dword.dk

This has been scheduled for quite some time, but today I finally got around to updating the software on this blog, including removing spam from the database (12,000+ comments). Now I have effectively blocked new spam attacks. Seems it was also actively being exploited to put hidden links to various sites in the posts — what a complete waste of time. I hopefully put an end to that now, at least for a while.

Yes, I know I should do this more regularly to avoid such problems, but I’m lazy when it comes to this. Not least because the process for updating the blog software is rather involved. It means I have to make a complete backup of the files and database, and create a patch with the customizations I’ve made against the old version. Then installing the new version, upgrading the database, fixing any problems caused by the upgrade, and then re-implementing the old customizations in the new version by inspecting the patch created earlier. Of course this task gets easier the more often it is done, so I should probably be doing it more often in the future.

Long time, no updates. It’s not that nothing is happening, though. Lots of small projects, but none worth showing off (yet at least). Anyway, I just have to brag about my new screen, so here it is.

As it says in the headline it’s a 24″ widescreen, i.e. it is damn big. I’ve been reluctant to buying an LCD flat panel for years because I never found their colour representation to be anywhere close to my good old Trinitron CRT. Things have changed, though, and when I came to think about it I don’t require exact colours in any of my daily work anyway. On the other hand, what I absolutely must have is lots of screen estate and fast response time.

It appears I got all three things: great colours, high resolution (1920×1200), and fast response time (6ms grey-grey). And not the least, the image is ultra sharp, which certainly wasn’t the case with my CRT, so the name is in fact not lying. As the display on my laptop has the same resolution I now effectively have a desktop of 3840×1200 pixels, which should suffice in most cases. Actually I wasn’t sure until I tried that my graphics adapter could handle two displays at that resolution using DVI-D. Nice surprise.

Well, I had been thinking about buying a flat panel for some time, but it wasn’t until I stumbled across an ad from Dell I started looking into it. I spent some time reading reviews, and it appears that the 2407WFP is competing with Samsung’s 244T. From what I understand they’re using the same (Samsung) panel, but the Dell has more facilities and connections and comes at a lower price.

Most of the reviews mentioned problems with banding, streaking, and blurry text on the Dell, especially on the earliest firmware. I haven’t seen any of these problems; the image quality is absolutely top notch. And what an awesome experience it is when gaming! No problems with response time whatsoever. I truly recommend this screen.

Here are some pictures showing my new and old setup, and a close up of some text to refute that the screen blurs text. Click the images to enlarge.

Well it’s starting to thaw now, but since last Thursday large parts of the country has been nearly in state of emergency because of heavy snow (by the standards here). Thursday until Sunday it has been almost impossible to get anywhere. All bus routes were cancelled for four days, but not completely without reason; see the picture to the right. This was the first real snow this winter, so maybe it came as a surprise for those responsible for snow removal.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this little gem. It’s a program called AutoStitch, which makes it really easy to create panoramas from a series of pictures. You basically just point and shoot a series of pictures that overlap a little, and when they’re fed into the program it automatically figures out how they fit together. It works really well and is damn fast compared to other panorama software I’ve used before. Below are some panoramas I made with it. (I cheated a little with the sky, because the originals didn’t cover enough—that’s also why the composition is a little messed.)

I must admit that Dell’s next business day service is nice. I got my video adapter replaced today, and everything is back to normal. Let’s hope this one will last a little longer.

The video adapter in my laptop was just fried. It’s a Dell XPS Gen 2 with a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra, and it’s been running flawlessly for 10 months. I was running some 3d graphics when suddenly the screen froze, and weird animated patterns appeared all over the screen. Admittedly I was running TwinView and pushing it a little, but it’s built for just that, so it should be able to handle it. When rebooting even the BIOS splash doesn’t show up, although the machine itself appears to start up normally. Luckily I have 2 months left of my on-site service, so now the “Dell man” should come and replace the adapter by tuesday. Still it sucks.

Hi, and welcome to my new weblog. I figured using a weblog for maintaining a little site as this one would be a lot easier than hacking around with those old .html files all the time. So here it is. Still a bit work in progress, though.

To check out my software projects that used to reside here on the front page, just use the links under Software in the pages list to the right.