Saturday, April 24, 2004

Unison File Synchronizer

Something to possibly play with later...

Unison File Synchronizer - Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. (It also works on OSX to some extent, but it does not yet deal with 'resource forks' correctly; more information on OSX usage can be found on the unison-users mailing list archives.) It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.

posted by Wuphon's at 7:05 PM

Sunday, April 18, 2004

Looking for Hi-Res LCD Monitors

One of the things that bugs me is that I can't find a desktop LCD monitor that has a reasonable DPI. For example, the Toshiba laptop that I use has a 15" LCD with a resolution of 1400x1050. That works out to a DPI value of 1400 / 11.25" or 124dpi. A regular desktop 15" LCD monitor seems to only be available in 1024x768 resolutions (1024 / 11.25") or 91 dpi. Worse, the current Toshiba laptop has the option of a 15" 1600x1200 display. That has a dpi of 142.

142dpi looks a lot nicer then 91dpi. Even with my 124dpi LCD, changing the screen DPI setting from 96dpi to 120dpi and turning on ClearType results in a very crisp display of text that is nice and easy on the eyes. Ideally, I'd love a 200dpi or 300dpi display (IBM makes a 200dpi display, but I think it's greyscale and a few years old). I figure that once we'd hit 300dpi LCDs, you really won't notice any broken pixels.

To change your monitor DPI in WindowsXP:

1. Right-click on the desktop, select "Properties"
   
2. Select the "Settings" tab, click the "Advanced" button
   
3. Select the "General" tab, change the "DPI setting" drop-down
   

To enable/disable ClearType in WindowsXP:

1. Right-click on the desktop, select "Properties"
   
2. Select the "Appearance" tab, click the "Effects" button
   
3. Change the "Use the following method to smooth..." setting
   

posted by Wuphon's at 2:24 PM