I bought a 20" Apple Cinema Display ![[B0002ILKMW]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
yesterday to replace my excellent-yet-aging SGI 1600SW flat panel monitor. The Cinema is flawless. It is dead silent (no annoying buzzing like my Dell screens at work), and there aren't any defective pixels that I've noticed so far. And it's right sexy!
Some notes:
To relieve myself of the ambient noise at my work desk, I've started wearing closed-back isolation headphones. Since I need to listen to at least two different audio sources at the same time, a decent desktop audio mixer was in order. The last time I looked at mixers several years ago, there was nothing decent available at a budget price, let alone under $100. Today, there are several choices, and in my opinion, none better than the Behringer UB502 .
The Behringer UB502 is a 5-channel mono or 2-channel stereo mixer with a bidirectional tape loop. It has a powered microphone input, and most importantly for my desktop, separate mix levels for headphones and speakers. The sound quality is pristinely transparent, and the build quality is totally solid. Unbelievably, this mixer is only $35! And if you need more channels, Behringer makes other models with the same high quality.
Correction: There is a single master Mix volume and an additional Headphone volume. If you have the mix output sent to live speakers, the mix volume will go to both the speakers and headphones, but only the headphone volume is adjusted separately. This is a normal mixing board configuration. All this means is that if you are using this with desktop speakers, you'll want to keep the speakers' power on/off button handy when using headphones.
Long time Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki has started writing a blog. It has been almost fad-like for high-level muckity mucks to have blogs, but they usually end up posting droning entries that simply promote their company's strategy or product line. Luckily, Guy's blog is damned interesting and inspirational. Grab the feed and enjoy.
The Sudoku craze that has swept through Japan and England has finally caught traction in the US. If you haven't played it, Sudoku is a numerical puzzle consisting of a 9×9 grid. A little like a crossword puzzle, the goal is to fill each row with the numbers 1 through 9 (no duplicates), as well as fill 9 3×3 sub-grids with the numbers 1 through 9.
The best free online Sudoku I've found so far is syndicated on the San Jose Mercury News web site.
As fun as it is, I'm not sure why it's so popular. Once you figure out how to solve one Sudoku, you can solve any Sudoku. It took me about 3 puzzles to realize the solution pattern. I still play it occasionally to test my wits, even though I know I'll solve the puzzle in just a few minutes. I wonder if others are doing this too, which would explain its popularity.
What I find more interesting is how the puzzles are generated - a very clever game design mechanic that always provides just enough clues.
The monitor on my main WinXP machine at home is a Silicon Graphics 1600SW. This was the first high-end widescreen monitor available, and also the first LCD monitor that had a refresh rate fast enough for gaming. At its native resolution of 1600×1024, the 17" diagonal screen keeps text somewhat tiny, but very readable. I think I paid $1200+ for this thing five years ago, and it has been worth every cent. Unfortunately, it has developed an constant "buzzing" sound, to the point of becoming the loudest component in my office. It isn't screaming by any means, but in a quiet office, it is pretty darned annoying.
I've been looking at replacing the 1600SW with a 20" widescreen LCD from Apple or Dell. Both make LCDs with the same source panel, but they have very different electronics and light sources. With the Dell costing about half the price of the Apple, you'd think it would be a no-brainer… until you visit the Dell support forums. Lots of people are complaining that the Dells squeal loudly. The Apples, on the other hand, are reportedly dead silent.
Pending a surprise announcement at MacWorld this week, I know which screen I'm going to buy.
I've had Wired News bookmarked at the address http://www.wired.com/news for years. If you read their news regularly, you might have that URL bookmarked too.
A couple of weeks ago, a click to that URL started giving me page timeouts, 404 Not Found messages, 403 Forbidden messages, etc. I figured their server crapped out over the holiday weekend, and that it would return soon.
I just discovered that Wired moved their news to the front page of http://www.wired.com, but they did not redirect people from the old link. Isn't is incredible that the once premier magazine for internet culture can't properly manage their own links these days?
