D-Blog
King Geek (or is it Geek King?)

Ignoring the fact I am a crap writer unless i have gone over whatever i have written a million times (notice all the Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors on this blog) i would still love to write some books… mainly because i would just love to see something bound and printed which i have written… but here’s the top ten ideas i can think of which i would like to get down on paper… or keyboard or is it screen…

1. PHP guide.
2. Autobiography
3. How to make a website 101 (obviously have to think of a different name, that’s probably taken! lol) [this would also include how to use html/xhtml/css and everything in one!]
4. Website Tips, this would be basically what it says, a kind of guide on how to make your site better and would probably be just general advice for web persons.
5. Hates, okay from the title your probably wondering what i mean, i am hoping to start a pet hates website, which users can add what really annoys them etc, i have the domain, but i dont have the site… yet… but this could be one of those books with just a combination of the most interesting pet hates i always find those kinds of books fun
6. Hacks for Noobs, Now I’m not 100% clear about this but i think it could be interesting, now as i am sure many of you will know, there are a few videos on YouTube, or little tutorials etc with hacks for everyday objects, i think it could be great to get that in a book, just a collection of little hacks you can do at home! lol.
7. Computer Care for Noobies! - Its important! … unless your paying me to fix it of course!
8. What i hate about the world, okay this would just be one HUGE rant.. think clarkson… but with a supped up computer and PHP…
9. How to pack out a “Top 10″ list for beginners… can i get a copy of this XD
10. How to run a successful blog… was that one pushing it? okay.. maybe one day when i have one myself! lol.

Okay so i have been using Vista (ultimate version) for a while now, and the gadgets are great and really handy, so i have complied what i think is the Top Ten Vista gadgets which everyone must have!

Okay the ten gadgets below are not in a particular order of top ten,  they are my favourite ten vista gadgets all are helpful in some way to me and makes it all a bit easier!

The UK Radio Player, is a great little gadget, you can add any online radio feed, and its just nice and easy to use, just have it in the corner and click play when ever i fancy some music. (and I’m not already blasting it that is!)

I came across this gadget the other day, and it is helpful to me, as i am a web host to keep tabs on my server, simple little gadget pings my server every few seconds to check its still online, so if it isn’t i can do something about it, only thing i can complain about is it only allows up to 5 servers, and the height is fixed, so when you have one server it still has a huge gap, and my gadget space is valuable to me!

The Top Process gadget is really handy, it shows the Top three CPU and RAM hogging programs, so i can easily see whats using what without having to open Task Manager, great easy gadget, could be improved if it had the ability to end task as well, but I am not sure how that feature could be added.

Volume control: I used to use another volume control gadget and when i re-installed the other day, i lost the gadget but when i went to re-download it from the Gadget Gallery instead i found this one which looks much nicer and has a few more features.

CPU Gadget, this definitely had to be the most “used” gadget, always handy to check how hard I’m working my system, helps me know when i need to easy off a bit to avoid problems.

RSS Feed Reader, Only recently have i started properly using this great little gadget, its one which comes default with Vista, and is nice and simple, you subscribe to a thread (through IE) and they show up, you can select to show 10-100 items, select a single feed of just one, handy tool to keep up to date with goings on, I started to use it to try and learn a bit more and be more in with whats going on with the Web, and also an attempt to get more ideas of things i can talk about both on my blog, and on my Radio show.

Notes, yes this is a simple little gadget comes with Vista by default like the CPU monitor and RSS feed reader, its a Handy note pad on your desktop to jot something down to remember later, i was (and admittedly still am) guilty of having a desk covered in little piles of yellow sticky pad notes, most of which are in unreadable handwriting or just end up lost and forgotten. So in that sense it is a handy little gadget, also means i don’t have quite so many random .txt files on my desktop with random things in. However a bad note (no pun intended… okay that’s a blatant lie.. anyway) is its quite a small area, and would be a very handy if you could extend the note pad so you don’t have to scroll down the note o read it all however i am not sure how easy this could be done on Vista Gadgets, it would be good though if it was possible.

 Weather Gadget, never bother to use it before the other day, but its pretty good does a variety of weathers, and it does my local area (Swindon) so I am happy.

Calendar again one of the pre-installed gadgets with Vista, but its something which i use daily, much easier to give it a glance and see today’s date etc in nice big letters, without having to faff about hovering over the clock like i used to especially when i am busy working on scripts or working with clients. 

Clock, okay this really doesn’t need a description of any kind, but i have to admit having a nice easy to ready clock on the right hand top corner of my first screen is a lot easier to read than a small time in the corner. So again it is a basic gadget which can really speed up little things you do when on the PC.

Okay that’s it that’s my Top Ten Vista Gadgets, all helpful all great.

Now when looking through the Vista Gadget Gallery I have seen literally thousands of gadgets which all have almost identical gadgets which do the same thing, and there are a lot of “Search” gadgets, like YouTube or Google and when i first got Vista i tried them and soon realised for me at least they were more annoying than there were useful, i almost always have a webpage open, and it is much easier to manually open the page than to use the often ugly gadgets which just waste my Desktop space.

 So here’s my first of what will hopefully be many Top Ten lists, hope you enjoy and find it useful.

Dan