Tag: Display technology

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Monitor 451 or Ixnay on the X-ray

What I always thought to be just dirt on my screen or glasses, turned out to be a burned in picture of the login screen. Modern monitors are supposed to turn themselves off after a period of time, didn’t they? I thought that the login screen in NT used to jump around like a screensaver? Apparently not so.

A friend from the Fair and Balanced Network told me over lunch that the reason network logos are usually 3-d and rotating is because people used to get rather nasty burn-in on their TVs with static logos.

This got me thinking — what kind of statistics are out there about radiation exposure in programmers? I spend about 8 hours a day in front of an electron gun directed at my face and chest. And I’ve been having salivary gland troubles for a while. People worry about stupid cell phone microwaves. Monitors shoot X-rays. Now that is scary.

I am thinking now of buying a couple of flat panels for home and work. As expensive as it can be, it’s probably a good idea.

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100 Inch ……. TV

I was browsing a site that sells weird keyboards and fount this :
“A Perfect Monitor Solution”

Just $285.00
I think various pixel pushers and the nuts who set their screens to ridiculous resolutions could actually get some use this product.

Wow, this reminded me the Soviet “КВÐ?-49” TV set that was sold with a water (or glycerin) filled lens so that you could make out something on it’s tiny screen.

Oh, and a $9.95 kit for making a 100 inch TV. “The picture produced by this lens compares only to the high-end HDTV plasma screens costing over $12,000!! “ and “With every order you will also receive… A FREE 3 DAY, 2 NIGHT VACATION OVER 20 WORLDWIDE LOCATIONS!”

Don’t know about the plasma screen comparison and that vacation, but from what I’ve heard the projection apparatus kind of works.

And I also remembered my high school AP Physics teacher Mr. Lloyd who explained how Fresnel lens works.

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The Engineer’s Itch

On Saturday I’ve got the Engineer’s Itch. You know, the itch to take apart something that is working perfectly well and try to improve it. To scratch it I added a second video card and a monitor to my computer.

All I had in my box-o-junk was an old video card and a crappy 15 inch monitor, but even with that a dual monitor desktop is absolutely awesome. It works really great with Photoshop – I can move all the annoying toolbars to the left screen. I also moved the mess of shortcuts, install files and folders with junk to the left. Now my main desktop is very clean and organized.

It’s great for having multiple browser windows open, doing some reading during long and annoying installs (you can have a non-resizable window on the first monitor and another one on the second). Ok, next step is to buy decent lcd monitors and setting them up like that. I don’t want to go back to a single monitor setup.

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Memex Ahoy!

You’ll see, you’ll see. We will be all using memexes instead of the horrible pee-cees of today. It looks like even hardware is moving in that direction now. The first harbinger – dual displays are becoming almost commonplace.

For years it was possible to stick more than one video card into a box, hook a few monitors and have a two screened desktop in most modern windowing systems. Even Windows. Especially Windows.

But having two huge CRT monitors is not a picnic – they took up too much desk space, generated too much heat. And don’t forget radiation. But guess what – lcds are dirt cheap these days. Well, maybe if gold containing ore was dirt, but still they are kind of affordable. And multi flat monitor setups are so fricking amazing!

Ladies and gentlemen, start your droolers.

This was pure underwear soiling goodness from 9xmedia. Those are not cheap. But this is just one of the many, many different dual monitor products on the market. Check out this gallery of multi monitor setups. I will probably splurge on a 17 inch flat panel and a nice dual head video card for now. Should cost me about $600. I’ll keep my 5 year old CRT as the second monitor for now.