xscreensaver as your desktop?

Last night I stumbled upon BackLight, a free program for the Mac that allows you to pipe any screensaver into your desktop. While it’s not perfect (it’s a GL layer on top of the existing desktop, so there are issues with Exposé, for instance), it allows for some great effects. Want to run Matrix-style effects in the background while you work?

No problem. (GLMatrix is part of the xscreensaver package, now available for Macs, too.)

Don’t get me wrong; this is totally useless. Screensavers aren’t the most practical things. (When was the last monitor you owned seriously susceptible to burn-in? 1986?) But this is very cool eye-candy. This one goes in the ‘keep’ pile for now.

Updated: Found another way that doesn’t require an additional application:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

Will try it out and see how it works.