Now in 16:10 - part 1

Posted in: Artwork New toys

Update: As requested, I've added 1440x900 versions. I really shouldn't have forgotten about that resolution - it's what my work laptop runs at.

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I got a new 16:10 widescreen monitor over the weekend, and wow at all the extra pixels! :D

I used to have a 17" LCD monitor that dates back to early 2005 and stuck with through all these years and other computer upgrades, until just a few days ago. The thing came with 1 stuck pixel which was easy enough to ignore since it was on the side, and in the last year it had been showing signs of aging. I mean, LCD technology isn't supposed to suffer from burn-in right? Well, this monitor started to, and thankfully a temporary version of it. To see it in action I just had to leave a maximized Firefox window open for too long, and bam! My bookmarks toolbar is now a part of the screen when I close Firefox. (The burn-in would go away after a few minutes of displaying something, anything, else.)

So at 1680x1050, the extra screen real estate is great when working with pretty much any software, particularly the creative stuff: Adobe Audition for sound editing, Adobe Premiere for video editing, Corel PaintShop Photo Pro for image editing, etc. Hell, even using my programming IDE, Eclipse, is better now that I can put those extra views/panels to the side of the code instead of obscuring it.

The only annoyance is that all those wallpapers I'd collected over the years, made for the 1280x1024 resolution, suck at 1680x1050. So once I was done admiring how games and other programs looked on the new monitor, I went through my wallpaper collection and did a massive cull - either going back to the original artist hoping for a widescreen version, or just deleting them.

My own space wallpapers (from 2005-2008... I really need to get back into those), looked pretty bad too, so I took some time to update them for my new screen. Here's what I've managed to do so far:

A Tear in the Night Sky thumbnail
A Tear in the Night Sky (1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200)
From the Ashes thumbnail
From the Ashes (1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200)
In the Embers of Dying Stars
In the Embers of Dying Stars (1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200)

Apart from including extra elements from the original images to make use of the extra width, I've also done away with prominent titles or other obtrusive screen elements (eg: the HUD-like parts that were present in older versions of the last one). The title has now been relegated to the lower-right corner along with my name and website (it used to show my e-mail address, which has changed since these wallpapers first came out).

I'll have to update the actual pages in the Artwork section, and may have to update the originals as well. Hmm... I think I'll just work on getting more up-to-date 16:10 versions of these wallpapers first. Just the ones I like the best anyway - some of them have since fallen out of favour with me.