[ale] [OT] Wide Screen monitors / using screen real estate

[Ron Frazier]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the links.  That weather site is cool.  However, I don't 
think they have any stand alone sizable and movable radar app.  I've 
heard of conky before.  I don't think it can do a standalone sizable and 
movable window either.  If I come across anything relevant, I'll post it.

Sincerely,

Ron

On 9/8/2011 9:48 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
> On 09/08/2011 05:47 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
>    
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I thought I'd post something a bit light hearted, since I usually post
>> serious stuff.
>>
>> Every once in a while, I save up enough money to get some new tech
>> toys.  I just got my hands on an LG 23" 1080p wide screen monitor, to
>> replace a 19" "square" monitor that I had.  I TOTALLY love it.  It has
>> almost as much vertical space as the old one, and having the extra side
>> to side electronic real estate is great.  I've noticed that many web
>> pages, particularly forums, are not set up to handle reduced width
>> properly, and don't reflow text very well.  So, I read part of a line
>> then scroll over to read the rest then scroll back.  I use treestyle tab
>> in Firefox to make a vertical bar of all my tabs, which reduces the
>> width a bit more.  That problem won't happen with the Firefox window
>> almost 2 feet wide.  However, generally, I'll probably either tile two
>> windows side by side on the monitor, or have one window take up 2/3 of
>> the width and do something else with the rest of the space.
>>
>> So, that's what I have the question about.  Note, that I routinely
>> alternate between Windows and Ubuntu.  So, these questions apply equally
>> to either.  I know some of you work with Windows too, so feel free to
>> send me tips for that as well as Linux.  The apps involved don't have to
>> be the same on both platforms, but that would be nice.  I routinely
>> leave about 1" to 1.5" at the bottom of my screen to leave space for cpu
>> monitors, background processes I'm monitoring, terminal windows, weather
>> data, etc.  Now I am going to be leaving about 1/3 of the width of my
>> screen open (unless I need it) for similar things.  This works out to be
>> about 6" of width.
>>
>> At the very least, I'd like to be able to place any or all of the
>> following in this empty real estate:
>>
>> * Video.  Like YouTube, etc.  Could also be a video file, like an MP4, etc.
>>
>> I know I can play video files in Windows with Media Player and in Linux
>> with Totem or whatever Ubuntu comes with.  These applications seem to
>> scale to a reduced size pretty well.  I don't think I've tried to go
>> really small with Totem.  However, I haven't found a good way to scale a
>> flash streaming video like YouTube very well.  I know I can use the zoom
>> out (ctrl and -) function in Firefox, then drag the window off the edge
>> of the screen so only the video shows.  But that's really messy, and it
>> makes it impossible to read the website again without zooming back in.
>> I'd like a better solution to that.  So, I need a way to play video,
>> resized to whatever space is available on the screen, even very tiny,
>> whether from flash or a media file, in Linux or Windows.
>>
>> * Weather Radar
>>
>> I'd like a live weather radar showing the metro area, updated
>> continuously or at 5-10 minute intervals, that never times out, and that
>> never reverts to the local meteorologist moving the radar picture in and
>> out and zooming around.  It needs to be sizable to any available screen
>> space just as with the video.  Now, I know I can point my web browser to
>> weather.com and get a flash based radar map.  The problem is that it
>> times out fairly rapidly and is not easily scalable due to the flash
>> issues discussed above.  I'd like to do the same thing on either Linux
>> or Windows.
>>      
> Weather Underground
> wunderground.com
>    
>> * CPU monitor.
>>
>> Here's the deal.  In Ubuntu, in Gnome, I can use two panel applets to
>> monitor the CPU.  One is the system monitor, which gives a basic graph
>> of the CPU utilization.  The other is the CPU Frequency Scaling
>> Monitor.  This allows me to monitor any CPU core and tell what frequency
>> it's operating at, so I can see when the frequency is reduced during
>> light demand or increased in heavy demand.  By loading multiples of the
>> FSM, I can monitor the frequency of each core.  That's very handy to
>> observe how heavily loaded each core is.  On the windows side of the
>> fence, Task Manager is my go to tool.  It displays a graph of the
>> utilization of each core.  The problem is that it doesn't display the
>> frequency, and it cannot be scaled down less than about 1.5" x 4".  So,
>> what I want is something which will display a utilization graph of every
>> core, and display the real time frequency of every core (as a number,
>> not a graph), and will be resizeable to any size, placeable to any
>> location, on either operating system.
>>      
> conky
> http://conky.sourceforge.net/
> http://www.howtoforge.com/conky_system_monitor_on_ubuntu704
>    
>> Suggestions for other cool small size apps are welcome.
>>
>> I was going to talk about Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games,
>> but I'll do that in a separate message.
>>
>> Any help is greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>      

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
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Ron Frazier

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