1st November 2009
A new version of SaneBar, a nifty utility application developed by (you guessed it) me, was just released today! It brings a new exciting feature called Quick Launch, which, however, is completely unlike the quick launch you may all know.
But first, what exactly is SaneBar? Basically, it's a toolbar that sits at the top of your screen and acts like the title bar of a maximized window, even when the current active window isn't maximized. What this means is that not only it doesn't occupy any space you can't use (like the start bar does), but you can access window features much faster, because you can just throw your mouse to the top right corner and close the active window, regardless where or how small it is. Same goes for maximizing/restoring, where you can just double click the bar anywhere.
One of the other useful features it has is a "hot-zone" in the top left corner – just move your mouse to the top left corner of your screen to reveal your desktop. This is very handy when you often find yourself minimizing programs to access shortcuts or files on your desktop. Throw your mouse to the corner, launch a shortcut, the swoop it to the corner again and all your windows are back! This also works when dragging files, which makes it possible to drag or extract files to your desktop even when your screen is cluttered with windows.
What Quick Launch brings to this is that you can middle click anywhere on SaneBar, hold the button down, throw your mouse in any of the 8 directions (or just leave it where it is, in the middle) and release the button, thus launching any of your 9 configured applications or files incredibly quickly! Because you don't have to hunt down any tiny icons or shortcuts with your mouse, and instead use a couple of quick hand motions and just a single click, the speed of this is unmatched by any other ways of launching apps you may be accustomed to, including the desktop, the quick launch bar or the start menu. If you decide that you don't want to launch any applications after all, you can just right click while holding the middle button (releasing it launches an app), which cancels the operation.
This is one of the features that SaneBar is worth using for, was worth making for and that I'm very proud of. So grab it already and give it a try!
0 Comments · Post a Comment!
12th September 2009 posted on Groovy General Games Blog
You may say it's too early to announce sequels, when Death Pong isn't even out yet. Well, Death Pong Paranoid isn't quite a sequel, it's a different take on the concept of running people over with a ball. 'Paranoid' is a play on the word 'Arkanoid', so of course, instead of having two paddles facing each other, this time it will be solely a single player experience, with the player's mission being destroying all blocks in a screen before progressing to the next level.
The people roaming the battlefield will stay, as the trademark element of Death Pong, but this time they won't be for points, only for money, much like the 'Massacre' game mode of Death Pong. Power-ups and upgrades will be different, so to better suit the new gameplay and will be bought for money, instead of having them randomly appear from broken blocks. We also have a few bonus stages, special abilities and other nifty features in mind, so this is a very exciting game concept for us!
The good thing about this concept is that not only we're building a brand, but we can also reuse a lot of content from Death Pong, which saves us a lot of trouble and development time, while still retaining full freedom when creating new elements and designing challenges. Death Pong is of course the priority as of now, but when that's out, we will fully start working on Death Pong Paranoid.
Stay tuned!
0 Comments · Post a Comment!
31st August 2009
If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all! I'd like to see you do better! — And so on. How can people not see the logical fallacy in this? Just because I don't/can't do something (either at all or better), I have no right to criticize it? Seriously?
Let me show you a blatantly obvious example. So you're given this brand new car for a test ride. You get in with the maker of the car. (How you got to know a person like this I'll leave to your imagination.) But you notice that the headlights are facing away from the car, so that you can't see the middle of the road in front of you. “Well… wouldn't it be better, you know, if the headlights faced the road so I could see?” you say. The car maker immediately jumps and starts shouting at you: “What?! Well I'd like to see you make a better car, if you're such an expert! I gave you a free ride, you don't have to be here if you don't like it!”
At that moment, you're probably sitting there staring at him dumbfounded by the ridiculousness of what he just said.
But for some reason, this doesn't strike people when they come across criticism of smaller things like, say, drawings or blog posts. Sure, a lot of people can draw or write. Why don't you go and make your own blog, see if people like it better, huh? Yeah, but have you noticed that most video game reviewers actually don't make games? Or that film critics don't make movies? Or book reviewers?
Sure, negative criticism can make you feel bad, especially if it's ill-intended. But if you can put your feelings aside, you'll notice that feedback from others actually makes you improve. And isn't that usually a good thing? Unless you want to remain a bad artist/writer/whatever… Besides, negative comments can be made hilarious, if done right! (For some reason, you can't usually make positive criticism sound funny, at least not as easily) Sarcasm, ridicule and absurdities come into play, snarky comments appear, hilarity ensues! And humor is good for you!
So there you go! Criticize all you want, feedback is a good thing! Even negative one. (Just don't diss, that's neither funny nor valuable.)
0 Comments · Post a Comment!
31st October 2008
Adobe designers, are you kidding me?
Seriously, what's next?
What, are they trying to jump on the bandwagon of minimalism? The box doesn't even have the Photoshop icon on it (the colors are inverted)! Where's the borderline of minimalism? What's the point of using only text? Where are the symbols that've been used for centuries? (You know, the whole brush and paint stuff to show what the program's for, or the beloved eye…)
And don't get me even started on the new icons…
0 Comments · Post a Comment!
29th October 2008
Ever since I've decided my nickname would be FutureMillennium back in 2002, I've been using Google to check what sites talk about me, because my nickname was unique. Any results that appeared in that search were always somehow related to me, because no one else had used this name or even the phrase “Future Millennium”.
Speaking of which, how did this nickname come to life anyway? Well, I was originally using just “Millennium” as my nickname (now don't ask me how that came to life, I'm using it since I'm 11, although the correct spelling settled later), but when I first got to create an account on the Internet back in 2002 (yes, it was WinCustomize), guess what happened? Correct – Millennium was taken. It's always been a very popular site, so I wasn't surprised. I've thought about what to put before or after “Millennium” to make it unique, I think I tried stuff like “New” or “Neo”, but those were taken too (or maybe I just didn't like them, I don't remember anymore), so I ended up with “Future”. And for 2 reasons, too: 1) I like the future (more than the present or the past) and 2) the name “Millennium” actually comes from a story I've been thinking about since I'm 11 that's named “Future War” (so yeah, Future War + Millennium = FutureMillennium, right?).
What's been happening lately is that I'm noticing new sites popping up in the Google results for my nickname. Most of them speak of the future millennium (those are usually either Christian or economically oriented, or both) and there are some people that don't care that I've been using this nickname for over 6 years now and just decided to use it. What's more, suddenly there are even domain names that do contain “FutureMillennium” – FutureMillennium.com (Creation Date: 2008-08-27) and FutureMillennium.net (Creation Date: 2008-01-11) are those I know of. The first one seems like an obvious case of domain name speculation (“Hey, I own your name now, you pay up or you'll never have it!”) and the second… uh… I'm not really sure. But come on, Future Millennium? Compare this with my original site – Millennium Web.net (Creation Date: 2004-08-13).
So what's this now? Has it taken people 7 years to figure out it's the future millennium (that's 7 years from 2001)? And why have they never spoken about it before (at least on the Internet)? Or has just Google updated their search algorithm so that it shows up sites that weren't there before? (I don't think that's the case, all the new results are what they are to the Internet – new.)
I'm not mad, but it's bothering me a little. I've always been used to these Google results being dedicated solely to me. And now it's filling up with crap that has no relevance to me. (And what's worse, it's no good crap! It's just crap crap.) Also, they took my domain name. Seriously, people. My domain name. Who'd buy a domain with someone's nickname in it? Come on! I understand that Groovy was taken (and that it was and still is empty), but FutureMillennium?
(Oh, I should update my photo on WinCustomize…)
0 Comments · Post a Comment!
27th August 2008
Lorem ipsum, you know the deal… For far too long has this blog stood still. For far too long I've owned this domain with nothing on it. No more! Let us begin now!
Hello, hello, I'm Zdeněk Gromnica, also known as FutureMillennium, and I'm a Czech student, artist, designer, writer and programmer. I'm also the president of Groovy General, s.d. and a freelancer that works for softpae and Skládanka web design among many others…
What you can expect from this blog is my thoughts, comments, but also posts encouraging discussion and reviews of many things I come across, especially of things I think I understand well (that'd probably be electronics, computers, software, hardware, art, music, musical instruments, food, you name it…)
Get ready for more!
» Read more about me
0 Comments · Post a Comment!