HOME | DD

Description
My Windows XP desktop using "Windows XP Style" visuals with the "Silver" color scheme and personally customized Gnometer skins for Rainmeter ([link] ). My desktop is actually a plain dark gray solid color--read about the "Wallpaper Portal" skin to find out about the background picture.

1) "Wallpaper Portal" is a customized "Word of the Day" (WOTD) skin. I love my wallpaper collection, however I usually have programs open that obscure or completely hide (e.g., fullscreen games) the desktop--so what's the point of having wallpaper I won't see? I use this "Wallpaper Portal" to enjoy my collection. The picture changes randomly every five minutes. On the small icon, left-clicking refreshes the skin (and reloads a new picture) and right-clicking brings up the Windows Desktop Properties. The tool-tip for the file name shows the full name. Left-clicking on the picture itself opens an Explorer window with the picture file selected, and parking the mouse over the picture pops up an almost full-size view of the picture with preserved aspect ratios. I was quite pleased with being able to figure out how to put this one together.

2) Only slightly modified calendar/clock skin. I changed the time & date formats and right-justified some of the information.

3) Five-day weather forecast--unmodified

4) Facebook four-line feed--unmodified

5) WOTD--unmodified

6) VLC media player: modified the icon functionality to open VLC with a left click and Windows volume controls with a right click, and a helpful tool-tip to remind me.

7) Highly tinkered with multi-core System skin: added instrument gauge style displays for CPU 1 & 2 and RAM/SWAP (outer ring is CPU1, middle ring is CPU2 and the inner portion is purely aesthetic); SpeedFan plugin temperature histories for CPU & GPU; CPU performance histories; right-click on icon for Windows System properties; and removed the hibernate icon.

8) Disk info: the only thing I changed here was to have the numbers report the available free space instead of space used.

9) Network info: changed title to show "USER on COMPUTER"; subtitle shows local IP address, instead of external; mapped drives "light up" when a ping > 0 is reported for each one; and the network activity history line.

10) Finally, the hardly used but quite useful Recycle Bin info--unmodified.

Description
My Windows XP desktop using "Windows XP Style" visuals with the "Silver" color scheme and personally customized Gnometer skins for Rainmeter ([link] ). My desktop is actually a plain dark gray solid color--read about the "Wallpaper Portal" skin to find out about the background picture.

1) "Wallpaper Portal" is a customized "Word of the Day" (WOTD) skin. I love my wallpaper collection, however I usually have programs open that obscure or completely hide (e.g., fullscreen games) the desktop--so what's the point of having wallpaper I won't see? I use this "Wallpaper Portal" to enjoy my collection. The picture changes randomly every five minutes. On the small icon, left-clicking refreshes the skin (and reloads a new picture) and right-clicking brings up the Windows Desktop Properties. The tool-tip for the file name shows the full name. Left-clicking on the picture itself opens an Explorer window with the picture file selected, and parking the mouse over the picture pops up an almost full-size view of the picture with preserved aspect ratios. I was quite pleased with being able to figure out how to put this one together.

2) Only slightly modified calendar/clock skin. I changed the time & date formats and right-justified some of the information.

3) Five-day weather forecast--unmodified

4) Facebook four-line feed--unmodified

5) WOTD--unmodified

6) VLC media player: modified the icon functionality to open VLC with a left click and Windows volume controls with a right click, and a helpful tool-tip to remind me.

7) Highly tinkered with multi-core System skin: added instrument gauge style displays for CPU 1 & 2 and RAM/SWAP (outer ring is CPU1, middle ring is CPU2 and the inner portion is purely aesthetic); SpeedFan plugin temperature histories for CPU & GPU; CPU performance histories; right-click on icon for Windows System properties; and removed the hibernate icon.

8) Disk info: the only thing I changed here was to have the numbers report the available free space instead of space used.

9) Network info: changed title to show "USER on COMPUTER"; subtitle shows local IP address, instead of external; mapped drives "light up" when a ping > 0 is reported for each one; and the network activity history line.

10) Finally, the hardly used but quite useful Recycle Bin info--unmodified.