monitor upgrade

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

I finally upgraded my monitor after many years with my Dell 24". I use widescreen monitors in portrait mode, and the 1200x1920 resolution was never quite enough width to fit my needed 130 columns of code and my tools on the side. The tools were always cramped! The new monitor is a 30" and has 1600x2560. It dwarfs the 24" and feels a little big, but so did the 24" widescreen when I moved up from a 19" 4:3.

I had to get an Ergotron 45-214-026 desk arm since the stock stand doesn’t rotate to portrait. Only after installation did I find that the Ergotron supports 30" monitors and rotates, but only supports rotating for < 30" monitors! I used some brackets to mount the arm lower than the VESA holes on the monitor. This increased the space from the highest the arm goes to the desk, and was enough to fit the 30" behemoth rotated. :slight_smile: When rotated back to landscape the arm holds just fine too.

Here’s a screenshot, I love having all that code AND a huge console AND all the tools visible at once!! :slight_smile: 166 lines visible at all times in Eclipse, 169 in SciTE! Multiple monitors is nice, but this is perfect! Click for full resolution:

http://n4te.com/temp/monitor.png

I also upgraded my Logitech MX510 mouse to a Razor Imperator. Not only does it have a blue pulsing glow, it fits my hand even better than the old mouse and has a 5600 DPI sensor so I can skate around my huge screen without shoulder injury. :smiley:

#2

Wow nice setup! I’ve been disappointed with monitors (and laptops) lately since they’ve got a super-wide screen but no height for code lines… good idea to rotate it!

Do you get neck cramps when looking up and down? ;D

Also, what’s this dragon project? got any screenshots?!

#3

Thanks! :smiley: Yeah, portrait mode is fantastic for coding! Only problem is then the lack of horizontal resolution, so you are kind of forced to go to about 24" unless you use a second monitor for tools. 24" is a good size and 1200 pixels wide quite decent.

I have a lot of problems with repetitive stress syndrome from computers and trauma from Brazilian jujitsu, so I pay attention to ergonomics. I had an MRI done on my wrist last week. It was horrible, they had to inject the wrist multiple times with contrast. I left there hurting more than when I came in, and with a huge lump of contrast under my skin! Haven’t heard if they found anything in the MRI, they are supposed to call any day now.

Aaaanyway, you should never look up when using a computer. The monitor should always be in the bottom portion of your field of vision. Looking up ruins the nice curve at the top of your spine. If you draw a line straight out from your eyes, it should hit the monitor no more than 2" from the top of the screen.

The desk arm lets me sit the monitor all the way on the desk, normally the stand would lift it an inch or so. Also I have a very thin desk and my chair adjusted so my knees are hitting the under side of the desk, this puts the keyboard basically in my lap so I have > 90 degree elbows. Even with this setup raising me quite a bit, my eyes are still about 7" from the top of the monitor. I guess this makes sense, since the new monitor is 5" taller than the old 24". I’ve only been using it for a few hours, but I do find I have to look up sometimes, like to click a Firefox bookmark with the mouse or whatever. I’ve been trying not to move my head up.

Honestly, I put a lot of thought into the purchase and I knew the 30" was going to be a little bit too big. A 27" at the same 1600x2560 resolution would be better. Dell is the only one that makes this, and I would have got it except it was the same price as the 30". After much deliberation I decided to go for the big boy. :slight_smile:

Dragon is the codename for a turn-based/realtime hex map strategy-ish game. It uses Skorpios and KryoNet, and I intend it for Android and the desktop. It’s pretty early in its life and I’ve been neglecting it for weeks. A little too early for a screenshot! All I really have is an ugly hex map and the ability to move guys around and whack each other. Most of my work has been put into the foundation. I have tons of sprites, which is what all my posts weeks ago about efficient sprite storage was about. That turned into the “IMG” file format which is JPEG+alpha information. I also built a really sweet particle editor, which is checked in as a tool under Skorpios:

http://n4te.com/temp/sick.png

I plan on having lots of killer particle effects. :slight_smile: I sort of stalled after that, been busy with other stuff and haven’t been motivated to come back to it.

A fellow JGOer has GDX, which is similar to Skorpios and probably a bit farther along. So I should probably join forces, work on the lib, and port my game to it before moving forward. I’m supposed to receive a Droid or Nexus this week, so I’m thinking that will spark my interest again!

#4

Particle editor looks great, so I suppose you save the images it makes and show them as an animation rather than doing particles in-game?

I did jujitzu last week too, just a one off class with a friend who’s been going for a while. It was a lot of fun! It’s not often that you get to wrestle full grown men. Out of 3 sparring wrestles I got the first 2 guys in submission holds - two americana’s (or 4 fold or something) and one arm lock. I was pretty proud. The third guy had done it for a few years and I was exhausted so he threw me around like a rag doll :stuck_out_tongue:

#5

Nope, you save the emitter settings and it does the particles in-game. The in-game stuff is currently Skorpios-based, but is very straightforward and would be easy to repurpose for any OpenGL app. It could be done with animations, but they’d be pretty large, maybe ~0.75mb per effect!

Sweet! You must have trained before to tap anyone!? At my school, even most white belts can tap someone who has never trained.

BJJ is a lot of fun. It is really my only exercise, so I would hate to quit because of my wrists. I took 1.5 years off because of them, now I wear reinforced supporting gloves and tape over them for every class. I did wrestling in high school (went to state, didn’t place) and have been doing submission grappling since '96, on and off (mostly off). I trained at AMC for 3 months, which is a pretty prestigious MMA school. Now I’m a blue belt at a Gracie Barra school.

#6

MMA sounds brutal, I’d hate to get punched in the face by someone who doesn’t have thick gloves! Must have been tough training there!

I think I only beat those two guys because they were focusing on technique while I was focusing on brute force lol. But we were all of such low ability that the bouts started with both adversaries on their knees. the trainer running it wouldn’t let any of us start from a standing positition :stuck_out_tongue:

A friend of mine did Thai kickboxing for 2 years and actually did 2 ring fights which I was very worried for him about! But somehow he won both which was lucky. he entered in the sub-60kg weight class I think.

#7

Oh, I only did submission grappling at AMC. I enjoy thinking too much to do any striking! Even if you just train striking and don’t compete, you still get knocked around an unhealthy amount.

All of our grappling at Gracie Barra starts on the knees. We only train stand up before tournaments. With a gi on, takedowns aren’t quite as meaningful. It is much more dangerous to start standing, even if both of you know how to throw and (more importantly) how to fall. Starting on the knees is a bit awkward since it is an artificial position, but at least it lets you quickly get to interesting grappling situations. Uses way less mat space too. :slight_smile:

#8

Ah that makes me feel better, good to know. There wasn’t much mat space at the gym/dojo so that makes sense.

#9

When I bought my two Full HD monitors yesterday, I remembered this topic…

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We’ll see whether I can get used to this madness!

#10

Welcome to the club! :slight_smile: Very nice!

Still using the old Package Explorer eh, booo! I find it hard to make efficient use of two code views, so I usually use the extra space for console/tool windows. Sometimes I put the console at the bottom of the primary, eats up code space but means less neck action to see the code. So much space eaten by the taskbar and widgets!! :stuck_out_tongue: What’s ExpanDrive? :smiley:

I recommend going to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics and creating a REG_SZ called MinWidth with a value of 415, then reboot or maybe just kill and restart explorer. This is the width the taskbar app buttons will try to be. Makes it easier to read what the apps are and makes better use of the space. They will still squish down if too many buttons appear.

Re IRC chats: Yeah, the font in my screenshot was a raster font, so it has some glyphs that don’t fit well in the grid, but it is crisp and has minimal line height. I’ve been traveling for over a year now and my 30" has been in storage. :frowning: I’ve had to get used to a tiny 18.5" laptop screen, 1920x1080. My raster font was too small at this DPI, so I began using Consolas, which I highly recommend. I also increased Windows’ DPI settings to 140%. I still use my raster font for the console because it is so compact. Here’s an updated screenshot:

http://n4te.com/temp/monitor-laptop.png

I find the project/package/type views easier to use and more compact than Package Explorer.

#11

The only downside is that Windows Aero crashes with this setup. Reinstalling the gfx drivers didn’t help. The ‘Windows Aero’ theme is simply not listed anymore. Then I ran ‘sfc /scannow’ and after a reboot, the option was back. I clicked it, and it crashed, and the option disappeared from the theme list again :frowning:

:emo:

I’ll find a way!

#12

SSH drive mount utility for Windows, kinda like sshfs in Linux.

We’ll see what happens after the reboot. Killing/spawning explorer.exe didn’t do the trick.

I hear this argument every once in a while, but I don’t really get it. To switch back and forth between two or more classes in two different packages, you are 2 clicks away (select the package, select the class). With the Package Explorer you are likely to have both packages opened, and you simply click once to open a class.

Enlighten me!

#13

For either view setup, to switch back and forth between two or more classes you’d use ctrl+tab. Also ctrl+shift+R (or T or whatever the default keystroke is to open a class by name) is usually fastest to open a specific class, and in that dialog you can use asterisk matches. You can also use capital letters for abbreviations, eg BBIS would find ByteBufferInputStream.

In practice the 3 view setup is really slick and doesn’t take up much space. Package Explorer eats up lots of horizontal area with blank space. It also requires lots of vertical space, and even then you will find yourself scrolling up and down. Also I don’t like that it is more of a file system explorer than a package explorer. I don’t want to look at directories, loose files, JARs, system libraries, etc! I use the file system for file system stuff. The EasyExplore plugin gives a file system explorer window at the appropriate location by right clicking almost anything in Eclipse.

#14

I’ve also had it this happen multiple times. After messing around with drivers and rebooting a few times it comes back. Never have figured out why. Some programs will cause it to happen, like after connecting (and even after disconnecting) with VNC.