Dual Monitors

A few months ago we got new dual monitors at work. It's been wonderful.

The coolest thing is to put the desktop over two monitors, like shown above.
How to do that? My dell has a 256MB ATI Radeon X1300PRO. I selected "Start/Programs/Catalyst Control Center/Advanced/Catalyst Control Center Advanced" then the "Displays Manager". I set the Desktop area to be 2560x1024.
I know its annoying to have the middle of the virtual screen interuppted with the monitor edges, but two 19" flat panels are really cheap compared to a 38" screen.

Netflix for Books

I ran across an interesting website that loans books like netflix loans dvd. For 20 dollars a month you can have three titles out. What do you think? Will this fly?

Clutter

Paul Graham, author of On Lisp, wrote an excellent article on having too much stuff.

And unless you're extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.


At the Fincher household this article initiated a three day cleaning frenzy which has been refreshing. I've always complained our house doesn't have enough storage space, but see now that we just have too much to store.

Fun new promo for book on Continuous Integration

I liked the tone of the vid for this tome.