Phytotron's stupid computer blog

[Phytotron]

Argh, just noticed a pixel stuck on red! It's out of the way in the lower left, but still. I think ViewSonic has a "zero dead pixels" clause in their warranty, but, ugh. Thus far I've only been dealing with Amazon on these returns (and to their credit, thus far no hassles), and I'm not even sure if I want to bother with that anymore, let alone go through a warranty process. I may just suck it up and live with it; at least it doesn't have the previous dreadful faults. Not like this computer is a long term ownership (though, longer than I had originally hoped).

- DVI or VGA?

VGA thus far. It has a DVI input, and the computer only has HDMI output, but I understand there's an adaptor; same type of signal, just would nix the audio.

- Disable dynamic contrast

It comes disabled by default, and I don't like it anyway.

- See if eco mode has to do with it.

This has Standard, Optimize, and Conserve ECO modes. It defaults to Standard (the brightest), and neither of the others appear to affect the white saturation one way or another.

May also be worth mentioning that I keep the brightness setting down around 70, have with all of them.

- Get an iPhone 5.

Pfff, ha. I don't even have a regular cell phone, my man. But maybe the next iMacs will have nice, fancy screens.

Take this: ♚

Gracias, muchacho.

[Jonathan]

VGA thus far. It has a DVI input, and the computer only has HDMI output, but I understand there's an adaptor; same type of signal, just would nix the audio.

That should help quality and the ill effects a little, I think. But while you use VGA, does brightness/contrast adjustment on the monitor help? You've probably been there, but it does sound like contrast is set slightly too high.

[Phytotron]

I set the contrast setting according to that lagom site. On this monitor, I ended up with a value of 69/100 (the previous monitors were 70-72, if I recall). The brightness setting, most calibrating images there and elsewhere want it to go all the way down to zero, but I keep it at 70 so that white is still, you know, white instead of some faded gray.

As to how either affect the white saturation images, it's strange with contrast. Turning it up does indeed make it worse, but so does turning it down, at least at first. Down to about 53 will make some of those images blend into the background same as turning it up does; below that it's about the same as at 69.

Adjusting the brightness one direction or the other makes no appreciable difference.

[Jonathan]

What did you use on the Lagom site? The gradients consisting of 32 bands? Keep in mind that the average difference between bands is eight quanta. So even if you can see the difference, you may be clipping out a few values. The correct procedure is to set brightness so black won't get any darker, but no further. Then set contrast so white won't get any brighter, but no further. (On the other hand, if you lower contrast too much, you might get more quantization, but by that point your white won't be very white anymore.) Getting it exactly right is tricky. The 32 bands will let you overshoot a little without noticing. 256 bands are hard to tell apart and might lump into each other for other reasons.

What happens if you leave the monitor on your 'preferred' settings, go to the white saturation page, and then reduce contrast a little? Incidentally, that does seem to be the best image to fine-tune contrast.

No matter what, if you only miss out on the bottom row or so, and the monitor is otherwise fine, there isn't much to complain about.

[Phytotron]

What happens if you leave the monitor on your 'preferred' settings, go to the white saturation page, and then reduce contrast a little?

As to how either affect the white saturation images, it's strange with contrast. Turning it up does indeed make it worse, but so does turning it down, at least at first. Down to about 53 will make some of those images blend into the background same as turning it up does; below that it's about the same as at 69.

*****
After seeing this and this, I'm thinking of giving Kubuntu a try. I like Ubuntu with Unity well enough (relatively speaking), including preferring the Dash to the typical Windows-like application menu every other distro uses, and a few other little features that as far as I'm aware are unique to Unity. And I sooo don't understand what all the remarkably angry fuss in opposition to Unity is about. Still, I'd just like to see what I could do with Kubuntu.

The main feature I was looking for in an alternative to Unity is the ability to still have a global menu. Also, to be able to disable that fugly taskbar behavior, with the rectangles representing open and minimized windows, you know—integrate that into a dock instead. There's the option I've been playing around with of using Cairo/GLX-Dock with the the Unity panel (which also lets me keep all the other panel stuff on the right; app indicators, etc.), sans launcher, but then I'd be stuck using a GNOME 2-style application menu. Those implementations of Kubuntu above seem to provide an alternative. We'll see.

Speaking of Cairo/GLX-Dock, it has one little add-on applet I really dig. Remember my comment about the trick you could do with Mac OS 8 and 9, where you could put an alias to a folder into the "Apple Menu Items" folder, and it would then show up in the Apple menu giving you cascading menus representing all the folders within it? Well, this is basically that, for a dock. It's called "Quick Browser." It defaults to your home folder, sensibly, and looks like so:

Sorry, kinda big.

Notes: Still in temporary mode with Ubuntu, haven't added much. Brought over those three wallpaper sets from Windows (hence the .theme files). I currently have that dock set on the right side because of the Unity launcher on the left and panel to the top, but you can easily imagine how it would unfold on the top or left by looking at the example of it on the bottom. I find that with these widescreen monitors, it's easier to move the mouse to the sides than the bottom. Also, with vertical space a premium, docks and stuff are better off to the sides. The other two items are the old application menu, mentioned above, and the icon that looks like gedit is actually a clipboard history.

Question to Lucifer: You use Kubuntu, right? Are you aware off hand of a similar Quick Browser-like applet/widget/docklet/whatever available for Kubuntu?


Anyway, then I was looking at the couple of the other distros that aren't just Windows knock-offs, specifically Elementary and Pear/Comice OSes, but I'm not sure about what they do in terms of menus. Screenshots seem to indicate they lock them to the window. But then from other stuff I read it seems Elementary apps don't have a menubar at all. Eh? Third-party apps still will, but there's maybe a way to enable a global menu for those. And seems Pear/Comice may have some kind of global menu as well. I dunno. I was curious to give those a test drive anyway, so we'll see. (Although, apparently Pear/Comice is still only half-translated from French. My French is largely limited to culinary terms, heh.)

[compguygene]

Have you looked at Ubuntu Studio? If you do any music and/or video production, it is a distribution that is used by some professionals out there because it has a customized Low Latency Kernel. I have been using it for about 3 months now. I only boot up windows to use Camtasia Studio which is the easiest software to use for certain video projects I create for my business. Mostly I use the video and audio tools that Ubuntu studio comes with. Ubuntu Studio uses the XFCE GUI, which is the least resource hungry GUI out there.
Also, since you do seem to be experimenting some, you may want to consider partitioning your drive a little differently. If you create a partition and specify it to boot as /home, when you change distros, as long as it is an Ubuntu variant, most if not all of you software and settings will not be lost. I have been doing it that way for about 3 years now, and it has saved me a lot of trouble more than one time.

[Phytotron]

Have you looked at Ubuntu Studio?

Yeah, as it happens I actually had a PM exchange about it with sinewav awhile back, but I was suggesting it to him. As it turns out, he too was already familiar with it. For my part, as I'm predominantly an analog kind of guy, its specialization isn't of much interest or use to me. And from what I understand, its development is kinda dead, anyway.

Also, since you do seem to be experimenting some, you may want to consider partitioning your drive a little differently. If you create a partition and specify it to boot as /home, when you change distros, as long as it is an Ubuntu variant, most if not all of you software and settings will not be lost. I have been doing it that way for about 3 years now, and it has saved me a lot of trouble more than one time.

Yeah, I know all about that. We discussed all that stuff several pages back, and for a few pages. What I'm using now wasn't even meant to be an actual install, but just a test to see if and how it worked, and do a trial run through the installation process, since it was my first time. Like a step beyond a LiveCD session but short of a definitive install, ya know. I've just continued to use it provisionally (only so much time to fool with all this crap), and thus have refrained from saving much of anything to it, knowing I'm going to replace it all eventually.

See, I intend to continue to dual-boot to Windows 7, may as well, but I need to sort out what I'm doing with that before I do a more permanent install of Linux. That's because at present I have the following four primary partitions, in this order: 1) Some "DellUtility" boot dealio for diagnostics, only a 41 MB; 2) Windows recovery partition; 3) Windows; 4) Extended which includes a) Ubuntu root, b) swap. The first three came pre-installed, and I shrunk the third to make room for the fourth.

What I want to do is delete that recovery partition, so I can free up that primary slot (figure I'll leave the Dell diagnostic partition alone); and ideally do a fresh(ish?) install of Windows that a) has a smaller partition, and b) is a clean(er?) install, minus all the bloatware that came with it. Thing is, I don't have an actual Win7 install disc. All I have are the "recovery" discs provided by Dell, and I'm still not entirely clear at this point what and how much one can accomplish with those.

It may be that all I'm really able to do is delete the recovery, extend the front end of the Windows partition backwards into that space, then shrink the Windows partition from the other side. There's just that question of whether the Windows 'Master File Table' might limit how I can resize that partition. From what I understand, it's placed randomly, so you don't even know where it is until you actually attempt a resize.

Anyway, blah blah. We'll see.


*****

Say, I was just looking at the partitions table in the Ubuntu Disk Utility, and it says that first "DellUtility" partition is "misaligned by 512 byts. This may result in very poor performance. Repartitioning is suggested." It says the 'Extended' partition (but not the logicals within it) is misaligned by 1024 bytes.

BLAH.

EDIT: This seems to have something to do with newer drives using physical sectors of 4096 bytes instead of 512, and a bunch of other technical jibberjabber I don't quite understand, as explained here. And in fact:

Code: Select all

~$ sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4ddec17f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63       80324       40131   de  Dell Utility
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda2   *       81920    36880383    18399232    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        36880384  1890607103   926863360    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4      1890609150  1953523711    31457281    5  Extended
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5      1890609152  1939435519    24413184   83  Linux
/dev/sda6      1939437568  1953523711     7043072   82  Linux swap / Solaris

So, apparently Dell did it wrong with their Utility partition (but got it right with the Windows paritions? just luck?), and I did it wrong with the Linux Extended partition. Proper way is something about how the partition editor/installer should round to MB instead of cylinder, but it did the latter? I dunno. BLAH.


Three months on and I'm still futzing with all this crap. Had I held out for an iMac, I could've set that thing up within an evening and got on with my damn life! "OSX: For people who want to get on with their lives.™"

[sinewav]

Have you looked at Ubuntu Studio? If you do any music and/or video production, it is a distribution that is used by some professionals out there because it has a customized Low Latency Kernel.

This is a popular myth. Ubuntu Studio uses the exact same kernel as all the other Ubuntus. The "real-time" kernel needs to be installed separately. I would not recommend it for serious audio production and it is almost useless for video unless you are doing very basic stuff.

Ubuntu Studio uses the XFCE GUI, which is the least resource hungry GUI out there.

XFCE is a little lighter than Gnome, which is lighter than KDE, but not a whole lot of difference between the three. The lightest desktop with a reasonable GUI is LXDE (much lighter than XFCE), and there are still lighter desktops than that, like Openbox.

BTW Gene, this post is not about you but my extreme disappointment in Ubuntu Studio. It's so bad, it pushed me over the edge and I went back to WinXp -- a 12 year old, dead OS is better than Ubuntu Studio.

[compguygene]

That was true in Ubuntu Studio 11. The last Ubuntu Studio that shipped standard with the Low Latency Kernel was Ubuntu Studio 9. However, Ubuntu Studio 12.04 does now ship with the Low Latency Kernel installed.
I totally agree that for video production it is only good for basic stuff. That is why I indicated that I use Camtasia for most of the video production that I do.
I was only trying to point out a distro to Phyto that I have found to be eminently useful. I have found that among Ubuntu Distros, this is my distro of choice. I don't do a lot of video production, and for the audio production that I do, I have found I really prefer Ubuntu Studio. I also prefer the snappy performance that it has. Just a note: I have a 3 year old laptop with 4GB ram and a dual-core 64-bit processor. I run Windows 7 for my Windows OS, and with 4GB ram, I have to run a 64-bit OS. I do run an Virtuauox XP virtual machine on my Ubumtu install mostly to run Netflix w/o rebooting, and to run a few older XP games that Wine just doesn't support. I can really understand why you would go back to XP on your machine, Sine. On older hardware I have had in the past I have run either Windows XP or Puppy Linux.

[sinewav]

That was true in Ubuntu Studio 11. The last Ubuntu Studio that shipped standard with the Low Latency Kernel was Ubuntu Studio 9. However, Ubuntu Studio 12.04 does now ship with the Low Latency Kernel installed.

No it doesn't man, that's what I'm trying to say. It's a myth. It comes with the same kernel as the standard Ubuntu. I've checked it myself.

I have found that among Ubuntu Distros, this is my distro of choice.

Mine too! I was really in love with it until I realized there was no improvement in the audio department. I wanted a low-latency kernel (had to install that later of course) and session support for Jack (LADIsh). Well, LADIsh doesn't support the dssivst package (essential) and Pulse Audio keeps interfering with JACK. So I bailed on Linux altogether since this problem is across all distros. I hope it improves one day. I'm not happy about my return to Windows.

EDIT: After looking around a little, it seems there is some weird thing going on with Linux kernels. There is the generic kernel, real-time, and now something called "low-latency" kernel. It appears the last two are being conflated often on the web, and I'm surely guilty of that two since I just discovered the difference. But either way, Ubuntu Studio is garbage for audio regardless of kernel, so I don't care, hahaha.

[Jonathan]

What happens if you leave the monitor on your 'preferred' settings, go to the white saturation page, and then reduce contrast a little?

As to how either affect the white saturation images, it's strange with contrast. Turning it up does indeed make it worse, but so does turning it down, at least at first. Down to about 53 will make some of those images blend into the background same as turning it up does; below that it's about the same as at 69.

I couldn't infer how exactly you went about doing it. You know, when someone says X it can be interpreted as when it's really }{. Anyway, now I'm out of ideas again.

[Phytotron]

Yeah, thanks anyway. I've just decided to give up. Damn corporations! I'll get the HDMI/DVI adaptor and just live with it. Gonna try a few of the things to un-stuck that red pixel, like this. A lot of people suggest massaging and poking at it, but I'm a little reluctant to do that.


By the way, meant to mention before, with respect to "set[ting] brightness so black won't get any darker," thing is, black will continue to get darker all the way down to 0. But of course, that makes everything too dim. I've ended up knocking it down to 50 the past few days (from the 70 mentioned above). Doesn't make any difference where the oversaturation is concerned, though.

[Phytotron]

Watched a free stream from Hulu the other night, an old series in 4:3, so it was pillarboxed in fullscreen, right. The show's darkest black was as dark as the pillarboxes, and vice-versa. So, I guess that's good?

By the way, I mentioned the computer is HDMI-out, while the monitor is DVI-in, so I'll be getting an adapter. Anyone know, just off the top of their heads, if it makes any difference whether I use a DVI or HDMI cable?


Anyway, I haven't been playing Arma hardly at all since I got this, and I've just determined that I can't going forward. The response time of the monitor (6 ms) is no good; lines just get lost in the motion blur. Also, even worse, there's some kind of input lag going on. I don't know if it's the keyboard or the monitor (VGA?), a combination of both, or what, but my turns are a lot slower/wider/later than they should be. And in general, I seem to be behind all the action. I've experienced a similar latency when, for example, using the Gamecube with composite cables into some HD televisions (where you also get the upscaling lag). On top of it, there's some issue with the camera swing getting jittery at times, especially at higher speeds I think. I dunno, but all that combined makes it basically unplayable.

[Z-Man]

By the way, I mentioned the computer is HDMI-out, while the monitor is DVI-in, so I'll be getting an adapter. Anyone know, just off the top of their heads, if it makes any difference whether I use a DVI or HDMI cable?

It doesn't matter now, but since you are more likely to switch to a monitor with HDMI in than a PC with only DVI out in the future (guessing here), I'd go for an HDMI cable. The DVI cable would be useless then. Of course, you'll need to make sure you get the appropriate adapter.

[Jonathan]

The response time of the monitor (6 ms) is no good; lines just get lost in the motion blur.

Do you get this on all LCDs? An LCD is continuously illuminated, or at least the backlight flickers fast enough that it doesn't really matter. If you try to track moving objects with your eye, those objects will smear on your retina for the duration of a frame, even if each new frame could replace the previous one in a nanosecond. In that sense the flicker of a CRT is very advantageous. Because most of the light is delivered in a short burst, the image remains sharp even during tracking. Of course, then there's the rolling shutter equivalent in a CRT and flicker being slightly annoying, so your tolerance for various effects still depends on what you're used to.