Are you mindnumbingly bored with the field of wheat or sand dunes that have been adorning your computer desktop for the past ever?  Have you been looking for something fun, and a little quirky, to tell everybody what kind of a nutball you really are, without success?  Well, we may have finally found the answer!!!  Transparent Desktops!  Okay, not really, but this idea will definitely make people look twice.  Or three times.  Hell, they may even try to touch your screen just to make sure.  How do you do it?  Check out after the pics to see how… and a fun practical joke loosley based on this idea.

Here are a few examples of what we’re talking about:

So how’d they do it?  For starters… it really helps to have a laptop for this.  It’s as easy as folding the screen down and taking a hi-res digital pic from the angle you are normally going to sit (regular clutter and all).  OK yeah… it’s not quite that easy.  You’ll more-than-likley have to try it a few times until you get the angle just right.  Remember… shoot the same angle you’d normally see from just sitting there.  Then make it your desktop wallpaper and boom baby… optical illusion heaven.

For a slightly similar, but lovely, practical joke… try this out (Do it to yourself first to make sure you can do it quickly).   

  1. Sneak into their office/Cubicle
  2. Take a screen shot of their main windows desktop without any programs open (Ctrl+Prt Sc)
  3. Open up “Paint”, Paste (or Ctrl+V), Save to the Desktop under whatever you’d like to call it (eg. “Carl is a Prick)
  4. Go back to the Desktop, right-click, mouse over “View”, then uncheck “Show Desktop Icons”
  5. Right Click again, Chose to personalize your Desktop
  6. Select the pic you saved to the desktop as your new background.
  7. Now watch as they try over and over to click on the icons, which we know is nothing more than a picture.
  8. To undo your mess… simply right-click over the desktop and re-check “Show Desktop Icons”.  Then suggest he changes his wallpaper.

FYI if you are in good with your IT department you should give them a heads-up before you pull your little prank.  They’ll be able to quick-fix it and look like a hero in the process.