Not much traffic here lately. I've been away to Cambridge (MA) for a while, then got back and had to work pretty hard since I have new projects to manage at work.

The new projects are all Windows-based, so I had to reinstall XP on my office desktop. After many months of using only Linux both at the office and at home, I was suprised by Windows speed, especially in dealing with local files. Of course it's not hard to be faster than Nautilus, and in Linux I almost never use a graphical filemanager anyway, but it was a pleasant surprise.

After reinstalling Windows I spent some time trying to beautify my desktop. One of the things I have always envyed OSX is its wonderful panel, and after digging around for a while I found ObjectDock which is a really great piece of software. It emulates the Mac OSX panel in Windows, and can be used as a Windows toolbar replacement. There are lots of icons, skins, and docklets (clocks, system monitors, etc.) available from wincustomize, more docklets from YZdocklets, and a C++ SDK if you feel like developing your own docklets. Definitely recommended.