WFC Palestine: عمر

Hm… I can’t see the pixels on that map…

There’s lots of stuff here to like. The courtship scenes are really sweet, lots of amusing and real-sounding dialogue, some of the actors are good, and all the parkour is invigorating. But. Everything is so damn obvious. I was shouting at the screen when the al-Aqsa Brigade guy sat down with Our Hero “HE”S AN AGENT! DON”T SAY ANYTHING!”

Guess what.

And so it goes.

But great plot twist at the end!

Omar. Hany Abu-Assad. 2013. Palestine.

Limonana

  • 1 part sugar
  • 2 parts lemon juice
  • 2 parts rum
  • 2 parts water
  • plenty of mint leaves
  • ice cubes
  • 1 drop of orange blossom water

Run through a blender and pour into a glass. Garnish with mint leaves.

This isn’t really a Palestinian cocktail. I googled and googled and googled but found nothing.

But this it apparently a real Palestinian soft drink. I just dumped some rum into it since it seemed vaguely mojitoish.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

Blacker than Black? A Small Monitor Review

I’ve been using an Emacs-based alarm clock for almost a decade through various hardware incarnations.

The main issue is the screen: It’s difficult to find a small screen that has a good black level. The last version used this USB IPS screen from MIMO, and it’s just about as good as you can get with IPS.

It’s difficult to illustrate just how it looks since the camera helpfully adjusts everything, but with the camera on manual, I think this is just about right when it’s darkish in the bedroom. When it’s completely dark, its glare is rather annoying.

So! I got an OLED screen today, because OLED has perfectly black blackness, right?

Quotes like “Produces True Blacks” and “Because OLED displays are not backlit like LCDs but rather lit by each individual pixel, black means black. This yields a contrast ratio of infinity to one.” can’t lie, can they?

And everybody knows that an OLED pixel that’s off doesn’t emit any light, right?

That is, indeed, quite black. But is it completely black?

No. If you look closely, it’s trivial to see where the black bezel ends and where the screen, filled with black pixels, starts. (The picture above exaggerates the issue a bit, depending on your monitor.)

But here we compare the IPS screen (to the right) with the OLED screen (to the left) in a completely dark room. The difference is huge. YUGE! But it’s not perfect!

The myth of total blackness in black OLED pixels: Busted.

SO DISAPPOINT!

Oh, well. This is approximately what this screen looks like from my vantage point in the bed when I’ll be waking up in the middle of the night and wondering what time it is before going back to sleep again, cursing the monitor gods and waiting for the next hardware revolution.

Sad!

Obelisk: A Monitor Review

I’ve had the same monitor in my stereo control system for many years. It’s a 20″ Dell that’s OK.

It’s got an appropriate size for the living room. But lately it’s started having a high-pitched whine. If I play only punk music I can’t hear it at all, but otherwise it’s slightly annoying.

So I went looking for a new monitor. I thought it might be nice to have a rotated monitor this time: Higher than wide so that I can display the name of the currently playing artist un-sideways.

Practical as always.

So my specs here were: No logos, and no bezels wider on any sides, and as small as possible. The logo/bezel thing because inevitably that looks weird when rotated, and this is in the living room. Looking pretty is nice.

Behold! After searching for hours, there was one (1) monitor that fit the specs, and it’s this 24″ NEC EX241UN. It’s got very narrow bezels and no logos and nothing ugly. So it’s just like a matte obelisk.

But my stereo computer machine is oooold. It’s based on a 2GHz Pentium M 32-bit CPU. I think I bought it in 2005, possibly? You can see it underneath the cassette player up there… It’s in a Hush enclosure.

And it managed to connect to the screen! I wasn’t quite sure whether it was going to be able to do that, because it’s also a Pentium M motherboard and the video routing is not very well supported by Linux by default. But I managed to route the DVI signal out instead of the LVDS and VGA, and there’s … the Matrix?

Er. X isn’t quite sure….

OK, “Option rotate left” in xorg.conf instead.

Now I have to rearrange all the display data… Hm… Does that look nice?

The monitor itself is pretty nice.  Quite wide viewing angle, but when I standing there at the screen looking for something to play, I do get a slight sheen at the bottom of the screen, so it’s not perfect.  But it’s completely silent, as far as I can tell over my tinnitus.

Perhaps I should have a clock and a load monitor there. Just so that not 100% of the screen is Emacs. I don’t want to appear fanatical or anything.

Or perhaps the sleeve on top?

Hm… Perhaps I should make that font smaller. I’m nearsighted, but not actually blind.

The un-nerdiness of this setup cannot be misunderstimated.

Of course not.  Not.

WFC Great Britain: Ex Machina

Look! Now we can save money on the special effects budget!

I thought I was going to enjoy this one, despite the many positive reviews it’s gotten. But it’s totally snoozeville with most plot developments signalled several hours before the movie even starts.

The ending was fun, though.

Ex Machina. Alex Garland. 2015. Great Britain.

White Lady

  • 5 parts gin
  • 2 parts Cointreau
  • 1 part lemon juice
  • 1 part egg white

Shake vigorously with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.