Got Myself a Little Computer Upgrade for Christmas
Holiday shipping is a nightmare. All of the components for my new, upgraded main system finally arrived this afternoon.
As you can see, I got a second 23" Cinema HD Display for my G5. As you can also see, the colors don't match at all. The original is on the right, and it's been to Apple for a repair, so I know it's right. It also matches the color on my ancient lucite 23" Cinema HD Display that my hot rod, upgraded G4 Cube runs. For some reason, the "new" monitor is ridiculously pink. Yes, I went through all of the calibration steps with both monitors, and it doesn't matter; they still don't match. Not even close. Oh well, it works, and it was quite cheap. You get what you pay for, I guess.
Anyway, as you can also see, I can get four full-page PDF's next to each other for practicing so that I don't have to worry about page turns, and by simply narrowing the windows and increasing their numbers, I can also get six to eight and still have them large enough to read. Just piddling around with this has raised a lot of questions in my mind about PDF rendering. The Mac OS X Preview app does not render PDF's with anything like good resolution, which I figure is because of some licensing agreement with Adobe. OK, fine. However, if I change the PDF's page by page into JPG files within Preview, they look fantastic (That's how I do them for blog posts, and then I size them to match my blog template in iPhoto).
Now, you would think, then - or, I did - that simply getting Adobe Reader would solve the problem. Wrong. Music PDF's look like dog poop in Adobe Reader. I wonder why that is? It's marginally better than Preview in some respects, but the note heads are so off that you cant tell if some of them are on a line or in a space. Completely unacceptable.
The solution? Safari. Those are four Safari windows. I just drag and drop the PDF's into live Safari windows, and they look even better than the JPG's I create in Preview (Exactly like those JPG's, in fact, but at a stunningly precise resolution). You know, PDF is supposed to stand for Portable Document Format (Or File), so why there should be ANY difference in how they are rendered by various programs is a mystery to me. It seems abjectly stupid that there should be any difference, to be frank, but there you have it/oh well.
I also got some speaker shelves for my Anthro table so that I could move them off to the side, and I must say the stereo field is a lot better with them farther apart. Those little Tannoy Proto-J's run by the Bryston 3B-NPB are an amazing combination, and those Proto-J's are ten years old this year.
I checked one of my Sitemeter hits just for grins, and I was dismayed to learn that my monitor resolution is still listed as 1920x1200 and not 3840x1200. I don't understand that either.
What's up with this guy? - A fairly regular visitor, BTW.
Look at the resolution: 30720x768! Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?! A vertical resolution of 768 usually goes with a horizontal resolution of 1024. Well, 30720 divided by 1024 equals 30: Thirty monitors? Surround or tiled?! I must admit, that bakes my brain... but I digress.
Working into the new practice method, and it's wonderful. It'll take a while for it to fully evolve, but I expected that. Now I'll be able to keep pieces more solidly in my memory via visual reenforcement, and I'll be able to add new pieces faster, because when I get to where they belong in the set, I just read through them. Memorizing new stuff will just happen naturally and organically as I cycle through the set multiple times.
I'm psyched.
As you can see, I got a second 23" Cinema HD Display for my G5. As you can also see, the colors don't match at all. The original is on the right, and it's been to Apple for a repair, so I know it's right. It also matches the color on my ancient lucite 23" Cinema HD Display that my hot rod, upgraded G4 Cube runs. For some reason, the "new" monitor is ridiculously pink. Yes, I went through all of the calibration steps with both monitors, and it doesn't matter; they still don't match. Not even close. Oh well, it works, and it was quite cheap. You get what you pay for, I guess.
Anyway, as you can also see, I can get four full-page PDF's next to each other for practicing so that I don't have to worry about page turns, and by simply narrowing the windows and increasing their numbers, I can also get six to eight and still have them large enough to read. Just piddling around with this has raised a lot of questions in my mind about PDF rendering. The Mac OS X Preview app does not render PDF's with anything like good resolution, which I figure is because of some licensing agreement with Adobe. OK, fine. However, if I change the PDF's page by page into JPG files within Preview, they look fantastic (That's how I do them for blog posts, and then I size them to match my blog template in iPhoto).
Now, you would think, then - or, I did - that simply getting Adobe Reader would solve the problem. Wrong. Music PDF's look like dog poop in Adobe Reader. I wonder why that is? It's marginally better than Preview in some respects, but the note heads are so off that you cant tell if some of them are on a line or in a space. Completely unacceptable.
The solution? Safari. Those are four Safari windows. I just drag and drop the PDF's into live Safari windows, and they look even better than the JPG's I create in Preview (Exactly like those JPG's, in fact, but at a stunningly precise resolution). You know, PDF is supposed to stand for Portable Document Format (Or File), so why there should be ANY difference in how they are rendered by various programs is a mystery to me. It seems abjectly stupid that there should be any difference, to be frank, but there you have it/oh well.
I also got some speaker shelves for my Anthro table so that I could move them off to the side, and I must say the stereo field is a lot better with them farther apart. Those little Tannoy Proto-J's run by the Bryston 3B-NPB are an amazing combination, and those Proto-J's are ten years old this year.
I checked one of my Sitemeter hits just for grins, and I was dismayed to learn that my monitor resolution is still listed as 1920x1200 and not 3840x1200. I don't understand that either.
What's up with this guy? - A fairly regular visitor, BTW.
Look at the resolution: 30720x768! Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?! A vertical resolution of 768 usually goes with a horizontal resolution of 1024. Well, 30720 divided by 1024 equals 30: Thirty monitors? Surround or tiled?! I must admit, that bakes my brain... but I digress.
Working into the new practice method, and it's wonderful. It'll take a while for it to fully evolve, but I expected that. Now I'll be able to keep pieces more solidly in my memory via visual reenforcement, and I'll be able to add new pieces faster, because when I get to where they belong in the set, I just read through them. Memorizing new stuff will just happen naturally and organically as I cycle through the set multiple times.
I'm psyched.
posted by Hucbald at 4:27 PM
4 Comments:
The problem with the 27" iMac is that its max resolution is 2560 x 1440.
Cheers
Yeah, Apple changed the aspect ratio and so you lost 160 pixels in the vertical versus the 30" Cinema HD Display, which is 2560x1600. My heart bleeds for you. lol
Sweeet
Did I mention i7 Quad Core? 2.8 GHz?
Cheers
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