Monthly Desktops

Here's my latest confection. The diver pictured is Australian Olympian Jodie Rogers. You can consider it a symbolic comment on the turning of the seasons, or just a weird idea I had... Winter gray and falling rain We'll see summer come again Darkness fall and seasons change (Gonna happen every time) Same old friends the wind and rain (We'll see summer by and by) Winter gray and falling rain (Summers fade and roses die) We'll see summer come again (Like a song that's born to soar the sky) The Grateful Dead - Weather Report Suite (part 1)

With all the hot weather here, I wanted something that evokes cooling. In this photo, Laetitia Casta looks very cool - while also looking very hot! The spiral gradient is an option of The GIMP's Blend tool; I'd never played with it before, it's kinda fun. Also, I made the icon size 25% smaller than default - got tired of those big, clunky icons.

4th of July fireworks - all I did was add the girl in the fluorescent bikini. Makes it much more festive, I think. Also, I changed the color scheme of the XP theme to silver from the default blue.

This month, it's Drew Barrymore as a sad butterfly on the railroad tracks. I have no idea why. The ImageSpeech site was down, so I had to resort to ImageShack...now I remember why I switched. So much slowwwerrrr...

I decided to use another, less April-foolish, pic of Sarah Gellar - in honor of her rumored impending motherhood.

I was going to post this on the 1st, say I made it myself...but I didn't get around to it. So no April Fool's joke - this is a premade wallpaper I found on a French site. While I usually like to create my own wallpaper, this was just too cool.

Still on the "Beach Babe" theme, since I found quite a few good ones:

Continuing with the warm theme I started last month:

To kick it off:

Here is mine, not festive, but I love it: As this is the last month of the year, I think everyone should post there's ;)

I'll start then.

This month, a picture of Sweet Creek. Don't know exactly where that is, somewhere in Oregon.

Didn't take the time to mess with images this month, just used a photo that came in an email from the conservation group Oregon Wild:

Recycled the picture I used last July of Charisma Carpenter wrapped in the US flag, with some changes - moved it to side, added color gradient background and fireworks. Could use some touch-up, but I already spent more time on it than I meant to. To get that background, I opened a blank image template and filled it with a gradient. Then I pasted in the image, and changed the original background color to transparency so the gradient showed through. Unfortunately, this showed up irregularities in my original background coloring that hadn't been noticeable before . Didn't work well with fireworks pictures, either; which is why that part has a solid black background. …

A change of pace for me this month - found a real nice picture of Oregon Iris, aka Tough-leaved Iris (Iris Tenax). This is a wild Iris found only in this region, usually blue but sometimes purple (as seen here) or, rarely, white. The moth fluttering around these flowers is a species I'm not familiar with.

After a really cold April here (it actually snowed a few nights!), I'm ready for some better weather - and this shot of Heidi Klum really evokes warmer climes to me. The color gradient I filled the rest of the space with is my first effort at using the "blend tool" in the GIMP - I think it came out rather well.

Have a Gillian Anderson picture I really like, but it's too small - if stretched enough to fill the screen, the quality is terrible. I expanded it as much as I could without totally ruining it, and gave it a wood-grain border matching the hardwood floor she's lying on, using The GIMP (learning to do more with it all the time). Screenshot taken, as always, with the WinSnap utility included in The Gimp.

My latest.

This month, Salma Hayek is looking surprised to be found on my desktop:

For this month, I put a Santa hat on Gisele:

Oki doki here is mine for this month...

Here is my latest

After watching a DVD of The Producers (the musical remake, just as funny as the original ), I got inspired to look for an Uma Thurman pic for my desktop. Found this cool shot: Couldn't see adding anything to this one, just cropped off a border and logo it was cluttered up with. Just a few other changes: got tired of folder icons, so I changed them; put the Arovax Shield updater on there so I wouldn't have to go hunt through the Start menu for it (since Avovax shield is always in the system tray, I saw no need for a desktop icon for the program itself).

Got a patriotic-themed desktop in honor of Independence Day: It's Charisma Carpenter again (you may remember her from my Easter desktop), wrapped in the American flag. A smaller flag might have been nice, but oh, well... The background was originally white, too much glare when I put it on my desktop. And, since the flag had white on it as well, I couldn't just select the white area and fill with another color - so I painted in the new background color. A lot of tedious air-brush work around the hair, but I think it came out pretty good.