Windows 7: Hailing from the camp of "software that does exactly what its name implies", Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer fine-tunes the size, spacing, and margins of your Windows 7 Superbar previews.

If you're unhappy with the size and spacing of application and folder thumbnails on your Superbar (less enthusiastically dubbed the taskbar in some circles), Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer adjusts them. Vertical size, spacing between the icons, and margins on the top and bottom of the icons are among the parameters awaiting your obsessive attention. This application won't change the spacing of icons on the actual bar itself, it alters the size and spacing of the preview thumbnails.

See the two images below for comparison. The top is the default settings and the second is with the size of the thumbnail doubled to 400:

Don't worry about remembering your initial settings—if you're not happy with your Superbar's new look, hit "Restore Defaults" and everything will return to its default. Have another application or trick for customizing your Windows interface? Let's hear about it in the comments. Thanks Saudrapsmann!

Life can be challenging in terms of mental focus. With so many things to worry about in your past, present, and future, it is easy to lose perspective. This episode teaches the value of living in (not for) the moment. Such an "awake" perspective allows you to enjoy life as it comes and positively influence your future.

Dear Lifehacker,
I've read about how HTML5 will change the way I use the web, but it seems like the biggest example of HTML5 in action is on sites like YouTube—which don't support my favorite browser, Firefox. What's the deal?

I find myself, and I'm sure tons of others, caught in the Adobe Flash Player vs. HTML5 battle. Flash Player runs terribly on my iMac. Videos on different sites either tell me to install Flash components, show up as blank white areas, load perpetually (CNET TV) or tell me to adjust global storage, and so on. If they do play, I often get the stuttering/buffering that drives me crazy. I had the latest version of Flash Player, uninstalled that and installed the latest 10.1 Beta3, and it's just as bad.

I considered signing up for YouTube's HTML5 beta test, but that only works for Safari, Chrome, and IE, not Firefox. I've read about Mozilla's stance on this issue, too.

I apologize for the long intro to my question, but do you know of any Firefox addon or plugin that installs the H.264 codec? We already have to install a plugin for Flash Player, so perhaps it's possible someone can do this for H.264.

Thanks for any help,
Fighting with Flash

Howdy Fighting,
That's a good question, and unfortunately one to which there's no great answer. It actually is technically possible to play HTML5 YouTube videos in Firefox, but it's extremely convoluted (details below)—and Mac users like yourself won't have any luck. First, for those who aren't familiar with why Firefox is excluded from YouTube's (and some other video sites') HTML5 support, here's why:

The Problem

In order to move to HTML5 from Flash, video sites like YouTube need to host their videos in formats friendly to Flash-free HTML5 embedding. Unfortunately there's no default standard for the format HTML5 videos should use.

As a dedicated open-source, open-standards browser, Firefox chose to support the Ogg Theora video format for HTML5 video. Like Firefox, Ogg Theora is free and open; it's not covered by any patents, so it requires no licensing and is completely free to use for everyone involved.

Other browser makers, like Chrome and Safari, support H.264 for HTML5 video. Unlike Ogg Theora, H.264 is patented, and would theoretically require browser makers to pay licensing fees to use it (though the company that owns licensing rights to H.264 have said that they'll offer it royalty free until 2016). Additionally, the issue isn't just about licensing.

Some tests have shown H.264 to perform better than Ogg Theora in side-by-side comparisons. Apple's stance on the matter, via Wikipedia, is that "H.264 performs better and is already more widely supported." For video sites like YouTube, the main concern is likely which format can deliver the highest quality video with the greatest compression rates. Unfortunately for Team Firefox (and supporters of free and open web standards), it's looking like H.264 might deliver the best results.

It's worth nothing that browsers can support multiple video formats for HTML5 support, but currently Chrome is the only browser that supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora (though through the Frankenstein efforts of Google Chrome Frame, Internet Explorer also gets support for both). The chart below (from Wikipedia) lays it all out:

As you can see, unless either Firefox changes its stance or sites like YouTube decide to support a free alternative like Ogg Theora, Firefox fanatics don't have a clear way to watch HTML5 YouTube videos.

The "Solution"

If you're extremely desperate to watch HTML5 YouTube videos but you absolutely do not want to switch to another browser, you've got one simple-yet-absurd solution that'll only work on Windows:

Watch HTML5 YouTube Videos in Firefox (on Windows)

1. Install the IE Tab Firefox extension (or one of the other IE-in-Firefox extensions).
2. Install Google Chrome Frame for IE.
   
   
3. In the IE Tab preferences inside Firefox and set YouTube to always open inside an IE Tab (see image below).
   
4. Visit the YouTube HTML5 Video Player opt-in page (if you've set up IE Tab correctly above, it should open in an IE Tab inside Firefox) and click the Join the HTML5 Beta link at the bottom of the page.
   
5. Go watch an HTML5-supported YouTube video.

And... that's it. Ridiculous, but I've tried it, and it seems to work. (Though, unsurprisingly, it seemed buggy, and worked much better in straight Chrome than it did in either IE with Chrome Frame or Firefox with IE and Chrome Frame.) Unfortunately it doesn't help Mac users like Fighting with Flash much, but it's the best we could do.

More than anything, the convoluted process involved in watching an HTML5 YouTube video in Firefox only serves to underscore the problem. It's not something that'll likely be solved overnight (though I guess if Mozilla decides to cave into H.264, change could come pretty quickly), but it's a good reminder that important, web-changing technology almost always comes with a few speed bumps.

Love,
Lifehacker

Got a better method you're using, or want to weigh in on this whole H.264 vs. Ogg Theora battle? Let's hear it in the comments.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the Mammoth Mountain ski resort in California.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the sport of Whitewater Rafting on the Colorado River.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and learn about the State of Arkansas.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the Agricultural State of Iowa, and learn about the state's background.

A video of an architect explaining the ideas and the design of a timber extension project.

Workplace distractions are nothing new, but if you can't seem to find time to do some serious distraction-free work for any significant chunk of time, consider time blocking an appointment with yourself.

Over at business site Fast Company, our own Gina Trapani continues her Work Smart video series with a great piece on Time Blocking (embedded above). Recounting the days when she worked as a low-on-the-totem-poll programmer in a distraction-heavy office, Gina remembers:

It got so bad that when I was on deadline, I'd book hour-long meetings in a conference room where I was the only attendee. I'd put the meeting in my calendar a day or two ahead of time so that I showed up as "busy" in Outlook. When the time came, I'd steal off to the conference room with my laptop to work uninterrupted. When I confessed to another programmer that I was holding fake meetings with myself just to get work done, he asked if he could join me—under the condition that we would not distract one another. I got the most work done in the shortest amount of time during those blocks.

Ever try something similar, or have your own methods for carving out distraction-free blocks of work time? Let's hear your tips in the comments.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and learn about the potato farming industry in Idaho.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the city of Tucson in Arizona.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the experimental city of Arcosanti in Arizona.

Math professor, programmer, and blogger John Cook discusses how work expands to fill the time allowed for it, and why the more trivial something is, the more time we waste discussing it.

Yesterday I found a copy of Parkinson's Law for $1 at a library book sale. This book is best known for it's opening line: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

The name "Parkinson's law" can mean at least four different things:

1. The 1957 book by C. Northcote Parkinson
2. The first chapter of Parkinson's book
3. The principle expressed in the book's opening line, as understood by Parkinson
4. The principle in the opening line as understood today.

I'd heard of the general principle of Parkinson's law a few years ago. I only found out about the book more recently. I didn't know until last night that Parkinson intended his principle to be applied more narrowly than it is applied now.

The full title of the first chapter of the book is "Parkinson's Law, or The Rising Pyramid." This chapter explains how work expands to fill the available resources within a bureaucracy and why bureaucracies grow exponentially at a compounding rate of around 5% per year. The subtitle addresses the mechanism for this growth, bureaucrats creating a pyramid of subordinates. Parkinson derives his law from "two almost axiomatic statements": An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals. Officials make work for each other.

Nowadays Parkinson's law is usually condensed to saying work expands to the time allowed. It is applied to individuals as well as a burgeoning bureaucracies. Parkinson discusses this interpretation in his opening paragraph but then limits his attention to organizations.

The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.

Chapter 3 of Parkinson's law is "High Finance, or The Point of Vanishing Interest." This chapter is the source of the phrase bike shed arguments. In this chapter Parkinson states what he calls the Law of Triviality:

… the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

The idea is that people are more likely to contribute to the discussion of things they understand. A nuclear reactor will sail through the finance committee, but a bicycle shed will cause endless debate because everyone can understand it and everyone has an opinion.

In the second video of this series I show you how to use formal English on the telephone.

Panic is a software company that makes useful tools like my personal favorite, Transmit for the Mac. They've also made a beautiful project status display keeps their team on top of what they're working on and keeps everyone motivated.

The board is actually an internal web page that auto-updates support email queue numbers, how far along each company project is, day over day revenue comparisons, the company calendar, and Twitter messages. Here's the effect it's had on the team:

Les, one of our support guys, said it best after a week: "That board is like magic." Our support turnaround time is faster than it's ever been. Just the simple act of "publicizing" those numbers - not in a cruel way, but a "where are we at as a group?" way - has kept the support process on-task and, I think, made it a bit more like a video game. (It helps that when all the boxes are at "zero", a virtual bottle of champagne appears on-screen, and a physical one is likely removed from the fridge.)

Brilliant! I am dying for one of these for my own personal use. Panic, will you add that to your project list? For the nitty gritty on how this board was built and what kind of display it's on, check out the full post at the Panic blog.

Smarterware is Lifehacker editor emeritus Gina Trapani's new home away from 'hacker. To get all of the latest from Smarterware, be sure to subscribe to the Smarterware RSS feed. For more, check out Gina's weekly Smarterware feature here on Lifehacker.

Too many people live their lives in a state of paralysis due to countless fears and doubts. Most of our fears are ungrounded and based on anything but actual physical danger. To overcome our fears and reclaim that passion and vigor for life which they stole, we need a new perspective on what fear is.

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the town of Hampton in Arkansas.

3 couples find out if they’re the next lucky couple to be on Married On MySpace-Season 2.

Take a peek inside DadLabs World Headquarters and witness a dramatic re-enactment of a recent production meeting where all the dads offer their best ideas for a video for the Nosefrida nasal aspirator. This product, also known as The Snotsucker helps parents remove mucus and snot from a newborn or infant baby. Daddy Troy gets scientific and offers a physics lesson behind the product. Daddy Owen goes hip hop and creates a mucus centered "Snotsucker" rap song. And Daddy Brad suggests creating ....

Mac only: Multiple monitors do great things for your desktop space, but your menu bar sticks to one screen. If you're looking for more menu access, free utility SecondBar puts one at the top of each monitor.

As veteran Mac users know, each application's menus fill in the menu bar at the top of the desktop, not the window of the app itself, as in a Windows desktop. When you have a lot of apps open in different spots, it becomes inconvenient to access an app's preferences or deeper features with a mouse. SecondBar adds a customizable menu bar to your second, third, or tenth monitor, letting you keep your focus on one screen at a time.

SecondBar has all the features of OS X's built-in menu bar, along with being drag-able and having the half-and-half resizing features of Windows 7's Aero Snap. The app is still in its super-early development stage, but it seems stable enough for regular use at the moment, and more features appear in the works.

SecondBar is a free download, Mac OS X only. Thanks, Douglas!

Pears are a wonderful winter fruit. Watch this health & wellness tip to learn to benefit from nutrients, as well as why they are an ingredient in baby food.

Giz friend Adam Savage, in our estimation, can make just about anything. Here he explains the path he took to turn a toy gun into an astoundingly sharp Blade Runner pistol replica.

I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible. (Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal Street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer.)

I made a crazy accurate scratch built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference—it was 20% too small. Fuck!

I even had it chrome plated at one point, and I weathered it.

In 2006, the screen-used original surfaced after 25 some-odd years and sold at auction last year for $256,000. Supposedly to Paul Allen. Update: We're just now told that Paul Allen specifically did not buy this.

The last picture is the final iteration. It's 95% finished. My hand-built baby. About 30 to 40 hours of labor spread out over (at least) 6 years. An original Steyr-Mannlicher .222 target rifle receiver and magazine and a Charter Arms Bulldog .44, both demilled and gunsmithed by me (working with hardened steel—FUN!) with custom machined aluminum and steel parts (barrel, grip, butt) and made as close as possible, in every respect, to the original. Painstaking.

That is all I have to say on the subject (probably not). I can't even describe how good it feels to hold it in my hand.

Follow Adam on twitter!

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the PRS guitar factory in Stevensville Maryland.