Red inside and out

After receiving a red aluminium 'bumper' case for my note 2, which I bought in a desperate attempt to alter its dreaded and glossy plastic exterior, I spent a good day or two customising the launcher to match it.

As I'm running a (Touchwiz-based) Android 4.3 ROM, a leaked build (MI6) for the upcoming Samsung release, there's a limit to how much it can be customised. Thanks to Wanam and his Xposed Framework addition, Wanam Xposed, I was able to modify all the aspects of finalising a fully-coloured theme.

Dark shot with the contours of the aluminium frame
Wallpaper is a modified version of an image taken from the Xperia Z-series devices.

Quick settings 4.3

Home screen with LMT launcher on the right. Apex launcher and simple icon text.

Benchmarking Note 2 vs. S4

Using the latest (but still old) perseus kernel, version 36.3, the note 2 performs almost as good as the S4 in every aspect. The cpu and gpu clocks in at 1800- and 800 MHz respectively, with lower than stock allocated voltage.

Desktop update

Rainmeter desktop

Current (and recommended) Chrome extensions

Some would call it unorganised, I suppose.

1. Adblock Plus - for intrusive sites.
2. Awesome Screenshot - To capture entire pages, usually lists.
3. Chrome Remote Desktop - Controlling my home computer from anywhere if needed.
4. Clearly (by Evernote) - Converts a site into a perfectly readable layout by removing unnecessary objects.
5. Download Master - Downloading all links in a website.
6. Evernote Web Clipper - Clips any site to your Evernote folder of choice, integration with the desktop client.
7. Firebug Lite - For testing purposes.
8. Ghostery - Blocking trackers.
9. Chrome to Phone - Send websites to your phone with a single click, useful if you want to download something exclusively on your phone.
10. Google Dictionary - One-click/select definition/explanation/lookup of words/phrases/wikis
11. Holmes - Intelligent lookup for bookmarks (I have thousands).
12. Hover Zoom - Shows images in full size while hovering.
13. Lastpass - Password management across platforms/devices and browsers, supports auto-login
14. Personal blocklist - Allows you to disable sites from appearing in Google.
15. Reddit Anywhere - Check if any links have been posted to reddit, excellent way to find information about something.
16. Reddit Enhancement Suite - A given for any frequent Reddit visitors.
17. ScriptSafe - Disable scripts on websites.
18. Search by Image - Useful for finding information/an original image/higher resolution of the image you choose to initiate the search with.
19. Session Manager - Saves the current tabs/windows.
20. Stylish - Install userstyles.
21. Tabs Outliner - Excellent tab management, also allows you to save sessions, but I prefer the former
22. Tampermonkey - Chrome-variant of Greasemonkey, install userscripts.
23. WikiTube - Adds related YouTube videos in any Wikipedia article.
24. WOT (Web of Trust) - Shows security-related information about websites and warns you if you enter badly rated ones.
25. Xmarks Bookmark Sync - Fantastic tool for synchornising bookmarks across platforms/devices and browsers.

Rainmeter desktop

Aside from the importunate Windows preview watermark, I'm satisfied with this desktop as my "daily driver" (if you will) for now. Using rainmeter skins from the Omnimo skin by ^fediaFedia@DeviantArt. Font is Segoe UI/Light. I later changed the bar colours to white.

Rainmeter desktop

Switching back to Chrome from Firefox.

Chrome and Firefox; an everlasting battle consisting of customisation, usability and stability. At least in my case.

Being fairly obsessed with having everything in place and perfect order - Firefox always appealed to me because of its convenient bookmark-management, which Chrome still struggles with.

However,  I was tired of the lack of well-written addons for Firefox - not implying there aren't good ones out there, but Google has a plethora of high quality services that they (for obvious reasons) don't port to Firefox.

Therefore, I decided to once again move back to Chrome. Google's new App Launcher is also quite handy, so that's just one more reason to switch.

I've been using Firefox since 2005 I think, up until 2008 when the first Chrome release was made  publicly available. After that switch I've been switching between them at least once a year.

Here's a screenshot of my current Firefox layout, with the "MZ8"-theme:

Firefox v23.0.1, Windows 8, 05.09.13.