Windows 7 GodMode: Not Your Ordinary Control Panel

Heard of the Windows 7 ‘GodMode’? The name is a bit much, because, if I truly had God-like powers over my Windows 7 machine it wouldn’t crash unexpectedly or freeze. Maybe they should have called it something like ‘ConvenientAccessModeForControlPanelsCheatsheet’ but then again maybe not. Anyways, ‘GodMode’ goes like this: you create a folder (anywhere) and you give it the specific name XXXXX.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} where XXXXX could be ‘GodMode’ or ‘Gaia’ or ‘AgnosticPowerUser’. The folder icon changes to an administrative control-like icon and you have access to lots (all?) control panel settings. Given that Start Menu in Windows 7 has gotten much better with finding phrases (e.g. try “power plan”) the GodMode may not be so relevant?

GodMode seems to devolve (nice pun, huh?) to be just a general trick where if you know the GUID to a particular control panel then you can use it in the same way. For example from my 32 bit Windows 7 machine these will work:

Network Connections.{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}
Wireless Networks.{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
Power Options.{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}

To find the GUID to use, search your registry for the phrase “.ControlPanel” and you’ll find references to control panels and you can find out the appropriate GUID. This is left as an exercise to the reader. Note that fooling around in the registry can have unwanted consequences so be careful and read up on good practices for working in the registry. Here's what the full GodMode panel looks like:


Update: 2017-02-21. This still appears to work in Windows 10.

Update: 2023-08-10. This still appears to work in Windows 11 Pro.

Sonos – Je Te Veux

We just installed Sonos and in a word it’s fantastic! What’s Sonos? Sonos is music at your fingertips, any room of the house. The real magic (besides the wireless technology) is the touch-sensitive Sonos Controller. From the intuitively designed controller interface you can quickly access your music archives or Pandora or Rhapsody to name a few of the possible services or just plain old radio. The controller goes where you go around the house. Stop, start, change music, adjust volumes, and mute with a few taps of the finger. Each zone (or room) of the house if you like can be playing something different.

Within a matter of a few seconds I set up a Philip Glass Radio on Pandora and was loving it. As I write this, I’m listening to El Chicano (a little Tell Her She’s Lovely doesn’t hurt does it?) via Rhapsody. Last night I was enthralled with Camille’s latest relase Music Hole (very interesting, Money Note). The real deal cincher was when I looked for the obscure-ish Erik Satie song Je Te Veux (here’s a video performance of the song) and discovered an album of Satie work that I’m not sure I would have found otherwise, Sport & Vergnügen.

Sonos brings the fun of music discovery back. It makes music immediate and very accessible with very little friction. That said, you still have to do a little work to let Sonos see the music you own. We use an HP MediaSmart server to host our media files. And, there is a gotcha with WAV file formats in that Sonos doesn’t preserve album order. The solution is to use FLAC format.

Knock, Knock, Who’s There? Edward Jones.

The other day the doorbell rang and we thought oh it’s one of those darn door-to-door religious nuts, but we answered it anyways. Well, well, it wasn’t someone warning us about the end of the earth, but rather advertising financial advising services. Whoa. We don’t live in that upscale of a neighborhood. After a little research it seems it is common with Edward Jones. Still a bit weird for my taste. The knocker even followed up with a Christmas card.

The 2010 Lunchbox

The phrase we’d like to kick off 2010 with is this: don’t poop in someone’s lunchbox. This was a phrase that came up over and over New Year’s Eve night with some friends as we joked around. The next day we kept saying it and realized that it is a pretty good guiding principle. If you are about to dump on someone’s ideas, manner of being, or general happiness, think twice before you do it. Please, don’t poop in another’s lunchbox.

Goodbye Peppermint Stick

I suppose we should be saying goodbye to 2009 and the decade, but we have nothing interesting at this time to say about that. However, we will take this opportunity to mention a subject near and dear to us: chocolate. By far, the best chocolate we’ve had this holiday season has been the Theo Chocolate Peppermint Stick 70% chocolate bar. Who could resist them? A perfect blend of dark chocolate and peppermint, not cloying or overpowering as sometimes peppermint-infused chocolate can be. From what I understand, this chocolate bar was made for Bartell Drug. We could rely on getting them at Theo’s showroom in November and most of December but when they ran out just before Christmas, frantic calls to Bartell began. We were able to secure a small stash to last us for a few weeks. When the last of our peppermint stick bars run out, it’s back to the Jane Goodall 70% bar, which is fantastic anyways – so that’s not so bad.

The Annus Mirabilis of an Inconstant Reader

I will use the idea of the Annus Mirabilis, not at all to suggest my year was as important as Einstein’s contributions, but to celebrate a good reading year for me, the inconstant reader. I’ve read approximately a book a month which was close to my goal for this year. (I feel like one of those elementary kids who signs on to a reading competition over the summer.) 

This reading exercise was to first, read more, second, to read outside of my comfort zone, and third, to finish reading a whole book (ok, I failed on this one, but for good reason). Reacquainting myself to books is harder than it should be. My job has me in front of a computer screen most of the time and shutting off that screen and picking up a book is not easy. Reading a physical book has a whole different feel than reading the same words on a screen. Don’t know why, but it just does. 

The book I’m ending the year on is James Joyce’s The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and it’s a bit of a slog for me. I really want to like this book but 170+ pages I’m not sure where I stand. It will be a miraculous year if I can finish this book by the 31st - that’s when it’s due back to the library.

Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo

Mystery solved. About 2 months ago I heard one of those little music interludes on NPR that sound intriguing – if you are an NPR listener you know what I’m talking. So I went on the NPR site and tried to look up the details of the clip. Usually the NPR site provides all the info about these music clips but not in this case. Well that 15 second sound clip haunted me for months. Was that Badly Drawn Boy? Ben Folds? I just couldn’t figure it out. Then today it came to me. It was Yo La Tengo’s Georgia vs. You La Tengo (listen) from their Summer Sun album. Thank you, there is a Santa Claus.

Avatar

The movie to see this season for blockbuster-loving, technology wonks is James Cameron’s Avatar. We caught a late showing of the movie and really enjoyed it. The movie highlights the distinction between a film and the experience around a film. In this case the experience starts with the pre-release build up of the film: over 15 years in the making by a hugely successful and idiosyncratic screenwriter, film director and producer using groundbreaking technology to realize the film. When you arrive at the movie, sit back, relax and put on a pair of 3-D glasses so continues the experience. It’s an interesting mix of live-action performances and computer-generated effects. The motion-capture system used to create the film allows the facial expressions of actors to be captured as a virtual camera system enables them to see what their computer-generated counterparts will be seeing. It works well.

The weakest aspect of the movie is the plot, being a little on the hokey side. In a nutshell, humans in the year 2154 arrive to a planet called Pandora to strip mine a mineral known as unobtanium which is very valuable. The problem is that the native population, the Nav'vi, has homelands right over the richest deposit of the mineral. Can you see where this is going? Begin huge conflict starring a tug of war between a ruthless corporation, ex-marines and scientists hired by the corporation, and the Na'vi. The Na'vi are 10 foot tall, blue-skinned sapient humanoids. The titular “avatar” refers to the remotely controlled, genetically-engineered native bodies that humans “slip into” to befriend the natives.

Talking about experience, it’s completely appropriate that we saw the movie at Gold Class Cinemas in Redmond. Wow, what a great movie experience. It's a bit pricey but if you see only a few movies a year, do movies this way. Plush seats that recline, drinks (full bar) and snacks (e.g. lobster rolls) brought to your seat to name a few of the niceties of the experience. Need something during the movie, there is a little call button you can use to summon a waiter. The best part was there are only 40 seats or so and every seat is a good one. There was no head to look around. Ahh, that's an experience.