HOW TO DISABLE OR REMAP CAPS LOCK (or any other key)

I got to thinking about the caps lock key because of ALL CAPS DAY, and it took me a while to remember the last time I used it. It was last month… oh wait, that was when I pressed it by accident. The month before that I used a few times… no, those were accidental too. 90% of the times my caps lock key is pressed, it’s either unintentional or it’s my cat.
If caps lock were somewhere else on the keyboard it would be alright. But as it is, it’s more useful if it’s turned off. So here’s how to silence the beast that is caps lock. This article is just for Windows, but I’ll write something like this for Linux sometime.

Windows XP revamp, part 2: convenience (a.k.a. UI improvements)

Now you have a nice, easy-on-the-eyes Windows XP desktop. If you don’t, then you either missed the first part of the guide or I just suck at writing guides. So anyways you have a pretty XP setup, but it’s still rather annoying and inconvenient sometimes. Here are some cool programs I found that give Windows XP a little usability boost.

Windows XP revamp, part 1: visuals

Truth be told, I’d love to have Windows 7 once it’s released. It has the nice looks of Vista plus some slick interface improvements. But alas, I’ll only get a new computer next year, so that’ll have to wait. In the meantime I’m making my XP desktop nicer. There are a lot of things in XP that are less than satisfactory, both in looks and in usability. So I’ve improved on some of these, and I now I’ll tell you what I learned.

Gnome desktop overhaul guide

The Gnome desktop environment is pretty cool. It’s simple and solid. Unfortunately a default Gnome desktop is not very appealing to the eyes. We all come to the point where we wonder, “Can I make my Gnome desktop look super l33t?” And then when we see screenshots of awesome Gnome desktops, a burning desire flames up in our hearts. That’s how it was for me, anyways. So I set out to transform my desktop into something that looks cooler.

deck out your Windows XP, Linux style

I like Windows XP, mostly because I don’t have money to buy Vista. XP works alright, but after using Linux (Mint and Ubuntu) there are just a few really useful features that I miss. XP also looks pretty bad compared to newer operating systems. So here are some nice improvements I’ve found. These are best for people who use Linux as well as Windows, but most of these are useful even if you don’t use Linux.

unlock files/folders in Ubuntu

I’m running Ubuntu 9.04 now. It actually doesn’t crash every 20 minutes like 8.10 did for me (to this day I do not know why it did), so I’m happy. It was super easy to set up, but of course there are always those little problems you run into. One pesky annoyance was that when I moved my giant music/documents/videos/games folder from Windows over to Ubuntu, it was locked! That means I couldn’t delete, add, or move files within that folder and all subfolders.

Here’s the solution I found. Open a terminal and run this command: sudo chmod 777 [path] -R, where [path] is your locked folder or file. In my case I did sudo chmod 777 /home/fipi/Stuff -R, and viola, now I can delete, create, and move files to my heart’s content.

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