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Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

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Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#131

Post by voidUpdate »

hnlmorg wrote: post #117
pomian wrote: post #107

This reminds me of a Lara Croft desktop(?) Screensaver? She climbed onto the window's edges -that were open on your windows screen, rolled, jumped, etc. Sometimes made a comment about you not having cleaned up your desktop. It was a small executable, than ran with or without sound. It wasn't very random, but it made for an interactive mind distraction on a rough day. She also walked across the bottom of the screen, o…

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

I wish wikipedia would detect when you're accessing from a non-mobile device and automatically redirect you to non-mobile wikipedia

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#132

Post by nasvay_factory »

albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

https://www.rainmeter.net/

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#133

Post by Bluestein »

voidUpdate wrote: post #131
hnlmorg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

I wish wikipedia would detect when you're accessing from a non-mobile device and automatically redirect you to non-mobile wikipedia

Seconded.-

(Then again, some people like the mobile version better - kind of like a "reader mode" - and link to it because of that ...

The behavior you mention should be an user configurable setting, perhaps ...

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#134

Post by elementalest »

nasvay_factory wrote: post #132
albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

https://www.rainmeter.net/

This. Its been around for over a decade and has all the features mentioned.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#135

Post by lucianbr »

albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

At some point these existed. I'm not sure, maybe on Windows 7?

But they were really sluggish, which made them useless in my opinion. If I have to wait seconds for my widgets to load or react, I'll just write my notes in notepad++ and look at the clock on the taskbar.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#136

Post by Bluestein »

nasvay_factory wrote: post #132
albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

https://www.rainmeter.net/

Another classic. An entire "subculture" ...

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#137

Post by Bluestein »

albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

> Instead what I have is ads.

> And copilot everywhere.

You raise a serious point, oft discussed here (about the sorry state of the OS)

I actually think the "whimsical", nostalgia these kind of apps (toys?) point to is actually indicative of a more serious "yearning" for simpler, higher quality, more user-configurable computing. As it was not so long ago ...

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#138

Post by wiredfool »

aresant wrote: post #42

This is awesomely reminiscent of the old school 68k macintosh era - dogcow, oscar the grouch in the trash can, etc I miss that simplicity / playfulness / aesthic of that era (yes I am old, please get off my lawn)

The Energizer Bunny too. You could install it on a lab full of machines, trigger it, and it would march from one to another, banging a drum the whole time.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#139

Post by Bluestein »

parpfish wrote: post #60
pavel_lishin wrote: post #9

I remember having these kinds of desktop toys in Windows, way back when, probably 95 or 98? Just a little joyful thing you could play with. This rules.

We got home internet for the first time around then, and its main use (to me) was going to downloads.com and getting screensavers. I spent hours downloading one that was macaroni doing the Macarena.

(Screensavers, which were a thing back then - and useful in the age of CRTs - and, of course, wallpapers ...

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#140

Post by brap »

hnlmorg wrote: post #117
pomian wrote: post #107

This reminds me of a Lara Croft desktop(?) Screensaver? She climbed onto the window's edges -that were open on your windows screen, rolled, jumped, etc. Sometimes made a comment about you not having cleaned up your desktop. It was a small executable, than ran with or without sound. It wasn't very random, but it made for an interactive mind distraction on a rough day. She also walked across the bottom of the screen, o…

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

Ooh I remember eSheep!

There was also this desktop program where you would choose from different weapons, I don't remember for which purpose... anyone knows what I'm talking about?

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