SimplyGold

I'm working on a side project that makes creating Wordpress themes easier and therefore makes me happier. It's almost ready, but while I procrastinate on putting the finishing touches on the application, let's talk about seeing your command prompt in a completely different light font. Lucida Console is an okay font, but the thing is there are better fonts out there. Turns out that it's really easy to change the default font of the command prompt; though you might get a bad case of jitters at touching the registry. ;-)

1. Open up the registery

Go to Start > Run and type in regedit. This opens up the registery editor. Before doing any changes, we'll be sane and backup our registery. Go to File > Export and give your registery backup an appropriate name. Hopefully, we won't have to use it.

2. Navigate to the Appropriate Entry

Once you're done backuping the registery, navigate to:

HKLM
Software
Microsoft
WindowsNT
CurrentVersion
Console
TrueTypeFont

Where HKLM = "HKEYLOCALMACHINE."

3. Create a new REG_SZ Key

Right-click on the right pane and select New > String Value. Give the new key the name: "00" (or "000" if you already have a "00," and so on...). Microsoft says:

The name needs to be incrimented with "0" for each additional font.

4. Enter the font name

Right-click on your newly-created key and select "Modify". Type in the name of the font you want in the "Value data" box. So for example, if you want the Consolas font, type in "Consolas" (without the quotation marks, of course).

Read the aforementioned Microsoft article on what criteria your fonts should satisfy.

Restart your computer.

5. Set Your Font as the Default Font

Hopefully, you were able to boot up without a problem. Go to the command prompt. Right-click on the title bar and select "Defaults". Go to the "Font" tab. Select your new font in the "Font" section and set the size appropriately. :D

Extra: Set Font For the Current Window Only

Right-click on the title bar and select "Properties" instead of "Defaults". Set the font to whatever and click OK. You'll be asked whether you want to set it for the current window only or save it for all future windows with the same title.

Whenever I do a squeaky-clean install of Windows XP (which seems to be at least once a month grr), there are always applications/additions/extensions/what have you that I add right away. I was recently contemplating yet another reinstall and, in making the list, thought it might be a good idea to put them down here so I don't have to go chasing after these links when I need them in case people don't know about (some of) them.

10. Alt-Tab Replacement

A Power-Toy from Microsoft, it shows you a thumbnail preview of the running applications when you press ALT+TAB (normally, you just get a small icon). This is especially useful if you're one of those people who have twenty applications running at the same time. ;-)

9. ColorPic

Probably useful only for Graphics Designers and Web Designers. It allows you to pick colors from anywhere on the screen. It gives you the color values in RGB, HSV, and hexadecimal (used for web); it even tells you what web-safe color is nearest to the color that you picked (all though I typically don't use this option all that much). Here's a link.

8. iTunes

I doubt I'm going to have to do any explaining, so I won't. ;-)

7. FileZilla or SmartFTP

FTP Clients. I used both of them, and both are good, fast, and realiable, but I have a slight preference for FileZilla over Smart FTP Client. Also, FileZilla is free whereas Smart FTP Client is a shareware. Which one you use ultimately depends on your personal tastes. Link to FileZilla. Link to Smart FTP Client.

6. ClamWin and WindowsDefender

Both are free virus-scanner for Windows; the latter is from Microsoft and still in beta. Link to ClamWin. Link to Windows Defender. While you're at it, grab Spybot – Search & Destroy too.

5. Cropper

Screenshot utility. Before Cropper, making a screenshot meant going through the tedious task of hitting Print Screen (which grabs the whole screen), and cropping it in Photoshop (which doesn't exactly have the fastest startup time). Trust me, Cropper is way better.

4. Firefox or Flock (or both)

There isn't much to say about Firefox other than it rocks (most of the time). However, I've grown very fond of Flock, despite the fact that I rarely ever use its features (built-in photo management and blog-posting among others). It definitely has a better default UI/theme than Firefox.

3. Process Explorer

This is possibly (probably?) of interest only to more technically-inclined people, but all the same, Process Explorer from Sysinternals is an indespensible tool when it comes to digging up information about all the processes running on your computer, and oh so much better than Windows Task Manager.

2. WindowsBlinds or StyleXP

The default themes you get with Windows are ugly. (Fortunately, Microsoft seems to be going in the right direction with Vista.) WindowsBlinds and StyleXP allow you to install themes and turn your atrocious environment into something you just might like looking at every morning.

(StudioTwentyEight's Tiger 2 Visual Style is quite excellent for all Mac-look enthusiasts out there.)

1. ClearType Tuner

Power-Toy from Microsoft. I found this little gem six months ago, installed it, turned it on, and never looked back.

Windows XP Only.

Creating thumbnails out of screenshots is possibly my most mind-numbingly boring and time-consuming task when writing a blog post. I recently found a neat trick to make this mostly painless: 1. Open the folder where you saved your image. 2. Right-click on the image and select Resize Pictures from the context menu.

1. Choose the size (you can specify a "custom size" as well) you want and click OK.

The clarity of the resized picture is surprisingly clear.

**Update: ** Actually, to be able to do this, you need the ImageResizer PowerToy from Microsoft.

For my footer, I wanted to list the top ten categories (as calculated by the number of posts in each category). Bizarrely enough, there isn't an easy built-in way to do this with Wordpress. What's more surprising is that I couldn't find a plugin that provided this functionality, either. Maybe I'm the only person with this requirement. At any rate, this is how I solved the issue:

1. <?php
2.  
3. $top_cats = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->categories ORDER BY category_count DESC LIMIT 10");
4.  
5. foreach($top_cats as $cat)
6. {
7. $cat_link = '<a href="index.php"' . $cat->category_nicename . '">';
8. $cat_li = "<li>$cat_link $cat->cat_name</a></li> ";
9. echo($cat_li);
10. }
11.  
12. ?>

Download the icons

One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to transform a Windows icon file into a Mac and a Linux icon file, but until that time...

Enjoy! :-D

Err — yeah.

You might be wondering what Genghis Kahn has to do with the template. The short answer: he doesn't. The long answer: I needed to name the template something — it was either "Red Blue White" or "Genghis Kahn," and I settled for the latter. I shall contrive to come up with a slightly more meaningful title next time. ;-)

View the template Download the template