Awesome. Click for fullview.

I just saw this icon set today by jg-visuals, but it turns out that these oh-so-awesome retro icons are part of a suite of designs ... Windows visual style, CD Art Display skin, Styler toolbar, etc. Your whole system can be unified now. I feel like playing SNES now ...

Nintendo says they will start offering videos via the Wii and also deliver original content. Nintendo’s going to have their own news station one of these days. Read the full story here.

The awesome new icon set by Sebastiaan de With:

Download ‘em!

For those of you who don’t know, Vundo is a horrible virus that comes in through holes present in Internet Explorer [download security updates NOW] and makes ¹ Automatic Updates stop working, even if you try and start it yourself, going through the registry etc, ² makes a lot of ads pop up in your face at random. And it’s funny [har har] because the ads are for programs to get viruses and adware off of your computer ... huh. SCAM. Anyhoo, ³ When you try and shut down your computer, explorer will just hang there and you have to force quit in order to continue the shutdown.

I’ve had these problems for a couple days now but I couldn’t take it anymore! And, I let a friend borrow my installation CD so he could diagnose whatever computer problem he had so reinstalling XP was simply not an option for me ... and I’m impatient as hell so I was going to find a solution.

My first pass of Google searches led me to an “AU Reset Tool” that supposedly resets the Automatic Updates module in Windows. The only problem is, the download link page is gone completely from the site which pissed me off to no end. Some of my friends call me the “Interent Goldminer” so if I gave up right then, I would have to set that crown in a box somewhere. Scouring even more obsure parts of the ‘Net, I came up with a name or a program that fixes whatever problems you might have with AU. Except, it didn’t work for me. The program is pretty good though [ Dial-a-fix ], I just had a crapload of infected files, memory, and registry entries [about 101, I believe]. Thanks to this post, I was able to fix my computer and it runs *sweetly*.

First, I went over to SUPERAntiSpyware and downloaded the free version. Went through the config and selected all the recommended options, etc.

Second, I restarted my computer [as required by the program to finish removing all the yuckiness from your harddrive].

Third, I followed these steps:

Start regedit.exe and delete the following key [contains the WU
service configuration]:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv

Do a reboot now!

Then run this command line [from a command prompt or from Start/Run], it
installs the AutoUpdate service [line will wrap in the newsreader!]:

%SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %SystemRoot%\inf\au.inf

[it must be a space between DefaultInstall and 132]

If it asks for your OS CD-ROM to get some files, just point it to the
folder %windir%\System32 [%windir% is typically C:\Windows].

Then run the following commands:

regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll
regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll
regsvr32.exe wups.dll
regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll

Do a reboot again.

Then check if you can start and stop the Automatic Updates service
successfully from services.msc

Just a few notes though ... when I restarted and went into my registry, the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv” key wasn’t there [it got removed by SAS] so I skipped to the command line step. I also did not have to start services.msc as Windows informed me automatically that I had updates ready to be installed. Sweet.

EDIT: I’m definitely getting a Mac and relegating this computer to torrent duty for my anime.

I found an awesome new freelance site today by the name of “Coroflot”. It actually feels like deviantART, but with an emphasis on freelancing. Other sites I joined seemed a little meh and too corporate-feeling to me.

Of course I wouldn’t be putting this info up here if I didn’t sign up as well! And, here’s my profile page.

Plus, some hilarious reading material that inspired the shirts!

Read the comic!

I literally LOL’d when I read the comic and once I found out there was a shirt? Psh, please. Consider it preordered.

Read the comic!

Another comic, another literal LOL. Awesomeness ... what? You want some shirts too? Well, get ‘em at Shark Robot! Here’s the Professor Oak shirt and here’s the Battle Set Blue shirt.

I’m not quite sure where I could where my Professor Oak shirt. The reactions/double-takes will be hilarious though.

First off, I’ll just explain that I’m not crazy. At least not in the medical sense. But I was having a problem with my “L” button on my DS Lite so I thought, “Why don’t I order one of those special screwdrivers that can open Nintendo systems?” Well, it came in the mail so I took apart my DS! Not all the way mind you, but this guy did. I only got to here, just to clear the dust out of the shoulder buttons.

Click the preview if you want the hi-res version. I also got a USB power-charge cable for my DS as well. I don’t always carry around the charger with my but my laptop usually goes where I go so it seemed like a good investment. Plus, I just wanted to plug my DS into my computer. It didn’t seem to do much but then again I haven’t been playing my DS five hours a day lately [rough estimate].

The thing I didn’t anticipate though, was my DS rebooting, like I got it brand new. I had to go through the “pick-your-name-and-customize-yiur-DS” thing again.

Yay for new beginnings! Hey, what the heck is this? Oh! I know this is going to be random but check out this pigeon!

I was like, “Daaaaayum!!”. I was waiting for the train early yesterday afternoon and I just had to document it. There’s a comedian by the name of Gabriel Iglesias who explains the 5 levels of “big”. This pigeon is definitely stage 5.

SYNC is an original cyberpunk project by a guy who goes by the name of extvia on deviantART. His character and world creations always surprise me with how cool/awesome/undeniably cyberpunk they are. He’s been working on this series for quite some time but only just now released the prologue to the whole story. I’ll give you the text version and you can check out the accompanying art afterwards:

There was a time when the lights of the culture on this particular planet named Earth, were shining like stars in the dark night. But after thousands of years of shining, the sun that once promised light and warmth for countless centuries slowly lost its energy. Without the warmth of the sun’s rays, a violent blizzard soon swept throughout the globe, turning it into a freezing cold world.

The sudden approach of theIce Age caused great misery to human beings. More than half of them lost their lives in the blizzard’s winds and the survivors were forced to hide in underground santuaries. With so little resources, they struggled for survival.

People began to expand their sanctuaries into huge underground colonies. Yet, time was hard and the resources were dwindling. People had to change their lives, their society, and even themselves.

After 300 years of evolution, humans became radically different beings. Their silhouettes now looked like hybrid-beasts, with electrical impulses running in their circuit vessels. They were not born by “mothers”, but produced in factories. They now called themselves androids.

“Am I life? Am I real? Does my existence have a meaning?”
They kept asking, but there was no answer. All they could do was to hide their anxiety deep within.

300 YEARS LATER

The time was the 24^th century. The sun slowly recovered from its long sleep and the permanent shadow of the Ice Age began to vanish. People rose from their sanctuaties to feel the warmth from the long lost sunshine.

The Earth was still covered in snow, but there was hope. With smiles and tears, people began to re-synchronize their fragmented world.

There’s also a timeline so you can track the progress of man’s evolution into cyborg and then android. See the whole thing here [and remember to click the image for the full-sized view].

You can find the rest of SYNC [trust me, there’s a lot more awesomeness] in extvia’s gallery. This is easily my favorite wallpaper of his [fullsize is 1680x1050px]:

Last but not least, be sure to check out his official site.

I will most certainly be on the lookout for when extvia finally gets his work published. Of course a lot of things are in the planning stages now but it’s looking pretty sweet by far.

This video is hilarious! One of the guys from Attack of the Show on G4TV made this parody of Kanye’s album. Ooh, Kanye’s gonna be mad because of a certain line in there. Anyhoo, you can check out the video, the original blog post, or download it! Hehe.

localhostr uploadr is a simple widget that comes with a very pleasing interface to use. It’s purpose? To upload of course! It allows you to upload any filetype 50mb or smaller to the site localhostr, from where you can share your file instantly. The guys who made this nifty uploader tool [Bluebear Studios] aren’t affiliated with localhostr officially, which is why they have a site solely dedicated to the widget.

Oh yeah, they have versions Windows and Macs [with an additional portable version for PCs]. Awesome.

Get it at Vanilla Soap. Rick Patrick has a bunch of other cool icons and goodies at his site [like the recently released Lätt and Lätt Sjö icon sets] as well, so be sure to check those out.

FontSpace is a community of font designers and font addicts. All 9488 free typefaces that you can download have been hand-categorized into 3000+ categories for your graphic design, scrapbooking, or documents.

And oh yeah, they’re free. What are you waiting around here for? Get to ‘em! I got some really nice thick fonts earlier today for a possible redesign of my portfolio site. So lovely ... yeah, I’m a font addict too. Maybe I should put that on my resume.

If When I open up a clothing boutique, I want it close to this:

This store is in São Paulo, Brazil and sells ultra-exclusive brands that aren’t selling anywhere else. That practically screams [and ensures] success. Take a peep at more pics and the details.

Why aren’t there cool things like this in the states? From Cool Hunting:

Portal consists of a diffuser screen that acts as an abstract doorway with lines of light that travel back and forth through it, bouncing around the room. As a doorway represents the transition from one space to another, Portal visually displays this moment of change as a 2D plane using the diffuser screen.

Get the full story and location [if you just so happen to be jetting to France] here.