Seeing the world through a new set of eyes

Posted on: April 10, 2006

This is my first blog entry seeing the world through a new set of eyes. And by that, I mean I got a new computer monitor today. On one of my extremely rare jaunts out from the quiet Canadian forest to the not-so-quiet-but-not-so-noisy either nearest town, I stopped in at Future Shop to get a Samsung SyncMaster 204B. I was assisted by two very kindly gentlemen, Matt Roth and Corey (didn't see a last name on his tag), who not only helped me figure out why my keys were stuck in ignition (absentminded me—leaving the car in drive!), but spent almost an hour showing me the different makes and monitors in person. I was going to order one initially, but I became convinced with a maddening urge that I had to see it with mine own eyes.

I still have my former monitor, the old SyncMaster 955DF, a bulky CRT. It's a piece of crap. The text got so blurry on it and the colors (GOOD LORD, HOW CAN I BE WITHOUT *COLORS*?) had faded into oblivion. It, however, still has some uses… and so, it's to my left, as part of my dual-monitor setup.

What happened was: I've had awful wrist cramps lately, and I began to have horrible headaches too. Upon closer observation, I realized how fuzzy the 955DF was becoming, and I don't know if this happened just recently or if it's always been that way (seems so gradual), but I compared it to an older monitor of mine, a smaller 17" Daytek, and even it was sharper and brighter! Like astronauts on a dwindling food supply, I could only hold out so long—

It sheerly amazes me what a new monitor can do. Well, perhaps not so amazing considering if computer didn't have screens, I wouldn't be seeing Second Life, let alone this blog editor I'm tapping away into. But it's the proverbial "night and day" difference realized! The colors are vibrant (I briefly logged into SL earlier), the text is as crisp as I dreamed it to be (this is gonna make proofreading a whole lot easier), and I have but a couple nits to pick thus far: 1) I can't get this MagicRotation feature to automatically work, which is supposed to rotate what's displayed when I pivot the monitor 90 degrees; and 2) MagicRotation isn't compatible with OpenGL apps like Second Life. :( I had something else on my mind but it's slipped.

All in all tho, good investment. It's funny: I haven't changed my keyboard but I psychologically feel it's a lot more tactile too. Something to do with the feedback loop from HANDS —> KEYBOARD —> COMPUTER —> SCREEN —> EYES —> HANDS. Heh.

I'd like to take a moment to thank my most excellent coworkers: Coffee, Jill, Lucy, Lawrence, and Adam for their advice on what LCD to get. I deliberated over it for several weeks and then the topic tangentially came up on a company mailing list. (Love when this happens.)  I look forward to less eyestrain and more productivity!

On a sidenote, I had looked at several widescreen monitors, but saw none that particularly impressed me in person. I know it's "in style", and in the Linden Lab offices, Dell monitors (either 4:3 or 16:9 ratio ones) are common.

All this space… wow… it's a freakin' rush. Native resolution is 1600 x 1200 and I have just learned the joy of putting my taskbar on the lefthand side of my screen and piling up lots of icons. This browser window is still too wide, which leads me to ask: anyone know a utility that can autoresize windows to specific dimensions, e.g. 1024 x 768? (Like what my old monitor's set to.) I stretched the SL window wide like taffy but it's difficult to be exact. *Googles* Hmmm… looks like Sizer may do.

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