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Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months.
And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?
This post features 50 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.
Please notice:
So what wallpapers have we received for August 2009?
"Belka and Strelka spent a day in space on August 19, 1960 before safely returning to Earth. They were the first Earth-born creatures to go into orbit and return alive. Strelka went on to have six puppies. One of the pups was presented to President John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline by Nikita Khrushchev in 1961." Designed by Rumake Web Agency from Russia.
Designed by Nikola Lazarevic from Serbia.
"Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy enthusiasm and peace. Green has traditionally been used to symbolize nature and its embodied attributes, namely those of life, fertility, and rebirth. Green was symbolic of resurrection and immortality in Ancient Egypt." Designed by Sagar from Bangladesh.
"August is the time for relaxation." Designed by Monica Corduneanu from Romania.
Designed by Vlad Gerasimov from Russia.
"Just a tiny monster dance party!" Designed by Guilherme Simoes from Brazil.
"Because the back side can be beautiful as well and because there is always more than one point of view. Enjoy!" Designed by Federica Sibella from Italy.
"As we step into another new month, I realize that this one is of those special month. Life without friends is akin to boat without a sail in the middle of sea. This wallpaper is a dedication to all my friends who have given meaning to my life. Speaking about the wallpaper, it is rainy season in India and you could see fresh greenery all around. The presence of your friends along with so much of beauty of nature is always so much to enjoy. Those two kids have just started this life long journey called friendship.All hail Friends!" Designed by Puneeta Prakash from India.
"The very first debut of a “new something” called iLogiCow. Some say it’s unbelievably creative persona. Some say it’s fresh looking symbol of trendy design ideas. Stay tuned folks." Designed by iLogiCow from Europe.
"My “Big Catch” Wallpaper Illustration was inspired by a drawing I made alittle while ago during an amazing day at the beach.Too bad I did’t see the big catch coming ;-)" Designed by Manuel Esposito from Germany.
"Gezellig - is a term that is said to encompass the heart of Dutch culture. One says it is untranslatable. Enjoy my attempt to translate ‘gezellig’…" Designed by PeHaa from Poland.
"The orchid is the colombian national flower. This photo was taken inside of “José Celestino Mútis” Botanical Garden in Bogotá." Designed by Carolina Obando (photographer) from Colombia.
"Just wanted to make something interesting and express my gratitude to my favorite site. I love you!" Designed by Alexey Chernishov from Ukraine.
"This is my first attempt at a calendar. The design of the fish was inspired by the Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha. I wanted to convey the feel of the month of August through colours. Enjoy!" Designed by Valerie Kozina from Canada.
"Wallpaper featuring the original and lovely Wii Fit Girl, Lauren Bernat" Designed by Giovanny Gutierrez from US.
"Hadedah Ibis are imbued with a sense of legend and history, in this wallpaper the history of flight, sound, art, murky legends and nostalgia are combined to create a moody, soulful wallpaper that will inspire and delight." Designed by Tamsyn Lancaster from South Africa.
"This months wallpaper is based around a Julius Caesar quote.It has been designed with a blue colour pallette and orange accent colours.There is also a subtle grunge effect to give the wallpaper some texture." Designed by Paul Randall from England.
"Happy Hamster in Harvest time." Designed by Inna Dekhtiar from Ukraine.
"Just motivating sentence for August :)" Designed by Temeshi from Poland.
"The planets stay busy making jam, while the moon sleeps" Designed by Chris Alexander (Yipori) from England.
"Inspired from the August flower ‘Gladiolus’ the design explores the form of the flower, textures and typography, making the wallpaper a striking and elegant design." Designed by Kate Jones from UK, Brighton.
"Going green has no seasons. It is an all-year commitment. While out enjoying the sun in the summer for the Northern Hemisphere, ride on the green wave and minimise our carbon footprints." Designed by Wong Kuo Tsung Jordan from Singapore.
"A shining lion with a grunge background." Designed by Booloo from France.
"Made in Québec!" Designed by Mélanie Denis from Québec, Canada.
Designed by Anil Omanwar from India.
"This summer I’ve spent 2 awesome weeks in Barcelona. This picture was taken on the rooftop of Gaudi’s “La Pedrera”." Designed by Anca Varsandan from Romania.
"I have been a follower of Smashing Magazine for a while but I have never contributed, so this is my first shot. I am an illustrator by heart and this idea came from my notebook full of doodles. I hope you enjoy!" Designed by Luke Eaton with Blue Arrow Design Group from USA.
Designed by Amandinelle from France.
"Guys usually like to pin up girly posters or calendars. This is a parody on this with a car hanging up a picture or calendar of it’s dream girl (car). For those car fanatics or people who just like a classy desktop." Designed by SKO from USA.
Designed by Yigit Yuksel from Turkey.
<;h3>Butterfly Effect
"I read about the butterfly effect . . .the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet .its very amazing . so I thought to do some design use butterfly, and I used Paul Erlich quotes in this design" Designed by Maya.Sivalingam from Sri Lanka.
"Tina just got her new dancing robot, but she’s not allowed to play with it at home.So she sneaks off to another planet to dance, but they’re afraid of her, so they try tohurt her. Too bad their weapons are useless against robots." Designed by Kristen M. Leonard from USA.
"Freedom15 August being the independence day of India. I have used the colours in indian flag and children enjoying there freedom." Designed by Supriya Dcunha from India.
"Bubbles filled with embryonic geckos floating in a sea of blue, with dark anonymous sharks circling nearby." Designed by Di Harrison from Australia.
Designed by Anil Omanwar from India.
Designed by Pablo Jimeno from Spain.
"This calendar was created for the motorcycle enthusiasts who visit www.allaboutbikes.com.The photo depicts Dani Pedrosa on his Repsol Honda before going on to win Round 8 at Laguna Seca in July 2009." Designed by Erica Volkman from USA.
"Beams of sun play across the sky, as a tree sits patient on the ground. A summery illustration based on August." Designed by Hennell from UK.
"I am a freelance graphic designer from India, currently involved inbranding, banner and brochre design. I love typograhy and I findminimalism to be more amusing than others. My love for minimalism inspired me to do this piece. " Designed by Venkat Sharma AG from India.
Designed by Kai Stabel from Germany.
"This plant was just too interesting to overlook. It reminded me a lot of the fireworks that had been going off the past few weeks. I felt like it was a good transition into the end of summer." Designed by A. Monday from USA.
"The idea behind this is to portray the choice that people often have to make about living life. Should you take a risk or take all the necessary precautions to stay safe which may do more damage in the end?" Designed by Kristen Brewer from USA.
"A Firefly tribute." Designed by Chelsea Otakan from USA.
"This is a photo taken, some July’s day in beautiful a nature reserve “Kuџnik”near to city Piіa in Poland, this a really amazing place." Designed by Mateusz Maćkowiak from Poland.
Designed by Jennifer Kowal from USA.
"A little bit of pink…" Designed by Marlaine Weber from Canada.
"Maybe it’s a little too late for the total eclipse…" Designed by Mac Funamizu from Japan.
"You may think that magick doesn’t exist; that if it ever did, it abandoned us when we became an industrialized society. But I think that’s wrong. Magick is still here - it’s switched from analog to digital, it’s embedded in hypertext and video compression algorithms. It’s transferred into our homes along copper and fiber-optic ley lines. Urban sprawls and social networking sites become massive nodes that contain the dreams and reflections of thousands of souls. Finding the layer of magick under the surface of things is the inspiration for this month’s wallpaper. I chose warm colors to represent the end of the summer and a time when our lives were defined by the changing of the seasons and the cycles of the sun and the moon." Designed by Arcane Palette Creative Design from USA.
"Celebrating Independence!" Designed by Viswanath J from India.
"This character found something new in his life, it’s reflection of my life. Sometimes he found a good things, but next day he found a bad one." Designed by Indrajid from Indonesia.
"Quick play with the photo I took in WuXi, adding some pattern to bring the colors to your desktop." Designed by JJ.Ying from China.
"Dedicated to all the innocent lives fade out in wars. May God bless the thousands others who have been abandoned alone by the devils in a tragic end of valuable human life." Designed by Sagar from Bangladesh.
Please notice that we respect the ideas and motivation behind artists’ work which is why we’ve given artists full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience through their works. And this is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but designed from scratch by the artists themselves.
Thanks to all designers for participation. Join in next month!
What’s your favourite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comments! And have a smashing August, folks!
© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Post tags: calendars, design, showcases, wallpapers
Logging application exceptions is like getting a new muffler. It isn’t exciting. It isn’t very fulfilling. It just costs time and money.
Also, it is something that needs to be done.
So, can we make exception logging as frictionless as possible?
Kidding. On both fronts.
Since the problem is just about logging exceptions, adding an extension method to the basic Exception class makes a lot of sense.
1: public static void Log( this Exception exception )
2: {
3: . . .
4: }
Now, using this extension method, logging an exception looks like this:
1: try
2: {
3: // do something that would throw
4: // an exception
5: }
6: catch (Exception ex)
7: {
8: ex.Log();
9: }
Enterprise Library makes what happens inside the extension method an easy implementation, too. The act of logging is simple enough with EntLib, but the real value is in how the configuration story lets an application administrator decide how the logging solution will actually behave at runtime.
For instance, when building a recent application, I asked the client if they wanted to receive email when a significant application error occurred. Their response was, “Just write to the Windows Event log. We have a monitoring application that will email us.”
Fine by me! Windows Event log, text file, email, it’s all the same because the ultimate destination of the log message is a configuration setting.
Anyway, the implementation of the extension method can look as simple as this.
1: public static void Log( this Exception exception )
2: {
3: var entry = new LogEntry
4: {
5: Severity = TraceEventType.Warning,
6: Title = "Application Exception",
7: Message = exception.ToString(),
8: };
9: Logger.Write(entry);
10: }
Of course, I ended up with some overloads and other niceties , but the basic approach remains sound.
This update covers tutorials you should have read in July 2009. Featured authors include: Chris Coyier, Jonathan Snook, Janko Jovanovic, John Imbong, Umut Muhaddisoglu, Brian Franklin, Jean-Baptiste Jung, Thomas Drake, Christian Baeuerlein, Jarod Taylor, Grazz, David Walsh, Kevin Liew, Kevin Liew and Mads Kjaer.
Featured Publications/Blogs include: CSS-Tricks, Snook, Janko At Warp Speed, Smashing Magazine, WebresourcesDepot, Line25, Cats Who Code, Nettuts, Noobcube, Blogging CSS, and Queness.
So which articles you found most useful. Also feel free to recommend any article that we may have missed in comments below.
Pingback from Web Design - Introducing LINQ to M | Web Design >> ASP.NET News
I am pleased to announce that Sonico, one of Latin America's leading social networks, has successfully rolled out its OpenSocial container to over +39 million users! A fantastic group of launch partners, including Buddypoke and GameDesire, worked with us for this initial release! Sonico is one of the leading social networks in Latin America, and is positioned as the second largest social network in Brazil. It is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Sonico's OpenSocial (v 0.8) platform includes the following:
Test & Publish your apps!
Our goal is to extend our application offering with useful and entertaining applications which bring value to our community and improve their experience!
We’re happy to invite the OpenSocial developer community to our sandbox and encourage the submission of engaging apps! It is a great opportunity to tap into a market that is eager for social applications.
Request sandbox access and read about our OpenSocial implementation:
To learn about Sonico's RESTful API visit:
To learn more about Sonico's demographics and growth:
http://www.slideshare.net/sonico/sonico-corporate-en
Background
Sonico is a social communication platform launched in July 2007 that merges social utility and entertainment to organize people’s life online. Developed with a strong emphasis in user legitimacy, privacy and personalization, it has been widely adopted across Latin America. Sonico is positioned as the second largest social network in Brazil, and is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Located in Buenos Aires and with a team over 80 people, Sonico was elected by BusinessWeek as the 5th tech startup with the highest global growth potential. Sonico closed its first round of capitalization of USD 4.3 million in May 2008.
For more information: http://corporate.sonico.com/
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In this post we are glad to release Creative by Nature, a unique and flexible high-quality portfolio WordPress theme for artists, photographers and designers. The theme was designed by .css{mayo} and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Creative by Nature is a free portfolio theme created by CSSMayo.com and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The designers created a funky theme, particularly useful for artists, photographers and designers who are looking for a flexible portfolio solution. The theme’s .zip-package includes all necessary files, server installation guide and a help file which describes how to add entries to your portfolio section. Besides, a PSD source file is available for free download as well.
The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this post and also to CSSMayo Release Post if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.
creative_by_nature-export.xml. Import it to your WordPress installation from “Tools > Import > WordPress”Here are instructions for adding portfolio entries:
Thank you very much, folks! We appreciate your efforts.
© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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