Yes, this is a week old, but on Aug. 16, the weekend of the blackout, CNN posted the top ten pieces of advice from Iraqi’s on how to deal with the heat during a blackout. I thought New Yorkers would appreciate #2.

Thanks to our friends at Cannonball Fine Art for providing me with a great satellite image of the recent blackout in the northeastern US. I love these kind of shots.

Update 9-1-2003: Per Aaron’s comments below, this picture is indeed a hoax. I’ve been had! Bad Fritter! Nevertheless it is pretty cool. Check out Aaron’s link for more information on this hoax.

Ah, the things we do to waste time. My task today, have a proper icon for my iPod display in Explorer and My Computer views in Windows XP.

Custom WinXP iPod Icon

To start, a disclaimer. This modification entails changing some settings in the Windows Regsitry. If done incorrectly, Registry changes can corrupt your entire Windows installation. If you are not comfortable making Registry changes then this modification is not for you. Also, this may work on Windows 2000, but you will need to find different icons as Win2K does not support XP high-res icons. Finally, you need to have Administrative access to your WinXP computer.

That said, visit this page at the Xicons site and download the icon zipped file. Next unzip the icons and save them somewhere that makes sense to you. Personally, I have an ‘icons’ directory in the ‘My Documents’ directory. You can also save the icon files to your winnt/system32 or windows/system32 directory if you wish. Now choose which of the icons you wish to use. I have only found XP icons for the original iPod, which is the model I have. If you find XP icons for the new iPod design, please make a comment below.

Next we need to make sure that the iPod gets the same drive letter each time it is connected. Personally, I like the letter ‘I’ (for iPod). It is far enough away to allow my other removable devices to not infringe. Typically, you can choose any drive letter after ‘D’ . To change the drive letter go to the Control Panel and then open the ‘Administrative Tools’ folder. Then double-click ‘Computer Management.’ In the left tab of Computer Management click on ‘Disk Management’ — your various hard drives will show up on the right. In the top right pane, right click on your iPod’s drive letter and choose ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths…’ and then click ‘Change’ and then change your drive letter. Click ‘OK’ twice and then close ‘Computer Management.”

Open the Registry Editor by going to Start->Run and typing ‘regedit’ and click OK. Goto [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer]. Look for ‘DriveIcons.’ If it doesn’t exist, create it by right-clicking on ‘Explorer’ and click ‘New->Key’ and entering ‘DriveIcons’. Then right click on ‘DriveIcons’ and choose ‘New->Key’ and enter the drive letter you chose above. Again, right click on the drive letter and click ‘New->Key’ and enter ‘DefaultIcon’. Now click on ‘DefaultIcon’ and the right side should show (Default) – REG_SZ and (value not set). Double-click (Default) and in the ‘Value data’ enter the full path to your icon file. If you used a folder in ‘My Documents’ or if the path to your icon file contains directory names with spaces then you should enclose the entire path in double quotes, i.e. “c:\documents and settings\username\my documents\icons\ipodAngled.ico”.

Close the Registry Editor and disconnect your iPod. When you reconnect your iPod your new icon should show up in the various explorer views. Credit for the Registry hack goes to David Candy and a post I found in Google Groups.