Desktop wallpaper loader with babbling brook sound effect example.

[Bill Cravener]

I remember back in the old days here at Steve's MASM32 board and that other board when there were a good many of us regulars who often posted program examples for everyone to play with. What happened to the clever creativity asm lovers use to hand out for others to have fun with? There doesn't seem to be much of that these days, I don't know, maybe like in my case we are all just too damn busy to play and show off fun and interesting examples.

Anyway, I recently purchased one of those 23 inch widescreen 1080p high def monitors. They are really becoming affordable and I got mine for under 200 US bucks. The picture quality is amazing and not only is it easy on the eyes, viewing high def photos and videos are awesome. The electronic guts of the monitor are in its base which makes the screen itself just less than 1 inch thick.

 

Now much of the time when I'm doing work on my computer I listen to music but other times I'm so intensely evolved in my work I find music a bit distracting. As I stated elsewhere here on the board, though I live in a small town I'm really a country boy who loves nature and the like. So I found me some beautiful high def country photos with brooks or streams running down the middle of the scene to use as desktop wallpaper. It came to me that wouldn't it be relaxing if there was a gentle sound of a flowing brook playing in the background.

Well this is what I came up with. The program includes the source code, babbling brook sound files and four beautiful country scenes. This by the way makes it a rather large zip file at over 24 Meg do to the high def photos. When you start the program it sets in your system tray. Left click on it once and the sound stops, click again and it plays. When you right click on the tray icon a small menu of options appears. There is a neat trick I use to hide the stuff you may have open on your desktop if you just want to sit there and enjoy the view. Tap your keyboard spacebar or double click your mouse to restore your desktop to its original state.

This example will work on most any machine but if you have a square monitor you might need to center the high def photos.

You can download it here: http://www.quickersoft.com/examples/BrookSound.zip

Or get it at My MASM32 Examples page listed below. Have fun!

[aker]

So sweet!

[dedndave]

nice setup, Bill   :U

[dedndave]

i think i hafta peeeee   :lol

[zemtex]

Anyway, I recently purchased one of those 23 inch widescreen 1080p high def monitors. They are really becoming affordable and I got mine for under 200 US bucks. The picture quality is amazing and not only is it easy on the eyes, viewing high def photos and videos are awesome. The electronic guts of the monitor are in its base which makes the screen itself just less than 1 inch thick.

I have a 26 inch widescreen here myself, bought a year ago. It is one heck of a coding screen. Combined with the best coding font out there, notepad++ its amazing.

[dedndave]

here is the font i use....

http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-quotes-inconsola/

it is a slightly modified version of inconsola
dina is also good
here are a few others...

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/The_perfect_programming_font

[hutch--]

Bitten by the same bug, I work on 2 x 24 inch screens that are truly wonderful. I have a couple of old boxes in another room with CRTs attached to them and I have to adjust my eyesight to use them now.

FONTS : Do you mean there is something other than FIXEDSYS ?  :P

[dedndave]

hey ! - terminal font has it's place   :bg
it's monospace - easy to write scroll/paint code
and - it has the lovely line-graphics characters we all know and love
but, the best thing is..... every windows machine has it - you know it's going to be there

[Bill Cravener]

My time in Arizona was south of Phoenix and I didn't see any greenery or babbling brooks. I imagine northern Arizona up in the hills you can find running brooks and greenery.

I've always done my programming in Notepad using Courier New – Bold – Size 12 (same as my feet, size that is :bg). With this new widescreen I can open two Notepads side by side one with the asm code the other for the inc or rc file. Makes it really nice to code with. It's great too when working in MS Word. Instead of viewing one page at a time you can view two pages side by side at 100% font size.

I had a 4 year old square LCD before purchasing this new widescreen LED LCD. The LED backlighting is why they come so thin these days. My TV is a LCD but compared to the new LED's backlighting it looks dual and lacks that deep contrast. This new monitor has a dynamic contrast ratio of 50,000,000:1. Black is truly BLACK and white is as WHITE as it gets. My old monitor ratio is 1000:1; my TV's ratio is 10,000:1. Big difference in clarity and sharpness. Those old CRT's would give me headaches after a few hours of viewing. I have an old 19 inch CRT up in the attic that works great and weighs about 60 pounds. I doubt that I could even give it away but hate to just pitch it out with the trash.

[dedndave]

yes - technology has come a long way   :P
i used to work on LCD displays - R&D
we made some very efficient backlights - there are some tricks to that, that aren't well known
we also did some work on LED displays
but - that company folded - too bad - was a nice place

Arizona has many beautiful places, Bill
the northern half of the state - the eastern area (White Mountains), and down in the southeast corner, near Wilcox - also nice
if you were south of Phoenix, you probably saw a lot of rock and dirt - sage and cacti - lol

[Bill Cravener]

Dave,

Here in PA I could show you in the summer time places that look near identical to those four photos in that asm example I posted. If its one thing we get here in the summer time its green. April 16th brings trout season here in PA and I'll be wading in some of them babbling brooks trying to catch my share of trout. Won't be any green though, that doesn't get here until like mid May or so.

[Antariy]

and - it has the lovely line-graphics characters we all know and love

╔═════════════════════════════╗
║                             ║
║ Windiws 95 is installing... ║
║ Please insert diskette #398 ║
║ into drive A: and press the ║
║ OK button when ready...     ║
║                             ║
║ ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐ ║
║ │    OK    │   │ Give Up! │ ║
║ └──────────┘   └──────────┘ ║
╚═════════════════════════════╝