(Incomplete page, last edited Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 10:46:00 PM.)


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Astroblahhh Desktop

Featuring the Astroblahhh Links Organizer,
Astroblahhh Idea Organizer,
and Astroblahhh File Organizer

Welcome to the official home page of Astroblahhh Desktop, a software package which I, Apollia of Astroblahhh.Com, wrote mostly in PHP with a little JavaScript and MySQL. It is free, open source, public domain software.

By the way, I am an amateur programmer and don't completely know what the heck I'm doing, so, please don't trust this software or rely on it for anything really important. Even though my programs seem to work remarkably well as long as the databases aren't too colossal, I don't think I fully grasp the intricacies of good database design or how to make databases function efficiently, judging by the problem I had (described below) where adding/removing indexes of a colossal file database tremendously overheated my hard drive. The file moving feature might also be very dangerous.

So, please only use this software at your own risk.


Astroblahhh Desktop is made up of 3 different programs for searching and organizing things. They're the 3rd, 4th, and 5th large projects written in PHP/MySQL/JavaScript that I ever completed (mostly) and released.


Alas, Astroblahhh Desktop definitely has its drawbacks. For one thing, I only feel comfortable using Astroblahhh Desktop whilst disconnected from the internet, because of the possible security and privacy problems. That's rather inconvenient, especially with the web links organizer. :-)

Astroblahhh Desktop isn't intended to alter or delete files, except for being able to overwrite files in the C:/xampp/htdocs/abdesk-data and C:/xampp/htdocs/abdesk directories - but, it could have glitches, especially with the file moving capabilities.

I rely on this software heavily myself, which gave me a very good incentive to do my best to make it work as well as I possibly can, but my best still might not be good enough. Astroblahhh Desktop could still very easily be dangerous and dysfunctional, especially on computer platforms I don't have, and thus haven't been able to test Astroblahhh Desktop on. I can't say it enough - please only use Astroblahh Desktop at your own risk.


All the organizers have powerful search capabilities similar to the Astrosorting Music Organization Database (AMODB). You can use the built-in querying languages to construct searches, or write your own MySQL queries, or just type in a few search tags without having to write any queries at all.

There are numerous checkboxes that allow you to change the order and filtering of results. There are colorful labels and Unicode icons which are helpful in telling at a glance what links, ideas, and files are for what purpose.

Instead of just one search tags category, there are numerous different types of tags. tags can have spaces in them, so you don't have to have tags like "SearchEngine" with no spaces.

You can mark records as read by clicking the "Read" link next to them. Then, by ordering your links, ideas, or files by the date/time you marked them read, you can avoid having records you recently browsed being shoved in your face at the top of the list.

Each organizer allows you to fill in numerous different data fields for each record - actually so many fields that it would be a waste of time and overkill to fill them all in for every single record you add, but, at least they're available if you need them. Each organizer also allows you to not fill in lots of data for each record - they cope with incompleteness just fine.


Being free, open source, and public domain, Astroblahhh Desktop is theoretically 100% customizeable, at least if you know how to code. Many of its cosmetic features (such as the background colors, text colors, fonts, etc.) are easily modified by editing its CSS file.

Of course, I'm biased, but - even despite the scary incident mentioned above of my hard drive overheating and the plastic literally melting when adding/removing lots of indexes of a huge file database, the possibility of unfound catastrophic glitches, and the fact that it's probably better and more secure to be disconnected from the internet whilst using it - Astroblahhh Desktop is my favorite tool for organizing and locating web bookmarks, ideas/goals/to-do list items/other random text scraps, and files, and there is nothing I'd rather use.

There is obviously room for improvement, though - which is part of why I made Astroblahhh Desktop free, public domain, and open source, so anyone who wants to can improve and customize it any way they like.


Astroblahhh Desktop isn't software which is limited to any particular standard computer platform (like Windows, MacOS, or Linux) - the interface can be accessed by any common web browser. You just need some web server software to run on your own computer - or you could even conceivably upload Astroblahhh Desktop to a regular web server, though I strongly discourage you from that, since it probably has security problems, and it's not designed to be used on the web or by more than one person.

To develop and use it, I've been using the Windows version of XAMPP, an easily-installed distribution of the Apache web server software, bundled with PHP, Perl, MySQL, and other stuff, which is available for Linux, Mac OS, Windows, and Solaris. I've provided some instructions on how to hopefully get that running, at least on Windows.

For more details on how to install Astroblahhh Desktop, and the numerous possible security, privacy, and hardware issues, see the Readme file. The Readme file is also included in Astroblahhh Desktop's zip file.

Disclaimer: This software is provided free, public domain, open source, and as-is, without any warranty, etc. The entire risk as to the results and performance of this software is assumed by you. Sorry if anything bad happens.


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Last modified: Dec. 5, 2009
This page uploaded to web: Mar. 1, 2009