24/02/2007 - Saturday

I wonder if it's possible to get addicted to nicotine by using the nicotine patches that you get for weening yourself off of smoking. I know it's possible to get addicted to the substitute drugs they give you to get off of cocaine and heroin, but what if you're not addicted to nicotine to start with? I suppose it's highly possible as the patches are designed to give you the same amount of nicotine so you don't actually smoke (at least the strong patches do - there are different strengths so you eventually cut down and then stop using them), so you could get addicted to it. It was just something I was wondering while I was sitting on the toilet this morning.

Apparently I'm red-green colour blind! I was just taking some online tests where you're shown the circles with different coloured blobs in them and you're supposed to see a number that's hidden in it. I could only see the ones that I was supposed to see and not the ones I wasn't supposed to see. No wonder my webpages always have crappy looking colour schemes ;)

Unlocker is a piece of software for Windows that lets you unlock locked files and folders. Don't you just hate it when you're trying to delete a file or folder (or move or rename it) but Windows thinks that it is in use and it doesn't let you do anything to it? I know I used to, but then I found Unlocker around two years ago. I hadn't needed to use it for a while but I just had to as Windows thought something was using a folder I was trying to delete (I had just burnt the folders contents to a DVD disk and I wanted to get rid of it). With Unlocker you just need to right-click the folder/file in question, click on the Unlocker menu item, then click unlock in the box that appears (listing all of the locked files and folders). Bingo! The file or folder is now unlocked and you can continue using it like normal. It even tells you which program has it locked, but usually this is explorer.exe so you couldn't touch it otherwise unless you restarted Windows. I thought I would write about this bit of free software as it tole me that there was a newer version available, otherwise I probably would have just used it and forgot about it!

RocketDock is an application launcher that sits somewhere on your screen and lets you launch various applications quickly and easily. You can add any shortcuts you like as well as a few other things (like a clock, recycle bin, seperators) and you can even get it to notify you of what applications are running. There is also an option for minimising windows to the dock, but I don't actually find that useful. There are plenty of dock launcher programs out there but this one is actually fast and responsive, even after it hasn't been used for a while.