Two monitors, and rules for reading habits
Orasi got my two screens working. It didn't look difficult at all, but he knew what he was doing, unlike me. I couldn't get it working properly when I tried. I don't usually ask for help with computer related problems before I've really tried to solve the problem myself. In this Google is your friend and if you just go whining to other people right off the bat, you won't learn much. But sometimes I just don't feel like spending a lot of time looking for answers online, and least of all when it's something that my brother fixed in something like five minutes.
I'm getting lost on a tangent here. I meant to talk about having two screens on my desktop. It took me a day or two to figure out what I wanted to use the second screen for. So far I've had a fullscreen Firefox window with Grooveshark on it. It looks spizzy and I have easy access to my music, to check what's playing and to tweak the currently evolving playlist. I also tested playing Sims and having a "walkthrough" open in the other screen. It worked so far as I still had to press the windows key on the keyboard to access anything on the other screen. While I'm writing this I find that it'd actually be handy to have an online dictionary open in the other screen. It might also be useful to have chat/IRC open in the other screen while doing something else on the other screen.
BTW, the novelty of how the mouse icon moves from one screen to the next seamlessly hasn't yet worn off, and it's been about a week already. I'll get used to it and then it won't seem so cool any longer. Maybe my brain is just too small and is still thinking of the two screens as two separate things, like my eyes see them, so it's difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that they're part of a continuum. And it's funny how it's now possible to "fall of the screen" by accident. I've noticed that I have a tendency to position the mouse icon at the left most edge of the screen (so it doesn't interfere with the scrollbar or the text) while reading fics, and since my second screen is to the left, the mouse icon often "falls" to the second screen when I didn't mean to do that. I'm trying to condition my mind to pay that no mind as it doesn't really matter. When I need the mouse I'll just move it where I want it. I think that what my mind is having a problem with is the physical distance between the screens (enought to put my fist through) compared to the distance in the universe of 1's and 0's, which is... I dunno... a hair's width or something. A miniscule movement of my mouse hand translates to a miniscule movement of the mouse icon on the screen in all instances except the right edge where a miniscule movement translates to a large leap of the mouse icon in distance seen by my eyes.
Hmm... I can't believe that I just manged to explain that so that it makes sense to me when I read it. This issue isn't really all that important, so it doesn't really matter wheather everyone was able to follow that explanation. Not that I wouldn't try to explain it better, if you asked, but I can't really foresee why someone would ask, but I've also long since stopped trying to predict the behavior of my flist when it comes to commenting.I've been hooked to this fanfic for the past three days or so. I just managed to finish reading it, well what there is at the moment. It's a work in progress. I wonder, if there are people out there who have never spent a whole day just reading. There must be (even out of all the people who know how to read). For me it's normal to spend a whole day, or several, just reading. If I didn't have to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, sleep and to take an occasional shower, I'd probably have no problem whatsoever reading through the whole day and night.
When I find a good story or something else interesting to read, the urge to just keep reading is very strong, so I have set myself rules to govern my reading habits, lest reading take over my life completely. For example I can ignore a little hunger when I have something engaging to do like reading (half a day is nothing), so I need to make sure that I eat properly even when I don't really feel like it. Another important rule, is that I won't skip a pre-arranged social engagement just because I'd rather keep reading. I don't recall ever breaking that rule, even though the temptation has often been hard to resist. My sleeping schedule is usually the first to suffer when I have something interesting to read. I don't actually strive to be still up at 5AM.
Another rule is that I need to take a short break between books in a series, especially if I'm so hooked that I'm going through in no time at all. This enables me to wind down a bit and do something else in between. It also gives my brain time to process what's been read and time for my thoughts to become not so busy. Another rule is that I need to give time to my family (or guests) to do something when they ask me (in person) to do something, like yard work or something, or to talk with them, if they'd like that.
I may have other rules to govern my reading habits, but nothing else comes to mind. These rules are so ingrained in me that I don't really need to think about them. Some of them I've followed since my teenage years when my mother was rather concerned that I spent too much time reading. Some of them I've developed at a later date. I've also let go of some rules about reading that I was following to keep my mother happy, as I later realized that they weren't needed and were in fact just my mother going a bit too far in her worry over this matter. I think that I lived probably a decade with this fear, that I was perhaps spending too much time reading. I cannot really describe in words the joy that I felt when I let go of that fear and let myself really truly enjoy reading. Such freedom. It's not really my mother's fault. It's a family trauma from three generations back. But I will never be like my great-grandmother. I have promised that to myself long ago. I also need to think about this matter some more to determine, if it might affect a possible fifth generation and how I should handle that. I don't think that my siblings have had quite this experience with reading and our mother, but I haven't actually ever asked. I don't know, if you know what it feels like to feel guilty about reading, but I know what it feels like. Oh, and to make it clear: I was never discouraged from reading my schoolbooks, that fate only covered fiction books.
These rules about my reading habits are there for a reason and I take them seriously. I can't really see how you might take advantage of knowing about these rules, but I would still ask you to respect them.
(When I was a teenager my mother was also concerned that I'd never be able to stop, if I ever entered University, that I'd just keep reading and learning for the rest of my life. She was not completely wrong to be worried about that. After six years at the Uni, I still have so many things that I'd want to study. If I could just study things, because I found them interesting and I didn't have to consider anything else like money or time or how useful that information would be to me, it'd be pretty brilliant to just keep studying until I grew bored with it. Adult responsibilites are so annoying sometimes. Well, there's always books, libraries, the Internet and Open University even when I eventually get done with University.)I wonder, if I ever end up writing exactly what I set out to write. It's often impossible to foresee the tangents on which I get lost onto. But some interesting stuff sometimes comes up on tangents. I've been aware that I have these rules for my reading habits, but this is probably the first time that I've put them to paper, or even discussed them with anyone else. Not that they seem all that personal. You're just so used to some things about yourself, that you don't stop to think how weird they might seem to someone else. It's like they're not even worth mentioning. And I'll just stop here. I really meant to go to bed two hours ago when I finished reading that fic. My mind was just buzzing too much to accomplish that before winding down a bit. Blogging is an excellent sleeping pill for me.Also, I'd be very annoyed at Semagic for crashing, like it just did, if it didn't automatically save drafts.
I'm getting lost on a tangent here. I meant to talk about having two screens on my desktop. It took me a day or two to figure out what I wanted to use the second screen for. So far I've had a fullscreen Firefox window with Grooveshark on it. It looks spizzy and I have easy access to my music, to check what's playing and to tweak the currently evolving playlist. I also tested playing Sims and having a "walkthrough" open in the other screen. It worked so far as I still had to press the windows key on the keyboard to access anything on the other screen. While I'm writing this I find that it'd actually be handy to have an online dictionary open in the other screen. It might also be useful to have chat/IRC open in the other screen while doing something else on the other screen.
BTW, the novelty of how the mouse icon moves from one screen to the next seamlessly hasn't yet worn off, and it's been about a week already. I'll get used to it and then it won't seem so cool any longer. Maybe my brain is just too small and is still thinking of the two screens as two separate things, like my eyes see them, so it's difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that they're part of a continuum. And it's funny how it's now possible to "fall of the screen" by accident. I've noticed that I have a tendency to position the mouse icon at the left most edge of the screen (so it doesn't interfere with the scrollbar or the text) while reading fics, and since my second screen is to the left, the mouse icon often "falls" to the second screen when I didn't mean to do that. I'm trying to condition my mind to pay that no mind as it doesn't really matter. When I need the mouse I'll just move it where I want it. I think that what my mind is having a problem with is the physical distance between the screens (enought to put my fist through) compared to the distance in the universe of 1's and 0's, which is... I dunno... a hair's width or something. A miniscule movement of my mouse hand translates to a miniscule movement of the mouse icon on the screen in all instances except the right edge where a miniscule movement translates to a large leap of the mouse icon in distance seen by my eyes.
Hmm... I can't believe that I just manged to explain that so that it makes sense to me when I read it. This issue isn't really all that important, so it doesn't really matter wheather everyone was able to follow that explanation. Not that I wouldn't try to explain it better, if you asked, but I can't really foresee why someone would ask, but I've also long since stopped trying to predict the behavior of my flist when it comes to commenting.I've been hooked to this fanfic for the past three days or so. I just managed to finish reading it, well what there is at the moment. It's a work in progress. I wonder, if there are people out there who have never spent a whole day just reading. There must be (even out of all the people who know how to read). For me it's normal to spend a whole day, or several, just reading. If I didn't have to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, sleep and to take an occasional shower, I'd probably have no problem whatsoever reading through the whole day and night.
When I find a good story or something else interesting to read, the urge to just keep reading is very strong, so I have set myself rules to govern my reading habits, lest reading take over my life completely. For example I can ignore a little hunger when I have something engaging to do like reading (half a day is nothing), so I need to make sure that I eat properly even when I don't really feel like it. Another important rule, is that I won't skip a pre-arranged social engagement just because I'd rather keep reading. I don't recall ever breaking that rule, even though the temptation has often been hard to resist. My sleeping schedule is usually the first to suffer when I have something interesting to read. I don't actually strive to be still up at 5AM.
Another rule is that I need to take a short break between books in a series, especially if I'm so hooked that I'm going through in no time at all. This enables me to wind down a bit and do something else in between. It also gives my brain time to process what's been read and time for my thoughts to become not so busy. Another rule is that I need to give time to my family (or guests) to do something when they ask me (in person) to do something, like yard work or something, or to talk with them, if they'd like that.
I may have other rules to govern my reading habits, but nothing else comes to mind. These rules are so ingrained in me that I don't really need to think about them. Some of them I've followed since my teenage years when my mother was rather concerned that I spent too much time reading. Some of them I've developed at a later date. I've also let go of some rules about reading that I was following to keep my mother happy, as I later realized that they weren't needed and were in fact just my mother going a bit too far in her worry over this matter. I think that I lived probably a decade with this fear, that I was perhaps spending too much time reading. I cannot really describe in words the joy that I felt when I let go of that fear and let myself really truly enjoy reading. Such freedom. It's not really my mother's fault. It's a family trauma from three generations back. But I will never be like my great-grandmother. I have promised that to myself long ago. I also need to think about this matter some more to determine, if it might affect a possible fifth generation and how I should handle that. I don't think that my siblings have had quite this experience with reading and our mother, but I haven't actually ever asked. I don't know, if you know what it feels like to feel guilty about reading, but I know what it feels like. Oh, and to make it clear: I was never discouraged from reading my schoolbooks, that fate only covered fiction books.
These rules about my reading habits are there for a reason and I take them seriously. I can't really see how you might take advantage of knowing about these rules, but I would still ask you to respect them.
(When I was a teenager my mother was also concerned that I'd never be able to stop, if I ever entered University, that I'd just keep reading and learning for the rest of my life. She was not completely wrong to be worried about that. After six years at the Uni, I still have so many things that I'd want to study. If I could just study things, because I found them interesting and I didn't have to consider anything else like money or time or how useful that information would be to me, it'd be pretty brilliant to just keep studying until I grew bored with it. Adult responsibilites are so annoying sometimes. Well, there's always books, libraries, the Internet and Open University even when I eventually get done with University.)I wonder, if I ever end up writing exactly what I set out to write. It's often impossible to foresee the tangents on which I get lost onto. But some interesting stuff sometimes comes up on tangents. I've been aware that I have these rules for my reading habits, but this is probably the first time that I've put them to paper, or even discussed them with anyone else. Not that they seem all that personal. You're just so used to some things about yourself, that you don't stop to think how weird they might seem to someone else. It's like they're not even worth mentioning. And I'll just stop here. I really meant to go to bed two hours ago when I finished reading that fic. My mind was just buzzing too much to accomplish that before winding down a bit. Blogging is an excellent sleeping pill for me.Also, I'd be very annoyed at Semagic for crashing, like it just did, if it didn't automatically save drafts.