Monitor As Zen Garden (With Directions)

I recently did two things:

Replace my broken 22" LCD monitor with a new 28" monitor.

Move the computer into the main area of the house.

So now that it's in the living room, I would like to show something beautiful, and peaceful, on the monitor when I'm not using it. Google Photos Screensaver is the obvious choice, but where to get free, maintenance-free content? Well, golly, I'll tell ya how!

First, I signed up for my free account, and created an channel on framechannel.com. I then searched through my account, and found the RSS-feed for my channel, and added it to Google Photos Screensaver. I will give you mine, it's filled with National Geographic feeds and other beautiful scenery, more on that later. Finally, I added my other favorite picture feed, courtesy of EarthShots.org.

Now I have beautiful, amazing pictures as my screen saver. It's so nice I've backed off the sleep setting on my monitor to 2 hours. Here's how:

1. Download and install Google Photos Screensaver, or any screensaver that supports RSS feeds. To get Google Photos Screensaver, use Google Pack.

2. Configure Google Photos Screensaver. It's in your Start Menu now.

3. Locate feeds of pictures. More on this in a bit. I'll give you two to start:

http://www.earthshots.org/screensaver.php
http://rss.framechannel.com/user=punkval/pin=9117

4. To add an RSS feed, click on "Settings...".

Here are the options for configuring the photos you see. Check the box for "Photos from public sites", and click "Configure..." directly to the right of that.

Copy-paste the RSS text into the textbox, and click Add.

Here you go again, for your copy-paste delight:

http://rss.framechannel.com/user=punkval/pin=9118

http://www.earthshots.org/screensaver.php

Now that you've added some, you can click OK or optionally find some more. There are two great starting points at the bottom of this window.

That's it, you're good to go!

I would LOVE to make this a forum for readers to contribute their favorite feeds. If you leave them in the comments I will promote them to right here:

(be the first one!)