A few days ago, on a whim, I went out to Best Buy and took a look at their widescreen LCD monitors. At the moment I have a large and fairly heavy IBM 17″ CRT (read: doorstop). Granted, it’s a great monitor - handles high resolutions (it runs happily at 1600×1200 all day long) and is pretty crisp. Not bad for a refurbished unit I got on sale for less than $100. It’s got a decent picture even from far away - like, say, the regular distance between a couch and TV. But it’s a little small when one is watching something widescreen on it.

A short overview of monitor anatomy, if I may. Regular “square” monitors aren’t really square at all. They have an aspect ratio of 4:3. In layman’s terms, that means the screen is 33% wider than it is high. When you see a 17-inch monitor advertised, that means the diagonal measurement of the monitor (from top left to bottom right) is 17 inches, give or take. Here’s where that whole aspect ratio comes into play. If your monitor were four inches wide and three inches high, you’d have a hard time reading anything on it. More than that, you could tell people you had a five inch monitor, because the diagonal would measure five inches. (Don’t believe me? Remember a^2 + b^2 = c^2? That’s the formula for finding the length of the sides of a right triangle. Plug in 4 and 3 for a and b, and you’ll find that c equals 5. That’s your five inches. To figure out what those other two sides would be for a seventeen inch diagonal, divide 17 by 5 (4^2 + 3^2 = 16 + 9 = 25, then take the square root of that = 5), then multiply your 3 and 4 by that number. (Hint: this was a simple ratio calculation.) For a nineteen inch monitor, do the same. I’ll save you some trouble:

Now, the widescreen process is identical, except that a widescreen monitor has an aspect ratio of 16:10 (yes, I know it’s a reducable fraction, but bear with me). The naming of the monitor is still the same diagonal process. The catch is what I saw that day at Best Buy - my 17″ CRT was actually taller than a 19″ widescreen LCD, which was unacceptable for me. For comparison, here’s the widescreen chart:

As you can see, to keep the height of my 17″ CRT, I’d have to go all the way to the 20.1″ widescreen LCD, then find room for the extra three and a half inches of width.

I bring this up because a lot of comments on places like Newegg and the like regarding widescreen LCDs look like this: “I bought a 19″ widescreen to replace my 19″ crt and I swear it’s smaller!” Well, it is, sorta. It’s shorter by an inch and a quarter, but it’s wider by an inch.

All this calculation was a big reason I dismissed the thought of getting a widescreen LCD until I could afford a nice big one. Knowing the math behind it and settling for a shorter screen (which invariably means lower resolution - 1440×900 compared to 1600×1200) are two different things, and I’m not quite ready to give up 1600 x whatever resolution. If you are, though, feel free to use this little cheat sheet to kick-start your purchasing.

I’ve got five more bloggers to report from the list. In no particular order, they are:

• A Weaver’s Touch - Brenda Strobehn, who is (I think) the administrative secretary up at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, runs this site. She was in the Academy/University from 1976-1984.
• Writer’s Blog - Despite the catchy title, I have no idea who runs this site, because he/she hasn’t gotten back to me yet. Never fear, though. Perhaps someday we’ll unmask this anonymous blogger. For now I can guess that this person’s last name is Coley. *UPDATE* - sure enough, Sarah (Havner) Coley is our mystery blogger. Huzzah for comments!
• The Wales - Bobby and Sarah Wales run this site.
• abbylittlebit - run by Abby (Sokul) Turner.
• writersblock1117 - A little family action, as Cathi (Sasportas) Jett (Jett) Sasportas is cousin to Jared, of JaredSutton.com fame.

Enjoy checking these sites out. By way of annoucement, there are now 168 bloggers in that list. Whee.

I was just informed that the geek’s staple TV show proudly uses a big honkin’ split infinitive in its opening lines:

“…to boldly go where no man/one has gone before.”

Boldly to go or to go boldly, but not to boldly go! Gah!

I was doing some more reading this afternoon on the Geno’s flap in South Philly. This after listening to the Mike Gallagher Show live from 9th and Passyunk in Philly. He invited the senior editorial writer from the Philadelphia Daily News (the other Philly newspaper) Deborah Leavy onto the phone lines. Ms. Leavy, it should be noted, was formerly the executive director of the area’s ACLU crowd and is still a raging feminist. Anywho, towards the end of the phone conversation, Gallagher was in his “flustering” mode - he’d just keep hitting hard on his caller until the caller got flustered and spit out something damaging. She folded after about three minutes. Funniest thing I’ve heard in a while. Eventually she mentioned that, really, she was more of a Pat’s fan (Pat’s King of Steaks is across the street and is considered Geno’s biggest rival).

Didn’t think anything of it until now. Now, two columnists for two papers (here and here) are saying the same thing - Pat’s is a better steakhouse, so of course Geno’s is in the wrong. By the way, it’s not just reporters - something tells me the heart of this little snit may have been corporate rivalry. Check out this quote from Fox News:

And a manager at Pat’s, Kathy Smith, said of Geno’s English-only policy: “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’d rather listen to the Spanish than the foul language of the college students.”

You know, that sign’s been up for a year before anyone took note of it. Reporters have seen that customers ordering in Spanish (or any other language, I suppose) are nonetheless coached through the ordering process. I think it’s obvious that Geno’s is not denying anyone service, which is what they’re being accused of. To discriminate against someone, action against them has to be taken. Joey Vento’s not taking action. He’s stating an opinion and going on with life. All that to say, I wonder if this issue isn’t so much the waking of a sleeping giant (as Gallagher put it) but rather a little jealousy on the part of Pat’s across the street. It’s hard to tell what came first - did legions of Pat’s fans get up and start this, hoping to bring bad publicity to Geno’s? Or did someone just happen to notice it and complain, in which case is the Pat’s vs. Geno’s thing a secondary discussion, possibly being used by the people who don’t appreciate the American language as a last-ditch effort to prove their position? I mean, tell me if this is a misrepresentation:

Geno’s Crowd: We support his right to state his opinion, and Americans should speak American.
Pat’s Crowd: We want that kind of sales volume.

Anyway, that’s a little local color in what has rapidly become a national debate. No doubt the big debate is focusing on 1st Amendment rights and the now-two-week-old law stating that official government stuff must be in English (which should have been a no-brainer), but I still wonder if it didn’t start out as sibling rivalry.

I don’t usually dabble in news blogging. After all, you’re talking to the guy who not once, not twice, but three times asked three different guys how their respective fiancees were doing, only to find out they’d broken up a few weeks before and still weren’t over each other. I typically hear my news from the guys who are usually the last to find anything out. Nevertheless, there is one news item out there that is being spoken about nation-wide (I was listening to the Russ & Lisa show for some strange reason this evening - they’re local Greenville folks, and they were talking about it) that happens to hit three issues very close to my heart: English as a national language, Philly, and Cheesesteaks (which hits physically pretty close to one’s heart, depending upon how many one consumes). So when a news item comes up that I can get three quick venting points out of (yes, bad grammar - sue me), I’m pretty happy to give it a go.

Let’s talk about the actual facts here. At the risk of sounding like every talk show host on the East Coast, the media’s not giving you the whole story.

Fact: Joey Vento, owner of Geno’s Cheesesteaks in South Philly, has a sign placed at his ordering window that reads: “This is America. When ordering, please speak English.”

Fact: He also has a second sign, in a completely different style, that reads: “Management reserves the right to refuse service.”

Fact: These signs are atop one another, but not connected to each other - they are two separate signs, not just one. The “Management refuses…” sign was up long before the “Speak English” sign went up.

Fact: The city is pretty divided on how they feel about this.

All right - first point is private business. Our Constitution says that the government (and by extension, the governed) may not discriminate on the basis of nationality, age, race, blah blah blah. The media spin on this one goes like so: He said Mexicans walk up and can’t say “Cheeze Wiz.” He has a sign saying “Speak English.” He has another sign about refusing service. Therefore, he will refuse service to anyone who doesn’t speak English. Therefore he’s being a discriminating pig, so let’s sue the tar out of him.

If you were nodding the whole way through that, you probably have less intelligence than a slice of proscuito. There are several leaps of “logic” that throw the whole thing into spin city. Starting at the backend, reporters in California assume he refuses service to non-English speaking people. He himself says he doesn’t, and that’s confirmed by bunches of customers, none of whom have been turned back. Next, those two signs aren’t necessarily (or actually) related. All businesses have the right to refuse service for their own reasons. Even if the English thing were a factor, he’s still got that right. By refusing people who speak any language other than English (and more languages exist than just English and Spanish, peeps) he’s not discriminating based on race. Suppose I’m Mexican, and I speak passable English. If he were banning non-English-ordering customers, I wouldn’t get banned. That one example alone confirms that he’s not discriminating against an entire national heritage.

But all this assumes he’s refusing people orders for not speaking English. Without any evidence to the contrary, I don’t think we can argue that. Taken at face value, two things are going on. With the first sign, he’s proclaiming his right to refuse service to people who are giving his workers a hard time, disrespecting something about him or the establishment, being disruptive, etc. All businesses have that right; he’s just confirming it in print. With the second sign, he’s making a political statement - this is America, and if you want to fit in, you should learn American.

Enter the intrepid City Council, who (like so many left-wing PC nuts) have decided to get offended on the behalf of the not-offended-but-should-be people. Apparently immigrants are either too illiterate or too stupid to take offense at being “discriminated against,” so it’s up to the smarter, more literate folks to be offended for them. (I’m being facetious, FYI.) Your Southpaw spin says that “these signs could offend immigrants who haven’t learned the language” (putting aside the fact that, if you can’t read the English sign, you can’t be offended by its content; and if you can read it, there’s no reason to get offended by its content) - consequently people with very Latino names are thinking of taking him to court. (Did I mention these people with Latino names speak flawless English? Just an observation.) This is, by the way, the same city that showed brotherly love for a guy who killed a cop just because the killer had a fake Arabic name. He was black and had a fake Arabic name! That must mean he’s not guilty! It’s also the same city that re-elected a mayor who was, at the time, under investigation by the FBI for a whole mess of charges, simply because the mayor claimed he was being oppressed by white people. So this whole mess with Geno’s is actually normal, in an abnormal sense.

Another neat fact is that he’s a 3rd generation Italian immigrant himself. It wasn’t until his grandparents started attending school that they had to learn English to actually get an education. If you’re more on the lebanon bologna side of the IQ scale, you’d probably see this as proof positive that immigrants should learn English. If you’re more on that proscuito side, you’d think that naturally it makes no sense for him to be complaining about immigrants not learning English when that’s exactly what his grandparents did. And if you just reread that sentence three times, scratched you head, and said, “What…?” then you’re smarter than a lot of folks. Hey, don’t take this “immigrants must learn English” stuff from me - my ancestors immigrated in the 1500s. Take it from him, who knows what it’s like to go around not knowing what anyone else is saying. Only difference is that now, the immigrants are telling us that we have to change for them.

Bottom line: Rush Limbaugh theorizes often that the liberals in this country need victims to survive, and that their survival instinct demands that they keep the victims in their current state, or else make new ones. This concept of being offended on behalf of people who clearly aren’t offended fits right in there. Personally, I agree with the guy completely. I think it’s better for immigrants in the long run to learn English so they can actually live the traditional American dream, which is NOT to sit at home all day, watch soap operas, and collect welfare checks to buy more Corona. I agree that he has a right to run his business as he pleases, provided he’s not violating any laws. And I agree that his place is the original home of the Cheesesteak.

Stay tuned for more updates and general mocking of the morons running that wonderful town.

No, this isn’t a political post. It’s purely a personal annoyance. I hate when people split infinitives. Shakespeare, for example, used good grammar: “To be, or not to be.” Microsoft, on the other hand, does not: “Windows Update recommends installing this update because the device on your computer to which this driver applies appears to not be working properly.” Can’t you just see the Bard writing “To be or to not be?”

I’m fascinated that they avoided ending their clause with a preposition, yet missed the other mistake two words later. It could have read: “Windows Update recommends installing this update because the device on your computer this driver applies to appears to not be working properly.” That’s enough to send me into convulsions - both bolded sections are slam wrong. Of course we talk like that all the time, and that’s fine. But professional publications/worldwide updates shouldn’t be like that. They went out of their way to use the clunkier-yet-correct “to which” construct, but they missed their split infinitive.

For the record, it should read: “Windows Update recommends installing this update because the device on your computer to which this driver applies appears not to be working properly.” Or, better yet: “Windows Update recommends installing this update because the device on your computer to which this driver applies does not appear to be working properly.”

For an almost entirely untweaked image (scout’s honor: I just highlighted the mistake), click here.

I was browsing ABC News this evening, and I came across this story. One of Philly’s most famous landmarks, Geno’s Steaks, a staple on the campaign trail (Bush, Kerry, Clinton, etc. all stopped there for lunch at one point or another), has put up a sign ordering customers to speak English. Read the article, then watch the video. This guy, Joe Vento, is just plain Philly through and through.

Note to the other guys on the road trip: we’re stopping here for lunch. No questions asked. Pay no attention to the nutritional information about cheesesteaks on the bottom of the screen.

Props to PCWorld’s Tech Blog for tipping me off on a new Firefox extension that synchronizes bookmarks, settings, etc. across multiple computers. Fittingly, this software only works for Firefox.

:waits for cheer from Open Source crowd to die down:

They can do this because everyone has access to the Firefox source code. So it’s surprisingly easy to write plugins and extensions for Firefox. IE and Opera? Well…we all know what’s up with them. Anyway, Google Browser Sync can be had from Google’s main site, and if you’re blessed to be able to reach blogspot.com sites you can read up a little more on the official Google blog.

I don’t flatter myself to think that the trolls in Redmond have ever taken notice of little ol’ me, which makes this easier for me to do.

You can go to Microsoft’s site to download IE 7 beta 2, recently released. Of course, you have to install the “Genuine [Dis]Advantage” plugin to actually download the software. If it helps, this software has never worked for me, for one reason or another (yes, I’m running a legal copy of Windows). And if you’re running Linux, I imagine you either can’t download it or can proceed to the download without messing with the Genuine Disadvantage software. Either way it’s stupid. So, courtesy of Softpedia, you can download the installer directly from M$ without using M$ malware.

And, if you don’t want to go to Softpedia, you can just download it direct.

You’re welcome.

I feel like I’ve just come out of the Dark Ages into the Renaissance. I’ve got one new blogger to report, and one update. First, the n00b:

Richard Stomps, of STOMPS fame, contacted me and had his site added to the list. Richard is a 1997 grad from our Church Music undergrad program, so it was pretty cool catching up with him. (We’re everywhere!!!)

Now, the update. Peter Anglea and his brother started up their own website design service, and what better way to show off some design skillz than with your own blog? If you’re looking for ManoSinistra (sp?), look now at Peter’s Blog instead.

As always, keep those sites coming in. The current list now stands at 163.

I just did a minor update from WP 2.0.2 to 2.0.3, so if anything appears not to work, please let me know and I’ll try to straighten it out. Thanks.