Always On Top

Site: https://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/keep-window-always-on-top/5213/

Purpose: Set any window to be always on top...or not

Country: US (Amit Agarwal)

Cost: Freeware

Open Source: No

This is a must-have for anyone using Windows for a long time. You press Ctrl-Space on a window, and it becomes always on top. You press it again, it resets this setting.

Yes, you'll say, many applications have this setting. True but, each one enables it on a different menu, a different keybind, and not many, some.

This tool applies to every window you want. Easy. Simple. So good. 

Windows 10 Dark Themes !

This is a personal problem I have with Windows 10 and Microsoft...I hate excessive brightness on my triple monitor setup. It lights me up like a sunny day, and at midnight, it's not something I utterly like.

Before Windows 10/8, I mean, in the Windows 7 era and before that, Windows themes, desktop customization and colorization were part of the core system.

But, come Windows 10 (I skipped all 8 flavors), it went way. We had to cope with the IDIOTS at Microsoft that decided to skip most the themes implementation, and all the colorizations and gradient color bars with it.

So, we ended up with a mongamic/monochromatic OS, where the background HAS TO BE white (or black, if you enable a silly Dark Side toggle button somewhere in the also oversimplified, overidiotic setup).

Now, I had to get rid of pure white RGB(255,255,255) backgrounds, but I also didn't want a pure black RGB(0,0,0) background.

What to do ? A few hackers/integrators decided to create a "Black Theme Toolkit" (google it) or the UltraXThemePatcher, tools designed to patch the Windows GUI system DLLS (a bunch of UX***.DLL). But this poses problems, of course, of maintenance, integrity, spywarity, etcity.

I didn't want to go down that road.

But I wanted:

- File Explorer with NON-WHITE background.

- Programs like OpenOfffice Calc with NON-WHITE background.

- Programs like  like Thunderbird mail list with NON-WHITE background.

- Google Chrome with NON-WHITE background.

- Windows Apps and Settings and all that crap with NON-WHITE background

But there was not a "unified" solution.

So I had to address each problem separately, and needless to say, I did a GOOD JOB. So, I hope it helps you.

• For File Explorer to become grey (in my case. Choose any background/color you like):
  This one takes a bit, but works fine. You install QTTabBar (qttabbar.wikidot.com/). After you install it you'll see a new bar. Click the Dental donut(Options). Go to:
• Appearance==>Folder View
• Appearance==>Navigation Pane
• Compatible Folder View
•  and chose your background color for all three. Apply and rejoice. After that you go to the Explorer View, click Options and disable the QTCommandBar check menu item, do hide the bar.
  
• For Windows programs like Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Core Temp or whatever window .EXE you use, to show non-White background, you have to be creative. So:
• go to Settings==>Personalization==>Themes, grab your favorite theme (still white) and menu==>"Save theme for sharing". That will save a deskthemepack file somewhere. Then you have to open it (it's a ZIP/RAR file) so rename it and extract the .themes file that's inside.
  Now we have the "real theme" we want to update, so you can change its "DisplayName" from Blabla to Blabla-GREY for example, and then you do magic:
• Add an entry: [Control Panel\Colors]
  Below, add: Window=200 200 200
  That's RGB (200,200,200) so you can try any color you want.
• Next click on the theme file and it will be imported into your themes database and will show up in the Themes window, so you can click on it and voilà, your application background have changed !
• Yes, there are a LOT of Control Panel\Colors customizations beyond the Window=, but that's another topic.
  
• For Google Chrome background, you've got an easy solution. Of course you can install picture extensions that completely change your Chrome search box window background, but that's not really what we want. We want an extension named "Dark Reader". Install it and rejoice. Well actually, configure it, set it to "On", set it to "Light" (Dark will be black) and adjust Brightness from "Off" to "-10%". Voilà you're now greyed out on all your favorite blogs, newspapers, and all the crap you navigate to.
  
• Finally, for Windows 10 Apps and settings, unfortunately, I didn't figure it out, except turning it to black background.
  Go to Settings==>Personalization==>Color, scroll to the bottom of the page, and there you will find "Choose your default app mode" and choose "Dark". Of course, that means hardcoded black but it's better than full white, for me, at least.

And there you have it, WITHOUT being intrusive in changing OS binary DLL's, you can customize the colors your OS presents to you, and give  your eyes a BIG CHUNK of eye strain relief.

There are a few things I will keep on investigating, and will surely find and answer, like "Inactive bar colors".

Cyberduck

Site: https://cyberduck.io/

Purpose: Cloud Drive client (and FTP, etc)

Country: Switzerland

Cost: Freeware

Open Source: Yes...

Cyberduck is a must have, if you use Cryptomator and cloud drives. Why ? Because Cryptomator encrypts your data into a synchronizeable local folder, while your typical sync client (One Drive, Google Drive, Cloudbox, etc) takes care of sending your encrypted data to the cloud storage.

That's all very nice but...how do you access your data in the Cloud ? If you are on an Android, your Cryptomator will provide decryption for e.g. watching multimedia remotely.

But if you're on a desktop, you're stuck. Well, not really, because that's what Cyberduck is for. You can read/write your cloud data as if it was decrypted, WITHOUT having to copy it to the local storage space. The tool will decrypt/encrypt on the fly, (supposedly) using Cryptmator libs.

When you want to retrieve data from a large storage, that's very handy. You only download exactly what you need, not the whole encrypted stuff, only to get a few files.

What you don't get  is synchronization between a local set of data and the cloud set of data, because you can't access it from Explorer, only from the Cyberduck client.

Of course, ideally, you would mount your CLOUD drive as if it was a local drive. And yes, Duck does it too, but then it's no longer Freeware. That's Mountain Duck (https://mountainduck.io/), the elder brother of Cyberduck. It's not a huge price, only 39USD. But still, no longer free.

For me, Cyberduck is enough for now.

Btw, there is also an alternative to SyncClient+Cryptomator+Cyberduck . 

It's Odrive (https://www.odrive.com/). 

I haven't used it yet, so I can't talk a lot about it, but ideally, it integrates all your cloud services/accounts into a single drive space, encryptable, and you mount it as a Cloud Drive, locally. And you just use it within Explorer, as if it was local. Seems like the best of worlds...but it comes at a COST: 99USD/year, not for drive space, but simply for the usability. That's a LOT these fuckers ask for.

TightVNC

Purpose: Remote Desktop
Site: http://tightvnc.com/
Country:
Price: Freeware
OpenSource: No

TightVNC Client/Server is a remote desktop solution. It works great, way better than the Microsoft Embeded solution. All it requires is TCP/IP, and you can connect from/to different OS's. I connect many times to my Windows machines from Android or Linux, works great.

You can copy/paste and you can also transfer files between guest and host. It's not an immediate desktop response, in the sense that you can not "play games" remotely, since the desktop refresh is optimized for LAN/WAN transfers. But you can work perfectly, do maintenance, browse, etc.

Couldn't live without it, it's been my remote desktop tool for years.

Oracle VM VirtualBox

Site: https://www.virtualbox.org/
Purpose: Virtualization
Country: USA
Price: Freeware
OpenSource:No

I've used virtualization for years. Until recently, I've been using VMWare workstation. But I lost confidence when a bug that's been there for years, showed up on me. Basically, VMs would stop launching, requiring me to change their name and move/copy the VM. Then it would work for a few startups until it showed up again. Looks like it's bug that's been there, but the idiots at VMWare couldn't solve it.

So I changed my VM's to Oracle's VM VirtualBox. Like VMWware, it provides virtualization of an entire OS, so I use it to run older versions of Windows, because the idiots of my ISP (MEO) disabled my remote TV in Windows 10, forcing me to use their cretin W10 app, which lacks a mandatory thing for me: "screen recording" ! So, I use Windows 7, and I record screens from W10. Genious isn't it ?

I also use Linux VMs because I want to keep up with other OS'es, their look&feel. At one time I even downloaded and used a OS/X VM for a while..Snow Leopard, and it worked fine.

In general, virtualization is great when you want to isolate and test a Software, or if you thing a Software is virused and you want to get something out of it when it runs, without the danger of infecting your main machine. Very well, let it infect your VM and then...just delete it.

There are few cumbersome things with Virtualbox, one being it's way of dealing with USB devices. Sometimes you have to set things manually in the Device Filters, install some drivers like USB 3.0, and stuff. But generally, it works. I can even make my old Webcam (not running in Windows 10 anymore) workable in Windows 7 or Linux. by forwarding the USB device to the VM guest, instead of the host.

Things that work great in Virtualbox VM's (Windows and Linux, the ones I use):

• Share folders, you just set a folder on your host and both your host and your guest OS will access the files inside that folder. Trivial on Windows, a little less trivial on Linux but works too.
• Copy/paste. Yes, you can copy a block of text between your guest and OS.
• Drag&Drop. Works good between Windows, you drab a file/folder from the source OS and drop it on the destination OS.
• Network, Audio, that works fine too.
• 3D...something still to check.
• VM compatibility: VMDK files are compatible between several virtualization tools. At least, for me, it worked, between VMware and Virtualbox.

The only strange thing that happened to me was that a Windows 7 VM got corrupted (yes, my HDD is 5 years old and is already at the "yellow"/caution SM.A.R.T level. I could not get it starting up again, so I had to delete it. I'm pretty sure it had to do with the HDD but still...

Cryptomator

Site: cryptomator.org/
Purpose. File/folder/drive/encrypter with virtual drive support.
Country: Germany (Skymatic UG (haftungsbeschränkt))
Price: Freeware
Opensource: Yes

Imagine you are working on a top secret project, and you don't want anyone to know. Or you live in a bad neighborhood and you are afraid that someone comes and steals your stuff.

Or, imagine you buy, or use, free of charge (?), cloud space on any provider, be it Google,Microsoft,Dropbox,Amazon, or any of the other "minor" space providers. But there's a catch. In the hidden/small lines, the companies you give your files to, are entitled give access to 3rd parties (or do it themselves) to search through your data, hunting for whatever they wish, for marketing purposes, to know how you live, what you listen to, where you go, what do you like most...and imagine, just imagine, you don't want that.

Or, imagine you're a bastard that downloads copyrighted data likes movies or music and want to avoid being caught by the authorities.

You're stuck, unless you encrypt your data. That's what Cryptomator is for. You create a vault on disk, and Cryptomator gives you a virtual local drive. When you copy stuff into that drive, it is encrypted, content, file name, folder name, and in the end you lock your vault. After it is locked, if you go to the original location of the data, you won't see anything but garbled stuff.

To unlock the vault, of course you need a password, it better be a good one, and that's it.

Never ever save your password online, store it in your head, or encrypt it somewhere in your home.

What's the best about cryptomator ? It's "client-side", so you never need to give your password to anyone, any site. As long as your computer is secure (no keylogging trojans), you're safe.

Being clientside is specially important when you create the vault on a "sync'ed" folder, meaning, a spot that will be sent to the cloud by your local cloud replication service.

And that's about it. Until today, it was not broken. 

Each vault has its own 256 bit encryption as well as MAC masterkey used for encryption of file specific keys and file authentication, respectively. So they say.

And the best best best of all ? It's open source (well, so they say, I must check, tbh), so you know there's no backdoor implemented.

Transparent, fast (well, slower than a normal access but still good enough), encryption. What else do you need? 

Nox

Site: www.bignox.com/
Purpose. Android emulator
Country: China ??? Ops
Price: Freeware
Opensource: No

Today I was going to talk about this nice Android emulator I use. In my case, it came with the 4.4 Kitkat OS installed. The only things I install are Google Store based apps, and although it tends to crash after some time using it with apps like Instagram and its pictures and videos, it works nice. It also has a multi-account setup, so if you want multiple accounts, you can even run them in parallel. There seems to be a VM running inside Nox, but I'm not 100% sure.

What scared me after starting to write this was that I found that this is supposedly coming from China and that there have been reports of stolen accounts, etc. Furthermore, Nox seems to "phone home" to China IP's every now and then, according to security sources, and it's encrypted. So all in all, it's not something I'd advise.

You also have Bluestacks, an USA program doing the same thing, supposedly being the source from where Nox derived. I don't remember liking particularly, everything looked less smooth, but tbh, I wouldn't like some hidden App hacking my store/google account, although it's SMS-protected and all. Tbh, I've been using Nox for 3 months without any problems. May be it has to do with the kind of apps that Nox can run. One thing I notice is that Nox keeps installing icons for Apps everytime I open one of my Apps on the emulator. May be they are enticing like a fox.

Anyway, Nox works great, and you have top control of your emulator from outside, meaning, you can share files from the Android filesystem to your OS, and reversely.
If you're playing games inside the emulator, you can take screenshots or record your gaming and you can even ODS it, it's just another Windows program.