Martin Geisler Online

I’ve just had my exam in Parallel and Distributed Database Systems and I think it went very well. Except for the beginning where they told me that I basically doesn’t exist — I’m not in their list of students, not in the computer, I’m nowhere…

But they did give me an exam, and then I’ll have to figure out to whom my lecturer can send the grade. I now have ten days until my next exam, so today (at least) I wont be studying, instead Stéphanie and I will go to Berne to have launch with her parents.

My final three exams for this semester are approaching fast:

• Parallel and Distributed Database Systems: September 30th,
• System Security: October 10th, and
• Security and Fault-tolerance in Distributed Systems: October 14th.

So if you don’t hear from me, then you can assume that I’m busy reading slides or papers for one of the exams…

Hehe, I finally found Captain Blondebeards membership card to the Brimstone Beach Club… and so I could get past the pesky cabaña boy! But only to find myself confronted with a very hot beach:

Luckily I think I know how to get across — it’s (unfortunately) not the first time I play The Curse of Monkey Island :-)

I would like to give a big thanks to the brilliant guys making the ScummVM engine, allowing me to play the game on Linux! You’re doing a great job of keeping these old games alive.

So… I’ve finally got a new monitor for my machine! After reading tons of online reviews I decided for the NEC MultiSync LCD2070NX, a 20″ LCD display with a native resolution of 1600 × 1200 pixels. Take a look at it:

The monitor comes in two colors: all grey (which they probably call “silver” :-) and black/grey. Mine is the black/grey one — I don’t know why it was cheaper than the all grey one?

I picked it up at Digitec Friday afternoon and hurried home as fast as I could! Connecting it was easy and after adjusting my X server I got a nice, crystal-clear image with 1600 × 1200 pixels running at 71 Hz. The new display is increadibly sharp compared to my aging PHILIPS 201P (which I bought in August 2000). It is actually almost too sharp, at least that was what I thought at first, but now I’m getting used to it! :-)

Since this is my first LCD monitor I had been reading a lot of reviews and tests online. Finding such tests proved more difficult that one would expect because of all the idiotic price comparison sites out there. They all write something like “Prices and reviews for ⟨product⟩ at ⟨site⟩”, meaning that Google will list them first when you search for the product number together with words like “review” or “test”. The problem is that these sites almost always lie by claiming to have reviews but in reality there are none.

Searching the newsgroups was more effective, as was searching specific sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware Guide, so in the end I did find some reviews. Reading through the reviews for big LCDs was strange: there always seemed to be something wrong with them! They would either be too slow for gaming (not a concern for me) and movies (a bigger concern for me, especially since we’re using my computer as our TV), or they would have poor colors / contrast / brightness! Reading the very comprehensive Contemporary LCD Monitor Parameters and Characteristics guide at X-bit didn’t really help: it explains how the characteristics of LCD panels are much worse than what we’re used to from good old CRT monitors, and how the manufactures constantly try to make their products look better by inflating the specifications. Sigh!

But since I couldn’t keep using my computer through an SSH connection from Stéphanie’s laptop I bought one anyways :-) And I’m very pleased with it! I’ve checked it for dead pixels with some online test images and I haven’t found any — all 1.92 million pixels (5.76 million subpixels) seems to be in order! The image is — as already mentioned :-) — very sharp, and that is with a normal VGA cable, not DVI. The credit (once again) for this goes to Matrox for making the amazing G400 graphics card! I’ve had it for almost five years now and it’s still one of the best for 2D graphics: fanless (a must!) and sharp.

One day I’ll probably upgrade to a G550 Dual-DVI or something similar to get DVI output, but it will only be if the G400 burns out or I buy a second monitor… for now what I have it just great!