Hex Wallpaper

It's time to switch up the wallpapers again so I've come up with a new concept for everyone to enjoy Hex WallPapers (in the same vein as the carbon fiber wall paper before it).

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Windows Carbon Fiber Wallpaper

I decided today that I needed a new carbon fiber themed wallpaper. After failing to find one that I wanted I decided to create my own.

1920:1080 (16:9 aspect) Download Zip Here

1920:1200 (16:10 aspect) Download Zip Here

And here's a bonus one for android.

I've included a blank carbon fiber so you can use it with the windows login changer for a clean login experience.

iTunesMonitor 2.5 (Update)

I've recently updated iTunesMonitor to 2.5 status you can find the original description here (The download link was updated there as well).

The main difference is it now respects Windows 7's UAC controls so no more crashing due to permission issues. Keep in mind you will need .NET framework 4 to run this now.

Among other nice features 2.5 iTunesMonitor finally gives iTunes the ability to work with your media keys even when iTunes does not have focus for those die hard iTunes users.

The system is "install free" meaning as long as you have iTunes installed detection and launching is automatic.

Download iTunesMonitor 2.5

iTunes Monitor

iTunes on the PC is quite popular but iTunes has a nasty habit of more often than not eating up way too many resources even while it's not running.

The culprit?

iTunes needs several services that it doesn't shutdown when it closes these are:

iTunesHelper

iPodService

AppleMobileDevice

BonjourService

(and a few others)

 

I found this unacceptable so I wrote a little program I call the iTunesMonitor. It's sole job is to set all these services to manual so you don't get them on startup and to launch them when it's started and then launch iTunes once all the services are up.

The program then sits idle in the background checking every 5 seconds to see if iTunes is closed. When it sees this it will immediately clean up any remaining services.

What about the media keys they don't seem to work one you don't have iTunes in focus. Well since my program has to sit in the background and wait for iTunes to close anyways I felt that I should fix the way media keys behave. Now iTunes will respond to media keys regardless of if it's in focus or not and the media keys are unregistered when the program is closed.

 

Try iTunesMonitor for yourself. It requires no configuration other than an installation of iTunes. It will automatically detect your installation of iTunes and launch it along with the supported services. No configuration is required however it is recommended you replace the iTunes icon in your start menu with the iTunesMonitor for transparent operation.

 

Download iTunesMonitor 2.5

Dell media direct button: Make it work with firefox!

Ok if your a dell laptop user with a dell media direct button but you really honestly don't use it at all I got a treat for you. Like you I got fed up with the button always there mocking me. A while ago I came up with my own solution that maps the "home" key for media direct to firefox.

The first solution used absolute paths which worked for me but I wasn't thinking of public release.

Now I've redone the application to detect your firefox installation, and the best part is after you first run the program for the first time it will install itself so dell quickset detects it as media direct.

Installation is easy:

1. Download the file
2. Copy it to where you want it to stay on your computer
3. Run it!

The program will automatically modify dell quickset to recognize it as Dell MediaDirect, and will automatically detect and launch your firefox for the first time. Couldn't be easier!

If you ever move the program from it's current location just launch it again and it will detect the changes reconfigure itself and let QuickSet know of the changes.

Couldn't be simpler.
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