BlueShift SE 3.33 ReadMe document

 

Contents

 

Section 1 legal stuff

Section 2 what’s new in BlueShift SE

Section 3 bugs in BlueShift SE

Section 4 notes

Section 5 how to contact me

 

 

Section One: legal stuff

 

BlueShift SE is copyright © 2000 Anderson n’Swaart, all rights reserved.  You may distribute this skin as you wish, as long as the original archive that you got it in remains intact, with no alterations made.  If you wish to modify this skin, it is illegal to distribute it containing the names “BlueShift” or “BlueShift SE”.  Any modifications made must be acknowledged and credit to the original source (me) given.  I would also appreciate it if you would email me to inform me of what you’ve done.  I would be interested to see what changes you made.  Ravaj is copyright © 1997—2000 Anderson n’Swaart.

 

Non-compliance with the abovementioned copyright is illegal and could result in prosecution, or in me kicking your arse directly.

 

Since I do not have a skinning program, I have taken the templates from several other skins and used them as a base for BlueShift SE.  While none of the original aspects of these skins remain and any resemblance is coincidental only, I will list them below as acknowledgement:

 

·       Fusion AMPdeck 2 by Robin Sylvester, based on the word of Blayde for the main, equaliser and playlist sections

·       Topazio (author unknown) for the MiniBrowser section.

·       Sharp Green v3 by William Levasseur for the AVS section.

 

All other aspects of BlueShift SE, including the cursors and ReadMe files were made without any additional templates and no further credit need be given.

 

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Section Two: what’s new?

 

·       Just one thing: I discovered that changing the file extension on .ANI cursors to .CUR effectively turned them into animated cursors that Winamp can read.  Took me long enough.  The cursors are the ones I use on my home system, which I mentioned in the BlueShift-M readme.  They’re really just a nice gimmick that add the icing to the cake—pity Winamp causes them to flicker.  Effectively, this skin is BlueShift-M, which is why I simply called it BlueShift SE.  Special Edition.

 

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Section Three: bugs in BlueShift SE

 

There are a lot of small bugs in BlueShift SE that remain from the original BlueShift skin, and most of these I haven’t mentioned as they are very small.  For more information see the Original BlueShift ReadMe.HTM in this archive.  Below is a list of the more serious problems in BlueShift SE.  Most of these bugs are actually caused by problems with Winamp.

 

·       The clutterbar buttons are still a little effed.

·       Dragging the equaliser bars all the way down will result in the blue line directly below the equaliser graph disappearing as the graph overwrites it.  (Not a bug in Winamp, and fixable.  I just don’t want to rectify the problem since the equaliser looks better the way it is unless you actually drag the bars all the way down, and no one I know of does that.)

·       WinShade mode grows a grey line along the top when title-bar dimming is active and Winamp is not selected.

·       Depending on the sequence in which you click them, the shuffle and repeat buttons will either fuse, or separate from each other by one pixel.

·       I know that the function buttons in the MiniBrowser aren’t quite on the right coordinates—you can push them without touching them.  This is because if you make them taller they look stupid, so I compromised again.

·       When using the “Lines” option for the Spectrum Analyser the bars will seem to disappear if they peak at maximum.  This is a remnant of the original problem I had with BlueShift that drew black dots to the tops of the bars in WinShade VU mode and turned the bar black in “Line” Spectrum Analyser mode.  Check here for more details.

 

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Section Four: notes

 

optimising BlueShift SE

 

BlueShift SE is designed for and looks best at 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution with 32-bit colour, maximum contrast and minimum brightness.  If you have a crystal-clear 15- or 17-inch monitor 1280x1024 will look good as well, though I wouldn’t recommend trying 1600x1280 on a 15-inch, crystal-clear or not.

 

To those of you who are thinking BlueShift SE is too grey, adjust your monitor so black is black, not grey.  It will look much nicer.  I would have changed it so that even on high brightness the dark areas look black, but it would have taken way to long and would have probably stuffed the look of the skin in the long run.

 

To make BlueShift SE look its very best, make sure you have Winamp 2.64 or later.  Then make sure that you have the WinShade VU option set to “Smooth”, and the Spectrum Analyser mode set to “Fire”.  The refresh rate of the Spectrum Analyser should be 35 or 70 fps, and I personally like having my Analyser falloff at the notch above fastest, with the Peaks at the notch above slowest.

 

system requirements

 

To run BlueShift SE properly you will need Winamp 2.05 or later and a 16-bit graphics card.  I wouldn’t recommend running it on Windows 3.x but it should be fine in Windows 95, 98, NT or 2000.

 

interesting titbits

 

In case anyone is wondering what the “M” in original BlueShift-M stands for, it can be either “modification” or “modular”.  I was originally going to call it “BlueShift Mod” but I thought it was too long, and didn’t sound as cool.

 

The “SE” in BlueShift SE stands for “Special Edition” as it generally does.  That’s all it is—a special edition with animated cursors.

 

BlueShift was originally created in Ulead PhotoImpact 4.2, and was modified into BlueShift-M using Adobe PhotoShop 5.5.  The BlueShift SE cursors were made using a coalition of PhotoImpact 4.2 and MicroAngelo 98.

 

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Section Five: how to contact me

 

Simple.  Write me at

 

            the_brainz@techemail.com

 

If you have suggestions on improvements to BlueShift SE, or have any questions, don’t hesitate to write (I’m so lonely—whimper, whimper).

 

If you want to check out the files on my iDrive, the address is www.idrive.com/the_brainz.  I keep some of the better skins I’ve found in my travels there, as well as some interesting documents.  Everything is in the shared directory.

 

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BlueShift, BlueShift­-M, BlueShift SE and Ravaj Tetralogy are copyright © 2000 Anderson n’Swaart, all rights reserved.

The archive that BlueShift SE came in may only be redistributed free of charge and with its original content unchanged.  Plagiarism of the material contained within is illegal and my result in prosecution, or me kicking your arse directly.