When I have full control over the desktop, I might as well do something cool with it.
The stack is mine. The X server, the window manager, the terminal, the shell and every app. Most of my work is focused on simplicity. And in the terminal. I decided to give that a face lift.
The voice is mine. So is the music: Longing III.14, from Rise Above. All the mail, calendar and task data is made up.
The effects
- LCARS: the look of the screens on the Enterprise. It started with gluon. Now the bar at the top, the window borders, the launcher and the notifications.
- Red alert: when the battery falls to 10 %, herald shows a pulsing red alert. Again at 5 %. It goes away when I plug in the charger.
- Beam-in: a new window arrives in sparkles, like a transporter. It takes 0.6 seconds.
- Living wallpaper: tonight’s sky, the Moon and the Yr forecast. astro redraws every hour.
- Matrix decode: Claude’s answers in deck arrive as green glyphs that settle into text.
fx
One pop-up with a tick box per effect: fx. Mod4+Shift+f opens it. Space switches an effect on or off.
An effect that is off does no work and drains no battery. Nothing wakes up to check it. An effect that is on works only when it happens: a window opens, an answer arrives, the battery drops, the hour turns for the live wallpaper redraw.
The film
No video editor. Claude ran a second copy of my desktop on a hidden screen. It typed the keys as I say the words, filmed each scene and cut it to the pauses in my voice. The green rain at the end is a script that draws every frame.
Summary
- fx: the pop-up with the effects
- gluon: mail, calendar, tasks and Claude
- deck: my Claude Code interface
- herald: the notifications and the red alert
- astro: the living wallpaper
- CHasm: the desktop in assembly
- Fe₂O₃: the apps in Rust
- The film on YouTube
Link to this post: https://isene.org/2026/10/Face-Lift.html