp (not to mention the aforementioned jusched.exe). And don’t get us started on all the little support components for HP’s printer and fax software. Death by overengineering.
One of the easiest ways to get rid of this crud is to run up msconfig.exe and look at the entries under the Startup and Services tabs. You will be surprised at how much junk is running. Just uncheck the boxes next to an unwanted program or service entry, and it will no longer get loaded at start-up. You can usually also kill the running versions of these items, but occasionally something ugly will happen, so rebooting tends to be safest. Note that sometimes the software that these chunks of code support will reenable the item.
If there’s anything in the list you don’t recognize, just Google its name, and you’ll find a number of sites that will explain what the software is for and how safe it is to disable. We like the WinTasks Process Library and the Network Techs Startup Database and Process Database.
Our final topic is a screensaver we love! No, we’re not talking about our fabulous Gearhead Windows screensaver (which is still available), we’re talking about Electric Sheep, which runs on Windows, OS X and Linux.
To explain this screensaver you need to understand how the images it generates are created. Using freeware called Apophysis (for Windows) or Oxidize (for Macintosh), you can create what are often stunningly beautiful fractal flames, images that are essentially histograms of iterated function systems (oh, that gave us goose bumps).
These flames are two-dimensional slices through a space of numbers. You can think of the slices being taken in sequence starting and ending at the same place, so the flames (otherwise called sheep) become animated loops.
Now the equations that define a sheep can be considered its genome. When a sheep you like is displayed by the screensaver, you can hit the up arrow to vote for it. If you don’t like it, hit the down arrow.
The Electric Sheep server manages the flock – the collection of sheep downloaded by the sheep clients – and tallies the votes for and against each sheep. It then generates new sheep using a genetic algorithm. The new sheep will be automatically downloaded to your screensaver in the background.
Using Apophysis or Oxidize, you also can generate your own sheep and add them to the flock by uploading.
Is this computing stuff fun or what?! Tell us on Gibbsblog or at gearhead@gibbs.com.
