Evolving Desktop
I don’t know what it is about desktop toys that fills me with glee and suddenly makes me notice that 5 hours have gone by, but there you go.
Windows 7 has a very nice minimal desktop if you let it. The task bar is great even though they got rid of the quick launch(but replaced it with something better) and it’s all nice and clean and crisp. So I tried to keep the rest of the desktop just as clean. This might seem like an easy task, but for those that know me, I’m a bit of a slob when it comes to desktops(both computer and real life).
But using some nice apps, I think I’ve found a way to do it.
The two main apps that I’m using are:
I found Fences some time ago via LifeHacker and just loved it. In a nutshell, what it lets you do is create an area of your desktop to hold things. This is a silly explanation, let me try again. It’s like a visible folder. You can create a ‘fenced in area’ and it will hold as many icons/whatever as you like, and never get larger. It will create a scroll bar if you need it. But it will also keep other icons/whatever out so things, when they download to the desktop, will kind of wrap around it. Hell, go to the website and see for yourself, it’s a lot easier.
What I’m using it for is two things; a place to keep folders, and a way to keep things from not going on top of other things.
The other things in this case is the RainMeter stuff. What does Rainmeter do? It monitors things. But in a really cool and almost helpful way.
And it has plenty of cool themes, so that’s kept me busy.
When I first installed it I just used the basic stuff, which, really, is still very cool looking. Then I found a few other things and now I think I have a good desktop. And a clean one.
Next step is backgrounds, and that’s what 4chan is for. Beyond the porn, they have a lot of really good, high res pictures that are great for backgrounds.
So that’s what I do. Download and put into rotation.
Windows 7 does the whole rotation thing automagically, which is also cool.
So here is the first desktop with all the toys(caution, the pics are big):
And after some tweaking, and some additional downloads, here’s the new one, and the one I’m currently using. That’s not to say it won’t change, that’s just the way I am:
And as new themes/skins emerge for Rainmeter, I’m sure this will change.
Anyway, that’s enough random noise, back to work with you!