Be Excellent To Each Other

I is interested in what customisations you guys have done to your desktops...or indeed how many people actually bother. Being curious, anyone have any desktops/workspaces they are particuarly proud of? Do you go for putting your personality on the computer, or just a functional tool?

This is my current Windows desktop - simple, clean, and one of the games I'm currently playing through (I never played this on SNES, so it's my first time through).

[Click for Biggyness, don't want to kill those mythical 56kers ]

I use XP. My desktop is a black background with loads of icons on it, lots of which are temporary files and shizzle. I have a blank desktop because, well, how the hell often do I at the actual desktop? NEVA. If the computer is on then something is being used, even if it's just MSN or the Webowser. I just think backgrounds tend to be too noisy, distracting, and mean I can hardly read the icons


My 0.02$ for you there!


oh, I also made XP use the 2000 theme and I turned off a lot of the rubbish like menu animations and shadows. I AM A FUNCTION TOOL USING MAN, etc.

Same here, except mine is HEALING GREEN*.

I used to have this picture, though:



Then I realised that although it makes me smile without fail every time I see it, it mostly made me want to go out and have fun with friends (who are mostly 150 miles away now anyway. Sob, whinge) instead of doing any work, so changed it to something more in line with that. Which was this:



But then I realised this gave any visitors the impression that I was dangerously insane (honestly, why do people take silly pictures on the internet so seriously? You make one dough-and-dye visceral organ mockup and suddenly people stop returning your texts), and in any case, it made me feel uncomfortably egocentric. Also it brought back those weird blackouts, and I kept waking up with that weird reddish crust under my fingernails, so I went for a traditional picture of my sister's idiot cat, Floozy (she still can't work out how to change or switch off the date setting, either. And yes, that is her real name. We named her after our mum. No, really. It... oh, use your imagination):



Then it hit me. All this background nonsense was just procrastination and made the text hard to read, and I can at least procrastinate in more interesting ways by rambling about videogames and calling David Blunkett a twat. Hence, green from now on.


*self-indulgent in-joke that absolutely nobody reading this will get.

I used to spend ages faffing about with custom icons and desktop pics, but I can't be arsed any more. The only major change I've made to my Mac's UI (10.5) is a pretty obvious Dock hack.

Natch.

That your entry in the 'sharp' photography thing?

I used to chop and change my desktop backgrounds but I can't be arsed these days as both my work and home desktops are nearly always full of icons as I use it as my temporary space for storing stuff. So if I had anything vaguely detailed as a background, it'd just look a mess.

Currently using Sarah... but my previous one was Susie ...

On a bit of theme recently but it's usually something motorsporty. Having 2 monitors does mean I see the pics more often than if it was always covered.

Likely to get replaced by one of Vanina Ickx when my hires LeMans pics download.

Sinister Agent has a teeny tiny hand.

You have a womans hand my lord!

I don't do customising my desktops any more. I used to, when I used one or at most two computers at any one time, but these days I could be using any one of six different computers, and one or two of those seems to change each year. So now I cannot be arsed.

Instead, I present one of my best desktop pics I ever took, of my iBook when I was doing my PhD, and I did used to care about such things:


(Click for full size)

yep, same here.

My 'somewhat' untidy desktop:

That's a lot of pixels. What res is that? 2x 1680x1050?

yep!

That's what I have in work. Rocks, doesn't it?

it does, but i'm always tempted by 2 x 1920x1200 but my wallet couldn't cope with it!

my real desktop is no tidier that my virtual one

I have two!

I can't do anything with my desktop in work as it's a shared computer, and at home I never see the background (OS X is very good at letting you work without ever seeing it if you really want) but this is it:

That keyboard looks most unfun.

it's one of those apple keyboards. it's surprisingly comfy to use. The lack of certain keys when used on windows can be annoying though.

4 megapixels FTW

Those pixels are mega indeed.
Also; roughly an eigth of your screen is taskbar..... how many applications do you tend to have open at once?

Fuckloads - I'm very bad at closing windows. Also, it's on autohide, obviously, but I thought I'd expose it to make the picture slightly more interesting.

Also; all those quick launch icons. I think you have more there than in my start menu. Not that I even use my start menu. Give http://www.launchy.net/ a try.

I "only" have three columns of quicklaunch - after that it's just showing my desktop shortcuts (right-click on the taskbar, then Toolbars->Desktop).

Launchy looks interesting, ta.

I've got this as mine currently. It changes every 10 minutes though, as I've got a rotator installed.

It is indeed shit and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. After 2 days of use I gave it a rating of 201 Bananas.

Mine is a lie.

whee, Portal desktop.

mine is awesome when you ignore the fact I have Vista.
Please ignore it.

That is an awesome picture. What is it from?

(I can ignore the Vista, but The Sims TeenStyle?)

fake it, I applaud you most heartily 'pon your sig. Take two points.

And I wasn't kidding. Continuing the theme of awesome racing women, here's Vanina Ickx finishing the LeMans 24hrs last weekend in Rollcentre's Pescarolo 01 - Judd.

Neutral Milk Hotel fan?
That song is amazing.




I... it's an addiction, okay?

I don't know. I found it using StumbleUpon [great app] and it's been my desktop forever now.

Massively so. That song's good, but not my fave... Give me that Holland, 1941 / Commuist Daughter one-two punch of heartbreak every time. "And here's where your Mother sleeps, and here is the room where your brothers were born. Indentations in the sheets where they once lay but won't lay any more." *sob*

I really love Two Headed Boy [pts 1&2] and then Oh Comely is my next favourite. He's a genius with lyrics.

Mine is quite... nah... very boring.

I hate having things clutter up my pc. Everything is hidden away in neat little folders.

What is with the OSX-style dock that so many Windows folks seem to have?

Just because it's an OSX invention, doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

Not that I have it.

Why does The Vision have a picture of Sheepeh on his desk top?

I find it a pretty fun 'grass is always greener' thing. I know loads of Windows users who lust after the Dock, but the vast majority of pro-level Mac users absolutely despise it. The same was kind of true of the Start menu (Mac users wanted it; most Windows users I know hated it), which Apple never really had an equivalent to (and, no, the Apple menu really doesn't count), but desperately needed until Spotlight yomped on in.

I like the Dock. A lot. But then my Quick Launch is effectively my Dock, so there you go.

An exciting desktop, yesterday.

I always get the rest of that song in my head when I see one of your posts. Not a bad thing.

Mine on my desktop needs a tidy up...

All this talk of start menus and docks.

Just use Launchy! (It's like Quicksilver or whatever it's called on the Mac)

Quicksilver—the app that nearly was, but that's now broken, unloved and dying. *sad face*

Goddess Jasmine—have you been to Aquatica? It was still being built last time we were in Florida, but it looked kind of interesting.

No Craig, it only opened a couple of months ago. The kids want to go when we go over, but personally I think I'd rather do Sea World and Wet and Wild. I can imagine Aquatica being a combination of the two.

I keep being told I should listen to them properly. Interestingly*, by another 17 year old. I shall do so at some point.

Also interestingly*, my desktop is a rather nice piece of balck and red fractal art, goes nicely with the black laptop, and black and red themes I have on Xp and Firefox.






*Not, in either case, interestingly.

I used to have all manner of gubbins prettying up my desktop and sucking up my memory. Since I've got my current PC, I've restricted myself to just CD Art Display and John's Background Switcher. As such, here is this morning's desktop:



And on the off-chance anyone wants that wallpaper for themselves:



Edit: Oh, and a quick tip for anyone using John's Background Switcher. There is an option for it to suck a correctly ratio-ed image from Flickr completely at random, and use it as your wallpaper for a day. I tried this. The very first day's image was... a great big fuck-off gold swastika. Not really very good.

I done this, the preview there doesn't look that great, mind:



I think it's pretty. I made a few of them, if anyone wants to use them.