Post your desktop-thread!

[Earendil]

Yes, it's finally here!

 

Time for everyone to show off how their desktops look!

 

Quick tutorial on capturing/uploading your desktop-pics

Firstly, minimize all programs so that we can actually see the desktop. Once you think it looks good, hit the button called PRNT SCRN (Print Screen). It looks something like this. Once you have done this, a screenshot will be stored in the memory of your computer. The next step will be to create an image-file of it. You can use Windows Paint for this operation if you do not have more fancy image-editing tools. Hit "Start", Then "All programs", "Accessories", and finally "Paint".

 

Now simply hit the CTRL-key, hold it, and then hit "V" - and the screenshot of your desktop will appear.

Great - Now we need to save the image as an image-file. Click "File" (Top left hand corner), and then "Save as". On the bottom roll-down menu, choose the JPEG format. DO NOT USE BMP AS THE FILE WILL BE HUGE! Select a name for your image, and hit "Save".

 

Next step is to upload the picture to the internet. For this we can use www.tinypic.com. Once you have clicked this link you will be directed to the mainpage of tinypic.com - You will see a buttom called "Choose...". Click it and locate the folder of where your imagefile was saved. Once you find your imagefile, simply mark it, then click "Open", and you will be back at the frontpage of tinypic.com - All you have to do now is to hit "Upload image", wait for a little while, and you will be given an URL (web adress) of your uploaded image. (Direct URL will be in the bottom box). Then simply reply to this post and copy+paste the url you were given.

 

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing how all your desktops look!

 

Here is mine (Big pic in resolution and size):

 

http://i11.tinypic.com/317croi.jpg

 

Show me yours!!

[wallee]

I use the web shots desktop manager and have about 250 photos that i rotate through. Mostly cars and animals, but some interesting photos I pick up while surfing as well.

 

Desktop 1

 

I call this one two moons rising. Desktop 2

[Earendil]

hehe love the title of the second one!

[Worker 11811]

>> MY Desktop <<

 

And if you have a REAL computer, all you do is press "--3"... Ka-Ching! You have a screensot on your desktop!

 

Double click the picture's icon and resave it in the size & format you want. Simply drag the resultant file to your iDisk. Viola! Screenshot on the Web!

 

[Earendil]

For everyone else who doesn't live in the world of geeks - Workers idea of "a REAL computer" is a Mac. And Macs have a nifty mac macro for taking screenshots. (Congratulations Apple, what a useful function )

 

For everyone else who has a PC - Don't try that at home kids, follow the tutorial in the first post of this thread. And stop confusing everyone with Mac procedures Worker

 

Oh, and nice desktop

 

Pic is a bit small though, no?

[Worker 11811]

"CMD-^-3" leaves a full size, uncompressed PDF on your desktop. You'll probabaly have to edit it down to a manageable size. (I usually do.) You can use Photoshop if you want to but "Preview.app" allows resizing and exporting pictures. It's a lot quicker and easier if you don't need the control that Photoshop gives. For "quickie pics" it's just fine.

 

My pic above was resized with Photoshop. Originally 1024 X 768. Now 512 X 384.

 

Then, when compressed as a PNG the result is a file that's only 76 KB. It downloads via modem in under 30 seconds. A full size picture with the same compression settings (PNG-8 @ 128 colors, Selective, 20% dither) takes just a bit over 300 KB. Uncompressed the picture would be almost 1 MB.

 

Not everybody has broadband internet, you know!

 

But, for you bandwidth bandits, here's the FULL SIZE PICTURE.

 

Which, by the way, I photographed that scene myself.

 

(At full size you can see the dither.)

[wallee]

Is this turning into a "Who's the bigger geek thread"?

 

Don't make me put on my thick black tapped together glasses and spank you both.

[Worker 11811]

...thick black tapped together glasses...

 

That would be Gaffer's Tape. Right?

You're not a real geek until you own at least one item that's been repaired with gaff.

 

I've always been fairly conscious of bandwidth abuse on the internet. Lately, at work, I have had to harp at several people about using too much bandwidth. Everybody there is used to having a high speed connection where super large files download quickly. But, now, when having to send out multimedia to lots of people over the internet, they are sending out HUGE amounts of data and wondering why other people refuse to read their messages.

 

There is one person who sent out an e-mail press release with three attached JPEG pictures. The entire message was OVER 10 MB! She wondered why the server rejected her. It took me almost an hour to convince her to upload the pictures to the public folder on our server then LINK the recipients to the pictures via the web.

 

Another person is in charge of sending out bulk e-mails to people on our mailing list. She sent out an e-mail with embedded pictures and HTML that was almost 3 MB. She couldn't figure out why people weren't reading it. She was completely amazed when I took her same e-mail and recompressed it into a message that was UNDER 50 KB!

 

I love looking at people's pictures over the internet but but please forgive me if I growl a little when I have to download gi-mongous pictures over my dial-up connection.

 

So... Who's going to be next? Post your desktops!

[Earendil]

So... Who's going to be next? Post your desktops!

 

Go, go, go people!!

 

[Aldhissla]

My desktop

 

Up the Irons!

[FrBrGr]

After I selected this as my desktop image, I never changed it. I love it!

 

FrBrGr's Desktop

Edited October 19, 2006 by Guest

[Worker 11811]

The OTHER computer I use:

 

>> Small Pictrure <<

 

>> Large Picture <<

 

Both are compressed.

 

Not my own work but I chose the picture because I wish it was.

[Joe]

Good to see a thread like this.

 

I change my desktop very frequently. Until recently I had paintings by a British graffiti artist called Banksy, a different one every couple of weeks. As I settled into Rome, I began to use photos from my travels. Then, one beautiful Sunday afternoon in the town of Assisi, I dropped my camera and mortally wounded the flash. As my other, "real" Nikon is on its way back from repair, I've made do with my little Nikon L4 (purchased in a Barcelona street fair for way below the foreign-tourist price...) and its odd night-portrait mode - nicknamed light/speed by a friend of mine). This picture is my current desktop, taken out my bedroom window at Bernini's Fontana Dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona, back when they had the lights and water on as usual. I should really share with you the fountain's current configuration with a five-story treehouse-like scaffolding, complete with plastic pitched roof, completely devouring the entire north side. Enjoy!

 

 

http://i11.tinypic.com/2cdhhuh.jpg

[Worker 11811]

A very cool and very Mac-like desktop picture!

 

Did you know that Mac OS X can be programmed to change its desktop at prearranged intervals? Every day, every time you log in or even every five seconds, you can have a new desktop picture, chosen from a list of your favorite pictures. This setting can be different for each user account that accesses the computer.

 

I have a steady desktop picture. My wife uses a generic background. The Bears have their account set up so that, every time they log in, the desktop is a new picture of a Teddy Bear. (Go figure! )

[Guest]

worker;

 

The KDE Desktop Skin for Linux can do that as well.

 

I'm considering that with my next update. It came with Mandrake when I had that but Mandriva is to be avoided since the change. Too many flaws and not sufficiently Beta tested.

 

There is a 'fixed' Screensaver/Picture Desktop Background program I used where I can change the picture easily. I miss the KDE changing Screensaver though. It's like worker's description of the Mac program. We have that on our big G5 at the office.

 

 

OFF

[Worker 11811]

In OS X, it's built-in. Sure, it's a module (kernel extension?) just as you describe with Linux but it's standard equipment.

 

Do you do much "crunching" with your G5 at work? I do a fair amount of video editing on the iMac-G5 at work. When I get Final Cut going, full-steam, I can bring the whole computer down to a crawl. We're supposed to be getting a Core-Duo machine very soon, now. I'm hopeful that the faster machine will speed up the workflow.

[Guest]

worker;

 

The G5 has a 30" monitor and is for CADD work only. It's loaded with Graphisoft's ArhciCAD which likes Mac better than WindowZ.

 

Unlike AutoCAD it's a true 3-D Information Modeling Program and it's much more powerful.

 

I don't run it. I have a CAD tech that operates the program to my designs. Un like AutoCAD you can actually use the program to design with.

 

 

 

OFF

[Joe]

 

 

AAAAAAH! AUTOCAD!!!!!!!!

 

*hides under desk*

 

OFF, maybe after we wrap the Rome project, I'll come work for you folks out west. I am about sick to tears of this confounding fascination with that damn program, autocad. One of my American colleagues who came with me from my office is absolutely obsessed with the program; he can't draw to save his life, and his design paradigm has 'contractor' stamped all over it in that charming AUTOCAD font that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside...

 

I'm almost thankful that the overpopulation of Italian architecture interns grants old farts like me the ability to move on. The partners of my office in Philly seem married to autocad, but we also use FormZ 5 and 3D studiomax. Our newest young upstarts arrived with a 3d form animation program called Maya. I own a copy of each program except Maya on my 2Ghz 15.4" MacBook Pro...what an upgrade from my previous 15" 2001 Dell Inspiron notebook, which had more upgrades and add-ons than Joan Rivers. My home machine was a 2002 iMac G4, top line model that my parents bought as a gift when I graduated from Lehigh. I'm still praying over that machine...it's had less problems in four years than my Dell did in the first six months, but it didn't make the trip across the ocean because it's been drafted into service by my very professorial Mom. The MacBook, although it runs hotter than I expected, does the job, however I have yet to delve into serious video editing. Oh, and thanks for the tip, Worker. I just put up a set of sexy vistas from Tuscany. I took a weekender earlier this month and stayed in Santa Anna in Camprena, the monastery where they shot scenes from the film The English Patient. Anyone ever heard of it? Let's see if this link works. I turned the image in Preview, but whenever I upload the pictures to any other site, they don't seem to rotate...

 

http://i14.tinypic.com/47bncow.jpg

 

 

 

grazie mila,

 

J.

[Worker 11811]

Preview.app doesn't alter the picture. It stores any cropping, scaling and rotation changes you make, leaving the original picture intact. (AKA: Non-destructive editing.) It then repeats those alterations when you view the picture again. Unless you resave the picture with edits made permanent, Photoshop, web browsers, etc. don't read the cropping/scaling information and, thus, don't preserve your changes.

 

The English Patient. Anyone ever heard of it?

 

Heard of it? I work in a theater. I presented it.

 

Oh! Nice picture, BTW!

[Joe]

Haha, first lof all, I should have emphasized the [ ] in that post a bit more.

 

I meant to ask if anyone has heard of the monastery Santa Anna in Camprena outside of Pienza in Tuscany. The famousness of the movie (there's even been a Seinfeld episode about it...oye) speaks for itself, but I've actually never seen it. Come to think of it, I didn't see too many movies that year thanks to round-the-clock hours in college at studio. I've always been a by-hand kind of guy since the beginning, something which I've sort of gotten over since I started to blend Form*Z and my usual mixed media a couple years ago. Here in Rome, it's a completely different experience in that my job allows me to draw and model the "old fashioned way", minimizing the use of computers.

 

By the way, thanks for the tip - it's sort of obvious, now that I think about it. When you make changes to an image in Photoshop or whatever program, it saves a copy of the image and subsequently doesn't open in preview unless you specify.

 

Ciao! I'll upload a few more soon.

 

J.

[Mr Barguzin]

And here we go folks.... the BIG ONE!!!

 

(well, it might be, but then again it might not be,,,, here's hoping anyways.)

 

My Desktop

 

I should add that there are a couple of desktops floating around the planet that are available and actually feature girls in fur. These were (are?) available at various background/font/theme sites and I did have one at my old workplace.... but guess who furgot to email thefile home before cutting ties with that place??

 

Ah well, another 'senior' moment.

[Guest]

As for Desktop pictures?

 

More than half the pictures I've posted are in my 'Desktop file' that I rotate frequently.

 

One reason I'm considering going back to the KDE Desktop skin. It has a 'Slideshow' Screen saver that I miss from my old Mandrake OS days.

 

I could have four separate and rotating slideshows on four Desktops. Later versions have up to 20 Desktops but I found 4 to 6 was sufficient. I currently have four Desktops with two 19 inch LCD monitors but they are not separated the way they were in the KDE skin.

 

 

OFF

[Worker 11811]

Should I split this off into its own topic?

 

There's a trick about Macintosh file systems. Unlike Windows which only knows what program to open a file with by looking at the last three letters, Mac OS has a built-in type and creator code which tells the system what kind of file it is and what program to open it with.

 

Windows only knows what those three letters are. It knows that ".jpg" files are pictures and ".doc" files are M$ Word files. But, what if I changed the three letters to ".foo"? Windows would start calling it a "Foo File".

 

(Go ahead. Change a M$ word file to ".foo" and see what happens. )

 

But, in Mac OS, if you use Photoshop Elements to make a picture it will have a type of "JPEG" and a creator of "8ELE" and an extension of ".jpg". Changing the extension to ".foo" does not necessarily change the type/creator of that file. (Unless you have programmed your system to obey file extension changes.)

 

If you change the creator code of a file to "OGLE" it will open in Preview.app. IF you change it to TVOD it will open with QuickTime Player.

 

Get it? You OGLE pictures. You "TV-OD" when you watch movies in QuickTime. (A reference to the song "TVOD" by The Normal.)

 

>> Sound Clip: "TVOD" by The Normal. <<

 

Anyway, if you want to be able to change the type/creator codes you need a program to do it... Or be able to edit the files in a binary editor. I recommend the former method.

 

Use "Quick Change" by Everyday Software. It's freeware.

 

>> Click Here for link to software. <<