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Zen of the Desktop: Now Under New Management! [56K Warning]
Lucky Cynic
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Desktop Thread:
Hey there guys. It's Lucky here and I've taken the initiative to roll up a new Desktop thread. The old one was sinking and it was getting near time for a new one anyways so I worked up a new OP. I know it is probably a little bare bones so if you guys could offer up content and guides for it and for other platforms, it would be quite stellar and kind of you as I only have my Windows Vista computer to tinker with and I know many of you guys have different versions Mac, Windows, and Linux so if I am missing something blatantly awesome/helpful, go ahead and bother me.
What Is This Thread?:
This is the Desktop Thread of course! In which, we discuss all manners of blinging, decorating, dressing up, streamlining, simplifying, appreciating and sharing the backdrop of our most beloved electronic companions. If your computer, laptop, netbook, or other miscellaneous device isn't looking sexy and stylish, have no worries for a new wallpaper and quick tweaks to your theme in general is enough to turn things around in record time!
Great Wallpaper Locales:
The PA Wallpaper Dump.
Deviant Art.
InterfaceLIFT.
Popular Programs:
Here is a quick list of easy to use and install programs, many of which are old favorites dressed up with a fresh coat of paint. This list is typically reserved for programs that have easy installs/uninstalls, and much with the OS as minimally as possible. I am going to need your help however! If you have a suggestion for something that meets these criteria, go ahead and PM me. I can't sample all the tasty desktop modding programs out there so ya'll will have to help!
Rainmeter: You guys may have remembered Rainmeter. What started out as a humble addition to a desktop to let you know if the sky was going to pee tomorrow has turned into a widely popular and easy to use interface. Rainmeter uses what it calls "Skins" to an extensive level. The clocks you see, the various meters and bars, each of those is a Skin and each Skin has multiple modes to be tinkered with. After a bit of editing, you can create a "Theme" (Or saved setting of Skins) of your liking or you can go ahead and use any number of the defaults! This is my program of choice! Let me know what is yours! When Toyed with extensively, you can have something as interesting and complexly beautiful as this!
<< More Programs To Come As Submitted >>
Sharing Is Caring:
If you want to post your snazzy desktop, go right ahead! Here's just a small list of pointers.
Forumer's Favorites:
Want to have your wallpaper featured here on the OP? Maybe it will serve as inspiration for someone? Or maybe people will try and top your submissions? Either way, if you want to have your wallpaper added, just go on and post it in the thread along with the line, "Lucky, have a look!". I'll just hunt each page and add submissions to this list as asked.
Warning Hueg!
Hey there guys. It's Lucky here and I've taken the initiative to roll up a new Desktop thread. The old one was sinking and it was getting near time for a new one anyways so I worked up a new OP. I know it is probably a little bare bones so if you guys could offer up content and guides for it and for other platforms, it would be quite stellar and kind of you as I only have my Windows Vista computer to tinker with and I know many of you guys have different versions Mac, Windows, and Linux so if I am missing something blatantly awesome/helpful, go ahead and bother me.
What Is This Thread?:
This is the Desktop Thread of course! In which, we discuss all manners of blinging, decorating, dressing up, streamlining, simplifying, appreciating and sharing the backdrop of our most beloved electronic companions. If your computer, laptop, netbook, or other miscellaneous device isn't looking sexy and stylish, have no worries for a new wallpaper and quick tweaks to your theme in general is enough to turn things around in record time!
Great Wallpaper Locales:
The PA Wallpaper Dump.
Deviant Art.
InterfaceLIFT.
Popular Programs:
Here is a quick list of easy to use and install programs, many of which are old favorites dressed up with a fresh coat of paint. This list is typically reserved for programs that have easy installs/uninstalls, and much with the OS as minimally as possible. I am going to need your help however! If you have a suggestion for something that meets these criteria, go ahead and PM me. I can't sample all the tasty desktop modding programs out there so ya'll will have to help!
Rainmeter: You guys may have remembered Rainmeter. What started out as a humble addition to a desktop to let you know if the sky was going to pee tomorrow has turned into a widely popular and easy to use interface. Rainmeter uses what it calls "Skins" to an extensive level. The clocks you see, the various meters and bars, each of those is a Skin and each Skin has multiple modes to be tinkered with. After a bit of editing, you can create a "Theme" (Or saved setting of Skins) of your liking or you can go ahead and use any number of the defaults! This is my program of choice! Let me know what is yours! When Toyed with extensively, you can have something as interesting and complexly beautiful as this!
Spoiler:
Sharing Is Caring:
If you want to post your snazzy desktop, go right ahead! Here's just a small list of pointers.
- Be sure to compress screenshots to appropriate sizes. Meaning no 10meg images!
- Please put spoiler tags around something that is massive. Anything larger than ~800pixels wide, I would go around and wrap around spoiler tags to be on the safe side.
- Also: Include the source! If you think your wallpaper is something that many people will be curious about, just go ahead and link to the source.
- While some people enjoy slightly NSFW wallpapers, please just link to them and label your links appropraitely. I don't want anyone getting banned or fired or whatever so be courteous.
- Make sure that your links are hosted on your own Photobucket account or something along those lines. It isn't nice to eat up wallpaper designer's bandwidth.
- Wallpapers and other device desktops are welcome to the party too! If you have an iPod, Zune, PSP, or whatever that you want to share, by all means!
Forumer's Favorites:
Want to have your wallpaper featured here on the OP? Maybe it will serve as inspiration for someone? Or maybe people will try and top your submissions? Either way, if you want to have your wallpaper added, just go on and post it in the thread along with the line, "Lucky, have a look!". I'll just hunt each page and add submissions to this list as asked.
Warning Hueg!
Spoiler:
Lucky Cynic on
Posts
(Just in case...)
I have way too many icons/programs installed
Btw, right click and "lock" your windows toolbar to get rid of that line.
And you can always take out parts you don't want of rainmeter. If you just want something that tells you the weather, you can just run the two or three skins that do that. Everything else can be shut off.
edit: haha, taking that picture made me realize I had winamp installed and I have no idea why. begone!
Paths of Exiled - (waffenheimer) SC -> minibean/fatslord/MuffinPuffs/ToomanyButtons
it's sad, really.
That said, I love my current desktop at home. For several years I used cool pictures I found in the Blender forums and galleries, or cool wallpapers that Gabe has made, but for the last 3-4 its been the same one. My best friend in college was an art student, and the summer before my junior year he drew two awesome pics of my character (where I got my forum name, which I use pretty much everyone on the web) from a MUD I used to play. One I tinyfied and use as my forum avatar wherever I go, and the other has been my desktop ever since.
edit: Wow. looking back, that wallpaper would have been made for me in 2004. So, 5 and half years now... It's survived two new PC builds and a couple additional Windows reinstalls.
Granted, a 9'' screen means real estate is valuable.
Guess I'll put up my current dual monitor background. TAKE THAT H-SCROLL
I vote for Blatte's Fractal Art to be added to the Great Wallpaper Locales section.
Consider this (Lucky, have a look! on this one, I guess
Source
vim, vimperator (yes, I love vim. Heck, even awesome is controlled with binds similar to vim, and I use vi mode in bash):
And to prove I don't have *only* fractal images in my wallpaper folder:
I still haven't figured out what it can do aside from launchy. I hear it can do everything though.
Twitter, notes, file operations, terminal, etc.
You need to access its properties and then search and install plugins or something like that.
Then I got Windows 7.
Now I simply can't go back to using my previous combination of ObjectDock, Launchy and Rainmeter, much as I'd like to. Shockingly, Microsoft has managed to roll everything I used those apps for into the default Windows UI, or close enough to that I can't even justify the RAM it would cost to use those extra apps.
The Start menu search box works just like Launchy. The new taskbar works better than ObjectDock in every way except aesthetics.
Basically I'm enjoying how normal everything feels. Using a stock interface after so long of fiddling with a set of disparate programs in order to get them to kinda look and act like each other is like a breath of fresh, uncomplicated air.
Of course I still miss the advanced functionality of my old setup; RSS news and weather feeds to the desktop, as well as system info and the like is still really nice. But when it comes down to it, no matter how well these desktop modification programs are made, they still feel like they're "floating" on top of Microsoft's underlying stuff which is always fighting to get through, and it makes the whole system feel a bit sketchy.
Now I satisfy the customisation itch through desktops. I'm currently using this stunning one (HUGE);
I've got a new hard drive coming in the mail, on which I'm going to install Ubuntu and use that to scratch my itch. I've always preferred system customisation on Linux anyhow, seeing as with a completely open system I can build a UI from the ground up with no superfluous parts and conflicting components, carefully fine tuning every aspect to my whim.
At any rate, does anyone else feel the same way? I'm honestly done with customising Windows, unless Microsoft blow a gasket and decide to let people tinker with their OS.
Yes. Exactly.
I started customizing my desktop with Windows 98 Lite and Litestep back around '99/'00. I've been doing it for a long time. I did all the custom apps, skinned things that were never designed to be skinned, all in the name of creating a nice, functional desktop.
Since I got Windows 7, the only "customizing" I do any more is wallpaper and desktop gadgets. So, sure, I'd like to make a few minor cosmetic changes to the UI, but functionally? It's awesome, and I just don't have any desire to change it anymore.
Could I ask where you got this? It is incredible, stupendous, jaw-dropping and a hundred other adjectives that have not been invented yet.
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/features/wallpapers/1959_2560x1600.jpg
I was wondering what it looked like all at once because my puny laptop monitor isn't nearly big enough to show it all at once, and it turns out he'd just linked it from the website.
I'm also annoyed by their lack of 1440x900 sized wallpapers, surely widescreens are common enough that you don't only need one widescreen size? (not to mention that one size is massive)
oh shit, I just noticed that the date in the wallpaper isn't really correct anymore. Shit, that means I gotta open up that old PSD again.
>2012
ISHYGDDT
I figure 2K Games has enough bandwidth that they don't mind me leeching a tad.
But yes, it is stunning, it's part of a series of conceptual artworks commissioned for Bioshock 2, there's one from Gabe and one from the guy who does Invader Zim, but the one I linked is my favourite. I'm honestly considering having a print done.
At any rate, those other pieces I mentioned are all good wallpapers too, so you might wanna have a poke around the site if you're a Bioshock fan.
You do realize that 2560x1600 is the same (16:10) aspect ratio as 1440x900, right? Just set your wallpaper to scale, or fire up any one of a zillion free image editing programs (e.g. Paint.net, IrfanView, Gimp) and resize it yourself.
Yeah, it didn't stop me from using it, but I'm not sure why they had a bunch of different sizes for 4:3 and just the one for 16:10. It looks fine and I can't really tell a difference between the scaled one anyways, so I guess it's not a big deal.
They don't, for the most part. 1280x1024 is 5:4, 1600x1200 is 4:3, 2560x1440 is 16:9, and 2560x1600 is 16:10.
There are a few with repeated aspect ratios, though. Not quite sure why they did that for some and not others. Those are mostly commissioned, though, so it's probably just the way they were submitted.