Minor Manipulations

If you look to the right you'll find that I've turned the player off and changed it's color. I think the new color is less "in my face". Hope others like that too.

The reason I turned the thing off was that it was getting in the way of other functions on my computer. It slowed my dsl way down. It's a constant source of music/noise. The player uses Java which doesn't seem to like having multiple applets running at the same time. Add a mail browser to that and things get even worse. It took 10 minutes to check my email this morning. To load the daily jigsaw puzzle required closing two tabs. If performance doesn't improve the thing goes. Does anyone know if there are some Java settings I can adjust to make things work better?

My PC is very knowledgeable about computers and software. He suggested some free photo manipulation software, GIMP, that is open source and works on multiple platforms. I installed it today and tried out a few of the filters. There are tutorials and books showing how to use all the features it has. Those will come in handy as I'm finding myself in need of a digital terms dictionary.

And while I'm thinking about it, it's raining here today. The lovely soft pitter pat of raindrops hitting on surfaces and the smell of damp. Totally peaceful!