Recently, I took a slight interest in PC gaming. Having dropped it a few years ago in favor of the headache-free Xbox games, I decided to look back as I wanted to have a few games on my laptop when my console is not around.

I have Windows Vista.

Since I don’t have the most beefed up laptop around, most games after 2007 will run only with the lowest settings except for Left 4 Dead. What I wanted, anyway, was a bunch of classics I enjoyed on my previous computers and a few ones my new config would play.

Heh.

Almost all of the games that came out before this garbage will not work or at least not without several tweaks and patches. I didn’t find a single game I wanted that could work on it. No Call of Duty, no Age of Empires, no Roller Coaster Tycoon, nothing!

What kind of upgrade was that? One more step towards the no-Microsoft-products room. If only it wasn’t about necessity…

We were walking around that place we like to call the armpit of the city when we stumbled upon this magnificient transportation modding feat. Behold THE RAINBOW SCOOTER!

Sadly enough, there is far worse to be found in Granby. I’m still trying to take a photo of the Tercel with spray-painted orange plastic spinners and a hood scoop.

Pursuing the quest for an awesome yet minimalist Gnome desktop, I decided to attack Gnome’s minimalism-hating panel. My goal is to keep all the functionnality of the panel while being able to have it match with my desktop backgrounds.

It was pretty easy to find where the panel icons were hidden (usr/share/icons/yourtheme/22×22) and now all I had to do is to create a nice icon set to replace the current ones without altering the rest of the icon theme.

So far, I made icons for Network Manager (only wireless), Power Manager, Menu, aMSN and Nautilus. I also made a few application icons for my Firefox, aMSN and Rythmbox launchers. These icons do not affect the rest of the theme and look damn great on just about any panel background. All the icons are in PNG, but the SVG file is also included if you want to tamper with the icons.

Here’s a preview:

Click for the full-size image

I admit it: I spend way too much time on the computer. I do a lot of great things with a computer, but I also kill a lot of time doing absolutely nothing but web browsing. It doesn’t have the impact it would have on some people’s life, but it’s still a lot of wasted time. Here is a few tricks to fight your computer addiction.

(more…)

Thanks for reading!

I made a very simple set of icons for people looking for single-color icons to match their themes. The icons are in PNG, but the SVG files are also included so you can edit them or change their color to your liking. I use them for my panel launchers in Ubuntu, but they look incredibly nice on any wallpaper.

The icons are to be freely used as long as you don’t sell them or claim them as your own. Edit them, share them, anything you want, but don’t be selfish! If you make your own icons to complement the pack, feel free to share them with me!

The icons in 32x32

SVG icons in a panel

The Gnome Menu icon

Sizes:

• 32×32
• 48×48
• 64×64
• 128×128
• 256×256
• SVG (any size you want)

How to install the Gnome Menu icon:

1. Go to the following directory (you need root access): /usr/share/icons/themename/24×24/places/start_here.png
2. Replace start-here.png with your own icon. You may want to backup the default icon, just in case.
3. In the terminal, type: sudo gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/themename/
4. Finally, type: killall gnome-panel
5. Voilà!
   

Download at Gnome-Look.org

Download on Wikimedia Commons