Month: December 2008

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Moving your wallpapers

Microsoft, in all its blessed wisdom, decided to keep Windows wallpapers in the system directory. This can lead to stability and\or security issues (“I was trying to install a wallpaper of my kids at the lake, and I saw this folder called SYSTEM32 taking up a bunch of space, so I tried to delete it, and now my computer won’t boot!”). It can also make disk images needlessly large: because Windows does such a crappy job of using JPG images as wallpaper, I keep around 125MB of wallpapers in my own WINDOWS folder, along with a 300MB archive file of wallpapers not currently in use.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could change the location that Windows looks in when you right-click on the desktop and choose Properties > Desktop? Well you can! Just fire up Regedit and go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Look for a string called WallPaperDir. The value will probably be at the default location – %SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper. Simply change this to whatever directory you want to use (perhaps F:\Wallpaper) and close Regedit. No reboot is needed – the next time you open the applet, Windows will look in the directory of your choosing!

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How Tina Fey Got Her Scar

Comedienne Tina Fey has a prominent scar on her face. She’s never revealed how she got that scar, and that’s caused a flurry of speculation on the Interwebs. Hell, there’s even a whole website – the Tina Fey Scar Detective – dedicated to finding out what happened.

Obsessive Internet geeks will no longer have to guess what happened. In the January issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband), says that “a stranger slashed Fey’s face when she was 5 years old… in the front yard of her house”. Richmond further states that “[the] scar was fascinating to me. This is somebody who, no matter what it was, has gone through something. And I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life”. For her part, Fey always felt that talking about the attack would feel like exploiting it, and that’s why she’s kept quiet about it all these years. Well, that, and it bothers her parents, who feel somewhat responsible for the attack.

Oh, and Fey is on the cover, too. Yowza!!!

(click to enlarge)
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The USB lunch bag!

Asians have this “thing” for USB gadgets. Sometimes these gadgets are useless, like the USB Fragrance Oil Burner, the USB Humping Dog (no, it’s not a flash drive, it’s just a toy that looks like it’s humping your USB port when plugged in), a USB fridge that only holds one can at at time, or the USB-powered Hamster Wheel (it’s a toy hamster, by the way).

Even when a USB gadget is actually useful, Asians like dressing it up. Take the USB thumb drive that looks like sushi, for example. Even the Brits have gotten in on it with the USB mincemeat pie flash drive!

I’ve never been interested in actually owning any of these USB devices… until now! Behold the USB-powered lunch bag:

The manufacturers claim that the bag will hold the contents at 140F as long as the device is plugged in to a USB port on your computer. Engadget doesn’t know when (or even if) the bags will make it to the US.

All I know is that I want one!

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Eva Amurri: Butterface

By now, everyone on the planet – even your grandma – has heard the word “butterface”, a not-so-nice slang term for a woman with an attractive body but less than attractive face (hence, “but her face!” = “butterface”). Pointless aside: such women are sometimes referred to as BOBFOCs in the UK, which stands for “Body Off Baywatch, face off Crimewatch” (Britain’s version of Cops).

There’s no better example of a butterface than Eva Amurri, the daughter of Italian director Franco Amurri and American actress Susan Sarandon. Her face isn’t horrible, but it’s nothing to write home about, either. Her body, on the other hand, is slammin’:

(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)

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