Tjoe's Blog

Wallpapers & Screen Savers

I'm a rather messy person; at least my mother always use to tell me that. And, for some things, she is right. At home, my workbench is a disaster. At work, people look at my desk and see big piles of stuff. There really is a method to my madness with my desk though. I do too much for the size space I'm allotted - in my opinion.

But many things I like to have neat and tidy. One of them is my computer desktop. As my 3 different screen-shots show (1 at the very bottom of the list, the other 2 right here), very little clutters my Windows Desktop. I rely heavily on my Office Toolbar (with AutoHide turned on), and on the Quick Launch area of my Windows Toolbar. On rare occasions I'll have a shortcut icon on my desktop, but that is only there to remind me to look at those objects in the very near future. Otherwise, I don't leave icons laying around. On my non-XP (windows) PCs, I leave the icons (that the Office Toolbar needs) hidden behind an empty folder. On my XP machine, I use the setting that keeps the desktop empty except for the picture. I'll also keep an old program from YAHOO running: a news ticker that helps me keep in touch with the outside world. And lastly, on my main office PC, I keep Intellicast's radar image of the Midwestern U.S. anchored in a corner using Windows (2000) Active Desktop.

But, as clean and neat as that is, it looks rather boring. Wallpaper pictures have been around forever, and I have used hundreds. The last few years, however, I have stuck to just a few favorites. Most of these favorites I got from SecondNature (www.SecondNature.com) in there various free packs or in the disk that I was given. When I thought that golf was my friend, I had a nice golf picture. The woodpecker picture (way below) now lasts during spring and summer.

But, Fall and Winter, my desktop gets the real treatment. In the fall, I load this picture of a country store on a lake in the late fall at sunset (called Terry Redlin - Master of Memories, from SecondNature). Then I run a great little program called AutumnLeaves from Rick Jansen (http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/AutumnLeaves/). This program keeps the desktop alive during my regular work, not just during screen saver mode, with falling leaves, acorns, growing mushrooms, chipmunks burrowing, pumpkins, little wind storms, etc. The leaves collect on the bottom of the screen and on the top of any open window. The settings let you change how many leaves, how fast they fall, the kinds of leaves, nuts, and mushrooms, to pumpkin or not to pumpkin, and many other parameters.

I found AutmnLeaves after using Rick Jansen's SnowForWindows (http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/WinSnow/) program. I really, really like snow in the wintertime. I'm so surprised by the number of people that live here in Chicago (and anywhere that snows seasonally) that can't stand snow. Hey! It's freezing outside. You can't go swimming or walk around in shorts and a t-shirt (for very long anyway). You can't do much when it is this cold out, you might as well have snow on the ground and in the trees to make it look pretty. Dead grass and trees are very depressing to look at for 6 or so months - cover them up with snow. And, hey, while were at it, learn how to drive in this stuff so that you don't totally ruin someone else's day when you slide into them because you forgot that it's slippery out.

Anyway, SecondNature has several snow scenes that I like, but my favorite is an old farm house in the mountains. Running the SnowForWindows program on top of that is so pretty. Snow lets you change the types of flakes, how many, how fast, how windy, etc. You can even have Santa and the reindeer (with optional Rudolph) fly by.

On top of all this, whether I have my fall scene up or my winter scene up, the perfect topping to all of this is having the right music playing. Check out www.Live365.com and you'll find any kind of audio that you are looking for. While you are there, check out the station StreamingSoundtracks (also available at www.StreamingSoundtracks.com). The biggest and best Movie, TV, and Games Soundtrack site anywhere.

posted by Tjoe @ 2:14 PM