Posts published in “tech tips”

About the Asus G1 Direct Messenger

christopher staines to m.mierzwa

5:06 am (41 minutes ago)

I’m not sure if you’ve found any method to show current settings
dynamically with Direct Messenger, but I did find something nifty:

If you browse to, “Program FilesASUSASUS Direct ConsoleICON,”
you’ll notice that each icon is 32×32, and named, “icon_###.bmp.” I
then created (copied) my own icon into the folder and named it,
“icon_022.bmp,” and this was then added to the, “My personal settings,”
icon list. Pretty nifty.

Some limitations to consider:

1. Each icon must be 32×32, though I’m pretty sure you can change the
width, but the height is based on what the OLED can display, so that’s
maxed at 32. A maximum of 6 icons may be displayed at once on the OLED.

2. Each icon must be a bitmap. I tried GIFs and JPGs, but JPGs say,
“Bitmap image is invalid.” and GIFs aren’t even recognized.

3. Each icon must be greyscaled, or equivalent. Notice the blue on
black– that’s because the OLED has no greying at all. It’s either
lit or it isn’t. I’m pretty sure some nifty Photoshop/Paint/Gimp
techniques could be used to make the illusion of shading, but I wasn’t
able to achieve this.

I hope this has helped you. I’m pretty sure there would also be a way
to hook into the Chkol.exe and make it dynamically display a message.

P.S.

To kill the Direct Messenger display (and all running Direct Console software, including Chkol.exe, D3DCheck.exe, and LCMP.exe),
you can run the KWin.exe application, located in, “Program
FilesASUSASUS Direct Console.” I added a shortcut to this in my Startup folder, as I don’t particularly like the ASUS logo being shown 24/7.

Share this information with whomever you want, but, please, if you
find a way to dynamically update the OLED, let me know. I love
tweaking stuff, but I haven’t the willpower to sit down and reverse
the Chkol.exe software.

After deciding to use STP MP3 Player (a small, resource-friendly MP3 player that resides in the system tray) instead of iTunes or WMP or WinAmp, I found my Logitech MediaPlay mouse’s SetPoint software was not properly controlling the new software choice. I decided to take action.

1.  in STP’s Settings->Advanced… window, under General in the top left, select, “Emulate WinAmp,” at the bottom of the list.

2.  where you installed SetPoint, find, “players.ini,” and add the following to the bottom of the Players:

     STP=cmd,STP.exe,Winamp v1.x,xxx,xxx,40045,40046,40047,40044,40048,0,1,STP

Links used:
a.  http://digitalelement.byethost22.com/stp/download.html – STP 10603 Final, or the 4.5a unofficial update if you’re curious.

b.  http://www.mstarmetro.net/~rlowens/uberOptions/ – uberOptions for SetPoint; adds the ability to change any button on your Logitech trackball/mouse/keyboard (not required for this, just a useful option).

c.  ftp://ftp.logitech.com/pub/techsupport/mouse/setpoint315_v450.exe – logitech setpoint 3.15

d.  http://www.google.com/ – without Google, i would have been lost. thanks, Google.

okay. i’m not the biggest firefox fan out there, or i’d be writing extensions with the best of them, but i am an avid user.

having used ie originally, then switching to netscape and, eventually, sticking with opera for a while, i dove right onto the bandwagon for firefox and started messing with it. the setup i use isn’t the best i’ve seen, as there are some people who make the browser their entire desktop, sans the start menu and taskbar. but, i figured i’d show you what i surf with everyday (when not using the latest opera 9 build).

my firefox config:

with my explanations: ff.html

without my explanations: ff-original.html

thanks go to mr tech for the badass local install extension.