Create your own calendar wallpaper!

A new year is here and with a new year comes traditions such as making new year resolutions (in England), eating twelve grapes (in Spain), or throwing water on everybody (in Thailand). Of course, wherever you are, a new year is also the perfect occasion to create your own calendar wallpaper for your computer!

There's a great website called Calendar Labs which lets you create your own calendar wallpapers, and they do most of the work for you. You simply upload your photo, then select a few options, such as the month, where you want the calendar positioned, and wallpaper size, then click 'create wallpaper' and it resizes your photo and adds a monthly calendar.

If you're feeling lazy, I suppose you could use the same photo for every month, and quickly churn out twelve almost identical calendar wallpapers for every month of the year. Or if you prefer variety, and if you're not lazy, it only takes a few minutes to upload a different photo for each month.

Here's a set of monthly calendars that I made using some of the covers from my books and short stories...

January:

January's calendar is based on the cover to my scifi short story, The Darkness And The Light, which is set on a planet where each day lasts for the equivalent of one hundred and twenty four Earth years. As you can imagine, this leads to fluctuating valuations within the property market.

The Darkness And The Light

For sale: Self assembly snowman

In search of a little extra cash over the Christmas season...

At this time of year there always seem to be a lot of financial obligations which place a burden on your wallet. To help my fiscal situation I've therefore decided to sell a few items around the house which I personally have no use for, and with that in mind I've created a few adverts.

First up on my list of things for sale is this self assembly snowman...

iPhone 4 (640x960)

Everything will be okay in the end

...if it's not okay, it's not the end.

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
iPhone 6 wallpaper (1334x750)

Anyone who has read my early scifi books, may remember that at one stage in the opening book, the main character was feeling downhearted with his lack of success in his quest to save the world. However, he then took inspiration from a quote on one of his t-shirts and that quote was:

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

In actual fact one of my own old t-shirts also features the very same quote, and it's a quote that I really like, so as last week saw the release of the latest iPhone 6 from Apple, I therefore thought it would be topical to turn the quote into an iPhone wallpaper.

Bang out of order!

The other day I discovered some graffiti on my car...

It's been a few months since I last featured an iPhone wallpaper, and as my last one was uncharacteristically serious and sensible, this time I decided to return to my usual daft self and feature a more typically silly wallpaper...

Bang out of order!
iPhone 4 version (640x960)

It's based on a daft joke which is a play on words, and as usual it's available in two sizes; 640x1136 for the iPhone5 and 640x960 for the iPhone4.

The harder the journey, the more rewarding the arrival

An iPhone wallpaper based on an inspiring dude.

iPhone wallpaper based on an inspiring dude
I encountered when I was climbing Mount Kinabalu.
iPhone 4 Version (640x960)

My last few wallpapers have generally been daft and stupid, but I made this next wallpaper when I was in a rare sensible mood, and it's based on a photo from a few years ago when I was climbing Mount Kinabalu in Borneo.

The mountain is only 4,095 metres high, so it's probably no more than a small hill to serious mountaineers, but to an amateur like me it was a totally massive effort to get to the top. By about halfway up my legs were starting to feel like jelly, so as I was hiking my way up to the summit I inevitably started to think to myself, 'Why did I ever voluntarily decide to put myself through this punishment!?'

However, just as me and my fellow backpackers were feeling as if our legs would go no further, we then passed a local porter who was carrying an object up to the overnight camp (3,270 metres up the mountain) and it quickly put our own efforts into perspective. Incredibly, the object the porter dude was carrying up the mountain on his back was a water tank, and as you can see from the photo, this thing was massive. So as we passed him we all stopped to give him approving nods of acknowledgement and appreciative shouts of encouragement for his incredible feat of strength.

The karma police are on the lookout...

...for the sly person who left the following note.

iPhone 4 Version (640x960)

A few months ago a Swedish friend on facebook posted a photo of a note left under someone's windscreen wiper on their car. The note read:

"Hej,

Jag stötte bilen och någon såg mig, så nu är jag låtsas att skriva mina kontaktuppgifter på denna not.

Tack,

Hej då."

For the benefit of anyone who doesn't speak Swedish, the note reads:

"Hi,

I bumped your car and someone saw me, so now I'm pretending to write my contact details on this note.

Thanks,

Bye."

Ha, ha, ha. Very amusing. Actually, I hope it was a joke because if it was real it wouldn't be quite so amusing for the person whose car it was, obviously.

Anyway, I thought it deserved to be translated into English so for the benefit of any non-Swedish speakers I've created an English recreation of the original Swedish note as an iPhone wallpaper. The wallpaper at the top right of this blog post is the iPhone 4 version in 640x960 resolution, and for the benefit of any cutting edge people who have upgraded to the iPhone 5, here's one in 640x1136 resolution: