Throw a little eye candy on your dual monitors with this roundup of stunning wallpapers courtesy of Smashing Magazine. Photo by smoovie.
Their roundup features great wallpapers from a variety of sources, including several favored by Lifehacker readers. Check out our roundup of your favorite multi-monitor wallpaper sites for more eye catching wallpaper and DisplayFusion to make managing multiple monitors a snap.
Mac OS X only: Reader Daniel used his ubergeeky perl skills combined with GeekTool and created a more powerful way to display the current weather conditions on his desktop.
Unlike the previous weather-on-the-desktop method we’ve covered, Daniel's script extracts the current weather information from Yahoo's feeds, caches it locally, and allows you to use each piece of data separately—it even grabs the current weather image and caches it locally so you can include it on your desktop.
Daniel explained how his script works, and how he includes the information on his desktop:
I wrote a a perl script that pulls the xml from the rss feed and caches it locally and extracts the information from the local version. A parameter is included to update the local cache. In addition it also pulls the images from the main yahoo weather page that represents the weather, not the ones in the rss feed and caches them locally.
The scripts I use to display my weather in geektool are as follows, for the forecast I use 4 scripts:
echo `yweather -fd1` " - " `yweather -ft1`
echo "H: " `yweather -fh1` " L: " `yweather -fl1`
echo `yweather -fd2` " - " `yweather -ft2`
echo "H: " `yweather -fh2` " L: " `yweather -fl2`The current temperature and description:
yweather -ct
yweather -cwAnd I have the update command set to run every 30 minutes:
yweather --update && yweather --copyimage
You can grab the script for yourself at the link below, or check out how to put news on your desktop with GeekTool. If that’s not enough, learn how to monitor your Mac and more, or even add a desktop calendar to your wallpaper. Great work, Daniel!
Got your own ubergeeky, hacked together, and totally awesome productivity tricks? We’d love to hear about them! Send an email to tips [at] lifehacker.com with “ubergeek” in the subject line, and we may just feature them here.
Update: Daniel posted a new bug-fixed version of the script over at Google Code, which should be the permanent location for the script from now on. Thanks!
Mac OS X only: System utility Loginox makes short work of changing your Mac’s login wallpaper to anything you want.
We’ve written previously about a manual hack using some terminal commands to change your login wallpaper, but Loginox takes all the guesswork out of the process—just drag the image you want to use into the window, click the Set new login image button, enter your password, and you are done. The application requires a 2560×1600 resolution wallpaper image, so you might have to resize your wallpaper to the right dimensions—but it's still a handy tool.
Loginox is a free download for Mac OS X only. If you would rather simply mirror your desktop wallpaper with your login wallpaper, check out the Desktop 2 login utility. Windows users can customize their login wallpaper using previously mentioned LogonStudio.
Windows 7 only: Tiny system customizing utility Logon Changer for Windows 7 swaps out the logon screen wallpaper easily.
Using the utility is simple—just select a new wallpaper, test it, and you are done. The only small issue is that the image must be less than 256k and in JPG format, which means you'll need to convert most downloadable wallpaper backgrounds. If you'd rather do it the manual way without additional software, all you really need to do is a simple registry hack originally figured out by Windows expert Rafael Rivera.
Tweaks.com Logon Changer for Windows 7 is a free download. To customize your login wallpaper for XP or Vista, take a look at previously mentioned LogonStudio, and then be sure and check out our guide to getting Windows 7′s best features right now, or learn how to dual-boot Vista and Windows 7.
Expert Windows hacker Rafael Rivera finds a change in the latest build of Windows 7—you can finally customize the log-on screen natively. In the meantime, XP and Vista users still have third-party solutions like previously mentioned LogonStudio.
Windows only: Reader Kaelri, well-known for his killer Enigma desktop, has released a new version complete with an installer—making this amazing desktop customization easy enough for anybody to install.
The latest update includes features geared at beginners—the new welcome dialog in the middle of the screenshot adds widgets to your desktop which can be easily dragged around the screen—making customizations easier than ever. The full list of new features includes:
- EXE Installer
– GUI widget manager.
– Template configs – usable right out of the box.
– Black & white variants for every widget.
– Individual story links for the RSS Reader.
– Show/hide button for Sidebar.
– New mail indicator for Gmail Icon.
Getting started with Enigma is simplified down to just a couple of steps, detailed in the included instructions:
1. Download and install Rainmeter. (www.ipi.fi/~rainy/legacy.html)
2. Run EnigmaSetup2.0.exe to install the theme to Rainmeter. (Make sure Rainmeter isn’t running while you do this.)
3. OPTIONAL: Choose one of the files in “Templates.” Replace C:Program FilesRainmeterRainmeter.ini and replace it with your desired template. (Make sure Rainmeter isn’t running while you do this.)
4. Run Rainmeter.
The full package includes fonts, AutoHotkey scripts, and multiple templates to get you started. Kaelri recommends also installing either the NOOTO, CleanGlass, or SlanXP visual styles for Windows to match the Enigma look. Don’t know how? Follow our guide to installing custom themes. Great work, Kaelri!
Enigma is a free download for Windows users only. Linux users can check out the previously previously mentioned Enigma for Linux.
Windows only: Reader Kaelri—famous for the beautiful and functional Enigma desktop—has packaged and released version 1.1 of the customization files.
What’s changed? Kaelri explains:
I’ve added:
- RSS reader.
- Gmail notifier.
- Calendar by ~limpet.
- System/battery graphics using ecqlipse 2 icons.
- Tray clock replacement.
- Quick-edit button for Notes.
- Application launcher. Useless to anyone with Launchy or StandaloneStack, but it’s pretty, and way too much fun to play with. (You can see what it looks like in the deviantArt screenshot.)
- Assorted doodads and revisions.
- Fixed the Location bug plaguing Enigma and HUD.Vision.
The Enigma 1.1 ZIP archive includes config files for Samurize and Rainmeter, fonts, a Windows theme, and more. Unzip it to get the full installation instructions. Nice work, Kaelri! The Enigma 1.1 customization package is a free download for Windows only.
