Globes and Maps

"...and globes and maps they chart your way back home"  -Something Corporate

I like that song.

And speaking of songs vaguley related to traveling that I also like... A Plain Morning by Dashboard Conf.

Ok, now onto our présentation principale!

New desktop background!

After The Hunger Games had come and gone, I wanted to change my desktop background, but I had trouble coming up with a new theme.  I was tired enough of all the changing and rearranging of geeklets that I wanted to pick something that I could have for a while, something that wouldn't expire (you know, like when the movie came out or holiday passed, etc.).

I remembered that my very first attempt into geeklets was built on top of one of the default desktop backgrounds that comes with a mac (The Great Wave).  So I turned to that folder to find something simple, beautiful, and lasting.  Though I sorted through many amazing pictures, the black and white set stuck out to me and I chose two of those to be my backgrounds (since I have two monitors now).

The geeklets I arranged all on one screen (the secondary) so I could always see them.  The second screen has become somewhat of my status screen now, I look there to check the time, battery level, calendar and weather.

Pretty nice, eh?  

Now, my main screen was just this cool, lighting desktop picture that I never actually saw because I always had windows covering it.  However I got this idea in my head that I really wanted to try.  I wanted to make this apear on my desktop... so I did.  In case you're wondering it does auto-update every 15 minutes so it shows the current sunlight spread over the earth.  I felt so proud I uploaded it to the official geektool forum/geeklet sharing site.

See that, globe and map, in the flesh.. hence my title, and completely random opening.

new theme!

You all may remember my infrequent updates on what my desktop background looks like.  My last update was in August, but it's changed since then (twice actually, not counting today's).  For the past three months I've had my desktop background a wintery Christmast theme, which was great for December and even part of January, but now that Groundhog Day and Valentines Day have come and gone it was well time for an update.

This weekend, tickets for The Hunger Games movie went on sale.  I'm pretty stoked for this, and I'm planning on buying tickets soon.  In honor of such, I have created this:

I'm still playing around a bit with some of the fonts, but that's the gist of it.

For those of you who care, all the updates to my desktop have been chronicled in my flickr photostream. (yeah, just those 5)

Desktop Update

Since HP7.2 has come and gone (great movie btw) I decided to update my desktop background:

I thought about creating countdowns for each game... but I don't really have the time (or need) for that right now.  But in also exciting news, the apartment we will be moving into has internet and cable as part of the rent, so I'll have the ESPN channels I need to watch all the BYU games :-)

Also, I got this background from this page on the Cougar Board

1 weeks

I recently got really geeky, and I created something so wonderful I just have to share it.
For the past three months or so I have had various pictures of BYU basketball players as my desktop background, but as BYU basketball ended, so too did the backgrounds.  I didn't feel like finding any special pictures at the moment so I just opened up the default picture folders that Apple gives you, browsed through some of the pictures (they give you a lot, some cool B&W pics, some weird nature ones, and a couple classic pieces of art).  I ended up picking this Japanese looking wave painting called "The Great Wave."

As I enjoyed my new background I began to fantasize of how great it would be to have a truly functional background, one that could display the time or date perhaps, or maybe show weather or have a calendar even.  So I began a google search for 'function desktops' or 'live desktops' even 'auto-updating desktop pictures'...  and although it took me a bit I was sitting in a boring class, so time wasn't an issue.

Eventually I stumbled upon GeekTool 3.0, and well, it's a tool for geeks!  With the program (a simple system preference pannel) you can create "geeklets" that allow you to take auto-updating images, files, or unix-shell commands and paste them on top of your existing desktop image.  It's really a great and amazing little tool, and as far as I'm aware it's for mac only, which makes me feel special.

I browsed a website where people had uploaded pictures of what they had done to customize their desktops and also uploaded files and scripts of their geeklets.  Some of them were really cool, and eventually I made my own desktop collection:

Now, the most exciting part of this is in the front and center of my desktop, a countdown!  This I'm particularly proud of because I had to do a hefty bit of editing to the geeklet I downloaded inorder to get this one to show up just the way I wanted it to.  I however did not go in depth enough to program it to read of singular times with singular units (1 hour, instead of 1 hours).  And this is why I am pleased to announce that I have precisely 1 weeks, 1 days, and two hours until my last class is over :-)

(Sorry this post is so long, but another new toy of mine is Bowtie, a desktop-level iTunes controller/identifier.)