Daily Archives: Monday, February 16, 2004

My Peter Pan Desktop

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I took the splash graphics from the Peter Pan movie site and put them together in Photoshop Elements 2, and pieced together some black to cover a hole, and also to cover over the graphic “playing now” as shown on the site currently.

I then “saved for web” and re-sized it in that utility as a bigger file, the pixel width of my screen resolution: 1280px.

The “save for web” utility allows for a nice graphic, even when blowing it up. It’s really nifty. The original file I made is 584px wide. The picture isn’t the full height of my monitor, just 769px and my monitor is 1024px. So I chose the graphic in my desktop properties, chose “black” as the background color, and “center” for the graphic. Voila, lovely desktop. I could add black to the actual picture file to make it larger–my full desktop size, but why? It works fine to add the black via desktop properties, saving byte size.

  • Click here for a copy of it for yourself, if you like. If you want it narrower in width, just shrink it by choosing “stretch” in your desktop properties.

Collecting graphical evidence

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Guess I need to explain parts of the earlier post a bit.

I like movies. I like electronic movie stuff. I love graphics and photos and doing stuff with stuff on the ‘puter, so that’s part of my addictive hobby, collecting avatars and movie clips and stills and such, when the whim hits. It’s not like I have THAT much stuff, by no means do I. But every so often, the fancy strikes to collect some stuff.

It takes some time, that’s it. It’s a free hobby, considering we have always on internet anyhow, and this computer is long ago paid for, in a round about way. This computer was actually no cost … but the one it replaced due to malfunction was paid for. OK ;)

So, the graphical evidence I collect is for movies that are current or recent, that I like for some reason. Most movies have a web site of their own, and there’s a ton of content to cruise through, download, etc. That’s not counting all the fan sites that are out there. People host websites and collect everything imaginable on a movie or some famous something that will one day be a movie, or TV show, or whatever. They are the folks to find info out from, sniffing the dark alleyways they hear the first news of “When such and such is …” beginning filming, casting, who’s who, etc. First pictures, etc. and etc.

I only get into this with certain things, I’m a movie buff, sort of. I like certain movies, but not everything, and certainly find no value in most movies out there.

The one we are most excited with is the recent Peter Pan (2003) that started in theatres on December 25, 2003. We’ve seen it twice at matinee showings (pricey enuf! Eek!) We are awaiting the DVD release, which shouldn’t be too far away, perhaps May 2004 we are hearing. It’s actually in the cheap theatres already. I’m saddened by that, it’s a wonderful tale and the support for it really is and was lacking. Our meager family of five seeing it twice is the most support for any movie we’ve ever given while it was still in the theatre.

The fact that this wasn’t a “disney” production seems to have hurt it, I guess [glad they didn't have their paws all over it though!]. It’s absolutely a delightful movie, full of beautiful stuff one could only dream of. It’s a tale of growing up, and oh so fitting for all of us. It’s a classic tale, but only known by those who have lived in the last 100 years. It’s been wonderfully brought to screen finally. And the only consolation to that is the DVD will be out, and it’s appeal may grow. At least we’ll have the DVD for our enjoyment then as well.

Well, the Peter Pan movie site has a lot of material in it. Several movies in the form of trailers, clips, and interviews. You can get a decent eyefull of what the movie is about. But it’s only the tip. It’s such a tease, post theatre for us, to see all the .mov ‘s. Sigh.

Cold, diversion needed

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It’s a cold day. It was so nice the last few days. Well, DH is out-of-town, in the Carolina’s where there is snow from this same weather system we had here yesterday and today. We don’t have that though.

It’s 44 degrees F. right now, with overcast skies. No warming sun, just residual cold left and lingering so that if feels much colder. The house got very cold inside overnight. Frank’s away, there’s not enough firewood for a whole day of fire, let alone two in a row — like we’ll need, so we suffer today. ;)

Frank gets back home late tomorrow night, and the next day is supposed to be nice, no need of a fire then. Figures.

So to keep warm, I’m going in and out of fantasy land on my computer. I’ve been looking at Movie Trailers, and saving them on my ‘puter, and photos and such from the movies, like Spider-Man, Spider-Man-2, Peter Pan (2003), Secondhand Lions (fun site, all the dogs bark when you pass your mouse over them, cool, makes our pups bark for real :) ), etc.

I view trailers online with Quicktime. They are .mov files. I have my plugin options for saving the .mov in Temperary Internet Files if possible for each. Usually, without that setting, they are there, unless they are a streaming video (as is Pirates of the Carribean, :( ). You can also snag Windows Media Player videos this way, (Temporary Internet Files) .asx files.

Go to your Temporary Internet Files folder, find the things you want to save permanently, highlight them and Ctrl-C (copy) then Ctrl-V (paste) it where you want to keep it.

Pictures, sound files, movie files, web pages, whatever you want they are in that folder. Most people don’t seem to realize that to view something online means it’s been downloaded to your computer somewhere. That’s important to know, since those files build up over time, and it’s needful to purge them every so often if you don’t have a huge unused harddrive.

On Win XP find your temp internet files here:

Documents and Settings\Your USER NAME\LOCAL SETTINGS\Temporary Internet Files

(LOCAL SETTINGS may not be visible, go to TOOLS, FOLDER OPTIONS, View, Hidden File Folders — check Show hidden files and folders click OK and LOCAL SETTINGS should now be visible)

Good Idea: Make a shorcut to that folder if you’d like to frequently gleen information out of it. If you’d like to just filter that stuff into a folder quickly: set up a folder and put a shortcut to it in your SendTo folder. Then in your Temp Int. Files you can highlight what you want to save, then right-click on it and choose “Send To …” the folder you set up for it.

SendTo is also a hidden folder, visible via the above Folder Options settings. It’s in your main profile folder:

Documents and Setttings\Your USER NAME\SendTo