Sunday 8 July 2012

Wallpaper


Yesterday's domestic chore - cleaning up the desktop by archiving about 300 little thumbnail documents, accumulated on the screen since the first day we bought this machine.  Why didn't I do it sooner?

H.I.'s painting of a group of juvenile gulls sitting on the roof under a full moon makes the perfect screen-saver/wallpaper, and can now be seen without all that clutter in front.  What looks like an extremely bright star over the moon is in fact the reflected flash from my phone-camera, but it sort of works quite well.

As well as the way that the birds seem to be sitting on the ledge of the bottom bar of the screen, the other thing I like about this picture is that it is a view of the building on the other side of the road, which can be seen through the window in the background, and the building is an art-gallery.  There's a sort of synchronicity about it, and it is a lot more muted than the off-the-shelf, swirly space-scape that Mac provides as a default.

I was going to bed one night when I looked out of a top window and saw the scene with the gulls and moon, so shouted to H.I. to come in and take a look.  We marvelled at it for a while, then she said that it would make a good painting, so I took a couple of pictures for future reference, then - later - she made a series of paintings from them, some of which sold at her last exhibition.

When I was first contemplating what to use as a screen-saver, grand-daughter suggested a picture of herself, but - as much as I love looking at her smiling, pretty little face - I am not the sort of bloke who has framed pictures of loved-ones on my desk, let alone desk-top.  I don't even have a desk.

I have friends who have joke images as their screen-savers, and although they are funny the first time you see them, the joke palls after the 10th time you turn on the computer.

I don't think I have had the courage to post up this view of the front of our machine - in detail - before, just incase someone carries out a bit of industrial espionage by reading certain tell-tale titles to the more commercially sensitive documents left on the screen, but now they are all safely hidden away.

When I was making H.I.'s website, a journalist friend of ours suggested that I 'watermark'  all the images to stop someone on the other side of the world ripping them off and using them as postcards, or whatever, but I didn't bother.  He had obviously never tried to get any images published as greetings cards before, otherwise he would have known that the image quality has to be so good that you really need a very good camera and thousands of pounds worth of colour sensors and the software to operate them - and that is only after someone has agreed to take the extremely risky decision to print, publish and distribute.  In any event, the website is supposed to be a showcase, so we don't want words like 'COPYRIGHT' plastered all over the front of the paintings.

I am going to attempt to drum up a bit of audience participation now, by signing off - Molly Golver style - with the question:

And what do YOU use as wallpaper?
(pictures would be nice)


18 comments:

  1. Monty, looking extremely arrogant (aged about 6 months).

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    1. I am assuming you mean the dog, and not our old mate, the Viscount Field-Marshall?

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  2. Replies
    1. Uh-oh... I feel some gay porn coming on...

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    2. Ha ha! I like it. Obviously on a break from dog-sniffing duties.

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  3. I change mine every so often, according to whimsy. At the moment I have a lovely image that a friend put together from photos on my blog.

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    1. Yes, I can see that, Sarah. Every now and then I feel like changing mine, but cannot think of anything more suitable. I updated the operating system recently, then put this picture back after a couple of days.

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  4. You can look at our wallpaper by googleling (Is that a word?) 'patriotism eagle poster' and looking under images. Up comes a stern looking eagle on a black background with the words "You're either with us or a fucking terrorist."

    What can I say, I'm married to an American. Once we had a computer tech fixing our PC while living in Germany, and I could swear that his eyes got all big and scared looking.

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    1. My eyes have gone all big and scared looking just reading this, Iris. I might not look it up before bedtime.

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  5. Some photo of mine like the recent bee in flight. I do know of a photographer who is in litigation against a wine company who stole an image of his. I imagine it was a rather high quality image.

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    1. Yes - I can see that - bee I mean. If someone (like the Olympic Committee or the Disney Corporation) somehow happened to make a load of money out of an image of mine, then I think I would be looking for some of the action myself.

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  6. Oh sod, I have the boring off-the-shelf swirling-space-scape that Mac gives you. Usually I have so much crap on the desktop that you can't see what's underneath anyway. Do like the gull photo. Looks like the birds are perched on the bottom of our screen.

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    1. Bottom of 'our' screen, Cathy? I hope you meant 'your' screen, otherwise I will be suing you for copyright.

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    2. I might also be suing you for calling me a 'sod' too...

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  7. Tom I don't use wallpaper I use paint (groan) but I really love H.I.'s painting on your screen. The reflected flash against the night sky does add to it. And none of those distracting icons to spoil the effect. It's lovely.

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    1. Yes - I use real paint on the screen when using the 'paintbox' program too, Molly. (I can't help thinking that someone has already made much better jokes along these lines).

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  8. Lovely screen saver. I have a picture of a friend's boat on mine. Used to have it on my work one, too, but when i got my new computer, i was told we were not allowed to have any wallpaper. :0(

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    1. Who told you that? Respond by asking him (?) to rearrange the following into a well-known phrase or saying: "Off, Fuck".

      Funny you should mention boats as wallpaper - I've just posted up a picture of one on the latest post. Friend of yours?

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