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Tuesday Dec 8th

Ok, I've finished up GeekNaddy, and I've ported both GeekAmp and GeekNaddy to work with Codename 2. You can get them here, and I'll update the GeekAmp page and add the GeekNaddy page later.

GeekNaddy for Litestep
quickinstall.txt
readme.txt

GeekNaddy for Codename 2
readme.txt

GeekAmp for Codename 2
readme.txt

Monday Dec 7th

...( Sorry I haven't updated my page at all this weekend, I've been busy.
...( Well, I'm almost finished with my module for NAD (GeekNaddy). I just have a few things to finish up, and I'll be done. This is just the first version, so it will only support the basics for now, but I'm sure thats all anybody uses anyway.
...( Somebody asked me about doing cd support for GeekAudio, so why not? While I'm at it, I'm going to do a GeekCD, which would be somewhat usefull. The other thing I thought of is GeekMixer, so you could assign bang commands to the different mixer items.
...( I'm going to be redoing some of the stuff on this page, and hopefully adding some tasteful images to the page today. I just really want to make this page a little tighter. :)
...( I'm considering creating a GeekAudio wharf module. I don't know how many people would use this(not I, since I don't even use a wharf). I'd like to do it, but it would consume a bunch of my time, so if you're reading this, and you want a wharf module, lemme know.

Friday Dec 4th

...( I'm working on the new designs for GeekAmp/GeekAudio/GeekJofol / Images pages. They are up now, but I'm still finishing them up. I'm trying to clean up the interface here a little. I'm thinking of removing all but the latest builds from the links over on the right, since they don't need to be there when I have a GeekAmp homepage now. That should clean things up a little, give a little more room for better links. I'll have it all up shortly.

...( More great news!! GeekAudio is now going to support NAD, as well! I am also going to create a standalone module for NAD, simply because Floach uses NAD, and he's awesome :)

...( Great news!!! GeekAudio is now going to support WPlay, as well. I'm going to start adding in support for it as soon as possible. I might even come out with GeekPlay or something :)

...( I've updated a bunch of stuff in GeekAudio, added some functions, so that should be done in a couple days. I want it to work great before I let it go, plus I want to get together a couple of sets of shortcut images first, as well.

...( Well, I've updated the GeekAmp zipfile to include a set of .bmps for GeekAmp. I also included a quick installation document that already has the shortcut defs and hotkey defs done for GeekAmp. This should make it much easier for you people that don't like editing your step.rc. Here's what they look like:

Of course, the black sections on the corners are actually transparent, so you don't have to worry about that.
...( I've added a few more functions to GeekJofol, not enough to put anything up here yet.

...( I know I haven't updated the other pages yet, I'll start working on the designs soon.

Thursday Dec 3rd

..( I've been coding for a couple of hours.. here is the new feature of GeekAudio: You are able to specify your default player in step.rc, and it launches that one if nothing is open, if only one is open, it sends a play command to the open window, and if both are open, it sends a play command to your default window. I have currently implemented this in the play command, and I'm working on a global function that will do this for all the commands. I should have it finished up in a couple of days. For now, I only have Winamp and Kjofol support, but I will have support for more in the future. The new commands are going to be !Audio_Play, and so on. I'm hoping that this module won't become too large as I add new features. I have started working on a set of shortcuts that you will be able to cut and paste instead of manually creating. I never did get around to doing anything else. I'll update tomorrow with more information, and hopefully I can have something ready in the next day or so.

...( I have now combined what I have for both GeekAmp and Geekjofol into GeekAudio. I am going to be going through and cleaning up some of the code, and adding some neat features. I am also working on some new graphics / shortcuts for this release. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll be finished with this one.
...( I have figured out how the first release of GeekPaster is going to work. It will be somewhat limited at first, but I will be expanding it in the future. For now it will just read out of a text file line by line, in the future I hope to have a config dialog to assist the user. Anyway...

...( If anybody out there has any graphics experience, and would like to contribute, I'd really like some graphics for GeekAudio. I'm going to be adding a graphics section under the GeekAudio page.

Wednesday Dec 2nd

...( Well, I want to thank Floach for hosting my site. It was really great of him to do so. I hope to keep this site updated daily, so check back here for news )...

...( I just wanted to say that SuperPhly is going to be helping me with some images for GeekAmp / GeekJofol / GeekAudio. I saw the first stuff he's done, and its really nice. I'm going to include a very large amount of predefined shortcuts that you will be able to use. What I have planned is to have a set of shortcuts for each corner of the screen at each resolution with each different set of images. Wow! If you understand that line, I'm impressed! :)

...( I just reinstalled my OS on my computer, so I'm still working on getting my system back to normal. I haven't been able to do any coding in the last two days because of that, but I thought of a cool module that would be easy to create and would take very little resources... GeekPaster.. This would be a clipboard / paste module that would let you predefine text strings that you could paste into programs using Bang commands. I haven't worked out everything yet, but it should be pretty basic.
...( I'm still working out how I'm going to implement LiteScript/GeekScript/WinScript. The first problem is the name. I originally chose LiteScript, but I am thinking of developing this as an .exe, and then porting it in .dll format to LiteStep and Codename2. So, I'm thinking I may call it GeekScript, which should fall right in with everything else.
...( I'm planning on including a set of images with the next versions of GeekAmp, GeekJofol, and GeekAudio. This should allow much more people to use my program with ease.
...( I'm planning on expanding Switch to include many more options. First, I'm going to rename it to GeekSwitch on the next release. Also I am going to add support for switching the theme.rc line in your step.rc. I haven't worked this out, but as most things do, it will probably come to me out of the blue exactly how to set it up. I'm thinking of adding support for changing the background image as well, so you could use it as a kind of random background changer.
...( Thanks for the couple of people who have emailed me on different topics. I appreciate feedback. And yes, I do know Microsoft has a scripting language. Unfortunately, it was written mainly to do enterprise workstation management through extremely custom login scripts. Thats not what GeekScript is all about... Its about wasting lots of time tweaking your computer so that you can tweak it more and more in an endless cycle. >:)

Tuesday Dec 1st

...( Well, I never got a chance to update last night, but I did get a chance to add a bunch more pages. I'm going to try and divide up my page so that I can have lots of organized information. This will still be the place for news, though. I'm not planning on having a modules or themes or skins section up here anytime, though, so don't ask.

Monday Nov 30th

...( I have added a LiteScript/GeekScript page. I don't have much on it yet, but I'm planning on creating a GeekAudio page and a misc page as well. I may do a Litestep page. GeekAudio will have GeekAmp, GeekKjofol, and GeekAudio on it for now. I'll post later tonight with more news.
...(  Make sure and get the Litestep 0.24.4 update on litestep.net.

Sunday Nov 29th

...(  Well, I have released GeekJofol version 1.0! This is my control module for Kjofol, a popular mp3 player. (I'll have a link up shortly.). This module is very similar to GeekAmp, except GeekAmp is a lot farther along. For all you people that use both players, I'm going to also be combining both of these into GeekAudio, which will hopefully include Sonique support, as well. I was thinking that in GeekAudio I could use shared commands that would work on whatever player was open, as well as the ability to set the prefered player if both were open. For instance, !Audio_Play would play the current song in either the only window that was open, or if both were open, whichever one was set to be the default. I would only make a couple of shared commands like that, and the rest would be specific to each player.

...(  All the commands currently do autolaunching of Kjofol if it is not running. Read the readme.txt to see how to set that up.
...(  Here are the commands that I have included so far:

!Kjofol_Play
        This plays the current song
!Kjofol_Stop
        This stops the current song
!Kjofol_Pause
        This pauses the current song
!Kjofol_Next
        This skips to the next song on the playlist
!Kjofol_Previous
        This skips to the previous song on the playlist
!Kjofol_LoadFile
        This opens the loadfile box
!Kjofol_Quit
        This closes Kjofol
!Kjofol_Minimize
        This minimizes Kjofol
!Kjofol_FastRewind
        This FastRewinds through the current song
!Kjofol_FastForward
        This FastForwards through the current song
!Kjofol_Preferences
        This toggles the Preferences Dialog
!Kjofol_DoubleSize
        Use this with caution.. it freaked on my machine

...(  I'm planning on porting both GeekJofol and GeekAmp to Codename 2 as soon as I get a chance, so stay tuned for news on that.

Saturday Nov 28th
05:05:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

...(  Well, I got to see my baby, and we are having another boy! Now I get to have two boys to help me do things around the house, and work on the car, and whatever other daddy/son things we need to do. :)

...(  Well, I've released GeekAmp version 1.3! There are quite a few new commands that you can do with this release, so I've copied the readme.txt file updates:

12:20 AM 11/28/98
GeekAmp ver 1.3
Updates:

!AMP_SHOW    This toggles the main window, I don't know why this wasn't included earlier
!AMP_REPEAT    This toggles the Repeat button
!AMP_SHUFFLE    This toggles the Shuffle button
!AMP_MAINMENUPOPUP    This will popup the main Winamp Menu (This is the same as
           right-clicking the main window titlebar
!AMP_DOUBLESIZE    This obviously toggles DoubleSize mode
!AMP_EASYMOVE    This toggles Easymove mode, which is where you can click on a non-titlebar to move Winamp
!AMP_LOADDIR    This brings up the dialog to add a directory to the playlist
!AMP_JUMPTOTIME    This brings up the Jump to Time dialog.. very nice attached to a hotkey!
!AMP_JUMPTOFILE    This brings up the Jump to File box, also nice attached to a hotkey!
!AMP_JUMP10FWD    This jumps 10 songs forward on the Playlist
!AMP_JUMP10BACK    duh
!AMP_WINDOWSHADE This toggles Windowshade mode, which could be usefull if you don't have the
        Winamp window active, but it is on the screen. Ctrl+W will toggle Winamp normally,
        if you assign Ctrl+W to this, you can toggle shade mode whether the window is active
        or not.

...(  I'm planning on going back in and redoing some of the code, as it is quite lengthy, I'm probably going to include the detection routine in all the commands, but that might slow the commands down just a little bit, so I'm going to put in a WinampAlwaysDetect or something that you can set in the step.rc.

...(  I'm about to start working  on a GeekAmp for Kjofol.(Geek_Kjofol, maybe) I hope to have the first version out in the next couple of days. (I haven't even installed Kjofol yet). Please give me some feedback if there is another player out there that you would like me to create a frontend for.

...(  I've started working on LiteScript, I'm thinking of putting up a seperate page for that and GeekAmp, while I'm at it. The only thing that is working is passing the commands line by line to the system. I'm working on the main structure, which I hope to have done in the next week or two. I love scripting languages, and I can customize this one to my liking :)

...(  I'm thinking of expanding Switch.exe to do some extra things like change the theme.rc line in the step.rc, or change the bmp, or some other usefull things like that. If anybody out there is actually reading this, give me some feedback on what you think.

Friday Nov 27th
05:05:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

...(  I get to see my baby today! My wife is pregnant with our second child, and I get to see the new baby on an Ultrasound today. My wife's sister is an ultrasound tech, so this is like the 5th time we've been able to see this baby, but this time the baby should be old enough to see if its going to be a boy or a girl. :)

...(  Well, I've figured out how to do Amp_repeat, shuffle, jump to file, jump to time, and a myriad of other things, so I guess GeekAmp 1.3 will have a bunch of updates. :) Hopefully I will be completely finished with it soon.

...(  Somebody sent me an email asking if I could do a Kjofol frontend. I'd be more than happy to, as soon as I figure out if I can. :)

Thursday Nov 26th
05:05:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

...(  Well, happy Thanksgiving to all you people out there who probably aren't really thankful for much of anything anyway.

...(  I'm working on GeekAmp version 1.3. What I have planned is to include things like Amp_Repeat, Shuffle, and hopefully any function that you can access from the Winamp system menu. Also I want to include a !command that shades both the playlist and the main window at the same time(per suggestion from Frog-).
...(  I've also finally added a !Amp_show function that shows/hides the main window. I can't beleive that I haven't included one in yet. I'm going to wait till I finish the other stuff to put the update up here, since its just a little one. I'm thinking about trying a shade / move to command. I don't know how that would work, though.

...(  I started work on LiteScript Tuesday night. I'm trying to decide exactly what I want to do with it. I decided that I will initially make a .exe that runs the scripts, and then copy the code into a LS .dll. (Its much quicker testing a .exe file). So if anybody out there that is actually looking at this page, and feels like dropping me an email, please give me some feedback. I'm really interested in this, I think it could become something, but not unless I get some feedback.

...(  If anybody has any more ideas for something that I can code, please drop me an email! I know that there are other programs out there that could use a remote control, so give me some ideas!

Tuesday Nov 24th
05:05:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

...( GeekAmp ver 1.2 is now available. This should let you specify your Winamp path in the step.rc file using WinAmpPath. Usage:
WinAmpPath c:\winamp\winamp.exe   <-- replace this with your full path, including winamp.exe. If this is not specified, it will default back to c:\progra~1\winamp\winamp.exe

...(  btw, CodeName 2 is now available here, and eFX version 0.4.0 is available here. This version of eFX now lets you set exclusions, which is very important.

Monday Nov 23rd
05:05:30 PM Eastern Standard Time

...(  I wrote another little program.. toggle.exe (!togglewharf). I created this in the hopes of using it to run two wharfs and selectively toggling both of them, but this didn't work, so I'll have to dig in a little deeper. But for now, you can use toggle.exe to toggle your wharf in a batch file or whatever.

...(  I am planning on taking all these little programs, and combining them all into one larger program that can execute Litestep functions from the prompt. So far that would be !quit, vwmselect, and !togglewharf. If you have any opinions on this, please let me know at [email protected]

...(  I wrote a couple of little programs that I thought I needed. One is quit.exe, which basically is the same as !Quit, just in .exe format. Another is vwmselect.exe, which is the same as !VWMDesk n, and is used the same way. You may find these usefull to use in a batch file or something. The source should be included with them.

Sunday Nov 22nd

...(  Ok. I have finished GeekAmp 1.1, and released my crappy source code along with it.

Here are the new changes:

The file has been renamed from geek_amp.dll to geekamp.dll.

!Amp_Play, !Amp_loadfile, !Amp_playlist, and !amp_prefs now detect whether Winamp is
running, and launch Winamp from c:\progra~1\winamp\winamp.exe minimized. I'm going to update this
in the future, till then live with it, or move your winamp temporarily.

!Amp_Power
    This toggles Winamp on /off. Pretty usefull tied to a hotkey
!Amp_OpenLoc
    This opens the Open Location dialog box
!Amp_ListStart
    This moves to the start of the playlist
!Amp_ListEnd
    This moves to the end of the playlist
!Amp_StopFade
    This stops with fadeout

...( Just a little piece of news: eFX 0.3.0 is now released to the public. This is probably cause of all the people complaining and asking non-stop all the time, which just goes to show that really annoying people get what they want. :)
      Heres some info about GeekAmp: I'm working on the updated and hopefully final version of this dll, and hopefully I can finish up this project shortly. I'm telling you, this module is really pathetic, and when you see the source, you will see what I mean.
...(  I'm planning on starting some other projects soon that I just thought of this morning. Here they are, and a brief description of each:

- [LiteScript] a batch type interpreter that can control not only normal application launching, but limited Litestep and Windows functions as well. For instance, you could have a script that would launch Netscape, but not before detecting the current res and setting your maximize dimensions and switching to the appropriate VWM.

- [LiteBoard] , an integrated clipboard enhancement that could not only run in a wharf tile like the one my MrJukes, but also be tied to bang commands for complete integration.

- [LiteApp], a dll that would allow you to set the current path for a certain exe to a bang command. This would allow you to call !Netscape, instead of calling the full path, like c:\progra\blah\blahg\lang\netscape.exe. I would really like some feedback on this one, as I could see the point, but maybe everyone else wouldn't.

- [LitePad], a MDI application that would launch Litestep specific files. This would be very similar to sysedit.exe that is included with Windows, except it could open step.rc, modules.ini, theme.rc, and so on.

Friday Nov 20th

...(  If anybody noticed, I listed the wrong date for yesterday.. <doh!> Anyway, the site is coming along really really slowly. This is due to the fact that I don't really care at the moment. On another note, GeekAmp 1.1 should be out next week, and I'll put the source code up here as well, which should make Snowchyld really happy, and let you all see how easy it is to create modules like this one.
...(  I am looking for a background image for this page. So if anybody out there really thinks this page sucks (which it does), and would like to contribute a nice background image, send it along)

Thursday Nov 19th

...(  This is the current home of GeekAmp, a control module for Winamp that runs under Litestep. This module lets you control Winamp using a series of !commands. These commands can be tied to anything in Litestep, including Hotkeys, Shortcuts, Popups, and even Wharf tiles.

For instance, you can put the following line in your step.rc file:
*Hotkey Win P !Amp_Play

This would play the current song whenever you pressed Win + P. This action can also be attached to popups and shortcuts, and even Wharf tiles.

In the Future:

...(  I have a couple of things planned for GeekAmp:

• Better naming of !commands... I'd like to completely redo the naming of the !commands, and possibly include a little .exe to remap them to the proper commands in your step.rc so you don't have to do it. Or I may keep the old ones, and rename them. Or I may leave them alone.

• Addition of more !commands

Hosted by Floach
.................
feedback

Winamp
.................
Winamp

GeekAmp
.................
GeekAmp1.3
GeekAmp1.2
GeekAmp1.1
GeekAmp 1.0
GeekAmp Source
Readme.txt

GeekJofol
.................
GeekJofol 1.0
Readme.txt

Misc 
.................
Switch 1.0
Readme.txt
Quit.exe
Quit.txt
VWMSelect.exe
VWMSelect.txt
Toggle.exe
Toggle.txt

Litestep
.................
Litestep.net
Floach.pimpin.net
litestep.m1crosoft.com
Litestep Commands
Litestep.abyssal.net
LS Users Gallery

Builds
.................
Litestep Changelog
Latest Litestep Builds
Latest Litestep Source

Fun Stuff
.................
MCP.com
Userfriendly.org
WinFiles New Apps
WinFiles New Themes
Wheel of Time Game
High Quality Themes
eFX Homepage

Good Graphics Sites
.................
Digital Blasphemy
The Digital Knight