'Ascii Desktop', and 'Hard Drive Indicator'

Ascii Desktop

If you are one of those persons who thinks that life was easier in the old days - and this was back then when monitors only had one color: green - then this tool might bring back that warm feeling. This small utility displays your desktop as ASCII art. It is a live display so everything you do on the desktop is reflected on the ASCII art display.

http://www.viksoe.dk/code/asciidesktop.htm

Hard Drive Indicator

Displays a system tray load indicator for your local physical disks. Has a 5 bar resolution for both read and write operations. Has a small memory footprint and low CPU utilization. Auto-calibrates itself to ensure that the output is relative to the disk usage for the previous 60 seconds (Read and write scales are not relative). Shows a 'governor' to indicate whether the system tray icon is actually being updated. Especially useful for situations where the (hardware) hard drive LED is hidden, missing or broken. Stand-alone executable. No install required. Includes self-referencing link creation/deletion code.

http://optionalreaction.com/software/hdi/