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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

#161
post #147

Reminds me of a toy that would let you break/destroy the screen with a variety of tools like hammer, drill, bomb, etc.

Desktop Toys! I remember playing with this on Windows 95, but it turns out it was made for Windows 3.1 initially. YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesM1fygKDs Internet archive: https://archive.org/details/desktoptoys_201911

I was using this on XP!

Edit: Noooooo I was playing some other program! It looked slightly better than this. Can't find it now :(

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#162

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…

Windows used to be cool! As a kid I remember the Dangerous Creatures CD [1] came with a custom theme for Windows 95. It would change all the icons to cool animal stuff. The "My Computer" icon would change to a frog, the Recycle bin icon would change to a fish, and my favorite, the waiting icon for the mouse cursor would change to a Wasp!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Dangerous_Creatures

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#163

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…

I have all I need right on my desktop. Expedia deals? Check. Candy Crush? Check. The current weather on the other side of the world using units I don't understand? Check. Everything came pre-installed too, so it's just the out of the box apple experience. Enshitification ensues.

That sounds like you are on windows

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#165
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…

Small story, friend of mine had a malware package, it needed a backdoor installed; he had a tool to merge the backdoor with any other application, so he used a cute desktop sheep thing. I put it on my parents' computer, then could have the client on my side instruct it to take and send screenshots.

We also set it up at school (IT degree) on the shared computers, but I think a sysadmin found out. We didn't get in trouble, but a classmate was caught and nearly expelled.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#166
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…

Don't forget Tiny Elvis.

https://archive.org/details/win3_TELV150

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#167
post #145

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…

totally reminded me of the days with Windows Blind(?) some crazy dock... you could customise widgets showing bandwidth/disk io/ram/cpu the usual. man those were FUN. but possibly quite power hungry so wouldn't fly nowadays...

WindowBlinds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmo62QTMn_I

Though you are probably thinking about rainmeter: https://www.rainmeter.net/

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#169

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…

Small story, friend of mine had a malware package, it needed a backdoor installed; he had a tool to merge the backdoor with any other application, so he used a cute desktop sheep thing. I put it on my parents' computer, then could have the client on my side instruct it to take and send screenshots. We also set it up at school (IT degree) on the shared computers, but I think a sysadmin found out. We didn't get in trou…

We have all done stuff like that :)

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#170
post #149

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…

On X11 systems there were also things like xsnow, with snow piling up on your window borders and santa flying in the background. xlemmings, walking/falling on your windows and various variations on this. Xeyes is the 'biggest' or most famous one, but in early linux distro's there were various of these things in the 'games' sections.

Xeyes (and Xclock) FTW ...
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