[Tfug] Wallpaper criteria

[Bexley Hall]

Hi John,

On 1/8/2013 10:45 PM, John Gruenenfelder wrote:

>> Any other criteria you can think of?  What sort of imagery do
>> *you* have staring back at you as you work??
>>
>> Alternatively, any pointers to resources that have already done
>> this sort of thinking??  Searching for "wallpaper" tends to just
>> turn up pages of photos...
>
> Don,
>
> Ever since I learned about it, I've been using Xplanet to generate my
> background.  Over time, I've attempted to collect the best imagery I
> could find for this purpose.  Primarily, this means very high
> resolution maps of day and night Earth, as well as the best images I
> could find of the other planetary bodies.

I run xearth on my software development workstations.  It seems
to fit the criteria I outlined previously (dark, no hot spots,
etc.) *and* has the added benefit of acting like a "clock" for
me (showing me a Sun's view of Earth so I can just watch to see
where it is currently "noon" to get an idea of what the local
time is).

This works well for single monitor use or "X-in-a-window" but
not well for multiple monitor use (too much "outer space")

> Personally, I think many of these images meet most of your
> requirements, though your threshold for "details" may be lower than
> mine.  In particular, an image of the night side of Earth surrounded
> by the blackness of space does not distract the eye much, in my

Agreed.  Especially in the case of xearth where there is very
little detail besides outlines of continents and city names.

> opinion.  Of course, once the terminator begins creeping across, it
> gets brighter, but not so much that it bothers me.

By choosing a viewpoint from the Sun, the image has a reasonably
consistent intensity.  And, while brighter than the surrounding
"blackness of space", it is still reasonably dark -- not like
the hot spot of a "sunset", etc.

> To make this ordeal easier to manage, I created a set of regular
> Bourne shell scripts (i.e. no bash extras) to handle all of the
> downloading, processing, and handling of program options.  They are
> limited in some ways as they really only address use cases that I have
> dealt with personally.  For example, the scripts support one or two
> screens, and can display a different object on each screen, or,
> optionally, one object can be replaced by a 'triple' which displays
> three objects instead of one.

For example?  (i.e., why?)

> They make some assumptions, however,
> like assuming that the user will always want the Earth to be one of
> the objects and therefore the scripts always attempt to download the
> most recent (every 12 hours) cloud map.  I've also never dealt with a
> situation where I wanted a different image on each desktop/pane so the
> scripts don't handle that.

Ah, OK.  That's far more detailed than what xearth presents.  (it also
requires the machines to have access to the outside world -- something
that I don't allow development machines to do!  :< )

> If you are at all interested, I made a web page for the scripts with
> all the imagery, scripts, and explanations:
>    http://bach.as.arizona.edu/~johng/xplanet.php

Great!  I'll take a look at it.  I can always download *one* set
of imagery and live with it "forever", right?

> And if you *are* interested and would like to see some of the
> shortcomings removed, just let me know.  I don't have a download
> counter on the files so I'm unsure if anybody else is actually using
> any of this.
>
> Oh, and if you'd like to see what my wallpaper looks like right about
> now, you can see it at:
>    http://bach.as.arizona.edu/~johng/files/xplanet-wallpaper.jpg

So, it shows the earth from a vantage point above a fixed location
(e.g., beantown) instead of from a fixed point in space.

> This is my standard single screen view.  The lat/long is approximately
> over Massachusetts, the stars are from the BSC (Bright Star Catalog),
> and you can also see Venus and Mercury (which is just about to be
> obscured).  Though you can't tell from this still image, the wallpaper
> is updated every five minutes and all of the background objects slowly
> move to the right.

Yes, this is similar to xearth's default configuration.

> The brightness on the left is the Sun just about
> to appear and it will take just over an hour and a half to move across
> the screen entirely.

?? Why?  Doesn't it show the current terminator?

> The fact that any of these objects is present is
> just a matter of timing and angles.  For most of the year, the viewing
> angle I have configured never matches up with the Sun or inner
> planets.
>
> You can also see red trails around the Earth.  These represent the
> orbits of either satellites or permanent space fixtures.  My default
> set includes the ISS, Hubble, COBE, and the current GPS constellation.
>   Fortunately, if these bug you, my scripts make it very easy to change
> satellites or turn them off entirely.

Ah.  OK.

My original request was for something largely *static*.  So that I
can get the Windows machines to resemble the UN*X desktops better
I.e., I can "86" xearth in favor of a static image on the UN*X
desktops and apply that same sort of imagery to the Windows desktops.
I'm trying to get some sort of uniformity to my workspaces that
is easier to maintain and, more importantly, that I can relate to.

I have lots of "desktops" that I juggle during the course of a
day so I want some scheme that lets me easily/subconsciously keep
track of where I am, what I am doing, etc. without having to
stop and think about it (i.e., which keyboard do I type on to
interact with this application).  In the past, I've just used
tiled patterns with different color schemes.  Then, just remember
"I was writing code on the blue circle screen" or "I was debugging
the target on the orange triangle screen"

With lots of physical screens and virtual desktops, this quickly gets
daunting!  (e.g., imagine opening an X server on a Windows machine to
a Solaris client. etc.  "Now which CD-ROM drive do I need to put this
disk in??"  :-/ )

Different *planets* might be a good theme -- though I'm not sure I
could differentiate the surface of Mars from that of Venus!  :-/

--don