TimsBlog

Ok I said I’d show off my black desktop and here it is. I used ishowu to capture the screen to video and visualhub to transcode it a smaller size. Then I upladed the video to viddler.

Before I get into the black desktop I’d like to say viddler is my video favorite video site. Its not chucked full of the clips you find on youtube, but its more practical for content you own yourself as far as sharing and hosting video online. Its got a get interface and the quality is great.

I started using solid black wallpaper when I first got my 24″ Dell LCD. Out of the box the thing blinded me so bad I saw spots for a day. Lets just say its bright. Now thats a good thing, but takes some adjustments. I was reading Merlin Manns site 43 Folders when he talked aobut using an all black desktop with the help of a few programs. I was already using quicksilver a little app that does so much and is rather hard to explain. I mainly use it for switching applications and controlling certain apps functions. I hit CMD+space and then type short abbreviations to launch apps. I also use it to control itunes with shortcuts like for play/pause and skip. Its nice not to have to bring itunes to the front to just pause a song. I set my dock to auto hide and installed menufela to hide the menu bar at the top.

This leaves me with a solid black desktop. No distractions and no bright ass pixels straining my eyes. I also made it a habit to leave all files off my desktop. It helps with performance and also is nice and tidy. I pace files on my desktop for temporary use only hen trash them or move them to a better more organized place. I have been using apples expose a lot also to navigate thru open windows and bring hem to the front as well.