Peter Wooley’s Blog

I have a problem. A big problem.For as long as I can recall, I have had unimaginably hard time dealing with any situations where others (or myself) are put on the spot and they (or I) may succeed or fail miserably. The single factor that determines if I’m comfortable or huddled in or a corner with my eyes tightly shut and hands pressed against my ears is my inability to tell the future. I can’t, for the life of me, know that whoever is in the spotlight is going to sink or swim, do well or die trying—and that drives to me to act in the strangest ways.I should specify that the only time I struggle is when I have absolutely no control over the outcome. This is often the case when other people are on the line: if someone tries to sing the national anthem at a sporting event that has questionable talent, if some body begins debating with no idea what they’re doing, etc. However, things are more specific when I’m the one I’m worried about. For example, if a piece of my created work is up for critique, I cannot stand the time when people are appraising it: thinking, examining, passing judgment. I feel I have to escape any way I can. If it would look crazy to leave, I just wrap up in my ball (as silently as I can) and hope it looks less crazy than walking out.When one of these events happens, my stomach and chest tighten in a way that feels similar to nausea. However, unlike the undulation of nausea, everything stays tight until the experience is over. When this happens, my mind immediately thinks of retreating. I often try to fight it, but it’s a pretty powerful feeling. If I am able to close off enough sound and shut my eyes, I literally feel like I’ve left the situation. I attempt to liken it to when a person has multiple personalities, unfortunately, I have no extra personality to take the punishment I am running from—I just look like a weirdo wrapped up in a ball.If money were more available, I’d consider seeing a professional about this. I assume it is entirely connected to something bizarre in my brain, and I’d love to find it, yell at it, kick it in the shins and throw it out of my head forever.Contrary to what some think, I in no way enjoy my strange behavior. It is, by far, the worst habit I have and the one I’d most like to get rid of. In addition, I seem to not realize what I’m doing when the feeling gets really bad. So much so that, after it’s over, I finally see that I was actually being distracting with my behavior – as much as I try not to be. That makes me feel like I’ve lost control of myself—and I hate losing control. That’s one of the reasons I’ll not be using recreational drugs or binging on alcohol in my life time.I’m sure I’ll be able to take care of this at some point. Either through professional help, growing out of it, or a swift kick in the pants, it just has to go away.

Recently, I’ve launched into a Utility-using trip! Partly from my exposure to LifeHacker, Digg and a few friends, I’ve been able to see and use some amazing applications that are shockingly handy on my Windows XP-based system.Launchy — launchy.netTo start, if you haven’t tried Launchy, you may not have read my previous 400 posts praising its awesome-ness. This application allows you to launch programs by simply typing in the first few characters of program’s name and hitting enter. Plus, you can skin the application with some Peter Wooley pizazz (look for Black Glass and Top Tab in the skins menu). Launchy is open source, and free as can be.RocketDock — punksoftware.com/rocketdockRocketDock is, for all intensive purposes, the Mac OS X Dock for Windows. I was just about to write this one off, but Tyler took a chance on it and it really paid off. The most popular skin for this dock is an OS X theme, so it shows what Windows are trying to do. If you’re unfamiliar with the OS X dock, it is a beautiful version of the Windows Task Bar and Quick Launch spun together with the Recycle Bin and a place for your Minimized windows to reside. It consumes very little memory, very little CPU and has excellent customization features from skins to icons to clocks. Give it a couple of days and see if it grows on you as much as it has me. RocketDock is freeware and not open source.Samurize — samurize.comSamurize is yet another powerful tool. Technically, it is “an advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Windows.” What they’re trying to say is that it’s a tool that allows you to view your computer’s uptime, your current bandwidth limit, your hard drive’s remaining space, another computer’s uptime, or a ton of other facts about your computer that you may not even know you can see! In addition, it allows you to design just how you want to show off all that fun information. Using bar graphs, text, icons or other goodies, you can make your desktop look the way you want it to. That does mean that you’ll need to do some work to get it going, but if you’re into the techy side of things, this app will rock your desktop. Samurize is freeware and not open source (as far as I can tell).MacSound — landvermesser.tripod.comNext in line is MacSound, a simply tool that allows you to control your Windows system’s volume similarly to how you might control Mac OS X’s. Upon installation and launching, a volume icon appears in your system tray, and using Alt+Up/Down, you can change the volume setting of your PC. A little Mac-inspired box also appears on-screen, and fades out when you’re done. All told, it takes a simply idea and executes it, what more could you ask for? MacSound is freeware and not open source.TaskBar Shuffle 2.0 — http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/It has always bothered me that you cannot, by default, re-arrange the open items in your Windows Task Bar. Apparently, it bothered someone else, and they made an application to allow you to! TaskBar Shuffle is a simple app that lets you drag and drop your task bar items into the order you enjoy. When managing a huge number of items or if you’re just nuts about organization, this can come in very handy. TaskBar Shuffle is freeware and not open source.TweakUI — microsoft.comTweakUI is part of the Windows XP PowerToys that Microsoft made available some time ago. It’s purpose is to allow the Power User some extra power over their Windows XP User Interface. It allows you to control a host of things from what system icons can be on your desktop (yes, you can get rid of the Recycle Bin!) to auto-login to what drives auto-play their content. To me, this options should just come with XP, but short of actually coming with XP, they’re handy. TweakUI (and the other XP PowerToys) are freely available and very much not open source.So, those are just a few of the apps that are making my life a little easier, and a lot more fun. And I haven’t even got into Portable Apps! I’m going to have to write a post about Portable Apps. Hopefully you can poke around with this list while I get around to my next post.

Little more than an image of work shown to a few people is enough to get me floating on cloud nine. In this case, LifeHacker put up two images. Granted they were just skins I made for a program called Launchy titled Black Glass and Top Tab and they were listed amongst the other skins, it just felt pleasant.I had a conversation with a friend earlier where I mentioned escaping. Escaping the here and now and feeling as though I were somewhere else. The conversation came up as a Lord of the Rings song came across my playlist and I left my work in Photoshop for a few moments and drifted into somewhere epic. I find myself drifting away every time I see a piece of work I’ve done in the hands of someone it was not intended for. Whether its a Web site that gets Dugg, a voice over put into a project or a horrifically buggy chat application open in a browser across a room, I can’t help but think I may just be successful. I can’t honestly think I’ll ever get to a point where money is no longer a concern, or gain enough fame to be annoyed when a random person emails me bout my work, but in my occupation, I may just find success.