Patchou's Cabana

A new version of Media Center Themer has been released. Version 1.40 brings in lots of improvements such as string replacements, reorganization of menus, and the possibility to add your very own menu items to launch custom programs or display web pages inside Media Center. You can download the new version right away from the usual web page, see below for a full list of changes.

Media Center Themer is a lightweight add-on that lets you completely customize the interface of Media Center. Modify text colors and other formatting attributes, pictures, MCML interfaces, and automatically re-colorize most of the built-in pictures with a single setting (say goodbye to the original blue theme). All of it is done in memory, without modifying a single resource file on disk, preventing screws up and the reversal of changes during software updates. and yes, it’s entirely free to use.

Change log from version 1.30 to 1.40:

• The <TextFormat> element has been modified to include <LegacyText>  sub-elements in addition to <Text>. They now replace the old <Legacy> and <String> elements for better organization (see the updated schema).
• MCML resource files (mcml and xml extensions) are now modified when extracted to look properly formatted when viewed in any text editor (identation and line breaks).
• The new <Resources>\<Strings> element can be used to replaced any of the text displayed by Media Center, such as menu labels and titles.
• A new <StartMenu> element has been added. Its <Builtin> element can be used to reorder or hide menus and sub-menus in Media Center’s start menu.
• The new <Custom> element of <StartMenu> allows for the creation of a custom menu strip with user-defined menu items to launch programs or display web pages.
• Command line parameters can now be used instead of some registry settings. See the updated documentation for more details.
• The documentation has been updated new sections have been added to it for the new features.
• The setup is now copied to Program Files and an uninstall entry is added in Windows’ Control Panel to easily uninstall the application.
• The setup now creates shortcuts in the Start Menu of Windows.
• Fixed: the first resource loaded in each DLL was not taken into consideration. This could prevent important files, such as CommonStyles.xml to be logged or replaced.

This site, patchou.com, along with the 16 other web sites I’m hosting on the same server will shutdown for a day, on Wednesday 18th, January 2012. Downloads will be down as well. This is done as an effort against SOPA, PIPA and any other future similar US bills that threatens our cyber-way-of-life. Wikipedia, Reddit, Minecraft and many other big names are doing the same. If you have a presence on the web, we encourage you to join the blackout.

For more information, check news posts such as the one on Neowin.

RIM has finally approved version 2.0 of Eorzea’s Guide, the Final Fantasy XIV app for BlackBerry. All the recipes have been refreshed for the latest version of FF14 and more have been added for a grand total of 2,187.

Enjoy!

Following the recent stand from GoDaddy on the trash that is SOPA, I have decided, like many others, to transfer all my domain names to a registrar that won’t work against my interests. If you currently have domain names with GoDaddy and are against censorshop on the internet, I recommend you do the same.

If you don’t know what SOPA is and you don’t feel like spending more than 3 minutes on the subject, watch this video.

Here’s an interesting article I found on Neowin today:

Chrome can do things that no other browser can do, and Google now targets Chrome exclusively, meaning some Google sites only function fully when viewed in Chrome. Even today, you can read on the Google blog about some new Angry Birds levels that only work in Chrome. This is disturbing, when you consider that Google has made a lot of hay about the openness of the Web.

To read more: www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397158,00.asp