![\"WorkingWatch500Wide.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/WorkingWatch500Wide.jpg\")
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A couple of people have asked me where I got the Windows blotter wallpaper discussed and shown in the photo on my January 19, 2011 entry<\/a>. I stumbled across it while looking for art depicting steampunk airships. Jim Strickland and I have been tossing ideas around for a drumlin airship, and I wanted to see what other people had done in that area. Just clicking around, and alluva sudden I was looking at this<\/a>. Egad, it’s 1600 X 1200 too–no need for me to do any resizing. If you’re widescreen, you might consider this one<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n I like blotters. I had a desktop blotter at Borland that was an Ampad Efficiency Deskpad 24-003. It was basically a faux-leather frame surrounding a pad of 17″ X 22″quadrille paper, which I have always liked for sketches and off-the-cuff coding. When Borland laid us off they told me I could have it, since they were just going to dump it (and everything else in my desk) anyway. It’s followed me around ever since, though I’m not sure the quadrille paper for it is available anymore.<\/p>\n The only thing that bothered me about the blotter wallpaper was the pocket watch, which (while well-drawn) was just an image, and always read 3:37. (Days later, I found a version of the blotter wallpaper without the watch<\/a>.) If the watch had to be there, it had to work. And then I remembered something I had seen a long time ago and forgotten.<\/p>\n There’s a widget engine for Windows called Rainmeter<\/a>. It was mentioned on one blog or another that I followed back in 2008 or 2009. A widget engine is an app that runs without a conventional windowed UI, and allows you to display frame-less output on your desktop. The widgets are basically skins, and the output can be drawn in easily parameterized ways. There are myriad skins for Rainmeter, and while I was experimenting with it back then I ran across a clock skin called Pocketwatch<\/a>. It looked a little bit Stickley (as does much else in this house) and I would still have it running had I kept Rainmeter across the last couple of Windows reinstalls. (I did not.)<\/p>\n On a hunch I did the obvious: I took a 6″ steel rule and measured the size of the Pocketwatch widget on the screen, then measured the static pocketwatch image on the blotter wallpaper. The face of one was precisely<\/em> the same size as the face of the other. (The Pocketwatch skin is the face only; the blotter has the whole pocketwatch.) I quickly installed Rainmeter and Pocketwatch. I centered Pocketwatch over the face of the pocketwatch image, and then un-checked the Draggable setting on Pocketwatch’s context menu. Bang! The watch on my wallpaper now keeps time. All free, too. C’mon, people: What are the chances?<\/em> Sometimes luck just happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple of people have asked me where I got the Windows blotter wallpaper discussed and shown in the photo on my January 19, 2011 entry. I stumbled across it while looking for art depicting steampunk airships. Jim Strickland and I have been tossing ideas around for a drumlin airship, and I wanted to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14,101,88],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","tag-software","tag-steampunk","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}