************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** With each new release of the Windows operating system, Microsoft adds new ways to waste your time customizing the look and feel. You can customize your desktop's wallpaper, cursors, themes, sounds, and screensavers. My own Windows desktop is so cluttered with icons that I've never been a fan of background wallpaper. I don't need any more visual distractions. That may change. I recently discovered the Joke Wallpaper archive (www.jokewallpaper.com). It features some irresistibly clever images you can save down as wallpaper. They're all free. The site is supported by banner ads. Many poke fun at Bill Clinton and Viagara (yawn) but a number are really well executed parodies of ad campaigns and movies. Many remind me of the excellent ad parodies produced by Ad Busters. The Joke Wallpaper site doesn't stop at just wallpaper. There are a number of cute images you can use to replace your boot up and shut down screens. My favorite is a shut down screen inspired by 2001: "Dave, are you trying to shut me down, Dave, Dave? Daisy Daisy..." Windows 95 major advance {in term of customization} was the addition of themes. Themes let you change your whole look-and- feel (wallpaper, sounds, cursors, etc.) in one shot. One really neat site offering free themes is Schmoe's Classic Arcade Game Page (http://www.inficad.com/~schmoe/index.htm). If you miss arcade classics like Pacman and Defender, you can download themes inspired by eight arcade games from the '80s. A good general archive of themes is available at http://209.113.74.59/dtc/. The site is broken down by categories, ranging from Cartoons to Universities. Check the Misc link for themes that will actually let you configure your Windows system to look like a Macintosh. And the hidden message here is? You can also modify your desktop in ways Microsoft never intended. CNET, the massive news and portal site, has a large shareware archive site at www.download.com. The Home:Utilities:Desktop Enhancements area has {all} sorts of crazy utilities to randomize your wallpaper, enhance your clipboard, and add new functionality to the Three Finger Salute (otherwise known as ctrl+alt+delete). One of the odder things you can modify is the animated N in the upper left corner of your Netscape web browser. The N is known as a "throbber" because in early versions of Netscape the N looked like it was throbbing in pain while your browser searched for the desired URL. At one point Netscape actually held a contest to find a better replacement. Mac uses can find a nice archive of throbbers at www.spies.com/Throbbers. There's no centralized archive of throbbers for Windows versions of Netscape. There was a good one at www.retrovirus.com/throbbers, but recently it's been reporting a 403 error (no permission to access). That could mean the site's creator accidentally set the permissions wrong on the directory. Give it a try from time to time if you're curious. The best way to find throbbers is do a search on HotBot (www.hotbot.com) or Alta Vista (www.altavista.com) for the keywords "Netscape" and "throbber". You'll find numerous links to throbbers people have squirreled away on web pages. You can find throbbers that replace your N with images from Quake (www.teleport.com/~kav/quake/index.html), Amanda Marshall (www.digitalozone.com/marshall/throbbers.htm), or for those of you using a high speed cable modem service you can get racing- themed throbbers (www.importracing.com/throbbers/). You can also make your own. To change your throbber in Netscape 3.x, create two .bmp files called 30m.bmp & 48m.bmp in the same folder as your netscape.exe file. Restart Netscape and throb away. Netscape Version 4.x is a bit more complicated. You need to edit a resource file. See www.zenweb.com/century/throb for a good walk through.