November 21st, 2008 
A good screen-saver makes life that much better. I’m not sure how or why they brighten a mood, but it would make a good research project in psychology. Generally, the better my screen-saver, the more I like my computer, so the happier I am being chained to it.
This week I’m using a seafloor image from Antarctica found while reading Kevin and Eric’s awesome inverteblog The Other 95%. This is one of two dozen NSF funded images collected in a photo story at Boston.com entitled "Scenes from Antartica". The original caption is below.
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The words you are looking for are “background image.” A screen saver is the thing that comes on when you leave your computer idle. A background image is what you put on your computer’s “desktop” in the background of all the icons.
Thanks for that correction, TG. From now on I’ll have to call my screensaver a background image to make up for the error. ;)
Or you could do what I do for my screensaver. I point to a folder of images from of marine inverts on my hard drive and it plays the pictures randomly. An endless source of entertainment for my 3 year old when my computer goes into screensaver mode. Of course he can name each critter that appears! My favorite is when he says anemone.
I do that for my PC at school, pointing to folders of fotos from the most recent expedition. it helps me think and remember what we saw. For my Mac, I use an awesome Mac Classic Screensaver Package, or rather I was, until I found the “Anemona”. You gotta check it out. http://www.pure-mac.com/downloads/anemonadl.html
[...] some sweet pelagic wallpaper, like this Atolla sp. medusa that now adorns my laptop. The previous subsea landscape from Antarctica was enduring. It lasted a full three months, but the close-ups of Sulu Sea zooplankton are tough to [...]