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For your Desktop only?

Hanging up wallpapers or painting rooms can be quite a mess or at least very tiring. Here come some homemade PC wallpapers. Ever since switching from MS-DOS to the colourful Windows Operating System they have been fascinating. The higher the resolution got, the better they started looking.

Just select one of the nearby images to have it pop up in full size. Then right mouse click and enjoy as your Desktop background. Here are some comments, mostly migrated from the first webpage, accompanying and describing these early wallpaper creations.

1. "Bubble Bath Baby" Wallpaper
Once more, here is a picture that was the idea of our daughter, during taking a bath with our youngest family member. The result is that picture we'd call "Schaumbaby", which is German for "Bubble Bath Baby" obviously. The image somehow reminds me of white baroque nobleman wigs, the kind also judges used to wear. And we have used it as desktop background ever since...

2. "Family of Babies" Wallpaper
What I always wanted to achieve is to create a situation in virtual reality, where the kids actually meet their parents - also at kid's age. The nearby compilation represents a compromise to this complicated undertaking. Anyway, there is even a separate page on this website, dedicated to the resulting "Family of Babies".

Here is our newest star in front of his own wallpaper.

3. "Hotzenplotz & Bambi Movie" Wallpaper
Taking the kids out to remakes of our very first movies as a child, some 30 years earlier (sniff). Above picture had one or two elements added later, as usual. To be more exact, we took two photographs and merged them later, as there was no one around taking the picture with all of us in at the same time. Also, it would have been nice to actually have the robber look over our shoulder and watching the deer and butterfly scene "live". What puzzled me was that Groundhog Day – the US equivalent to Mariä Lichtmess - was mentioned in the Bambi sequel, years after I had visited the weather forecast capital Punxsutawney in the north of Pennsylvania. More comments on the event can be found on the "Hotzenplotz" page of this website.

4. "Laurel & Hardy" Wallpaper
Taking many things too seriously in a life full of haste and stress is not only a disease (or may lead to some) but a necessity to survive in times of tight economical competition. Relaxation can be achieved through many ways, here is one: Entering a far away world, black and white, some seventy years ago, where things seem easy and two buddies fight with the little things in daily life, including misunderstanding and confusion. Very welcome distraction originally created in times of economical crises, unemployment and war. In those days the line that is the most closely associated with the comedian duo - "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into" - may have sounded like a relief from the everyday struggle to feed the family and just survive. Today we look back with a smile at those two pals with their bowlers, far away like a dusty, faded pictures on a wall. Enclosed wallpaper reverses this situation, places the two kids' heroes in front of our own photograph. More about the motivation to create this one can be found on the "Laurel" page of this website, obviously.

5. "Wobbly Stone" Wallpaper
This is a compilation of "rocky" pictures into a wallpaper. The day trip to the Wobbly Stones or Wackelsteine, as they would be referred to in German, was a birthday wish of my wife, precisely planning it out of one of those booklets titled "Hiking with Children". It took us to a part of Lower Austria, where the Czech border is just a stone's throw away. The place is called Blockheide in Eibenstein (near Gmuend) and we found lots of rocks around there, fun climbing and walking by. Rocking them though apparently takes more than one family... The motif seems to say "let's move things", which sounds like a good motto for both private and professional life.

6. "Looking Back" Wallpaper
The picture shows my boy, happily lying on the floor after just finding a green goblin toy, a couple months before the Spider-Man movie came out. I guess all this thrill, mystery, or whatever ít felt reading the story of the outsider with a strong sense of responsibility for the very first time is his heritage now. Sent in to the Panini Webpage, it got elected Artweb of the Week, whatever honour that means. They chose to add a caption reading: "Kinder und Ihre Leidenschaften (Kids and their passions)". Using it for a CD-Compilation Cover later, I added a title based on this incredible line: "I was looking back to see, if she was looking back to see, if I was looking back at her." The powerful version of this song by Gary Moore has fascinated me ever since its 2001 release. Originally, it had been the very first single Peter Green did with the Bluesbreakers, in 1966 just replacing Eric Clapton, who had left to form his own group Cream. Playing the song in the car, I have ever since asked fellow passengers: "Can you say that?"

7. "Halloween" Wallpaper
Monsters (no funny Herman Munster unfortunately), Mummies (not to mix up with Mommies), Ghosts (in timeless linen fashion), Spiders (not the Itsy Bitsy one that went up the water spout), Bats (no spandex superheroes this time), Vampires (no Van Helsing to the rescue), Witches (without the Lion and the Wardrobe) - let's check some out by looking... into the mirror? Spooky, spooky, spooky, it’s really kind of kooky", as the singing English teachers Danny & Gerry would rhyme. Seeing all these around we know it is Halloween again. Above wallpaper shows our hand carved pumpkin. Click here for more on festivals and festivities in the course of time, about long-term local traditions and new imports, including that spooky Halloween.

8. "Bangkok" Wallpaper
Going Far East for the first time is an adventure, one night in Bangkok followed by few more days. Even when spending most time in conference rooms - except on the sunny Sunday outing to the King's Grand Palace and Wat Pho temple with the Reclining Buddha - to achieve something together with very nice and knowledgeable colleagues from all over the world. A starting point for a challenging project and a new experience, you do not want to have missed. Turning the page on our way to reduce the "bu dong" among each other. It was also the first time, by the way, we'd be confronted with the Asian skill of singing karaoke, by the way, long before we'd shock the public with our own performance. Overall, as the song lyrics go: "Had a good time but it ended much too soon!"

9. "MichiLAysia" Wallpaper
A compilation of pictures taken during an overseas assignment in Michigan, with a week vacation in LA, and a workshop in Malaysia to follow. And it felt strange being back home again for the first time in several months, going back to a more or less regular life for a while, before being called away again. There are memories of the covered bridges in Michigan, the Lone Cypress in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, KLCC and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the National Monument for WWII and the following Malaysian Liberation War, up to a simple advertisement on the back of a Malaysian tour bus, something like a piece of home far away from home.

10. "Blue Sea" Wallpaper
On the Krk Island within the Croatian part of the Adria, we took this "Aquavision" boat tour. Hearing so much lately about diving, we decided for a more comfortable boat ride with windows and a little diving show under water, a guy bringing us uncooked seafood to the window. The kids called the sea stars Patrick, while there were not too many sponges. And then it happened. Lately we had heard rumours about tourists seeing sharks in Croatia while locals had always referred to Dolphins instead, wonder why. And finally we saw this shark opening his fierce mouth in front of us – when being already back home looking at the TV guide. So the kids found it a good idea to alter a somewhat boring picture I had taken and add a little excitement as you can see above.

11. Card Hand" Wallpaper
A hand full of friends playing cards. Created probably while thinking of good old times with playing "Bauernschnapsen" or listening to the related Austropop tune "I drah zua" about closing the game. It just felt good sitting together in the old days and play cards until one team had lost their "honour". Which was usually at stake instead of that round of liquor or Schnaps that gave the farmer's version of the "Sixty-six" card game its name, while it also went along well with a round of Spritzer, wine mixed with carbonated water. There was so much time to spend together. Incredible. And it is funny that the Austrian expression "Spritzer" is a loanword also known in English - just like bratwurst, lederhosen, rucksack, poltergeist, angst or doppelganger. While it is mostly unknown in Germany, where the "Schorle" rules instead. The technical term for a beverage of usually white wine "sprayed" with carbonated water possibly made it into the English vocabulary via the Pennsylvania Dutch - wrongly labelled former German immigrants in this case, for Dutch sounds closer to "Deutsch". Very popular in summer for its refreshing taste (and going into the blood faster thanks to carbonation), its consumption can also lead to misunderstanding. As with an American colleague, who thought that the wine was so bad here that it had to be watered down.

12. "Plitvice" Wallpaper
While spending a week on the Croatian island Krk we made a day trip to the Plitvice National Park, searching for the Treasure of the Silver Lake. Above picture is a combination of both beach entertainment and admiring those wonderful waterfalls between the 16 lakes in the recreation area. It was taken at the Upper Lakes – in Croatian called Gornja jezera however that is correctly pronounced – across Lake Okrugljak, which is fed from the Ciginovac (waterfall seen in the picture!) and Proscansko lakes. Anyway, my local language skills start and end with Dober Tek as you could find out on the "Mahlzeit" page of this website.

13. "Invitation" Wallpaper
A popular art print by Renato Casaro, we had admired in the Viennese Donauplex at Burger King and also in the Haydn English Movie Theater when watching Narnia these days. And then, surprise, surprise, this family activity also known as "Dinner for Great Names - 1000 Piece Panorama Puzzle" found its way under the Christmas tree. Thank you Christkind and thank you to my wife for not giving up! Check out this website's "Mystery" section and the following pages for a couple more words on the picture itself and the original it is fabricated after, da Vinci's "Last Supper".

14. "Wild West" Wallpaper
Playing Cowboys & Indians, dream come true in the very heart of Europe. Above collage includes elements from a visit to the Western town No Name City in Woellersdorf (Wanted Ad behind prison bars), Karl May Festival in Winzendorf (boy horse riding), Oberlaa spa gardens in Vienna (girl horse riding), Plitvice National Park in Croatia (waterfall) and an Indian village in Gumpoldskirchen (overall scenery, group pictures with Indian Benjamin and camp fire in front of tipi) as well as Carnival (boy blowing the later added fake smoke from his toy gun). In this case WWW really stands for Wild West Wallpaper. More on these Western style adventures can be found here.

And I still remember that paint job on the high ceiling of my first apartment, later wallpapering the walls and putting in new floors into the another place. Watching that "Mundl"-episode about the "typical loud Viennese" struggling with wallpapering the ceiling, I would still always end up painting it instead. It was quite amazing to see, how much dust collects in a nice, soft wall-to-wall carpet, which led me to a later preference for wooden floors. Ultimately, they are also easier to clean when kids spill something. So let me close with a comment that I also found on the previous webpage's section about homemade computer wallpapers: More of them to come, when time allows.

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