The Political Machine is a strategy/simulation game. What has made it so popular over the years is that while it is a game, it has a pretty serious and robust simulation running behind it. Most of the data is collected from a wide array census results, surveys and demographic research. Every four years when we update the data, we are constantly surprised on the changes we see in different states. The opioid epidemic is one example. This issue wasn’t on ...
The first month of the year is quickly coming to an end, so I'm back with some highlights of some of the newest Masters skins from this month. I can't always list every one in an article, so be sure to check the galleries daily for all the latest free and Master skins we get submitted to WinCustomize.com. https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/all Also take a look at the featured skins which should feature a new one each day, but here's a re-cap of the latest WindowBlinds skin! Wh...
As I mentioned yesterday, there is a really good use-case for the Surface Pro X as a device that uses Remote Desktop to your "main machine" when doing heavy lifting provided that it is sufficiently powerful enough to do light tasks on its own relative to say a Surface Pro 7. Now, this is for my purposes. YMMV. As you can see, for me, the Surface Pro X hardware has the edge over the Surface Pro 7. It's on the software support -- from Microsoft -- where...
This is my work station area at Stardock when I'm working in the Object Desktop area of the company which is located on the third floor of the building. As you can see, I have 3 monitors connected to a Surface Pro. The reason I'm up here is so that I can collaborate in person with the rest of my team. And the reason for the Surface Pro is that I frequently use it as a tablet for sketching on screenshots and designs. The only downside is that the Surface Pro 7, while quite power...
Dark mode has become popular for its eye and battery saving properties. I get daily updates from gHacks.net. Lo and behold, three days ago I got this email from them. The app works not just on W10 1803 and later, but also on Chrome and firefox. W10's dark mode can be accessed without this app, but it takes time, and frankly, this is easy-peasy: "Advantages of Easy Dark Mode: Enables quick switching between Light and Dark display modes in Windows 10.Selectable Hotkey.Fully suppo...
If you're interested in UX design, you will definitely want to keep up with what Microsoft is update to. https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/#/ Fluent is the name of Microsoft's new design language for Windows. Here is an example of Fluent design in action. As we get up for a major WinCustomize revamp, we are going to be taking cues from this design language to make the site more accessible, faster (much faster) and more modern. Stay tuned.
I love my Surface Pro. It doesn't always love me. This Summer, a firmware update caused the keyboard cover connector to not work anymore which forced me to use the Surface truly as a tablet. It wasn't...a good experience. While I wasn't a fan of Windows 8, it was a pretty decent touch OS. Windows 10...not so much. A big part of the reason Windows 10 isn't good for touch is that it doesn't use the screen edges well. Windows 10, by default, has these touch-based...
Bring "Zones" to your Windows 10 Touchscreens with TouchTasks!TouchTasks is a unique productivity app that lets you assign tasks to specific locations on the edge of your Windows touch screens. TouchTasks works by taking advantage of the fact that the touch sensitive area of a touch screen is larger than the display part of the screen. As a result, users can launch useful tasks by touching specified zones on the screen. By default, TouchTasks assigns the left middle edge of the touch sc...
When it comes to dogs my views can be summed up by this incident this weekend... I am at the store and I need a USB-C cable. They're $9.99. I call my wife and tell her "I dunno, $10 for a cable, can you just bring the one we have downstate with you?" However, before I had left the store I bought a $9.99 "Super Premium" dog bone. Priorities. Post your picture of your dog here. We have two dogs. First, the new puppy: This is an "English Creme" retr...
What an adventure... So I built "Frog-2019" and this time I bought a Fractal Design case that has a USB-C port on the front! Great. Well, my first motherboard, an ASROCK X299 Tachi said it had a USB-C front panel on it but when I got it, the actual header on the motherboard was missing. Ok. That gets swapped out with an ASUS and now Windows 10 wants activation. And this was a ridiculous situation. It said I needed to reactivate. Ah but there's a link that ...
Fall officially arrives next week, so now is a perfect time to start getting your desktop ready for the seasonal change. We have a nice variety of skins designed for the Fall season. Here's a few of my favorites! See more Fall inspired skins and themes here. Autumn forest stream for DeskScapes Autumn for WindowBlinds Fall Color for WindowBlinds Fall leaves for DeskScapes
Greetings! For this After Action Report I'm going to be playing Galactic Civilizations v3.9 with only the Heroes of Star Control civilizations. I'll be pointing out notable and interesting things as I go along. The SetupI'm going to play as the galaxy's classiest cannibals, the Phamyst. The Phamyst have the Ravenous ability which results in them receiving food after every battle which can be used to build cities. However, this food spoils after 25 turns so use it or l...
Stardock has released Groupy v1.25 with Dark Mode UI support. Groupy is a program that allows users to combine different programs together into a single window with tab navigation. For example, users can combine multiple Explorer windows together to get a tabbed interface or the same with the command prompt or even mix and match any set of windows. Also resolved some tab color issues with the KB4505903 update for Windows 10 in dark mode. While the app should soon prompt...
It's been an exciting Summer so far for fans of Star Control. Last month we re-released the classic trilogy on Steam, posted a major update to the engine to improve the visuals, and now we are busy working on chapter 3 of the Earth Rising expansion. For those of you who have played the game or will be buying the game in the near future, let's talk about the galactic scene today. Star Control takes place in the not-so-distant future. The stars are real stars, and in Origins they're placed...
A few weeks into spring, and while the weather is warming up we're looking at some cool wallpapers for the desktop. WinCustomize has a great selection of seasonal wallpapers to match any theme you are using. Check out all the spring wallpapers here: https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/wallpapers/search/spring