It was a dark and stormy night. Candles were running low and sandwich in the dimly-lit fridge evoked visions of broken Lent and various sweet transgressions. The hand has reached for the sandwich’s wrap… The eyes examined the packing. It was plain but elegant zipper bag, unspoiled by any markings that would betray it as someone’s Friday’s feast of a lunch.Emboldened by such discovery, legs carried the sandwich towards the microvave and one of the hands opened and closed the small white door with a clank.
In a minute, aroma emanating from the microwave made it clear that all inhibitions that might have survived so far have been abolished, thus sealing the sandwich’s fate and hastening its untimely demise.
The light on a lamp post flickered and gave way to darkness.
In this installment of the yet-to-be award-winning series “Get The Hang Of Your Display” (see Part 1 here) we continue to explore the outer limits and venture to where no one has gone before in the Area-51 of Advanced Display Attachment.
Have you ever wondered why All-in-One designs of a personal computer enjoyed such an unparalleled success? Look at the Sales Charts of Laptops, more appropriately called Notebooks, Tablet PCs, Portable Workstations or even Desktop Replacements! Those charts exhibit one uncompromising trend - Up and nowhere else! So, what if we are stuck with an Old World Desktop, do we plunk down cash for latest Apple creation or sleek Sony model? No, we do it the hard way, overcome hurdles, invent new and apply the old to obtain one-of-a-kind marvel of a machine that may yet have one or two tricks up its sleeve (of floppy bay) to one-up all those spiffy latest all-in-one-hang-me-on-the-wall models. And, yes, again, do we succeed …
Once upon a time there was that gorgeous princess named Vanadis who was like all princesses - not too hasty in answering knocks on the door. Then there was a handsome lad whose name escapes me, who came knocking on her door. Capricious Vanadis heard the knock but was not in a rush to open, deciding to wait and see if the knock will be repeated. It was not to be repeated. After waiting a few minutes, disappointed lad walked away, mentally going through his spreadsheet of other worthy lasses, perhaps.
Then there was that other lad who also came knocking on Vanadis’s door. She grew accustomed to the game, however, and was in no rush at all to open the squeaky door. The lad was a stubborn one, nevertheless, and kept banging at the door until it flew open and he saw Vanadis in all her unkempt beauty…
The rest is (chemical) history. Element Vanaduim was discovered and named by the persistent chemist who was sure of what he wanted, what he needed and what he saw.
Let’s just say one more time : never ever give up. 
Two fine projects we are about to tell you about concern hanging our beautiful bright high-contrast, low-latency, multimedia-ready Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) into their proper places in our ever-busy and cluttered workspaces. The goal is to achieve highest efficiency while expending as little money and time as humanely possible. And boy, do we succeed in reaching this goal! (more…)
Back in early 1980s digital video was not even a dream, it simply was not present in any vocabulary. Words like MPEG, AVI, QuickTime have not been coined yet as their future creators were busy at work on much simpler things, like playing a Barbarian game on one of the 8-bit computers of the era, and computers themselves were still actually made in places like United Kingdom.
Little did game players know that some of those machines already utilized some fundamental principles on which video compression technologies are based today …
ZX Spectrum, the legend that brought a “Sir” title to its creator, Sir Clive Sinclair! This machine that has become first “computer for the masses” in Europe, utilized some of the simple yet far-reaching principles that made it such a success. By far the most important was its amazingly fast and colorful video display that outshined many other displays of the time and led to appearance of vast library of, yes, games! All that despite being based on the relatively slow processor - 4 MHz 8-bit Z80. How it become possible to bring together the three qualities of the graphics system that tend to be mutually exclusive: colors, resolution, speed? The same general principle that is used today in many video compression schemes, including MPEG-1, although such connection is not very apparent at the cursory glance at the ZX Spectrum architecture, design and programming.
We, however, will take a closer look on these pages.
To be continued…