Try reverse Déjà Vu for inspiration

What's Reverse Déjà Vu for inspiration? Do something uplifting you've NEVER done before! I'm betting NO ONE has seen ALL of the videos below before. If you have leave a comment with something new for the next visitor. There are some new variations of well-known ones here, but NO WAY have you seen all of these!

New inputs = new inspiration

Why did I put these together? It's important to seek out things to be motivated by, not to just stick to the same inputs, day in and day out. To find new things to lift yourself up, forget all the time-wasters and get energized or just relax deeper than ever before. To remember what you want most out of life, and feel that it can happen.

Sometimes when something inspires you, it feels like remembering something that you've forgotten. Peaceful music and imagery is what often does it for me, that and really cool, gravity or body-defying dance! Here's one of my favorites nature videos to start things off:

Remember the best things you want from life

I hope you find something here that helps you feel and remember the best side of yourself, and remember the best things you want out of life. Hopefully there will be something here you love but have never seen or heard before. (Yeah, I've also got puns, cats, photoshopped and large desktop pics*sigh*)

Links in most cases take you to other popular videos by the same artist, or style of video. All photos below are by me.)

Enjoy!

Oh, and a suggestion: Watch and listen to these here but then watch your favorites in full screen. (How? Click on the YouTube logo in the lower right corner to go the video's main page, and then click on the tiny icon in the lower right to open the video in full screen. Viewing controls at the bottom of your screen, press the Esc key on your keyboard to exit full screen mode.)

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet." -Rumi

Okay, this is a viral video ad (Schweppes Burst), but it's great! Slow motion of water balloons bursting, with music. Won me over. Wait for the one that hits the guy in the face

Davy Spillane plays a lament on the Uilleann pipes to Cuchulain composed by Bill Whelan for Riverdance. (Once you've heard this sound, you'll never need to look up the meaning of "lament.")

Ray Lynch, "Celestial Soda Pop" (comments?)

Flowing Sand Art will blow you away. Don't skip this one if you've never seen this kind of artist perform before (comments?) 

Kitaro, "Silk Road." For fans, here's a version of Symphony of the forest (comments?)

Glass Harp on wine glasses (comments?) 

Enya, Watermark Orinoco Flow and May it be are great too! (comments?)

Laughing Baby What a great audience! Thank you, I'm here all week! (comments?)

Saraswa, "Trees" (comments?)

Nessun Dorm by the Three Tenors. You really owe it yourself to hear how it develops--listen to the whole thing and it will bring tears to your eyes. Made popular recently by Paul Potts version (comments?)

Okay, this is straight-up comedy: Tripod, "Make You Happy Tonight." At 1:07 the real meaning of this song comes out. "Turn the lights down low .. it helps me feel like I'm in a spaceship" (comments?)

Tchaikowsky, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Glass Armonica (comments?)

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Free Large Background Desktop Vertical Wallpaper for (Portrait) Monitors

I'm adding new extra-large free wallpapers each month, so be sure to check back!



Recent addition: free vertical extra-large wallpapers that work in both portrait OR landscape mode when rotated, both abstracts and nature images. Most of these can stand having the "ends" cropped if you want to resize them to a ratio other than 16:10 wide screen. If you like these, link to this page so others can find it too!



You might ask: who else uses their monitors in portrait mode? Here's a couple of photos from the Googleplex to give you an idea:



I use a 24" flat panel widescreen (16:10) monitor set to 1920 x 1200 in portrait (vertical) mode. I've tweaked or montaged a number of free images into vertical 16:10 desktop wallpapers in Photoshop. For example, the first image, Eagle Mountain Mist, is a montage of six images, and lots of Photoshop "mist" (you can also see it on Flickr). Some have been rotated to work well vertically. If these are too huge for you, realize Windows can auto-size them for a desktop background. (Here's a great site for completely free images.)

Montages and optimized free images:

Note: These are vertical as shown.

Best of Hubble and the night sky

Note: These are vertical as shown (regardless of original image)

Free Nature Desktop Images: Vertical or Horizontal

Note: these come in a horizontal orientation.

Rotate to vertical as desired in an image program

Free Abstract Wallpaper: Vertical or Horizontal

Note: these come in a horizontal orientation.

Rotate to vertical as desired in an image program

Finding other sources for widescreen vertical wallpapers



Probably the best is interface lift, but Stock Exchange has quite a few to pick through. And there's a big list of links here. Try this useful large image search for popular, large nature wallpapers easily cropped. I can't post any here since they prohibit redistribution.



Graffiti Wallpaper is also excellent. Some of the nature images shown here are simply rotated from Mike Swanson's excellent collection.



If you've ever thought of making 1920 x 1200 wallpapers for your widescreen monitor from online map images, check out Earth Wallpapers.

Sources

Here are the source of some of the montaged and optimized images, in order from first appearing above:

• Eagle Mountain Mist is a montage of several images and lots of photoshopping;
  
  
• Lazy Days II by boss019; April 24th, 2007;
• Neutron Revolver by Parth; November 18th, 2006;
• Peace by Grant Erb; December 15th, 2005--Morfee Lake, Mackenzie, British Columbia, Canada;
  
  
• Silence by shiftedreality; May 13th, 2007;
• Epic Falls by Chris Fenison; June 15th, 2006;
• Splash/3D rendered water by Ratow; January 15th, 2006;
• Crepuscule, by Fabien Egot; August 16th, 2007;
• Courage et dévouement (Courage and dedication) Cédric Sacilotto's photo taken with a Canon EOS 400D at f9, 1/200 s; France, copyright 2007;
• Solar Wind effect on Earth's magnetic field: Scaling The Universe;
• Modified from Haleakala Sunrise by Greg Martin;
  
  
• If anyone can help me with the original source of the starry night over golden building (MIT) HDR image, I'd be grateful;
• The rest are adaptations of classic Hubble Space Telescope photos from a variety of sources.

Photoshop optimization techniques include HIROLAM, LAB color adjustments, BlendIF layer styles to reduce white halos after sharpening, etc.

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