The Adventures of Leon Fu
Life is an adventure. This is my adventure.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Triple Monitor Setup...
I've been playing with my three, 24" monitor setup for a couple weeks now. It brings the computing experience to another level. Being able to see so much at once just makes thing so much easier to look at things. It can mean looking at multiple pages or documents at once at life size or looking at just one thing huge. One of my favorite applications is mapping software. Running Google Maps or Earth is just an amazing experience! It's the same with Microsoft's or Yahoo's site too. You can see just so much area in a level of detail which is not possible with just 1 or 2 monitors. Everything from data visualization, to office productivity is improved with a multi monitor setup.
Here's how you get your computer set up for multi-monitors. First, I have the 3 monitors laid out vertically. Horizontally, it would be too wide. This brings up another issue with the monitors. Viewing angles. Most of the less expensive panels are TN, which have a very limited viewing angle, especially in the vertical direction, which become the horizontal direction when rotated. You at least need to get a VA or IPS panel monitor. Otherwise, the narrow viewing angles will make the images go black if you are sitting even slightly off center or move your head in one direction. My 3 monitor setup are a Dell Ultrasharp and 2 HP LP2475W monitors. The HP's are IPS panels, which do look slightly better than the Dell which is a VA panel. The colors on all 3 monitors are slightly difference, so I'm still trying to get them to match.
The other issue is that you need 2 video cards with 2 DVI ports to drive 3 monitors. I'm using 2 GeForce 9400 GT cards. I needed to custom build my system in order to get this configuration. You may be able to use the built in video card on your monitor and an additional card, but this does depend on what kind of motherboard you have. Also, you really need to turn down the brightness. Three monitors at their default brightness is too bright. I had to turn the brightness way down because my eyes hurt after about an hour. Lastly, all these monitors put out a lot of heat and you can definitely feel it sitting in front of these.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Triple Monitor Setup...

I just finished setting up a brand new workstation. Here are 3 24" monitors laid out vertically. I can now finally have all my windows open and see them without switching! Now I just need to get my Mac attached to this. There are 2 HP LP247w IPS panels and a Dell Ultrasharp I picked up off eBay. Powering these monitors are 2 Nvidia 9400 GT graphics cards. With 25% off courtesy of Microsoft, it wasn't as expensive as it seems. Now I need to get a bigger desk and figure out how to connect my Mac to my monitor array.
Labels: computers
Saturday, November 15, 2008
San Diego as cheap as Austin?
No, overall, not quite, but at the rate prices are dropping, it might be true by the end of next year. The real estate market in California and Florida has been obliterated over the past couple years. It seems like it is now possible to get a condo in downtown San Diego about the same price as downtown Austin, especially once you factor in the much lower property tax rates in California compared with Texas. Not everywhere has dropped, but there are sections of the city that seem to have been cut in half. The northwest part of the city such as La Jolla seems to have held up very well, while the downtown condo market seems to have gotten destroyed.
Austin was not my first choice of cities to move to if cost of living was not a factor. I would probably choose to move to southern California or Hawaii if I had unlimited amounts of money. San Diego would be my first pick. But now that prices are rapidly coming down, I might actually considering moving again. Prices seem to have come down a lot, but rent still seems to be much more expensive than Texas, especially out in the suburbs.
Labels: real estate
Sunday, November 9, 2008
New Camera and Lens...
So in the last couple weeks, I got a new camera and lens. I got Nikon D60 and the 18-200mm VR f3.5-5.6 lens. This lens is incredible! No wonder it was sold out for the last 3 years. It combines 2 of my lenses. Previously I was using the 4 year old 18-70mm lens and often found myself wanting more reach than maximum 70mm. Nikon's image stabilization (VR) also works really well. I find that I can shoot around 2 stops slower now. The image quality seems just as good as my other lenses.
The D60 works much better than my 4 year old D70. It's got a 2.5 inch screen and is smaller and lighter with more resolution. There are some features that are missing like the depth of field preview (which isn't that useful with digital) and the inability to auto focus my older lenses. It's got Adaptive Dynamic Range (ADR) which does seem to improve dynamic range, but slows down the camera significantly. My 18-200 mm does seem to be a little large for the body, but it's still manageable.
Eventually, I want to get the D90, but settled on the D60 for its smaller size and cheaper price. It seems to do 95% everything I need for 1/3 the price. I'll probably still get the D90 or D700 eventually for autofocusing my non AFS lenses, shooting sports, the D90 for its movie mode, and/or D700 for its awesome low light abilities.
The baby Nikons (D40/D60) and this 18-200 mm super zoom seems to be all I need for the most common situations. The Nikon D40 is also great, but those are hard to find just the body without the lens. The D60 also has some nice features like ADR, anti dust system, 10 vs 6 Mega pixels, and an eye sensor, and 100 ISO which is useful when you want to shoot large apertures at slower shutter speeds.
Labels: cameras, photography