Dual Monitor Set Up, 19 inch CRT versus LCD, Book Cataloging

Dual Monitor Set Up

I've been wanting to try a dual monitor or multiple monitor set up for myself for quite some time, and finally got the chance to on my home system.

All I gotta say is - if you work with graphics, programming, webpages, etc or you're just a power user, it's something to consider. Or maybe a must-have.

Basically, with my set up, I am extending my desktop across two monitors. I can move my mouse cursor from the right screen to the left seamlessly. I can drag programs and windows there; graphics, text, anything. I can copy and paste from one to the other.

So far I don't always start the other monitor, but when I need another window open or more space it's great. See the short video above. The vid shows moving a window with a high res satellite/GPS mapping program from one monitor to the next. Each display can have different resolutions, or you can even set the second monitor on it's side and have the display rotated for page-like editing. On mine I keep both monitors at the same resolution, though one is slightly smaller in physical size then the other.

I could also add a third (or more) if I wanted to, but each display uses video resources, of course.

A minor annoyance is my dock program (Rocketdock) sits over on the top of the second display, and no matter where I try to dock it it stays on that monitor until I switch off the dual set up. Not a big thing, as it's a quick matter to jump the cursor from the right monitor across to the second one and drop the dock down.

I've tried this set up with editing a photo pixel-by-pixel in the right window, and having the full-size photo with the changes showing up in real-time in the left. I've monitored the upload and set up of a Wiki in the left while I read my mail and wrote e-mail replies in the right. And kept real-time track of an approaching Nor'easter via NEXRAD in the left while working on a website and doing research in the right.

I haven't been able to get Flight Simulator 2004 to work with the dual monitor set up. I cursorily read a quick blurb on setting it up and I need to do something extra for mine. When I get time I'll check it out.

And I haven't tried it in Slackware Linux as yet (I loath trying to set anything new up in Linux ;().

Like I said above - I don't always have both displays enabled, but that may be more of just getting used to working with multiple windows actually being displayed rather then using Window's task-switching or the taskbar to switch from one thing to the next.

Interesting also; doing a screen capture captures both screens in one long rectangle (like widescreen). Excellent for graphics. Pretty interesting.

19 inch CRT versus LCD

I recently picked myself up a 19 inch CRT monitor, which I've been wanting for a long time.

you say. A CRT? But that's so 20th century. Why would you; a computer guy, want that?

Well, a couple reasons.

Firstly, CRT monitors aren't much in demand now so people, businesses, and computer places are unloading them as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Secondly, I LIKE CRT's. Maybe I'm the only person, but I tend to like CRT's better then LCD's. There, I said it.

I like the look of the colors.

I also like the scanlines, the shiny texture of the screen, how they smell and look, the static that comes off them when you touch them and the dust that gets attracted to the aforementioned static, and their weight. Okay, maybe the latter list is tongue-in-cheek, but I do think CRT's display colors much better and vibrantly then LCD's.

But frankly, I don't care all that much either way - I mostly wanted the 19 inch rectangular monitor. I'm not adverse to having an LCD, but I still prefer a CRT.

Anyway, this 19 inch is great for working with graphics, though I still do a lot of switching back and forth (via a simple click in Rocketdock) between 800x600 and 1240X800 and higher.

In the dual monitor set up I use the 19 inch as the main (of course) and a 17 inch Compaq CRT monitor as the secondary.

On a side note; can you imagine how many CRT's are being thrown out every year, every day for that matter? I have a bunch of them sitting in my garage that I can't even give away.

I have a thousand books. Yes, a thousand.

No, no, that's not exactly correct - I have over a thousand. I'm not exactly sure how many over a thousand any more. Because, you see, I used to keep a meticulous database of each one but in the last 5 or so years I've gotten behind, by a lot.

So last weekend, while my wife was at a football game in Buffalo (I don't watch football - my sports interests run more for mechanical-related sporting events; if it's got wheels I'll watch it).

While she was gone for the weekend I set out to find some way to catalog my books easier, and update everything with more updated data.

Awhile back I had run across a freeware program (I can't tell you what it was, I didn't keep it - usually I keep a copy of any interesting piece of software I come across, or at least the links to it but for some reason I didn't) which accessed the Internet to update books as well as CD's and movies in a collection.

After lots of research (when I was younger I wouldn't mind spending a whole weekend alone, but I've become 'too' attached to my wife and miss her when she is gone, so I have to keep real busy;) I found a number of programs; both free and commercial, which will scan Amazon, the Library of Congress, and any number of other sources for info on the books I enter and automatically fill out the entries for me.

Some search only by book title and author, some have that option or search by ISBN (International Standard Book Number, the long sequence of numbers that are on pretty much any book you buy, usually in the copyright page and on the barcode on the back cover). A few will even use a hand scanner, a flatbed scanner, or a special barcode scanner to quickly scan the books.

Some will queue up as many books as you want to enter and then do the searches in en mass, then letting you choose or combine the various entries you want to include, including book covers.

I haven't tried the bar code scanning but entering ISBN numbers via the computer keypad and queuing up a number of books works great. Book covers, titles, authors, synopses, categories, notes on what series the book is from, and all sorts of miscellaneous info are available. Exactly what I am looking for.

The biggest thing is choosing one. Oh, and entering the ISBN's for over a thousand books...

Neelix (cat) Fetching, Flash Video Quality Again, and Human (Technological) Evolution and Computers

One of our kittens consistently fetches toys. Geordi (one of our other cats) and Katie (my father's cat) will do this also, but they get sick of it quickly and they were more into it as kittens.

Neelix will do it over and over for long periods, and will even drop it when told to. His brother picked up on what he was doing, by watching a few times and did the same, but rarely will most of the time. Their sister has no interest in fetching whatsoever, only playing with what I throw.

See video below (excuse the slight mess, we're still cleaning up after the remodel of the other room so we still have a few things scattered around).





The more you play and work with a cat (or any animal) the more and quicker they seem to be able to learn. Hmmm, just like humans.

This morning we saw a story on chimps that could consistently remember numbers flashed on a screen much better then an adult human (the researchers mentioned that children would probably be able to do it better then adults). Makes you think.

But I do think that a possibility is that this may have to do with a more specialized part of their evolution, possibly survival-related, that makes them better at this particular thing then the sign of a larger ability and intelligence. Just playing devil's advocate.

Flash Video Quality

As mentioned in a previous post, video quality suffers when converting to Flash video and the high compression involved in it.

The original high-res video the size was around twenty-three megs, conversion to mono audio with a medium bitrate, and medium quality video in Windows Media Video format knocked it down to about 1.32 meg.

After uploading here using Blogger's video upload and hosting the quality suffered immensely.

Again, I still prefer to host a video directly, instead of via YouTube, Google Video or (as I did here) Blogger's video storage. But it's quick and convenient to do so when the video doesn't have to be high quality.

Human (Technological) Evolution and Computers

I sometimes wonder though - are complex and moderately complex things like recording a video, connecting the camcorder, camera, or phone to a computer, and then uploading and hosting it on the Internet increasing the intelligence of humankind?

I'm a history buff, and it seems to me that some simple advances in primitive technology were so ludicrously basic that any modern kid would be able to have figured out better ways of doing things. Maybe it's just hindsight, it's easy to say that. But I suspect not.

Gene Roddenberry took this idea to a new level in a way that maybe some SF and Star Trek fans may not notice or realize and critics passed off as "bad science" or just a story vehicle.

If you watched the episodes at all you might notice that a number of his characters; adults and children alike, in various episodes of the all of the series - were able to almost intuitively use both alien instruments as well as those they weren't familiar with in general, or from the past or future. It always bothered me a bit.

But, even on a small scale, I'm able to sit down at unfamiliar software, computers, and other devices and figure them out in a short while; almost without thinking and on a intuitive and subconscious level. I've always been able to do that with machines and electronics, and I know others do also. And you see kids doing it all the time.

Can you imagine human evolution and affinity for technology evolving over hundreds of years? There's really no imagining what the species will be like or what it can do, maybe ol' Gene had something figured out there.

If you look at modern kids, even very young ones, they are able to make leaps of logic (when it comes to technology) that I wouldn't have been able to at their age, nor most of my peers. Yet some of the other life decisions of young people might be more questionable to those older then them.

I often wonder though, if the giant strides we've made in computer technology have meant that we haven't made consistent advances in other fields of human evolution, as well as other areas of technological evolution in general.

Where's our space habitats, our space-base manufacturing and zero gee medicine. Why are we still using internal combustion and burning fossil fuels when we have massive amounts of more energy available - solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, etc - to power the US without using a drop of oil (except in the manufacture of the plastics and polymers for doing this)?

I wonder also, in some fields of computer-related items - why are some still very behind? Is it because something like artificial intelligence really is hard to achieve, or because money and immediate demand drives research and innovation?

Think of personal aircraft. What's needed to make this happen? I believe that computer control, both of the individual aircraft as well as a network of traffic control would have to be in place for this to even begin to happen. Computer controls both in using the network (able to make automated decisions outside of what the network is telling it to do - like an uncontrolled aircraft heading in it's direction, or emergency procedures) as well as when the personal aircraft must be under the individuals own control. Big uphill battle to make any of this happen.