Multimonitors, ToDo's, and Goal Setting.
Geek: Portrait mode and MultiMonitors Galore: a 1600x3600 display ~$1K
X 3
The nvidia video card drivers have easy to access, screen rotation utilities built in, so on a lark I turned my monitor on it's side (which it really really wasn't designed to do with mostly round edges tipped precariously, threatening to fall into my lap), and turned on the portrait mode. The shift is kinda huge, it reminds me of the switch from wearing glasses to contacts, in that the worlds seems so different in the framed space. The monitor in question is one of those oddball widescreen ones (1600x1024), so right now the LJ update web page is around 1500 high, and yet it's still taking up most of it...the virtual world everyday takes up more and more space, and eventually my workspace will probably look like something out of the matrix, and I'm going to have competing walls of displays with the projector on one wall and the workspace on the other.
What originally prompted this was my heirachical todo list, which at over 1MB comprised of mostly sentences of things to do, is huge, and inside the small window constantly scrolling to clean it up and move things around, was frustrating and constraining, a bit like watching a movie through a door peephole. The frustration, made me less interested in doing it because I felt like I had a similar thing going on in my head: I just couldn't grasp and order it all, as really what's on the page is a reflection of the order (or lack thereof) in the head. The screen rotation worked extremely well, it's extremely refreshing to have access to 3x the data. I've also noticed that many web pages (email and qtask chat logs) are much more efficent in this view, than landscape mode. As is looking at code, and listing of directories is way way more efficent. I've noticed I hardly ever scroll now, I can get better grasps of a page without reading it, and that many sites are artificially constrained to lower resolutions.
The results, have been so useful over the last few days I've opted to plunk down $1K for a multi monitor setup, which should arrive later this week, as sadly BestBuy didn't have any in stock anywhere near me. In the end I will have a display the equivalent of 1600x3600, but with 3 screens that I think will actually be as productive or more than a single display as I tend to use the maximize function inside a pane frequently to provide a context of use like one for: Todos, Scripting Environment, and Flash IDE. I got the inexpensive dual head video card in the mail today, which being an Nvidia, which has a shared driver across their series should be easy to manage in a single control panel.
If your interested the monitor is a 20.1" Samsung 204B (1600x1200, DVI+VGA) that is well built and designed, the stand allowing screen rotation easily (many oddly do not). That after the $60 mail-in rebate (which ends today the 31st) is about $310 after shipping and handling, which for comparison is half the price of the 20" on the apple website. I got mine from tigerdirect.com
It's amazing how excitement clears the path of obstacles impeding it, especially if one tends to sometimes muddle through meloncholiness.
Speaking of excitement, going to see Nightmare Before Christmas in digital 3d this eve on the big screen yay!
Todo's and Goal Setting
Speaking of todos, yesterday I got the first time to kinda dig through my monsterous master todo list in any depth, the first time in about 3 months. It's a bit like spring housecleaning, in that all the goals in order create a crisp feeling in ones head and mood. What's also interesting is seeing what I've done, or sort of done or completely forgotten about since the last review. It seems almost 2-3 times a year cycles, of intense focus/effort then diffusion and confusion, then back again. In some cases it's not like the world actually changes, it's just the perspective. In the diffusion and confustion stage, where there are so many rather mundane to-dos (e.g. moving bricks from pile A to pile B) that feel as effective as bowling with baseballs, that with no clear more important goals (e.g. moving the books to build a university...that may someday have the cure for cancer discovered in it), to latch on to. It's a bit like being stuck in traffic versus treating it as an obstacle course, or wading through mud and quicksand, rather than water skiing over it.
Part of the problem is keeping the important things important. It's so easy to get distracted with the net, and there are so many things that interest me so it's sometimes hard to prioritize. At other times I get bogged down by value conflicts like "saving money" and "improving workflow", as once I see a way to improve my workflow it's hard to forget it, so it feels a bit like small paper cuts.
To help keep present, I actually have a white board right by my door, that contains the top priorities for the day or so, which I see every time I head out to take a break etc, and also is a good fast place to jot down ideas when I'm pacing around. I like to practice stretching (learning how to do the splits) while reviewing them. The white boards transient nature also appeals to me as it allows reworking, and I have no desire to scan it for the most part.
X 3
The nvidia video card drivers have easy to access, screen rotation utilities built in, so on a lark I turned my monitor on it's side (which it really really wasn't designed to do with mostly round edges tipped precariously, threatening to fall into my lap), and turned on the portrait mode. The shift is kinda huge, it reminds me of the switch from wearing glasses to contacts, in that the worlds seems so different in the framed space. The monitor in question is one of those oddball widescreen ones (1600x1024), so right now the LJ update web page is around 1500 high, and yet it's still taking up most of it...the virtual world everyday takes up more and more space, and eventually my workspace will probably look like something out of the matrix, and I'm going to have competing walls of displays with the projector on one wall and the workspace on the other.
What originally prompted this was my heirachical todo list, which at over 1MB comprised of mostly sentences of things to do, is huge, and inside the small window constantly scrolling to clean it up and move things around, was frustrating and constraining, a bit like watching a movie through a door peephole. The frustration, made me less interested in doing it because I felt like I had a similar thing going on in my head: I just couldn't grasp and order it all, as really what's on the page is a reflection of the order (or lack thereof) in the head. The screen rotation worked extremely well, it's extremely refreshing to have access to 3x the data. I've also noticed that many web pages (email and qtask chat logs) are much more efficent in this view, than landscape mode. As is looking at code, and listing of directories is way way more efficent. I've noticed I hardly ever scroll now, I can get better grasps of a page without reading it, and that many sites are artificially constrained to lower resolutions.
The results, have been so useful over the last few days I've opted to plunk down $1K for a multi monitor setup, which should arrive later this week, as sadly BestBuy didn't have any in stock anywhere near me. In the end I will have a display the equivalent of 1600x3600, but with 3 screens that I think will actually be as productive or more than a single display as I tend to use the maximize function inside a pane frequently to provide a context of use like one for: Todos, Scripting Environment, and Flash IDE. I got the inexpensive dual head video card in the mail today, which being an Nvidia, which has a shared driver across their series should be easy to manage in a single control panel.
If your interested the monitor is a 20.1" Samsung 204B (1600x1200, DVI+VGA) that is well built and designed, the stand allowing screen rotation easily (many oddly do not). That after the $60 mail-in rebate (which ends today the 31st) is about $310 after shipping and handling, which for comparison is half the price of the 20" on the apple website. I got mine from tigerdirect.com
It's amazing how excitement clears the path of obstacles impeding it, especially if one tends to sometimes muddle through meloncholiness.
Speaking of excitement, going to see Nightmare Before Christmas in digital 3d this eve on the big screen yay!
Todo's and Goal Setting
Speaking of todos, yesterday I got the first time to kinda dig through my monsterous master todo list in any depth, the first time in about 3 months. It's a bit like spring housecleaning, in that all the goals in order create a crisp feeling in ones head and mood. What's also interesting is seeing what I've done, or sort of done or completely forgotten about since the last review. It seems almost 2-3 times a year cycles, of intense focus/effort then diffusion and confusion, then back again. In some cases it's not like the world actually changes, it's just the perspective. In the diffusion and confustion stage, where there are so many rather mundane to-dos (e.g. moving bricks from pile A to pile B) that feel as effective as bowling with baseballs, that with no clear more important goals (e.g. moving the books to build a university...that may someday have the cure for cancer discovered in it), to latch on to. It's a bit like being stuck in traffic versus treating it as an obstacle course, or wading through mud and quicksand, rather than water skiing over it.
Part of the problem is keeping the important things important. It's so easy to get distracted with the net, and there are so many things that interest me so it's sometimes hard to prioritize. At other times I get bogged down by value conflicts like "saving money" and "improving workflow", as once I see a way to improve my workflow it's hard to forget it, so it feels a bit like small paper cuts.
To help keep present, I actually have a white board right by my door, that contains the top priorities for the day or so, which I see every time I head out to take a break etc, and also is a good fast place to jot down ideas when I'm pacing around. I like to practice stretching (learning how to do the splits) while reviewing them. The white boards transient nature also appeals to me as it allows reworking, and I have no desire to scan it for the most part.