Desktop Designing

I'm quite proud to say that today I stumbled upon, toyed with, and actually managed to produce something of aesthetic value entirely on my own with the program

R A I N M E T E R

Yes, I realize that it's been around for a while and I'm a little behind in thinking that this is a novelty but regardless, I still spent a good two hours completely enthralled by its endless customization options.

I chanced upon this magic when I was browsing the internet for free tutorials on how to use Adobe Illustrator and ended up on Lifehacker. Browsing through a couple of Lifehacker pages about the Creative Suite, I came across THIS PAGE and was hooked. I read through other posts tagged "rainmeter", downloaded the program, and got to work.

After much tinkering, here is the final setup that I made !

M Y   D E S K T O P   B E F O R E

pretty minimal

A N D   A F T E R  ! 

widgets!

I thought about using one of thousands of readily available pre-made themes, but after scrolling through a few I realized that there were a lot of skins that many of them had in common. I decided to go searching for the sources of these skins, and these are the ones that I ended up choosing: 

- THE ENIGMA SUITE for the icons, calendar, weather, news, music, and summary widgets

- ENCODED  for the transparent box

- PRAGMATIC, for the large date and time display

I downloaded Enigma Arcs, Deux, and Owlet UI as well because I thought they looked neat, but couldn't find a good place for either on my screen so I will hold on to those until I decide to change my wallpaper... I had so much fun with the design process that I can't wait to start with a new blank slate and explore more layouts. 

Before this, the only customization I had done with my computer was Rocketdock, because I wanted to get all the icons off my desktop and I really liked the Mac OS tray feature. 

my cute little dock, pre-Rainmeter. It's still there, just slightly more hidden now.

As well as a Login image changer...

...which I just discovered that I can't show you because apparently one cannot take a screenshot of one's own login page... but it's basically just the same galaxy wallpaper instead of the Windows 7 default cerulean leaf image.

I already thought I was one fancypants for doing that, haha... but this program really showed me that there is so much more out there! Stay tuned for future layout updates... I consider this another of my crafty episodes... it's just crafting in a slightly different sense :) 

[[currently listening: Anjunabeats Volume 10]]