Dreams and questions

[elaby]

First, a Mac question:

I have my resolution set at 1280x800 because it is oh so sharp and pretty. However, it was giving me a bit of eyestrain so I fooled around with my Firefox text settings and I'm all happy with the text now, but pictures are still really tiny. Icon-making is going to be somewhat different (I'm not sure if that's different in a good way yet) when my 100x100 icons look about 25% smaller than I'm used to. Other pictures as well (comics and art) are so small that I kind of feel like I can't see the detail. Is there any way to make my resolution be, say, 1152x720 and retain the sharpness? I've tried setting it to 1152x720 in the display but it seems quite fuzzy. I imagine I'd get used to it, but whenever I look at the 1280x800 again I'm like "OMG so much sharper!" Is there anything I can do, or do I just have to choose one or the other?

I also had several strange dreams. In the first one, I couldn't get up to get a drink of water unless I could find the popup menu with the water bottle on it -_- Too much playing with new computer, methinks? Then I dreamed that Ariel (from The Little Mermaid, yes) was living on an island (she had legs) and the island needed battle reinforcements from the king of the ocean, but all he sent was a couple of empty oyster shells and some rocks and one periwinkle, who fled when Ariel hummed him out to ask him for help. The king had said he would send all sorts of elite troops and stuff. Then Ariel was trying to do her hair but it wasn't working because a dragonfly kept trying to help by lifting bits up. She was going to get mermaids to help her brush it.

In the third dream, I dreamed I woke up and said "That dream was so awesome! I have to write this down!" but then when I really did wake up, I realized that it in fact was incredibly dorky. Here's what happened:


Darth Vader and his grey-suited minion types had a bunch of people all lined up on this rotating circular track thing. One of the minions, who looked a bit like a much younger version of this actor (he played Marcus in Titus), was standing in line next to a teenage boy who was disguised as an old man. This minion kept harassing the kid, but eventually did it in such a way as to make him laugh, and then kept doing the same thing so that the both of them were in hysterics.

Vader, obviously, didn't like this and yelled at the minion to move in line so he wasn't standing by the disguised kid anymore. The minion kept saying that he was just trying to rile him up. Anyway, eventually Vader killed off all the prisoners and strangled the disguised kid with a rope (why he didn't just use his mind, I'm not sure). The minion was all smug and said something about how the kid had deserved it or how it was all he was worthy of or something like that.

Now, I don't know who I was or why I was there or why I wasn't killed, but I slapped the minion. Then we all filed out of the room, and I turned around and saw the minion come out of the door and start to cry. Vader was all "WTF what's your problem?" and he ran away down some stairs. I ran after him, telling Vader that I was going to yell at him about doing his laundry (???). At the bottom of the stairs, we were suddenly not on a ship but in what looked like an English country lane. I asked him what was wrong and eventually figured out that he had actually been in love with the teenager. I was a guy at this point, though I think I was a girl earlier when I slapped him.

Then things started getting REALLY weird (huge purple rabbit heads that inflated and tried to squash us weird) and then I woke up.

Comments

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

*giggles* You are NUTS! :) I love you!

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Maybe just a little ^^; I love you too!

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

Hey! You can buy houses today in Gaia!! You should go to Akea and get your house.

You can't place them anywhere yet, but you can buy it and put stuff in it!!

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I should! I keep forgetting about Gaia.

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

silly Elaby! :)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Indeed ^_^

[caitirin.livejournal.com]

*snuggly loffs*

I ate my guacamole! yummm!

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

laptops and TFTs tend to have a 'native' resolution where everything looks fine. Anything off from that and the number of physical pixels doesn't match the number of pixels the graphics card is pumping out, so it can look a little off.

Could you not do some kind of zoom thing on the mac? Other thing is that you'll soon get used to it...

:-)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

That's true, I think I will get used to it. The thing is, most text on userpick icons is so small at that resolution that I can barely read it, let alone create icons with text that looks good. I'll look into the zoom thing for images, though, that's a good point.

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

I always find it hard to read text on usericons, and I have my laptop set at 1024x767 (I think), and my TFT second monitor set at something bigger (1280, I think)

Stuff like photoshop or the Gimp will let you zoom images nicely

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been trying to figure out how to work the Gimp, with moderate success. It's just weird going from a computer where everything is so huge to one where everything is so miniscule. Even when I change the settings on the PC, everything remains clear (though proportionally wonky).

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

assume you've got a regular CRT monitor on the PC? They're pretty good at adapting to different resolutions as they don't depend on physical pixels making up the screen,

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I bet you're right.

[hellziggy.livejournal.com]

Even when I change the settings on the PC, everything remains clear (though proportionally wonky).

Clear, but not good... When you've been using the Mac for a while you'll *really* notice what a crap job a PC does at font rendering!

[hellziggy.livejournal.com]

OK, I'm pasting stuff here from another site and so I'm not sure it will work...

Here is a comparison of Mac and PC font rendering. If you don't see the typographical quality comparing the two headlines (look at the edges of the letters), try to read the differently rendered text. You'll see that the Mac text reads more easily.

This is how PC users see iA by default. Look at the Rea kerning in "Read different". This might seem a neglectable detail, but it's little things like that that make text easy to read.

This is how Mac users see iA. It's not just the anti-aliasing. Compare the rendering of the headlines. PC have a clear type option, but PC clear type for small fonts just makes it all worse.

And this is how PC users see Japanese text (clear type doesn't work for Japanese characters)

This is how Macintosh users see Japanese text. You don't need a typographic eye to see the difference. You will easily notice the difference if you can read it.

To get the full effect you need to see the whole page.

[elaby.livejournal.com]

That is pretty different!