First things first: my apologies for how late this one was. The last week of April was the last week of classes for the semester, and last week was finals week. That's also the reason for the simplicity of this one, though I think it worked out this time around.

Also, another apology: I do not have vector-based logos for teams, and did not have time to fix these ones, so most of these logos have some scaling weirdness to them. You can especially see this in San Diego and any other logo with pronounced curves. This was a problem the last time I tried to do something like this, back in 2009, and I still haven't learned my lesson. But I just love the outlined look. I'll try and make future ones better if I have some spare time between jobs this summer.

The reason I'm apologizing so much is because I really wanted the schedule piece to do justice to the fantastic picture at the center. Most of you probably recognize the image as one that our awesome prettyinpurple took of the hometown heroes on Opening Day. As soon as I saw the image, I knew that I wanted it to take center stage for the team in some fashion; what better way than in a schedule wallpaper?

And the title? Just sort of came to me :)

Please send her basically all the credit for this one. If it wasn't for her awesome pic, the relative awesomeness of this wallpaper would have been significantly decreased overall. Thank you, Pip!

Enjoy, everyone! Let's hope it brings the winning ways back to the team (and the hitting ways... and the non-Paulino ways...)

GO ROCKIES!

To download: click your desired screen resolution, then click the "Download" button on the Google Docs page that you are redirected to.

WIDESCREEN:

1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1680 x 900 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 

1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 

Phone resolutions look very similar to the ones above, only with a cropped image and a fade effect.

Android: 640 x 480 | iPhone 3 and lower: 320 x 480 | iPhone 4: 640 x 960 | iPad: 1024 x 1024

Attributions: "Opening Day (63)" (aka "Pretty in Purple") (c) Katerina Gonzales. Cream font.

WARNING: This is looooooooong and very personal. But hopefully interesting?

This past Sunday, I was privileged enough to visit the Great Cathedral of Purple Baseball, where I was witness to one Mr. Alan Johnson's major league debut. Yes, the Alan Johnson! It was a wonderful inspiring time, one which I was felt enormously grateful to be a part of. My heart raced with each center-cut fastball to Soriano, knowing that him, and the Cubs lineup, would all fall victim to the wicked 85 MPH heat.

Oh, I'm sorry, I think my sarcasm is dripping onto my shirt. Darn stuff gets everywhere.

Anyway, I wanted to actually share more than irritating sardonic Alan Johnson comments with the community. You see, this past Sunday also marked the final game that I would attend with my faithful companion. She's been with me at every ballgame I've attended since 2003, watching the various home teams go 9-13-1 in those 8 years. I remember each and every game, every lineup, every play, even every pitch that she and I saw together.

Well, mostly cause I wrote it all down. You see, my friend is a scorebook. She was $5, and I've not spent a better $5 in my life. Take a walk down memory lane with me?

Continue reading this post »

Lookie, new wallpapers!

Thanks to a few midterms this week (and packing my bags for Coors on Friday!) I didn't have a lot of time to put this one together. But gosh darnit, this is my 5th year of doing these things, and my goal is to get one out every month this season. Last year was a really rough year for me personally, and this year is shaping up to be a really transitional year for me as well. But I'm setting my goal, and I'm planning on sticking to it.

I also didn't have a ton of time to get this one done because I spent a long while on that background in Photoshop. I think I finally got it juuuust right, so now it really looks like I just took my Tulo jersey and snapped a pic of it with my G2 camera. The similarities are striking! (*I may or may not have actually done just this)

Let me know if you want some different screen resolutions, as per usual. iPhone, Android, and iPad are new offerings this time around. Note: I don't own an iAnything, so I'm not sure if they will actually work on those devices or if various menus will get in the way, etc. Please let me know and I'll try to fix it!

Important note: only the "Standard" resolutions and iPad version are Approved for Muzia (r), as all unnecessary #2's have been cropped out. Other resolutions may feature a Tulowitzki number, so all Muzias should be aware.
Oh, and Happy Opening Day! Gooooooo Rockies!

To download: click your desired screen resolution, then click the "Download" button on the Google Docs page that you are redirected to.

WIDESCREEN:

1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1680 x 900 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 

1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

ANDROID: 640 x 480

iPhone 3 and lower: 320 x 480

iPhone 4: 640 x 960

iPad: 1024 x 1024

Attributions:  Street Corner font,  Jersey image (c) Nathan Bellis

UPDATED 11:30 AM with (hopefully) working download links. Sorry about that, everyone!

Tulo's a Rockie for life (or at least until near when he retires) and I couldn't be happier.  I feel he's the real deal when it comes to team leadership, and his drive to win every game is infectious. Tulo is my favorite Rockie, and I'm glad to have him on the team for the next decade.

I've got two different versions of wallpaper for you, one with "2007 - 2020" at the bottom, and one with a co-opt of The Lodo Magic Man's quote from the thread.  The usual flavors are here, along with new iPhone and Android versions! Give them a test-drive and see how they work.

"2007-2020" Version:

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768

ANDROID: 640x480

iPHONE: 320 x 480

Continue reading this post »

Not dead, just not very much time on my hands.  Isn't college supposed to be, like, about enjoying life?  Aren't I supposed to be getting drunk every night and waking up next to a stolen parking sign?

Ah well.  I suppose making money to continue eating works as well.

In other news, here's Uball and Tulo towering above Angel Stadium.  Links below the preview - let me know if you want something special.  Go Senior Circuit!

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

Attributions: Jimenez image, Tulowitzki image, Angel Stadium, ASG logo, blue star, blue brush strokes, Angels font/numbers (this is where I got them from forever ago, but the site appears to be dead now :( )

School is over tomorrow and the end of my busy apartment season (where I work) is next Thursday.  After that... I'm actually, legitimately, free.  And let it be hereby known forevermore that my next project is a set of logos for the Purple Row fantasy leagues - just like I promised Jeff :) . But now it's in writing so he can come after me.

Also, I want to give a big shoutout to an unnamed contributor who sent me a few Rockies logos in vector format (if you don't know what that is, I'll explain further down the page).  Unnamed contributor, whom I'm not naming unless you want to be named because I don't know the legalities of how you obtained said vectors, thank you so very much!  I had one of the logos lined up to use in this edition, but then Ubaldo had to go win NL Pitcher of the Month.  Your work will be featured next month :) .

**********

Warning: boring graphic talk ahead... skip if you're not interested or in a rush.

A note on the vector logos... it's become rather apparent to me that I'm in desperate need of vector-based logos for my work.  For those that don't know, the difference is essentially that a vector image is an image that's drawn through math and calculation, whereas a raster-based image is drawn through pixels.  So if you try to resize a vector-based image, it will continue to stay crisp no matter the size it is.  A raster-based image will inevitably get blurry or pixelated if you shrink or expand it.

For my logos, I traditionally grab rasters from the excellent sportslogos.net, and then resize them to fit my needs.  However, for some reason or another I got fed up with doing that this month, and so for the teams that I could I actually went and created some vectors from scratch.  If you look at the wallpaper, you'll notice that San Diego, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, and Kansas City will all look abnormally sharp when compared to Houston.  That's because they are vector-based now, so no matter the size, they will always look like that :) .

Boringness ends here

**********

Let me know if you want any resolutions not represented below.  Next month, my goal, aside from releasing something before the first of the month, that is, is to also develop something viable for mobile phones.  It won't look as pretty, but I know a lot of people have been wanting a mobile version of the wallpapers for some time.  I'll be giving it serious thought for my next edition.

Enjoy!  And, as always, Go Rockies!

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

Attributions: Logos retrieved from sportslogos.net, MLB Block letter/number font retrieved from a source via the CCSLC forums, Ubaldo image found via a Google Images serach that returned this page.

Time taken: 3 hours for the wallpaper, 30 mins for linking/posting.

I didn't make an April schedule wallpaper because I felt like it was taking too long, and I could feel my GPA dropping beneath me.  Apparently the team just needed to give me something awesome to motivate me to push aside all of my essays and readings and just create a wallpaper.

Just like the Rockies' last game at Hi Corbett, yesterday marked another event that was far too important in Rockies history to let go unmarked.  Thus why I stayed up to 3 to make this for everyone.  Hope everyone likes it :)

Usual drill - let me know if you want a special size, I should have some time tomorrow between pages to whip something up for you.

NOTE: I'm trying out Google Docs for the hosting this time around... when you click a link, a preview will pop up.  Click "Download" to get the size you clicked.  Let me know if there are any problems!

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

Attributions: the two pictures beneath the scoreboard and the scoreboard are from AP, the list of no-no's was screencapped from Wikipedia, the Rockies logo was taken from sportslogos.net, and the large picture of the man himself was found on this page via a Google search.  The MLB block letter and number font was downloaded from a link provided via the sportslogos.net forum.

For those curious, here's the short version of why we didn't have a Spring Training paper.  For those not curious, head after the jump.

Basically, my life has been a clusteryoucan'tsaythatwordonPurpleRow since mid-January, and things have come to a head recently.  The big and most recent piece is that my father recently suffered a stroke.  It was mild - he's only lost peripheral vision in one eye and some of his concentration skills have suffered (though he won't admit to that).  However, he's going to have heart surgery within the next couple of weeks.

A lot of the other issues have been me trying to help my girlfriend as best I can in her battle with a rather crippling anxiety disorder and depression.  Her parents aren't helping matters.  This, thrown on with my mom maybe possibly having breast cancer and me staring down the barrel of 33 pages worth of paper to write before the month is done...

If you have any spare thoughts, I'd appreciate them :) .  But this is why I haven't been around the Row lately (and why I missed the SABR league draft and why you don't have your logos yet, Jeff... I'm sorry!)

Continue reading this post »

...you all know the rest :P .

While working on my Spring Training schedule wallpaper, I saw the awesome AP photos from Tucson and couldn't help but make something to celebrate that most holiest of days: the day when Pitchers and Catchers report, and the new season is born.

Ladies and gentlemen...

baseball is back.

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

Good news, everyone!  4:3 aspect ratios are here!  Bad news, everyone: I couldn't find a way to re-organize the stuff on the paper to make it "fit" better to that aspect ratio, so I took the easy way out and just scaled down what I had and added more border around it.  Mea culpa.  Next time around, I'll develop both ratios at the same time.

If you've got any special resolution requests, let me know!  I won't be able to get them done before Game 2, but they'll be in your hands either tomorrow night or Friday morning :) .

Go Rockies!

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

STANDARD: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

Something short and sweet I threw together in just a few hours after tonight's amazing win vs. the Giants.  These next 3 dates have been circled on my calendar for a month now.  It's time you make sure they are circled on yours.

BEAT LA!  GO ROCKIES!

FULLSCREEN: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 | 1440 x 900

Last month was bad...pulling double-shifts at work, my girlfriend coming back early from field training with a badly sprained ankle - throw in a vacation around the All-Star Break and you've got an overly busy month.  So just for all you loyal followers out there, I learned how to put textures onto fonts :) .

Let me know what you think of this month's edition!  I'm headed to bed for now (3 am and such), but when I come back tomorrow night I'll sit down and watch our boys do battle with the Phillies while making up any special resolutions that people want (jrockies, should I just start making you one each month?) and getting to work on some mobile versions.  I've also got a few other wallpaper ideas floating around in my brain...since I have a relatively light workweek, you may just get 3 or 4 wallpapers this time around :) .

Enjoy as always, and Go Rockies!

FULLSCREEN: 1600 x 1200 | 1400 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 |  1440 x 900

(for those not sure what this is about, you may want to read this thread first)

Not even a 51 minute rain delay in the 4th inning could slow down the Hammel train tonight as he dominated the hapless Mets lineup through 7 2/3 innings.  After allowing only 4 hits until the 7th, Jason finally showed signs of wear as he allowed 3 in that frame, including a 2-RBI double by Angel Pagan.  Solid bullpen work thereafter by Chacin, Betancourt, and Street with Daley providing an 8-pitch, 2 hit, 1 earned run hiccup in the 8th.

A solid outing by the Rockies offense as well, with the big power provided by the bat of Garrett Atkins.  His grand slam in the 3rd put the Rockies up 5-1, and a two-run shot in the next inning by Brad Hawpe would put the game away for good.  After that, the Mets wouldn't sniff a win expectancy over 10% until the 8th inning.

Check after the jump for more WE/WPA goodness, the fangraph, the RowCall, and tomorrow's action.

Continue reading this post »

I wanted to give everyone a brief update.  About two weeks ago I fell victim to a bad computer virus (Win32Trojan.TDSS, if you're interested - Google it if you want, it's real nasty), and earlier this week I had to throw in the towel and reformat my computer.  So I lost a lot of stuff, most notably my copy of Photoshop.  I'm still waiting for my friend that can get me a good Photoshop hookup to come through, which should be on Friday.

tl;dr: Hopefully I can get a July wallpaper done by the end of the holiday weekend for everyone.  Thanks for being patient with me!  Especially cause this time it wasn't just me being busy and/or lazy :P .

Here's my laundry list of reasons why this has taken me so long:

1) My girlfriend just left for ROTC field training, so I was helping to get her ready

2) Double shifts at work

3) Summer class w/ 2 papers in 1 week

4) Photoshop makes my computer choke

Go ahead and choose which one (or a combination) of the four you want to be the reason why this is 11 days late.  Once you've decided on one, enjoy the wallpaper!  I put in twice as much work into this one as I usually do, and I think the calendar turned out pretty good for it.  However, my creative juices ran dry for the background, so it's rather barren.  Use your imagination :) .  Also, the special wallpaper isn't quite done yet (you can choose a different excuse for this one if you want for some bonus points), but will be by the end of the day.

Kosmo, I'm working on your logo request.  The trouble is that I need to get it vectored first, because the version I have isn't any bigger than the version here on the site.  But since I'm done with papers (at least until Tuesday), I'll have some time to get it done for you :) .

Anyway, onto the wallpapers!  As always, let me know if you want one in a specific resolution and I'll get it out to you.  C+C is greatly appreciated!  And yes, RMN, I did take some inspiration from your "learn scorebooking" post a while back :) 

Enjoy, and Go Rockies!

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 |  1440 x 900

FULLSCREEN: 1600 x 1200 | 1440 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

SPECIAL BONUS WALLPAPER!

To show my thanks for sticking with me through thick and thin.  I know that, as Rockies fans, we're all pretty used to adversity, but you all put up with me even when I didn't update for 3 months one time - even the Rockies can win at least once in that timespan! ;) 

So anyways, here's one that I think(hope) everyone here will appreciate.  I saw the font on a free font website and this image instantly popped into my head.  2 days later, here we are!  Again, let me know if anyone wants a special resolution (and jrockies, I've got a special resolution in there for you too :) ).

Enjoy, and Go Rockies!

WIDESCREEN: 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 |  1440 x 900

FULLSCREEN: 1600 x 1200 | 1440 x 1050 | 1280 x 960 | 1024 x 768 | 800 x 600

SPECIAL RESOLUTION: 1280 x 1024 (jrockies) (note, this is a .BMP and will take much longer to load)

Continue reading this post »

So I've had this bad boy about 98% finished since April 6th, but being the over-thinking perfectionist that I am I decided to keep it back for a while to make some final adjustments (long-time wallpaper users will remember that it was that same over-thinking perfectionism that kept me from releasing a September wallpaper last year).  Well, those final adjustments just kept getting put off in favor of such things as 10 page papers, double shifts at work, and having to redesign my apartment complex's website (which actually looks quite nice, if I say so myself).  So finally, I just got fed up with myself and decided that I was going to post it; so after a bit of use of the Smudge tool to get that 98% to 100%, here it is!

Now when I say "guinea pigs", I mean it.  What do you think of my calendar?  It's very different, yes, but with good reason.  Here are some features:

• All the games are now grouped into series, with all the info you need for each game.
  
• Each game box is either grey or white to designate away or home respectively (like our uniforms).
• The script used for each team is the script that the team will be seeing during that series (so "Dodgers" when the team plays in LA, and "Los Angeles" when the Dodgers come to Coors).
• Pictures of the stadiums included to further denote home/away (since the colors on the boxes can run together a bit).

The new calendar is the major part of this new wallpaper, and is what I'll be focusing on mostly.  I realize that Tulo has a bit of a weird outline going on, and that the team logo coupled with Squeaky's sign is a bit forced.  However, I'd really like to iron out the kinks in the new calendar before next month, and then once I have that down, expand from there.

So that's where you come into play...comments!  What do you think of the calendar?  Is it useable?  Pretty?  Useable and pretty?  Tell me what to fix for May!

I am rather proud of the way the new Purple Row logo turned out, however, so don't bash that one :P .

As always, if you would like a funky resolution just leave a comment and I'll get one made for you.  The links will take a while to download (though not as long as last season, since these are now .PNG files rather than .BMP, meaning the files are about half as big with very negligible loss in quality); if you have any issues downloading let me know.

Thanks for being patient with me, everyone - the last month of school is always a hectic one for me (and especially since it's the first month of baseball, my mind always gets pulled in two different directions).  And, of course, Go Rockies!  Maybe they just needed some new computer wallpaper to help snap out of this recent funk.

STANDARD RESOLUTIONS:

800 x 600 | 1024 x 768 | 1280x960 | 1400 x 1050 | 1600 x 1200

WIDESCREEN RESOLUTIONS

1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200