Enough already

[altivo]

I don't generally complain about winter. However, we've had enough now as far as I'm concerned. It's time for the sun and liquid rain instead of ice and snow.

Swapped my venerable CRT for an LCD flat panel at work today. I haven't much cared for those in the past, but they've definitely improved in recent years. The jury is still out as to whether I'll go cross-eyed looking at it, and the colors seem a bit washed out to me, but it does have higher resolution and a larger working area than the CRT did, so I guess I'll keep it.

Installed the demo for a game called Pony Luv from Gogii while waiting for some things to update themselves (all those Windows updates) and was amused when it wouldn't run because some part of it was looking for .dll files with slightly different spellings than the ones they installed (as, for instance, with a "d" appended to the name) so I renamed the relevant files and suddenly it worked. That seems like a pretty dumb mistake to make. Do you suppose they put their demo out for distribution without ever trying it out? Apparently so.

Anyway, I heard about it from felder. You get to choose a breed of pony and take care of it, including feeding, grooming, exercise, etc. Sort of like those tamagotchi (or however it's spelled) keychain pets that were popular a few years ago. The graphics are cute anyway.

The workshop fabric is nearly all woven. About another yard before the bitter end of the warp where I can't go any farther. That's good, because the next meeting of the group is a week from today and I want the fabric washed and ironed before then so I can show it in class.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you need to change the colour profile when using LCDs as opposed to CRT. Pony Luv? Now that sounds really naught XD Especially considering the behaviour of some equines I know :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I looked briefly but didn't find a menu for an overall color balance. I'll poke at it some more today.

Naughty ponies? I think not in this game. It's made for kids. When you take the pony to walk in the park, he even hides behind a bush to relieve himself.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm ready for winter to end. It's been rather nice here the last few days (read that as "it's been above freezing"). Stuff is actually starting to melt. Sure, we'll get clobbered by another huge snow storm before the year is out, but it'll be March by Thursday, so it's getting there.

I like the LCD's. There can be issues with color, and I can see differences in my two monitors (and actually the cheaper one looks better to me, for what it's worth). On the other hand, I'm color-blind anyway, so I'm sure whatever is on my screen would look totally different to anyone else :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We've had milder temperatures too. Actually, we only had about two weeks of really cold weather, which is about normal here. It's all the ice and slop on the ground that gets me. This is the first time I can remember in eight years of living here that we've had actual slush piles and puddles. I associate that with the city, where you'd step off a curb into six inches of ice water with an inch of snow floating on top.

Green-red color blind or one of the rarer types? They used to say you shouldn't work in electronics with that, which I'm sure is bosh. Years ago when I applied for admission to theological seminary, they made me take a test for color blindness. I passed, but I've never figured out what that had to do with anything.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

The traditional green-red type. I have a hard time explaining to people that I do, in fact, see in color, but I can't make the fine discriminations between colors with small amounts of red in them. I also can't tell red from green if the saturation is very low (for example, I can tell red and green christmas bulbs apart, but I can't tell the difference between some low-saturation color variation). Traffic lights are okay, although the green looks pretty much like white to me (save for a little blue that traffic engineers put in there for people like me). Although telling green, yellow, and red apart isn't an issue, I have to be careful in strange urban areas because traffic lights can get "lost" in all the different bright light sources.

There are a lot of areas of electronics that you cannot work in..particularly jobs like a telephone splicer or alarm installer, where you're working with multicolor cables. Most of the work I do is either SMT (surface mount) now, or is with RF, so troubles with color identification are infrequent. It has kept me out of some jobs, however, and often times employers will not hire you in the electronics field because you are colorblind.

So, there you go..more than you ever wanted to know. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Not more than I wanted to know, actually. Thanks for taking the time to explain. That's more than I've ever gotten out of anyone else and it does interest me. The most interesting comment I've ever heard on the subject though was from someone who said as a kid he could never figure out how other people could pick strawberries because he couldn't find them except by accident and then he couldn't tell if they were ripe. But he was a champion blueberry picker. ;) I believe there are compensations to everything.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Well, speaking of which..there is a compensation. I have an unusual ability to find four-leaf clovers. I can literally find 30 or 40 of them at a time (given a big enough clover patch). I'm pretty sure this is a result of my brain having had to compensate for lack of color discrimination by recognizing subtle differences in shadows, shading, or outlines. I don't know if it has any real world applications, but if you want a 4-leaf clover, let me know and I'll go pick you 30 of them.

Most people think color-blindness means that you see no color...this is entirely untrue (except in rare cases)..but the colors I see are different than what other people see, and I can't discriminate between fine variations. It's the visual equivalent of being tone-deaf. So, if everything in the world were colored by Fisher-Price, I'd be able to see everything...but if you ask me to pick out the "evening azure metallic" car from the parking lot, you'd be out of luck.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That actually makes sense. Some fine artists are color blind and it is rarely noticed in their work because the way they see things still accurately reproduces what others see. That makes it difficult for us "normal" folks to quite imagine what it's like, hence my curiosity. I'm always reluctant to pry too much about it because I never know whether it will hit a sore spot. Thanks for talking about it with me. *hugs*

The closest I can really get is the way I see in dim light. I have good vision under dim conditions once my eyes adapt, but of course it's almost colorless. That's much more extreme than the single pigmet variations though. You see as dogs or horses do, not without color but with different emphasis and gradations. In fact, if I'm remembering my animal science correctly after 35 years, canines and equines both have similar color perception. Rather than seeing reds as standout contrasts, they distinguish very fine gradations in the blue-green-yellow part of the spectrum.

[cetasdolphin.livejournal.com]

Wish I could send you some warmth up there, in my area in the South we seem to be keep getting spring like conditions and had been for most of the winter. I am glad to be spared the tornadoes though that occurred in other areas but I still got some rather nasty storms.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer, but our temperatures are already moderating. It's all the excess ice and slush that bugs me. :)

[calydor.livejournal.com]

The word you're looking for is 'Tamagotchi'.

On some LCDs, the in-screen menu system has a couple of color profiles; in my case a 'warm' and 'cold' setting. I definitely prefer the warm one, which increases the red colors just a bit and, as you get used to it, does make the screen appear warmer and more comfortable to look at.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I could have looked it up but I was lazy.

I'll check again for a color balance adjustment, though I would say it's saturation that I'm missing rather than the balance of RGB being tilted.

[vimsig.livejournal.com]

Enough already indeed!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes. Time for spring.

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

Dear Rider.

Well... you could be in Alaska (thirty years for me). Heh, but I agree, enough already. Our firewood is almost gone for one thing. Hay going fast.

I noticed several cheap computer games at Best Buy featuring horses. Of course there are several girl's horse showing games but noticed a seven dollar Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmaron game, rather basic, almost bought anyway.

Too cold to fly,
Imperator

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You guys probably got buried in snow last weekend, neigh?

This new Steed icon is a little too perfect. I wanna muss up his mane.

Rider

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

That game sounds nice. While I admit I /do/
enjoy High Adrenaline Shooting games (a legacy
of sweating and shaking in front of Robotron or
Defender in the 80s) the gentle thoughtful
games are a bit too infrequent I think.

As for the LCD vs. CRT I still say that a nice
CRT is crisper and brighter than any of the
flatpanels yet. I guess its an analog of the
"audiophile" thing where some people can tell
the difference between IC's and Tubes.

Winter?

*laughs demonically*

*coughs*

Don't worry, March is here, and that means we've
turned the orbital corner. Warm days are
coming pony!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

If you want to try it, there are downloadable copies of the demo all over the place. Search Google for "pony luv" and "download". The demo is apparently the full game. It's a 100 MB download, and if you decide to buy and get all the features, they send you a key to unlock it somehow.

CRTs are brighter, but I'm not sure they are crisper (by which I assume you mean sharper.) They are also bigger, heavier, and use more electricity. This flat panel is a 19 inch, and with a flat panel you really get all 19 inches, unlike a CRT. It does 1280x1024 resolution without complaining, which means I can see more windows at once, which is very useful. I'll trade that and the extra desk space for the brightness of the CRT. ;p

As for winter, it's supposed to get to 50° tomorrow and rain all day, with gale force winds. I guess that's just March coming in like a lion?

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Yay! March Yion!

*pets the March Lion nice.*

That'd actually make a cool FM charcacter;

Name: March
Species: Lion
Scent: Rain