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Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

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Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#281
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it's art even if it has no ambitions to be exhibited at the MoMA. > It's a computer wallpaper that monopolistic megacorp funded to show off how wealthy it is. Groan. It's not possible to have a serious discussions with someone starting from such a cynical position. After all, what is even the point of creating anything? We're all going to turn to dust and be forgotten forevermore.

The point is it's poorly done by the standard you'd expect from top level no-expense-spared commercial graphic design. And that reflects poorly on the company and the product. The Win XP field was the opposite. It was organic, calming, and oddly fascinating because you couldn't tell if it was a plain photo or an edit or... what. And it had an unexpected reference to the Windows branding in the composition. Win 10 was…

Again, it does not matter, and it is entirely subjective, if art is poorly done or not. It does not matter if it doesn't calm you. It does not matter if it reflects poorly on Microsoft. Why do you care so much?

Like it or not, art exists in a vacuum. It does not need to justify its existence. That's the very definition of art.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#283

I think the wallpaper is minimalistic, elegant.. and boring, which is why I usually end up using a wallpaper from KDE Plasma. https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest

I grab pictures from Find47 (https://search.find47.jp/en). They're licensed under CC-BY-4.0, which is nice.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#286

I have an vertical monitor (1080x1920) I use mainly for browsing and the site is basicially not readable: https://i.imgur.com/5Klt2Ls.png I scrolled to the bottom for contact information but it keeps loading stuff so I never reach it.

A useful keyboard shortcut is ctrl-end. You might have to hit it a couple of times, but it will get you to the bottom. I’m on Windows, but I’m guessing macOS and many Linux DEs have something similar.

Yeah I know, besides my keyboard has no physcial end/home key. But if websites do stuff like this, I usually hit Ctrl+w because my time is to precious to fight bad UIs.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#287

Also interesting: Brian Eno on his work composing one of the Windows startup sounds: > Q: How did you come to compose "The Microsoft Sound"? > A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it." https://www.sfgate.com/music/pop…

> The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long."

This bit has always stuck in my head. Makes his longnow foundation work make more sense. Always find it wild that microsoft takes the time and spends the money on such tiny details in their products.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#288

This is so over-engineered, it tells you that when you have billions, you do the most whacky things. A 5-minute VFX job will yield the same results. But no, there's so much f*k you money, they had to do this.

On the other hand this will be shown to bilions of people almost everyday as a front screen of Windows

I hope that the artists creating the image knew that whatever they submitted would be the most displayed image worldwide, for a couple of years.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you set a better background image?

I think this is actually an interesting question. I think I've been leaving on the default desktop on any computer I use, for over a decade now. It's not just that, it's every kind of setting. I just don't futz around with things that don't actively get in the way of my work anymore. I used to love to tweak everything, to try to pour my personality into a sweet computer setup, but after using computers for fifteen ye…

I've settled on a slightly custom setup based on Plasma and i3wm. It involves a single systemd unit running in user space. I get batteries included desktop environment and a tiling window manager I can tolerate. I also set up zsh+powerlevel10k. In all it takes me about 20 minutes to configure.
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