Millennium Gadgets Pack (for Rainmeter Windows)

[The Old Man]

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Millennium Gadgets Pack (for Rainmeter Windows)

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Millennium Gadgets Pack (requires Rainmeter and Windows 7 or later)

This Millennium download has been updated and now contains a suite (pack) of Millennium-inspired gadgets which run on the free Rainmeter theming platform for Windows.

The pack includes 8 Millennium inspired gadgets, with additional variants (total of 10 designs).

• Frank Black Millennium Countdown
• Halloween 'Spooky' Frank Black Millennium Countdown
• Halloween Pumpkin Millennium Countdown
  with 2 selectable variations: animated with flickering candle (art by @ethsnafu) and standard, non-animated version.
• Lucy Butler Millennium Countdown
  with 2 selectable variations: choice of 2 scenes from Antipas
• Halloween 'Spooky Lucy Butler' Animated Millennium Countdown
• Ouroborous 'All-In-1' Millennium Countdown
  with choice of 4 selectable variations including standard gold Ouroborous, an animated rotating Ouroborous, and the popular Owls hacked version of the Ouroborous available in 2 matching white or gold text versions.
• Owls Ouroborous Millennium Countdown
  A stand-alone variation featuring the popular Owls hacked version of the Millennium Group's Ouroborous branding available in 2 matching white or gold text versions.
• Animated Ouroborous Millennium Countdown
  A stand-alone variation with an animated rotating Ouroborous.
   

Description

These Countdown gadgets can be installed on modern, recent versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, 8x, 10 (after Rainmeter is installed first).

The gadgets feature images inspired by Millennium, a 'Welcome Message' from the Millennium Group, your name (optional) and the 'number of days remaining' (you can edit the countdown date/time,) all inspired by Chris Carter's Millennium television series.

Here's a video to show you how they work... that Festive wallpaper is not included!

 

Features

• Millenniumistic! Our interactive Countdown gadgets feature images from Millennium television series, the default gadget is of Millennium Group criminal profiler Frank Black and is the first one made.
• Display as many as you like, 1 or all of the gadgets, you tweak each with different names and countdown times.
• Easy to personalise - Just click on the 'Welcome Frank' greeting to display your own name instead (max 16 letters) . After a few seconds, the gadget will update with the new name.
• Days Remaining Countdown - Upon first install, displays the current number of days remaining in Millennium-inspired style until next New Year's Day or Halloween.
  Just click on the countdown to change the date/time of your event. After a few seconds, the gadget will update with the new time.
• TIWWA Site Link - Clicking the image on the gadget triggers the booming Millennium style drum sound and takes you to straight to our Millennium community forums (TIWWA) via your current default internet browser.
• Automatic saving - The gadget will remember your customised settings (name, target date) whenever you restart your computer (if you have the default setting enabled in Rainmeter to load Rainmeter when you start Windows).
• Drag and drop anywhere on your desktop. Rainmeter will remember where you left the gadget so it will appear in the same place, when you next restart Windows. You can also save your desktop layout as a new layout within Rainmeter, with or without your current desktop background.

 

Requirements

• Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 8, Windows 10 and later.
• Rainmeter, the best known and most popular desktop customization program for Windows which uses very little CPU and RAM resources and will run perfectly well on any supported hardware. Rainmeter is free and open source.
  Remember to please download and install Rainmeter first, then afterwards you can install our gadgets. Available from https://www.rainmeter.net/

For more hints and guidance on using our gadgets, how to display more than or choose different styles on some gadgets, please see this handy pinned topic:-

 

How to install

1. First install the latest free version of Rainmeter software from the official Rainmeter site. 
   You can download it for free from https://www.rainmeter.net/
2. After Rainmeter is installed, it shows you a welcome message skin and demo widgets. You can close off/disable them (and any others you don't want visible) by right-clicking on them, and selecting Unload. 
3. Download the latest Millennium Gadget pack from here, then double-click on it to install (it should open automatically in Rainmeter).
    

How to configure

1. Place them where you like!
   You can click, drag and drop the gadgets to move to any desktop area of any monitor you have. Rainmeter will remember its position.
2. Change the name!
   You can change the name shown from Frank to your own, simply click on the "Welcome Frank" message and following the instructions.
3. Change the countdown date and time!
   You can change the countdown timer's target date by clicking on the current countdown message and following the instructions to enter a new future event date/time. The gadget will ask you for the year, month, day, hour and minute. E.g. So for midnight on 18th March, 2019, enter 19, followed by 03, followed by 18, followed by 00, followed by 00. The gadget then refreshes after a few seconds with the new setting. Easy peasy.
4. Right click on any gadgets to unload, view any additional variations, themes and animations as per the Support Topic and shown in the video. 

 

MILLENNIUM and all related characters are © Copyright Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc and its related entities. All Rights Reserved.

 

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• Submitter
  The Old Man
• Submitted
  01/14/2017
• Category
  Millennium Gadgets (Win10)
• Specific Requirements
  Install latest stable release of Rainmeter first, for Windows 7 or later

 

[The Old Man]

Hi all,

As you can see from above, I've uploaded the first of our revamped Millennium-inspired gadgets for 2017.

This first one is dedicated to @Earthnut for being very patient and waiting until I could get around to recreating them for Windows 10 after Microsoft dropped support and ended their own Windows Gadgets, and so that she and many others could for example easily enter their own name, as opposed to the one picked up automatically from the Windows username system variable which didn't work well for some users, but fine for others. I'm sorry its taken so long to work out how to do this and get them working how you would like.

This week I've been able to learn a bit more about how https://www.rainmeter.net/ works and how to create gadgets for it, so this is the first gadget to use Rainmeter, which if you haven't heard of it is a very reputable, free application for Windows that lets you run 'Skins' (the Rainmeter term for gadgets, even complete themes etc) on Windows, in similar fashion to how Windows Vista and 7 once used to support Windows Gadgets before Microsoft killed them off.

Don't wory, you don't need to learn how Rainmeter works if you just want to use a few gadgets or skins. Just know that you 'load' skins to display them, and 'unload' to deactivate them either by right-clicking on any Rainmeter skin/gadget or by using the main menu available from your taskbar.

I'll be updating our other gadgets made a few years back for Rainmeter including the Lucy Butler and the Ouroborus gadgets. I'm starting to have a few ideas for more Millennium-inspired gadgets too.

So if you want to try it, the new improved gadgets are easier to personalise with your own name and countdown date (just click on them to edit) and now work on Windows 10, provided you have Rainmeter installed first. Just download and let it open in Rainmeter.

If you want to check out some more Rainmeter creations, check out https://lifehacker.com/tag/rainmeter and https://rainmeter.deviantart.com/

 

 

 

[Libby]

Oh, so that's what your cryptic message in the shoutbox was about.

Looks great. I might try it.

[Earthnut]

Can't thank and praise you enough for all that you do here for us.  You're "The Man."

Installed "Rainmeter" and really like it, especially the transparency feature.  One question though.  How do you minimize the Welcome window with links so it's not always displaying on the screen?  There's no options in the top right corner, and if you click "Exit," it closes out everything.  Right now I have the MLM gadget and the "system" info.  Also, I stupidly right clicked on "click through" and now I can't get back to settings for it when I right click on it.  So sorry.  I know better then to click on something I don't understand.  All I get now is the desktop window.  I can't even move it now.

[The Old Man]

11 hours ago, Earthnut said:

Can't thank and praise you enough for all that you do here for us.  You're "The Man."

Installed "Rainmeter" and really like it, especially the transparency feature.  One question though.  How do you minimize the Welcome window with links so it's not always displaying on the screen?  There's no options in the top right corner, and if you click "Exit," it closes out everything.  Right now I have the MLM gadget and the "system" info.  Also, I stupidly right clicked on "click through" and now I can't get back to settings for it when I right click on it.  So sorry.  I know better then to click on something I don't understand.  All I get now is the desktop window.  I can't even move it now.

Your welcome, Darlene. 

Re the Welcome skin, to remove it or any other skin you use the option to UNLOAD it. Unload removes the skin (aka gadget/widget) from the list of loaded skins, meaning Rainmeter won't display it. If you change your mind, you can always LOAD the skin again and it will display it again. So skins are either loaded (active) or not, you can't minimise them as such.

Yes Exit will exit Rainmeter. You can quickly Unload a skin in Rainmeter by right clicking on it (to access the Skin Context Menu) and clicking on Unload at the bottom of the list, or you can do it from the Manage option which is the 'main control panel' for your skins.

https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/user-interface/context-menus/

https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/user-interface/manage/

 

I had to read up on the Click Through option to see what it does, it appears when you enable it, it makes the skins or gadgets kind of ghost-like, so you can literally click straight through them as if they weren't there (say to whatever is below them like a web page or email program). To temporary disable this, hold the CTRL key when clicking.

Aside from accessing the Click Through option by right clicking on a skin, you can do it via the main Manage feature (think of it like a main control panel where you can see and access settings for everything, and see lots of things you'll probably never need). 

Manage is accessed in several ways:

• Left-Click the Rainmeter icon in the Windows Notification Area on the taskbar.
• Right-Click the Rainmeter icon in the Windows Notification Area on the taskbar and select "Manage".
• Right-Click any running skin on the desktop and select "Manage skin".

Choose the skin you want to toggle the Click Through on/off and it will display the chosen skin's settings, then use the Click Through option at the bottom right:

Sounds like you need to turn Click Through off, the normal setting.

 

[Earthnut]

Wow, I sure appreciate your help and all the time you took to reply.  You're awesome.

Here's my thing.  It's the Rainmeter main control panel I want to not display, or at least minimize, and after right clicking and left clicking on whatever I clicked on, it kept me from making any changes.  All it would display when I right clicked is the same options if I had right clicked my desktop.  I could only change settings on the individual skins.  I went ahead and uninstalled the program until I understand more about it, and not click something I don't understand.  

[The Old Man]

On 15/01/2017 at 8:21 PM, Earthnut said:

It's the Rainmeter main control panel I want to not display, or at least minimize, and after right clicking and left clicking on whatever I clicked on, it kept me from making any changes.

Hi Darlene,

You can normally minimise or close it completely so it sounds like you had another window from the program open at the time that was preventing you from making any changes. Usually its gotten behind something else so that you can't see it but it was asking you to do something or choose an option or something, the type that until you do something with it, it wouldn't disappear.

This happens all the time in work, people get frustrated and starting clicking away on the program thinking its not working and has frozen or something, but they have somehow missed a small window asking them to choose an option or do something. its often not their fault they have missed it, it may just be out of view. A handy tip when that happens is to hold the ALT key down and then press Tab which lets you cycle through the current open windows one at a time until you you spot the mischievous one you need to do something with or dismiss, before it will let you do anything with the actual main window of the program like minimise or close it. Flick between them all if you have to, until you find that peskly open little pop-up and do something with it!

The documentation on their website is quite helpful and explains what the functions do but honestly, trust me, you don't need to fully learn Rainmeter or especially how to change and tweak the actual Rainmeter program's settings like the ones in the image below...

... just to use the Countdown gadgets. I think this is where your troubles began (although experimenting is a great way to learn! You were just unlucky by clicking on something tricky to reset!).

You can also save your Layouts (click for link to their documentation) to quickly switch back to at any time, once you have a set-up you are happy with your layout.
That way if you ever get in a mess, just reload your saved layout. You can create many layouts, perhaps with different gadgets loaded and where you like them to be.
 

On 15/01/2017 at 8:21 PM, Earthnut said:

I went ahead and uninstalled the program until I understand more about it, and not click something I don't understand.

My suggestion would be re-install Rainmeter and then download and open the gadget. Then move it where you want it, then personalise the name/countdown date etc and enjoy; no need to tweak any Rainmeter settings!
You could also then save the current layout for possible future use, so you can quickly reset back to it if you've had a play with the settings and things have gone awry.

If you need further help, I could always Teamviewer in to your computer when we're both available online for 5 mins and check/do it for you.

 

On 15/01/2017 at 8:21 PM, Earthnut said:

I could only change settings on the individual skins.

Yes to change the individual skin's Rainmeter settings, you right click on the specific gadget, select Manage Skin and it will open the skin in the Manager and let you change the settings for it, same as if you just opened the full Manager from the raindrop icon on your taskbar by your clock and then chose the same skin from the drop down list. However Unload/Load (to display the gadget/skin or not) or possibly Refresh are probably the only options you would need to change, the other settings are really for more Advanced Users and Skin designers.

Some skins like the next one coming soon (Ouroborus Countdown Gadget) have more than one Variation, so you can quickly choose which style of the Gadget to use by right-clicking on the Gadget and selecting from the Variants menu:-

But that's about all you need to do with Rainmeter if you just want to enjoy the gadgets.

Here's a sneak preview of the Rotating variation to get you in the mood!

 

[Earthnut]

Thanks for all of your help and time Graham, I really appreciate it.  The main control panel didn't give me an option to either close it or minimize it, so thinking maybe the program didn't completely install.  And when I clicked on what I thought was a way to remove it from the desktop, I prevented myself from even viewing a menu.  I was able to change the gadgets, but didn't like the main window taking up so much room on my desktop.  Yes, I will download it again and I promise not to click on anything I don't fully understand, and read more on their site.  There has to be a way for the main control panel to not be displayed.  

Edited January 17, 2017 by Earthnut

[The Old Man]

I've created an updated version with a new subtlety animated Creepy Lucy Butler Halloween gadget, some performance enhancements, and split some of the variation designs into standalone gadgets, so you can more easily mix and match multiple gadgets on your desktop (I.e. no longer limited to one type of Ouro at a time, you can now have separate ones all at the same time, rotating Ouro, Owls Ouro etc).

Releasing soon!

[Earthnut]

11 minutes ago, The Old Man said:

I've created an updated version with a new subtlety animated Creepy Lucy Butler Halloween gadget, some performance enhancements, and split some of the variation designs into standalone gadgets, so you can more easily mix and match multiple gadgets on your desktop (I.e. no longer limited to one type of Ouro at a time, you can now have separate ones all at the same time, rotating Ouro, Owls Ouro etc).

Releasing soon!

Thanks Graham, I appreciate this and hopefully will have the Ouro again.  Lucy is too creepy for me to see every day...LOL