Thursday, February 11, 2010

My Top 5 Wallpapers, In case you cared

I rarely post highly off-topic posts to Telerik Watch, but I’ve come to recognize that every now and then, an off-topic post can be refreshing. There are a few things that we as professional software developers interact with on average for more than 8 hours a day:

  • Our chair
  • Our keyboard/mouse
  • Our monitor
  • Our computer
  • Our (computer) desktop

It’s important that each of these things be optimized for your comfort so that you can focus on being a great developer/designer/evangelist/computer person. And of all of these, the easiest to change and optimize is your desktop wallpaper.

Is there a perfect desktop wallpaper? No.

Everyone has their own wallpaper taste. [SIDENOTE: Why do we still call these images “wallpapers?” Wouldn’t “Desktop Background” be more appropriate? Legacy words…] For me, I like wallpapers that are simple and abstract. I like wallpapers that don’t strain the eye by being too bright, or distract the mind by being too busy. Like you, I’ve used many wallpapers in the past, but here’s my current top 5 (including a custom Telerik Wallpaper):

Barred Spiral Galaxy 1620_appletvesquesanslogo_1920x1200 00671_theworld_1600x1200

(Sorry- No link for the clouds…)

TelerikWallpaper

And the image currently on my desktop:

Starburst_multi_light_by_abh83_1680x1050

Enjoy! What are your favorite wallpapers? Your kids? Landscapes? Anything I’d like?

5 comments:

Joakim Eriksson said...

Shameless plug but relevant to telerik and backgrounds. I use this Custom multimonitor desktop background so I can get a new desktop background when needed. The editor for the program is built using telerik winforms Plane9 overview

Anonymous said...

In fact no, we don't care. But thanks !

Unknown said...

I use this desktop: http://yfrog.com/3mavatarcutj and its my dogs picture.

Always makes my day :)

Patrick said...

I have a friend who has some talent with a camera, but he really shines when he does HDR images. I download 'em and let Win 7 rotate through them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nanoflux/tags/hdr/

One of my favorites:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nanoflux/2495957971/sizes/l/

Todd Anglin said...

@Anon- I probably wouldn't care much either, but for whatever reason, wallpaper posts spur comments. ;)

@Patrick- Cool HDR photography! I've always wanted to give that technique a try. I do like the photo you linked to. Adding that to my collection of possible backgrounds...