Throwing stuff



  • I was at a lecture the other night to do with coaching agile teams. One thing the lecturer went on about (that I tend to disagree with) was his insistence that a a happy programming team likes to have soft toys and likes to throw them around. The emphasis on throwing stuff strikes me as an immature behaviour and as such I can't understand why it is lauded. I've never had a desire to throw stuff around, or have I worked with any team that acted like this - although the teams I have worked with have been of engineers and not programmers, and were not agile teams either. So is this some sort of programmer vs engineer behaviour trait difference or is it some mythical aspect of agile teams promulgated as fact in order to encourage other agile behaviour? Can anyone enlighten me?



  • We talk of chucking heavy shit at another of that guy's fucked up in some way, but's more an expression.

    One coworker did toss a piece of licorice at me, because he was far away and I wanted some. He threw too hard because he's an asshole.

    But soft fluffy things? What the fuck was that guy smoking and drinking and taking?

    But, that said, if I had a soft thingy, I'd throw it too. Away from me. Then some other guy might pick it up and throw it, and then it'd be on the floor as we resume work. Then someone tramples it, and someone else bins it.

     

    I have a cow taped to my monitor, but that's just a thingy. People do that. 



  • It may be that this guy was not the best Agile coach in the world. I did find this link that sort of supports him agile Modeling Room



  • I have one of those really bouncy red rubber balls that I throw against the wall from time to time. It takes just enough concentration to let me start thinking laterally when I'm stuck with something (that's my theory anyway). I don't share an office though.



  •  Agile developers do tend to throw lots of StackOverflowExceptions at each other...

    *ducks*



  • In times long past my monitor was once destroyed by a anti-stress ball that missed my head. Apparently vendor X had at some time given the company dozens of these little rubbery balls. The throwing of them at each other apparently came natural, and it did help alleviate stress.
    It is amazing how little stuff broke around the place really, also i leanred that monitors can take quite some abuse before you get discolouring.



  • @stratos said:

    also i leanred that monitors can take quite some abuse before you get discolouring.
     

    OK, I'm instituting a ban on throwing stuff because I really love my monitor.



  • Pixel fag! Designers can't be programmers! Take your gamut elsewhere! We don't need no stinking colour calibration!

    On a more serious note though, we where all programmers, the monitors colour accuracy wasn't all that important. Besides, it was a bit of a wild time. We where more or less "let loose" just as long as we finished projects on time and on budget.



  • I wanted a fucking proper monitor with a bitchin' resolution, not one with a built-in exclusion layer blend mode gradient, and not a letterbox widescreen— I can't work on those.

    Buying your employees expensive stuff is far cheaper than giving them a raise.



  • @dhromed said:

    I wanted a fucking proper monitor with a bitchin' resolution, not one with a built-in exclusion layer blend mode gradient, and not a letterbox widescreen— I can't work on those.

    Buying your employees expensive stuff is far cheaper than giving them a raise.

    *turns green*

    I want an LP2065!!

    I want two actually -- I want to replace my two Dell E176FP 17" 1280×1024 displays with two of anything half-decent that's 1600×1200. Needs to be tall enough to remote onto a 1280×1024 machine and let me keep my two-row taskbar up above it, so that means 1200 height. The only way to get that sort of height is either 20" 1600×1200, or 24" 1920×1200 (or larger). It's crazy how difficult it is to get a cost-effective screen that's an upgrade on 17", because the world is pathologically obsessed with widescreen, such that you only get 1050 or 1080 height.

    24" 1920×1200 is just far too big to have two side by side. (Rotating is silly because it precludes ClearType and I like my smooth, readable letter shapes, especially italics, but it wouldn't give me my needed 1280 width either.)

    1600×1200 is only available in S-PVA (the disreputable Dell 2007FP) or A-MVA (HP LP2065 that the two people on earth who own one, really love).

    Getting two £350 LP2065s for my desk at work is way out of the question. I'd buy myself two screens if I could get that size in a good quality TN (i.e. Dell) because I don't need S-IPS at work (even though I do a fair bit of in-house Web-based app graphics), but no such monitor exists (they did once, but that time has long since gone, because, in the world's eyes, 4:3 is for chumps). I was considering two more of the S-IPS LG L2000CP 20" 1600×1200 that I use at home -- the same LG.display S-IPS panel as the obsolete IPS versions of the 2007FP and LP2065 -- but they're now unobtainable.

    I e-mailed a whole load of dealers with refurb 2007FPs to check whether theirs are the S-IPS model or the S-PVA, and every single one ignored me. One did claim they had S-IPS stock, which confused me because everyone knows that Dell lie about their panels. When I asked them how they knew, their repeated responses amounted to "they just are". (With refurb you can either check the serials, or check whether black turns purple from a steep angle.)

    Only one company across the pond has LP2065 refurbs at two wildly different prices, and attempts to communicate with them via e-mail and their official AIM account were met by the same silence as with everyone else.

    Oh well. I will stick with my old E175FPs. See if I care.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Rotating is silly because it precludes ClearType
     

    You're in luck: it does not! It may need a different configuration, but it works just as well.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    A-MVA (HP LP2065 that the two people on earth who own one, really love).

    The LP2065 is an S-IPS...

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    the same LG.display S-IPS panel as the obsolete IPS versions of the 2007FP and LP2065

    ... but you know that.... hu?

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    S-IPS LG L2000CP 20" 1600×1200 that I use at home

    Funny how I actually indicated this one to my employer as it was cheaper for the exact same panel, but I erroneously got the superior alternnative instead. The HP LP2065 has an awesome stand. You want it.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I e-mailed a whole load of dealers with refurb 2007FPs to check whether theirs are the S-IPS model or the S-PVA, and every single one ignored me. One did claim they had S-IPS stock, which confused me because everyone knows that Dell lie about their panels.

    I've never seen any indication anywhere, be it in online product specs or even on the monitor itself, what sort of panel is used, but I reliably deducted it from the viewing angle and refresh rate.

    If it says somthing like "178° angle, 8ms resp GtG", then it's most certainly IPS. TN commonly does 100-120° at 2-5ms. I've never experienced an MVA.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I'd buy myself two screens if I could get that size [...], but no such monitor exists [...] but they're now unobtainable.

    I can easily get the LP2065 from online retailers. LG, not so much, though, for some reason.



  • Is it just me, or does e-mail subscription on this board no longer work?

    @dhromed said:

    You're in luck: it does not! It may need a different configuration, but it works just as well.

    I've never checked, but I know that ClearType is far better in Windows 7, where it ropes in classic AA to handle the horizontal curves. Can XP support it rotated? Wikipedia says "no" for any OS. I would dig deeper if the panel for rotation was > 1280 px high :) ClearType wouldn't make much sense rotated anyway as most strokes in letters are closer to vertical, suiting the horizontal RGB subpixel arrangement well. Our *VA LCD television though has the subpixels arranged vertically instead for some reason.

    @dhromed said:

    The LP2065 is an S-IPS...

    OK, that's interesting, HP have reverted to IPS again. They kept quiet about the panel type last time I checked (a few months ago), but the detailed specs do now clearly state IPS (not S-IPS, just IPS, but the panel is reported as S-IPS (see below). However, it's pure chance what specific retailers have in stock as HP have used both panels and online retailers' monitor specs are as laughably incomplete and inaccurate as their categorisation and filtering by nerd-oriented parameters, is lamentable.

    TFT Central panel search reports “20" LG.Display S-IPS (LM201U05) or AU Optronics AMVA (M201UN02 V6)” (both 8 ms GTG) for the LP2065. The A-MVA is an inferior panel but I would gladly take it if the price was right. It isn't.

    A lot of retailers describe IPS as 6-bit (16.2 M) and I could have saved £40 on the price of my L2000CP if I'd realised that the L2000CP-SF was "silver frame" and not a cheaper 6-bit variant as all the incorrect specs suggested. And I still ended up with the SF, which is fine as it's a really attractive display (though the stand is wobbly).

    @dhromed said:

    Funny how I actually indicated this one to my employer as it was cheaper for the exact same panel, but I erroneously got the superior alternnative instead. The HP LP2065 has an awesome stand. You want it.

    I am not fussed about the stand really though, I just want 20″ 4:3 :) It's just not financially viable right now, especially buying two (so that I don't have a horribly mismatched desktop with no provision of window display spanning).

    @dhromed said:

    I've never seen any indication anywhere, be it in online product specs or even on the monitor itself, what sort of panel is used, but I reliably deducted it from the viewing angle and refresh rate.

    Response time between *VA and *IPS isn't that dissimilar (see above, 8 ms GTG spec used for both panels), and my 8 ms S-IPS is close enough to 0 ms for most things (it has certain bad colour pairs like black and lime green). Viewing angle between *VA and *IPS is also very similar -- the principle weaknesses are that black turns to varying bruise shades from an angle on IPS and black levels are relatively poor, and darker shades reduce to black when looking straight on with *VA, or so I've read -- never noticed that myself.

    @dhromed said:

    If it says somthing like "178° angle, 8ms resp GtG", then it's most certainly IPS. TN commonly does 100-120° at 2-5ms. I've never experienced an MVA.

    TN is more like 160–170°. TN from the sides and above is really pretty decent, it's mostly looking up from below that you see the characteristic total inversion of the display. The viewing angle doesn't measure the point where the image changes from perfect, but the angle at which contrast is reduced to, say, 1:10 -- there's a very visible drop in contrast on my S-IPS if I start to stand up, but the important part is that colour and intensity is uniform across the display within the range of angles that light heading for my eye subtends from the panel. TN shows visible shifts across the panel even from straight on, which ranges from quite tolerable and typically unnoticeable (Dell) to horrendous (LG in Iiyama for example).

    @dhromed said:

    I can easily get the LP2065 from online retailers. LG, not so much, though, for some reason.

    The LP2065 is widely available, but it's relatively expensive, although not much above half the price of a comparable spec NEC. A friend has an old NEC gloss S-IPS – if you can stand the glare, it's spectacular, although the backlight coverage is pretty shabby, perhaps from age.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I know that ClearType is far better in Windows 7
     

    Indeed, CT on 7 does both axes.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Can XP support it rotated? Wikipedia says "no" for any OS. I would dig deeper if the panel for rotation was > 1280 px high :) ClearType wouldn't make much sense rotated anyway as most strokes in letters are closer to vertical, suiting the horizontal RGB subpixel arrangement well.

    It's irrelevant. CT, when properly configured, works just as well on vertical RGB subpixels, and on CRT non-pixels. Try it.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    OK, that's interesting, HP have reverted to IPS again.

    Uh, weird. Mine is about 1.5 years old, and it was IPS then.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    A lot of retailers describe IPS as 6-bit (16.2 M)

    ... how can they describe 6bpp as 16.2M? 2^18 = 262K. Barely worth considering.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    TN is more like 160–170°.

    No TN I've seen has anything approaching that kind of angle, but perhaps they're improved the technology in the past two years. I still equate TN with cheap shit, but that may be an obsolete standpoint.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The LP2065 is widely available, but it's relatively expensive

    The interesting thing is that I see one for €400+ and one for €277. It's odd.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Response time between *VA and *IPS isn't that dissimilar (see above, 8 ms GTG spec used for both panels), and my 8 ms S-IPS is close enough to 0 ms for most things

    Yeah. the supposedly "slow" time of 8ms really isn't bad at all. After all, it comes down to 125fps.

     

    I do have trouble with the combo of this monitor + my video card. I don't know what's causing it, but whenever the monitor comes back from standby, it mistakenly thinks it should output at something link 1800×1210, and the picture then goes schizoid, flitting back and forth between scaled/not scaled, halfway off the screen. Also strange patches of noise appear.

    Easily fixed by tapping the INPUT button, but still annoying.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     



  • @dhromed said:

    It's irrelevant. CT, when properly configured, works just as well on vertical RGB subpixels, and on CRT non-pixels. Try it.

    I've used it on a CRT, but then, CRTs are irritatingly fuzzy no matter what you do with them. You mean, that ClearType works OK in vertical orientation on a system that supports it? I have no intention to try -- I don't want all my desktop icons scrambled and all my window layouts hosed by rotating the display :)

    @dhromed said:

    Uh, weird. Mine is about 1.5 years old, and it was IPS then.

    It's a common practice to start out with *IPS as it's highest quality, and then swap over to *VA when nobody is looking. With Dell it's referred to as the Dell panel lottery, but HP had a panel lottery with the LP2065 also. I don't mind getting the A-MVA as the LG.display panel it shares with my L2000CP has issues including short-term burn in (a fundamental IPS flaw) and what comes across as bad interference that is apparently a panel fault. Flat screens have a long way to go yet ...

    @dhromed said:

    ... how can they describe 6bpp as 16.2M? 2^18 = 262K. Barely worth considering.

    It's dithered spatially or temporally. I noticed, when I had the screen at a steep angle, that the Dell Latitude D530 display is spatially dithered -- you can see the dithering when you view from below where the contrast rises sharply. I imagine the Dell E176FP is temporally dithered (AKA frame rate control). It's a far lesser concern honestly than not getting the same shade at the top of the screen as at the bottom.

    @dhromed said:

    No TN I've seen has anything approaching [160–170°], but perhaps they're improved the technology in the past two years. I still equate TN with cheap shit, but that may be an obsolete standpoint.

    Depends on the brand. Dell TN is significantly better than other brands I've tried, but it's always been significantly more expensive. I've noticed with digital cameras that the viewing angle of TN also depends on the input power -- crank up the power to it and the viewing angle improves hugely. Let the camera drop into low-power LCD and the viewing angle drops.

    @dhromed said:

    The interesting thing is that I see one for €400+ and one for €277. It's odd.

    I have found what appears to be a great deal on them. I dropped the site an e-mail about their warranties, and guess what, they ignored me. But then, the pre-loved Macs site that sold me my G4 tower, ignored every e-mail I sent them, but they did ship my Mac, at way above the quoted spec (50 MHz faster CPU, SCSI adapter, DVI video adapter, Zip drive, more RAM, larger hard drive and a DVD writer instead of CD-ROM). I wasn't so keen on their packaging -- not just the fluffy things, but also large, ripped up slabs of expanded polystyrene that ground into powder that went everywhere, shredded paper and various other absurd items.

    @dhromed said:

    I do have trouble with the combo of this monitor + my video card. I don't know what's causing it, but whenever the monitor comes back from standby, it mistakenly thinks it should output at something link 1800×1210, and the picture then goes schizoid, flitting back and forth between scaled/not scaled, halfway off the screen. Also strange patches of noise appear.

    Easily fixed by tapping the INPUT button, but still annoying.

    Uh oh ... hopefully I won't see that :) I've got an ATI Radeon, probably a Radeon HD 2400 XT but I've forgotten, I'd have to check. Low-profile PCIe, dual DVI. Odd sort of bug to get from DVI -- unless you're on VGA? The huge problem with the LP2065 is that so few people actually admit to owning one that I can't build up an idea of its reputation. But it's that or a 2007FP and those are known for defects.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I've used it on a CRT, but then, CRTs are irritatingly fuzzy no matter what you do with them.
     

    Meh. My home one, while obviously fuzzier than any LCD, is just fine.

    Diff'rent eyes  for diff'rent folks, I guess.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    You mean, that ClearType works OK in vertical orientation

    Yes.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    on a system that supports it?

    Like, Windows and a rotating screen? Yes.

    I can't begin to overstate how irrelevant the RGB orientation is for my Cleartype joy. Really. It does not affect things. At all. Even when I force-position my glasses in they absolute optimal position, it's all fine & dandy and color fringing is zero.

    Really. I'm going to cease this idle speculation now; you get back to me when you've tried it. :)

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    dither. It's a far lesser concern honestly than not getting the same shade at the top of the screen as at the bottom.

    I can believe that.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    But then, the pre-loved Macs site that sold me my G4 tower, ignored every e-mail I sent them, but they did ship my Mac, at way above the quoted spec

    Hey, Macs are more expensive, spec for spec.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Uh oh ... hopefully I won't see that :) I've got an ATI Radeon, probably a Radeon HD 2400 XT but I've forgotten, I'd have to check. Low-profile PCIe, dual DVI. Odd sort of bug to get from DVI -- unless you're on VGA?

    It's an onboard Ati 36-something, DVI. My machine is a Dell Vostro.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The huge problem with the LP2065 is that so few people actually admit to owning one

    "Admit"? You mean they lie about it or omit mentioning it? It's an awesome monitor! We should all have one!



  • @stratos said:

    In times long past my monitor was once destroyed by a anti-stress ball that missed my head.

    What was your anti-stress ball made of? Unless it hit the monitor hard enough to knock it down, I can't see a rubber ball smashing a monitor.

    Now if I could borrow one of those balls ... I've been trying to get my CRT monitor swapped for an LCD one, maybe this will happen when my monitor suffers a sudden death...



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    A lot of retailers describe IPS as 6-bit (16.2 M)

    I am confused:
    You'd have to get to 24 bpp to get even close (16,777,216):   6 bpp = 64.  Or are we talking 6 bits per channel (RGBL) = 24 bpp?



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    @stratos said:
    In times long past my monitor was once destroyed by a anti-stress ball that missed my head.

    What was your anti-stress ball made of? Unless it hit the monitor hard enough to knock it down, I can't see a rubber ball smashing a monitor.

     

    Stainless steel.



  • @danixdefcon5 said:

    @stratos said:

    In times long past my monitor was once destroyed by a anti-stress ball that missed my head.

    What was your anti-stress ball made of? Unless it hit the monitor hard enough to knock it down, I can't see a rubber ball smashing a monitor.

    Now if I could borrow one of those balls ... I've been trying to get my CRT monitor swapped for an LCD one, maybe this will happen when my monitor suffers a sudden death...

     

    The monitors in question were dell 22" or 24" LCD's, can't really remember but probably rather fragile.  The balls, i dunno here is a picture of the type of balls http://img.en.china.cn/0/0,0,206,2054,550,550,b2121b59.jpg
    soft nylon skin, wrapping a rubberry sphere. You could easily squeeze them, but they had weight to them.

    As experience has proven, if one hits you squarely on the nose, your nose will not break but you will get a nose bleed.



  • @Medezark said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    A lot of retailers describe IPS as 6-bit (16.2 M)

    I am confused:
    You'd have to get to 24 bpp to get even close (16,777,216):   6 bpp = 64.  Or are we talking 6 bits per channel (RGBL) = 24 bpp?

    The displays are 6 bits per channel, RGB, 262 144 colours. The remaining 16 515 072 colours are simulated using dithering, using two methods. The first way is for the display to draw a pattern of dots taken from the 260k supported colours, just like how you had to do this back when you had dispalys of only 2 to 256 colours. The Dell Latitude D530 display for example does this -- if you look at an IE 8 error page with the screen tilted right back the dither patterns are quite visible.

    Alternatively, the display will cycle pixels back and forth between the two nearest shades on alternative frames-- known as frame rate control.

    These displays are advertised as 16.2 million colours instead of 16.7 million, but the real colour count is far lower. *VA and *IPS panels should all be the full 8-bit, and some are higher bit depth internally to cope with colour adjustment without loss.



  • @dhromed said:

    I can't begin to overstate how irrelevant the RGB orientation is for my Cleartype joy. Really. It does not affect things. At all. Even when I force-position my glasses in they absolute optimal position, it's all fine & dandy and color fringing is zero.

    This is not true. Windows XP does not support ClearType under rotated video. A basic understanding of LCD subpixel rendering will clarify why you will see fringing when the display contents are rotated through ±90°. However, the fringing is indeed very subtle and is not much worse than some of the artefacting I've seen even with correct orientation. LCD subpixel rendering itself though is an arcane mixture of black magic. No-one for example explains why pale orange and lilac are used in varying degrees to shift pixels as it should also work with RGB primaries by definition, although it definitely doesn't.

    Since I had to log out to test this (lest my desktop be scrambled), I decided I may as well revert explorer.exe back to the factory copy with "Start" written on the Start button, to see if this cures its occasional crashes (in case I introduced some sort of offset error in some pointer maths somewhere). Explorer has always crashed periodically ever since I set this PC up, but at least now I won't feel that it's my own doing as Explorer is back as it was.

    However, ever since my reboot yesterday, Pidgin now starts during login with no tray icon, and this time, Winamp started opening with no main window. Altering the window positioning in the INI file did nothing -- I had to right-click its taskbar button and select Restore to get it back as, somehow, it had recorded that one window as minimised while leaving the playlist and cue sheet windows visible. These problems seem to correspond with finally installing Microsoft IntelliPoint … it hope it really isn't that broken. I really do.

    @dhromed said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The huge problem with the LP2065 is that so few people actually admit to owning one

    "Admit"? You mean they lie about it or omit mentioning it? It's an awesome monitor! We should all have one!

    I guess most owners don't consider it noteworthy enough to write about it, or it doesn't appeal to the people who go in for higher-end displays. I did find a [H]ard|Forum topic about HP's panel lottery, but otherwise it gets little mention. Note that page 13 of that topic has a very disturbing photo of just how bad A-MVA is. Makes me very nervous about ordering an LP2065 now, although they appear to have predominantly shipped with S-IPS panels. I was going to order mine today, but now I'm scared I'll spend money on screens that have even more ghastly design defects than TN (although I've worked on a P-MVA panel before and it was quite tolerable, a Formac Gallery 1900 OX, much nicer than TN).

    The LG L2000CP is even more rare -- it got the odd review (apparently its DVI support sucks, but my PC only does analogue and 1600×1200 works fine like that) but for the most part you wouldn't know that it existed, and despite having the same S-IPS panel as the widely available LP2065, even sales of old stock L2000CPs has totally dried up. That monitor had a brief glimmer of existence before being truly dead and buried. Which is a shame because it's a pretty nice display (having owned one for two years now). Its main problem is what appears to be bad signal interference that apparently is a fault of the panel. There are also banding issues where every shade of grey has a subtle colouration. I imagine the LP2065 has similar flaws, as well as the white-to-red vertical gradient (a white window tends to pale orange-red-grey at the bottom of the screen), but I can live with it.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    This is not true. Windows XP does not support ClearType under rotated video.
     

    I never claimed it did. I'm aware of the concepts behind ClearType and how Windows supports it, and I know that it's horizontal-only, leaving nearly-horizontal edges nastily aliased.

    I only said that CT works just fine on monitor[-configuration]s that, in theory, should look bad with it ( = CRT and portrait LCD), but the reality is that it doesn't and it looks quite normal.

     @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Note that page 13 of that topic has a very disturbing photo of just how bad A-MVA is. Makes me very nervous about ordering an LP2065 now

    I understand. I guess I lucked out. I'm still uncertain why such info is generally nowhere to be found, not even among all the various numbers and barcodes on the back of a monitor. Manufacturers quote numbers, but somewhy omit the actual technology used.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    There are also banding issues where every shade of grey has a subtle colouration. I imagine the LP2065 has similar flaws

    Yeah, it's highly subtle and barely noticeable even under experimental conditions, but it's there.

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    white-to-red vertical gradient

    Nothing of that, though. Perhaps it's mitigated by portrait orientation.

     

     

     



  • If I were someone who didn't notice the subtle flaws of flat panel displays I wouldn't be so concerned with whether I purchased TN, *VA or *IPS ;-) I am very sentitive to the deficiencies of ClearType and always install ClearType tuner to try to find the best compromise, typically with far higher gamma than the default, which for me always looks very watery and fringed. ClearType boldness though depends in part on the ambient light quality -- diffused natural light gives ClearType, for me, a much more solid, smooth, jet black look as well as making the backlight appear a more pure white. I think having a rotated panel with all fringed text would get on my nerves. ClearType isn't that great on CRT either -- did people here not complain about ClearType in screenshots a year or two ago? Now that the majority of people use RGB-order LCDs, it's not so great a concern, except for those people still using default ClearType gamma!

    If I turn my head to the right (I have no room to rotate the panel, my Mac's screen is next to it), the "top" of the screen now has a pale yellowish tint. The fade towards orange or red at the bottom is pretty subtle but I noticed it straight after purchasing it. How noticeable it is seems to depend on the lighting -- the screen looks much whiter and much more uniform with diffused daylight as the room's light source than under harsh compact fluorescent lighting.

    Just need to wait to see what monitors arrive on Tuesday. Hopefully the GSM002 revision :) (S-IPS with improved backlight)

    I don't think manufacturers want you to know though, because it would create a headache when they want to sneak in an inferior panel, and that is what they should not be doing. It's bad enough when people do find out and try to wangle getting the better monitor. So far as I know, LG never switched to *VA with the L2000 series; glad they retained a sense of honour.

    You can read off the panel type or other details from the service menu. I read that for the LP2065 you hold menu while powering on the display, and Service Menu is added to the OSD. On the L2000CP, that causes the service menu to appear and to replace the main menu completely. Sadly I don't know how to use the service menu and accidentally wiped the operational usage data. Mine is configured as "PANEL ▶ LPLNEWLIPS" by default, but this can be change to other values including AUO (AU Optronics who make A-MVA panels such as in the LP2065) that pretty much just make the brightness drop considerably. Yours will list the specific panel model, I think. I really shouldn't dick around in that menu though, lest I break something else.



  •  I often play with a plush Cthulhu while I brainstorm.  For me, though, it's just my personality -- I naturally have to have something in my hands while I think, and after a somewhat painful experience when I was lost in thought and absentmindedly playing with a stapler, I decided to have a designated object to play with while I think.



  • @Cat said:

     I often play with a plush Cthulhu while I brainstorm.  For me, though, it's just my personality -- I naturally have to have something in my hands while I think, and after a somewhat painful experience when I was lost in thought and absentmindedly playing with a stapler, I decided to have a designated object to play with while I think.

    I keep a Zhu Zhu Pet on my desk for that reason. It annoys my co-workers when I tap the nose though.



  • @Cat said:

    or me, though, it's just my personality -- I naturally have to have something in my hands while I think, and after a somewhat painful experience when I was lost in thought and absentmindedly playing with a stapler, I decided to have a designated object to play with while I think.

     I used to do something similar with a staple remove, also with painful results

    Time spent playing with staple remover = 53 hours
    Time spent removing staples with staple remover = 14 seconds



  • Grr. I got stitched up.

    Ordered two "A+ grade" refurbished HP LP2065s at the weekend. By this point I'd stopped caring about S-IPS vs A-MVA as the P-MVA in the office -- the previous generation to A-MVA -- is vivid and dazzling. If I got two of those I'd be in love.

    I got two HP LP2035s. A model I hadn't even heard of. IPS of some variety, actually much better viewing angle than the LP2065/2007FP/L2000CP -- very diminished "rolling darkness" effect as you move away from dead centre. The panel is 16 ms instead of 8 ms but again, people seriously understate IPS as it's as good as 0 ms

    However, they have some sort of anglepoise lamp stand where the height also controls distance to you. That is absolutely not what the LP2065 has. The promise of "no missing/broken parts" wasn't kept -- one has a broken stand with the cover missing, and it won't raise up to the right height. Both have discoloured displays -- one seems to get more pink towards the right, the other is pink all over except the edges (not the backlight as you don't see a glow when the display is black). White is not affected by this, so I can't calibrate to white as all I get is correct colour around the edges. They've both seen 3,700 hours (1 year at 8 hours/day) on backlight, so the backlights must have sucked from new, same as the early GSM000 revision of the LP2065, as they're really dim, because backlights don't fade that fast.

    The Formac Gallery P-MVA I mentioned was thrown out by a customer, despite being in mint condition physically and perfect working order. My existing Dell 17" displays, despite being some years old, are also in far better condition (neither was new when I got it and I've had one nearly three years). I don't know what they mean by "A+ grade", but my L2000CP at home could be dusted and sold as new, I've taken that much care of it. There are no scratches, and there is no wear. Backlight still set to 50% and still plenty bright enough. Can't tell you its operational life as I wiped that by mistake when dicking around in the service menu ;-P That was very stupid of me as I'd like to have that as a comparison. Guessing around 1,000–1,300 hours.

    I never lose awareness of how much my L2000CP owns.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Ordered two "A+ grade" refurbished HP LP2065s
     

    Liars!

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I got two HP LP2035s. A model I hadn't even heard of.

    Google returns 50 results for that, only one of which is a different monitor. Are you sure that number exists?

     

    You weren't able to go up there and inspect the goods?

     

     



  • @dhromed said:

    Google returns 50 results for [LP2035], only one of which is a different monitor. Are you sure that number exists?

    Sorry, I was really tired. L2035. Not actually that bad a display if it came with the original stand -- excellent viewing angle, better than the L2000CP -- but the display of that model was very dim, and I found that most disagreeable, while I run my L2000CP and E175FPs at below maximum brightness (the L2000CP is still at 50% brightness after two years, otherwise it would wear my eyeballs out). I can't fault the LP2065 though, everything I read and see just confirms its excellence and superiority. I didn't realise either that it has 4 USB ports (although I've never seen any sense in putting them in a display, especially with a rotatey stand that will tilt if you push it).

    I still want two of them. I've contemplated buying two brand new for my 30th birthday (almost upon me, even though I typically don't have anything to do with birthdays, mine or anyone, and expect it to be another routine day exactly like any other), but buying myself £700-worth of displays for the office seems like a spectacular misappropriation of my money and I would most likely spend the rest of my days in a padded cell somewhere.

    @dhromed said:

    You weren't able to go up there and inspect the goods?

    It was an option, but had I taken the train all the way up to Birmingham just to discover that they were selling turds as nice displays …

    It's not like they're disreputable as a company -- they get great reviews from everyone. I don't know that it's even their fault though; I think it's bad karma on my part. Like the Reality Distortion Field, but the reverse -- my deeply negative karma turns nice displays into turds when I try buying one, and now I've cursed them with a load of bad stock. ("Well, she turned me into a newt!")



  • @OzPeter said:

    One thing the lecturer went on about (that I tend to disagree with) was his insistence that a a happy programming team likes to have soft toys and likes to throw them around.
     

    People who don't do any real work and just give lectures are always coming up with stupid crap like this. I would ignore the vast majority of everything the "lecturer" says.

     



  • Hopefully, it was a metaphor. Otherwise, you ought to ask him, what he smoked before the lecture.



  • I was told the same thing by a trainer at my last job while in an all day "verbal communications"course.  She said the reasoning was that, although counter intuitive, having some random object to manipulate with their hands actually keeps people more alert and focused on the task at hand.  It's probably wormed its way into agile coaching since a lot of those methodology coaches are pretty much one step above motivational speaker.  It actually did seem to work in the class, but I think that was because the material was so ass-tardedly inane stretching my little rubber tentacle orb was the only thing keeping me sane.  I dunno how well it'd work in an actual team meeting where everyone's focused already by virtue of wanting to do their jobs, and I've never seen it outside of the one class.



  •  Yeah I've worked on a few honest-to-god agile teams and we didn't have things to throw at each other.  (aside from the occasional "hey man will you toss me a piece of that candy" which is due more to laziness than anything else)


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