TAD Wallpaper at Tor.Com
Posted on March 21, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 27 Comments
For the next week or so, Tor is making available this really excellent wallpaper based on the cover of The Android’s Dream, created by Shelley Eshkar. It’s one of my favorite covers and it does make a fine, fine wallpaper, if I do say so myself (also up: a genuinely spooky piece of art from Sam Weber). It’s available at the Tor.Com Web site. Get it while you can.
Ha, just saw that and downloaded them while I was writing a post on the Harper-Collins “free ebook” experiment.
Awesome! Reminds me I have to rescue my hardback copy from its imprisonment in Canada.
Though I may need to get a paperback in the meantime. It’s only right!
Set as my desktop! :D
I can’t do this unless I enable “active desktop”. I need a techie geek or two to tell me what the pros, cons, and implications are of doing so. I generally avoid new features like that because of an intense distrust of Micro$oft, but this may be a good enough reason to allow it.
WXYZ:
You really shouldn’t need to enable the active desktop; it’s just a jpeg. I just opened it up with the standard Windows picture viewer, right clicked, and clicked on the “set as wallpaper” feature.
That vampire thing freaked me out – couldn’t even download it. People who like that kind of stuff should love it.
Is it off topic to say that Android’s Dream is awesome? ‘Cause it is. It’d be cool to see some of those folks again, possibly in other settings.
Dang! It must be early. I thought you were speaking of wallpaper that’d look great on my office walls (which it would). Now I’d buy that!
stoolpigeon:
Definitely not off topic, and thanks. I’m writing a followup.
Lovely wallpaper. Almost makes me regret being a flash bugger with a huge monitor, as there’s no 1920×1200 version for me. *sob*
I have one of those, too, Nick. It scales up pretty nicely.
Hi Nick,
Email me your address and I’ll send you a larger version.
irene.gallo@tor.com
Re #5 All I know is, when I tried to set this as my wallpaper, I got a little popup box that said “The wallpaper you selected can be shown on the desktop only if Active Desktop is enabled. Do you want to enable it?”
This has happened before when I tried touse JPG files for wallpaper. So, technogeeks, what about it?
WXYZ, if you can (i.e. with a graphics program), try converting the JPEG of the wallpaper to a BMP file, and see if Windows lets you use that.
WXYZ, tell me you’re not using Windows 98.
If that’s the case, and you don’t want to enable the active desktop, you must convert the image from jpg to bmp. Pretty much every graphic software should do it, except MS Paint, if I remember correctly. I haven’t had this problem in more than 10 years.
Oh, forgot to note to the tor folk that this is a very smart idea.
;)Just saw and endcap of Old Man’s War at Gate G at O’Hare. thought you might like to know.
/It was sitting just above Dune
Hi Irene,
thank you very much for your kind offer, I have sent you an email.
Awesome! This has replaced my previous wallpaper that was really creepy and kept weirding my wife out every time she walked into mt office. LoL
What can I say!? I’m a horror writer. lol
stoolpidgeon @#6
I write about vampires and I didn’t even like that wallpaper. Something about it just didn’t gel with me.
Every time I see the cover art for “Android’s Dream”, I can’t help but think of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?” (i.e., “Bladerunner”).
Pardon me now while I exit stage-left to download the wallpapers and this week’s free TOR novel-download.
Lee S:
It’s probably because the title is a direct and unashamed rip-off of PKD, just as is the title of the upcoming book in that universe, The High Castle.
Assure us John that any potential continuation of the series will be given the title “Pot-Healer.”
Gianluca:
If that’s the case, and you don’t want to enable the active desktop, you must convert the image from jpg to bmp. Pretty much every graphic software should do it, except MS Paint, if I remember correctly. I haven’t had this problem in more than 10 years.
My windows 98 box is at home. MS Paint handles jpeg and will convert to bmp fine, although maybe the older Win 98 version didn’t.
I like this picture but for wallpaper I usually pick something either darker of with a dark edge. Currently I’m using one of the latest Mercury photos but I like to change it every couple weeks.
It’s funny you should mention that. I just found it yesterday and downloaded it. It’s always been one of my favorites as well.
On an entirely different note.
I just finished reading Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades for the second time. I will be starting on The Last Colony in the next day or so.
I think I liked them even more the second time through.
Thanks a lot for those.
OK, I found MSPaint and made a bmp version. It works fine. Thanks. And no, I don’t use windows 98 and never did.
Thank you Friend,
This is an amazing wallpaper do you have more like this please?
Oh yes, it does make a fine desktop. Very happy.
Cool! My 9yo son will totally dig this. We’ve been making him branch out and read some new stuff (Reading all the Harry Potter books? Not a problem. Reading all of them 8 times in a row? Problem.). After finishing Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers, he asked to read TAD because he really likes the cover.
The only reason that my wife and I haven’t let him read it yet is that we’re not certain whether he’ll see the first chapter as a challenge or not. He’s generally not into fart humor and we’d like to keep it that way.