Miss Kitty by the fire

Weather App

I’ve been working on a new program lately. I have always been frustrated with weather websites and their programs that “put weather on your desktop.” They always seem to have advertisements and other crap, and who knows what else is running in the background with their programs. I just greatly dislike anything with ads. SO! I made my own weather program. You put your zip code in so that it will give you the weather for wherever you are. It will display the current temperature in your system tray (see picture). If you click that little icon, it will give you a little bit more info about the current weather conditions. If you want, you can also check out the 36 hour forecast. How accurate is all of this information? It is all pulled straight from Weather.com so I’ll let you be the judge of that. What I can tell you though is that there are no ads and no funky things running in the background. Someday I will add some more features, but for now it is still a handy little weather application.

By the way, as with any of my programs I’ll be putting up, you’ll need Java to run them. Chances are you already have it, but in case you need to download it there is a link here.

Please leave comments/feedback/concerns!

Download Java
Download: Weather.zip (170kb)

A Few Awesome Things

I just wanted to do a brief post to give a few, uh… shout outs I guess to a few random things that I find really awesome!

First up is Digsby. Digsby is hard to describe because it does so much. It is mostly and instant messenger program, but the catch is that you can log into Digsby with ALL of your different IM accounts whether they are AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc. and talk to all of your friends from one program. That isn’t the only thing it does though. You can get E-Mail notifications and even send E-Mail from Digsby. You can also get notifications from websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. On top of that you can use Digsby to send files, send text messages, and to video chat! It' also has a very customizable user interface. So with all these features packed into one program I think it is definitely worth some time to check out for everyone! Did I mention that it is totally free?

Second is Royale Noir, a “secret” windows XP theme. This is a theme that was (partially) developed alongside Royale (the Windows Media Center Edition theme) and was never officially released to the public. Someone eventually uncovered it. You can download it and find instructions on how to easily set it up here. Enjoy!

The last thing I would like to mention for now is Eclipse. Now I don’t know its full capabilities, but I know that it is a wonderful program for Java developers. It also has C/C++ capabilities and a few other languages I believe. It has wonderful auto-complete features and auto importing of classes. I also like the exporting feature that allows me to easily make runnable .jar files from my java programs (which you’ll be seeing some of on this blog soon). The only annoying thing I have come across is the fact that every java class you make must be in a “project” which makes it somewhat difficult to switch from computer to computer and work on the same files because you have to make a new project and import the files, etc. Overall this is definitely my favorite IDE for Java so check it out!

Miss Kitty

She likes to wink :D

And rob banks with a bandana on her face!

And, of course, sleep.

Odyssey

If you’re into experimental/progressive/jazzy style music, here is an album you should check out if you get the chance. This was going to be just a normal LTE show until Jordan’s keyboard broke down. Instead of disappointing fans, Mike, Tony and John proceeded to jam for almost an hour! You can buy it from YtseJam Records for $15 (before shipping). I believe someone had posted the album on YouTube if you wanted to preview it before buying it (no telling how long it will be on there). Needless to say, the musicianship from these guys is as top-notch as ever and worth checking out if you’re into virtuosos.

I’ve also been listening to Lamb of God’s new CD, Wrath, lately. Check that out if you are a fan of metal!

A Little Treat

I’d like to use this blog to post some things that i create from time to time. So here is the first! It’s a World of Warcraft wallpaper I made from a bunch of different wallpapers.

Preliminary Post!

So I decided to start a blog, as you can see I am sure. I had to make a post so I can play around with some of the visual settings. More to come later!