Saturday, April 12, 2003
Spent some time staring at Bhikku’s virtual prayerwheels today and found a kind of post-tax peace in doing so. However, since my attempts to set them up on my own desktop according to the instructions were frustrated by the fact that the Active Desktop “feature” doesn’t seem to exist any more (at least in Windows XP), I decided to write my own desktop toy to do the same thing.
With apologies to Bhikku, I present Virtual Prayerwheels for Windows (80 KB download). Just extract the zip file and run, and right-click on the wheels to see more options. A little more flexible than the HTML version, they can float above or below your other windows, looking pretty and spinning their mantra into the ether while you happily type away at other pursuits.
prayerwheels in action
Phew! It does feel good to do something random once in awhile. Anyways, it was a lot of fun for me, and hopefully for others too. Please let me know what you think!
And did I mention that I finished my taxes? A full three days early. I’m so proud of myself!
Comments
Just updated to version 1.0.1, which has code cleanup and improved resource usage. Also fixes the about box on certain operating systems.
If anyone’s had problems on Windows 95, 98 or Me and this new version fixes it, please let me know. I know there were strange problems before.
Aww, sorry sweetie, I was away all weekend, so I didn’t try the old version. This one is fantastic! I had bhikku’s version;I like this one better (sorry, bhikku). Yay, on the tax timeliness. You reminded me that I still have to do mine. Uhh, guess I better get started…
Spiffy! I think this wins a spot on my desktop. I just have a few suggestions for improvements, if you have the time and inclination to implement them:
* option to antialias the edges
* option to hide the app from the task bar
* option to instantiate multiple copies of the wheel from a single process, locate them to one’s liking on the desktop, and save their positions
You are indeed a smart cookie, well done!
You can achieve a fine effect by opening multiple copies of the app (and then your machine stops and you reboot, if you have a toy one like I do …)
I wonder who wrote the original gif, tho?