short takes

[cellio]

A recent news article about a spate of traffic violations (with police lying in wait to write tickets) mentioned that the vehicle code requires drivers to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks or at intersections (even without crosswalks). I guess a different law covers failure to yield to jaywalkers.

I was amused by this indirect response to my post about probability.

I have a new(er) machine at work, which I'm in the process of configuring. (This always takes longer than you expect. Today's main hassle was making cygwin and ant play nicely with each other, which took a while to diagnose.) Anyway, after bringing the OS (Win2k) up to date and installing a bunch of software, and before running any web browsers, I ran Spybot Search and Destroy. It found three pieces of spyware. Sheesh!

The graphics card on my new machine is fuzzy -- or rather, its output is fuzzy (though for all I know the card is too). I have the latest driver, and the fonts are still harder to read than on my old machine, with all parameters and the monitor identical. This must get fixed before my eyes rebel. I wonder if there is a way to choose an appropriate graphics card, or if I'd just be shooting in the dark. But aside from that, the machine is definitely a win -- I timed a process that used to take 3-4 minutes at 40 seconds today.

December already? Where's that coem from? :-) We have no free Saturday nights in December: gaming, then my company's party, then Dani's company party (early) and a friends' party we wouldn't miss for anything, and then a family visit. (And then more gaming on new year's day, but that's not technically December.)

Comments

[goljerp]

The graphics card on my new machine is fuzzy -- or rather, its output is fuzzy (though for all I know the card is too). I have the latest driver, and the fonts are still harder to read than on my old machine, with all parameters and the monitor identical.

Did you check to see if MS has some sort of font anti-aliasing turned on, or does the fuzzynes extend to 1-pixel lines, etc.?

[cellio]

I thought of that, but haven't been able to find any relevant settings anywhere. (It's kind of hard for me to evaluate one-pixel lines, but I think everything is fuzzier, not just text.)

Our IT folks agree with my assessment that a new graphics card is cheaper than the time of people to investigate this, so this should be fixed on Monday.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

They'll be providing you with one of these (http://www.buy.com/retail/product_jump.asp?sku=10343929&SearchEngine=Froogle&SearchTerm=10343929&Type=PE&Category=Comp&dcaid=17379), I presume?

[cellio]

It'll be a surprise for all of us on Monday. I'd be especially surprised if they did. :-)