Light was too beautiful to pass up. Taken in North Bethesda, MD.
Yearly Archives: 2007
Condensed knowledge for 2007-05-03
This post picks up where my previous one left off. Here’s the good stuff:
- Do you like old printing presses, or the quality print jobs in old, rare books? Then you’ll love this video of a small press that still uses the old methods to create some amazing results. (You’ll need Quicktime to view it.)
- John Dvorak is a Mac troll. And I bet he’s drooling for an iPhone as well.
- Check out the Google Maps directions from NYC to Dublin.
- Did you know raw milk is illegal in many states in the US? Neither did I, until now, but I think it’s a very silly thing. Check out the stance of the public official quoted in the article. You’d think the guy was talking about terrorists, not some stuff we find in the supermarket. Remember the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld? See any similarities?
- This article made serious waves when it came out a few weeks ago. The Washington Post arranged for one of the world’s best known violinists, Joshua Bell, to sit in a DC metro station and play on his violin — a Stradivarius. The music was classical, but extremely moving. Would people stop and listen? Would they realize what they were hearing was amazing? Check out what happened.
- Back in April, Johnny Hart, the cartoonist who created B.C. and Wizard of Id, died. Rest in peace, Mr. Hart!
- Look At This has a series of “Monkey-ed Movies” on their blog. They’re parodies of movies and television programs done entirely with chimps. Funny stuff!
- Keith Washington was, or may still be, Prince George county’s deputy homeland security director. He is also trigger happy to the extreme, and can pull his gun on you at any time. He’s shot up two furniture delivery men in his home, and also pulled his gun on a real estate appraiser as the man took photos of his home. Someone tell me how this guy got the job. Or is the Homeland Defense department purposely looking for these sorts of people?
- IKEA makes prefab houses, and they’ve begun to make them available in England.
- This is a great video of the real estate house prices from 1890 to the present, adjusted for inflation, and plotted as a roller coaster ride.
- A drunk guy fell under a passing train in Cologne, Germany. After the train went over him, he got right up and kept on going. That’s one lucky dude.
- Beware the bot fly and its larva. This is NOT something you want to experience. There’s also a video to go along with that.
Condensed knowledge for 2007-05-02
I can’t resist sending interesting links through email to my close contacts, or publishing them to my Twitter page. But I thought it’d be a good idea to collect them every once in a while and publish them on my blog as well. Hope you find them as interesting as I do!
- Have you been unable to get a mortgage or to rent a place lately? You may be on one of the government’s many terrorist lists. The Treasury Department has started to release names of suspected people to private businesses. They’re supposed to check against these lists when doing business with normal folks like you and me. The sad part is, the lists are inaccurate and there are many false matches. It’s also a serious invasion of our privacy. See “Ordinary Customers Flagged as Terrorists“, in the Washington Post.
- If you use FeedBurner, you’ll be glad to know they’ve released a Twitter Feed Flare that will let your site visitors automatically submit a link to your blog posts on their Twitter pages.
- Have you been getting hassled about your photography in public places? You’ll get a laugh out of this What The Duck comic.
- The Japanese are doing some pretty cool things to save energy in their country, and in many ways, are on the leading edge of energy efficiency and conservation.
- The FBI abuses its right to use gag orders when they investigate suspected crimes.
- Got money to burn, no common sense, and a desire to possibly pee in your pants while eating dinner? Great, then have dinner in the sky.
- Hey look, here’s a really cheesy Bollywood movie featuring a dancing Superman and Wonder Woman…
- The last WWI combat veteran, Ret. Army Cpl. Howard V. Ramsey, has died. Rest in peace, brave soldier!
- Russia has formed a super agency that will control what the media says and does. Gee, what does this remind me of? Oh, I know, communism…
- Just what is Supermarket 2.0? Watch it and see.
- I always thought the Art Lebedev Studio made products that bordered on useless, but this is just not right. Although, given the date when it was released, I have a feeling it’s an April Fool’s joke.
- A very cool dog saved its owner’s life by jumping on her chest as she choked on a bit of apple. It worked! There’s a video as well.
Discerning among LCD monitors
I’ve been looking at various LCD monitors lately, because I’d like to get one for my laptop. Truth be told, I’m more confused than when I started. There’s a dizzying array of prices among various brands, in the same size display, and not a whole lot of explanation as to why that is. Sure, every company touts their higher contrast ratio, higher brightness, more resolution, more inputs, etc., but that still doesn’t explain why the prices differ so much.
I’m looking at 20-22″ LCD monitors, and in that range, I’ve managed to find monitors in three price groups:
- Around $250, I can buy this Sceptre or or X2gen (brands I haven’t heard of). I can also find similar prices from brands like ViewSonic, Samsung, Dell and HP.
- From $600-900, I can get the 20″ or 23″ Apple Cinema Displays. The thing is, other than the distinctive design, the specs are actually less impressive than those of the much less expensive monitors in the first group.
- Then, of course, there are brands like LaCie, with their professional LCD displays that start [*cough*] around $1,800 for the sizes I’m interested in.
So I did a lot of searching, and found out that manufacturers can fake the contrast and brightness measurements, so even though everyone touts their higher specs, you can’t trust them. Many of the monitors also don’t list a measurement that’s harder to fake, the gray-to-gray response time. I wanted to compare apples to Apples, if you will.
After a little more spec comparison, I found that the top of the line LaCie monitors list a spec that no one else seems to list, and that is the “gamma correction”. For example, their 321 LCD has 12-bit gamma correction. Less expensive models have 10-bit gamma correction. And that got me thinking: if, at least for LaCie, the price is proportional to the gamma correction bit depth, a higher spec there might be a good thing. But the less expensive monitors didn’t list it, and Apple didn’t list it either. What was I to do?
I gave Apple a call. After about 15 minutes of alternate talking and holding on the line for a sales rep while he consulted with the engineers, I got nothing but smoke and mirrors. Not that I think it was intended. I just think the rep didn’t have the info. He didn’t know what gamma correction was, and the bit depth of the gamma correction on Apple’s displays isn’t listed anywhere in the specs. The person he spoke with in engineering either didn’t know this or didn’t feel like sharing that bit of data. So the rep kept coming back to me with 16.7 million colors, which works out to 24-bit color.
I kept thinking, that can’t be right! Here LaCie is charging over $1,800 dollars for 12-bit gamma correction and Apple claims 24-bit on that spec at less than half that price? They would be an absolute bargain if that were true! But it’s not, at least not for that spec. I don’t doubt the Apple displays can show 24-bit color overall. But I still don’t know whether their gamma correction engine outputs 8-bit (the normal spec), 10-bit (the higher end), or 12-bit (the really high end), and this determines how well that 24-bit color gets displayed. This is important because the higher the bit depth, the smoother the color is. I’m a photographer, and I shoot in RAW. The files I get are either 12-bit or 16-bit color, and I can see some dithering in color tones when I look at the photos on my laptop’s screen. That means that even though my video card can display 32-bit color, my laptop’s effective display is less than 16-bit.
I have a feeling that given their price range, the Apple Cinema Displays are either 8-bit or 10-bit when it comes to gamma correction. If they’re 8-bit, then they’re overpriced given their specs, and they’re charging hundreds more based purely on design. If they’re 10-bit, that’s interesting, and it warrants a closer look.
So, as you can see, I’ve gotten nowhere. I’d love to have a reason to buy an Apple Cinema Display, but it’s got to be a good reason, based on facts, not sales fluff. I like Apple but I’m not a fanboy. At this point in time, I can’t see why I should spend more than $1,000 on an external monitor, so that rules out the LaCie LCDs and the other high end displays. That means if Apple can’t offer me a compelling reason for their higher price, I’ll go with one of the less expensive monitors and see how things work out. If and when I do, I’ll blog about it, so stay tuned. And by all means, if you’ve got some ideas about this, do let me know.
Raoul Pop 