Past Diatribes

(There are fears that the voltage over here may fry what should not be fried, i.e., something other than baked potatoes and mariner's pies.)

Well good netizens, first let me show you a neat trick that will brighten up and customize your Windows 95/98 desktop. Instead of living with the default icons that come with your software, it's possible to set up any picture you like to act as a shortcut link.

Here's how:

(1) Find a picture you like, such as this brand-new logo for the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Co-Op:

(2) Right click on it and save it--- if it's a picture you picked up on the Internet, it's probably a .gif or a .jpg file. Save it as a .bmp (bitmap), if you can, and skip to step (5). Save it on your desktop for convenience's sake.

(3) When you are off-line, go into the Microsoft Paint program that is built in with your operating system's Accessories. Open the picture that you saved on your desktop.

(4) You can mess around with the picture any way you like at this point-- add a nasty slogan underneath your portrait of Bill Gates or black out one of Cindy Crawford's teeth, whatever you want. Chances are the icon will be too small for the change to be noticeable, though. Next, save that image as a .bmp (bitmap) file, also on your desktop. Go ahead and close Paint.

(5) Right-click on the bitmap on your desktop and select the "Rename" option. Change the .bmp extension to .ico and hit return------- this changes the picture to a little icon. Cool, huh?

(6) Take the file or program that you would like to associate with your new icon. Right click on that program or file and create a shortcut to it.

(7) Highlight and right-click this new shortcut, then go into its Properties. Go into "Shortcut" from there. Change Icon from there, Browse to the icon (.ico) on your desktop--- it's pretty self-explanatory from that point.

(8) Voila! You now have your little picture set up as a shortcut. Drag the old icon to the recycle bin and your desktop is a cleaner and happier place.

Other than learning new tricks like this and cooking dinners in Dublin's only toaster oven, domestic chores in the new gaff have been keeping me busy. This weekend I baked some bread. It tastes like twenty pounds of soggy concrete. It's near as bad as my latest story. Ah well, the ice cream we churned out on Sunday came out all right.

For now, I'll leave you to it.