The Icon Bar: The Playpen: Flicker... flicker...
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Flicker... flicker... |
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swirlythingy (16:01 6/11/2010)
iomanoid (21:42 6/11/2010)
epistaxsis (22:11 6/11/2010)
Acornut (16:36 8/11/2010)
filecore (21:30 8/11/2010)
Lampi (03:06 7/11/2010)
swirlythingy (12:21 7/11/2010)
sa110_mk (08:58 8/11/2010)
trevj (07:03 7/11/2010)
filecore (08:36 7/11/2010)
trevj (19:14 7/11/2010)
filecore (08:38 7/11/2010)
VincceH (11:09 7/11/2010)
Acornut (11:12 7/11/2010)
CJE (13:46 9/11/2010)
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Martin Bazley |
Message #115818, posted by swirlythingy at 16:01, 6/11/2010 |
Posts: 460
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My monitor flickers.
I don't mean a continual shimmer like a maladjusted AKF12. I don't mean prettily, like a candle flame. What I mean is an evil, spiteful, malicious, calculated to inspire maximum annoyance little blip.
Most of the time it doesn't happen often. In fact, it'll go long periods appearing to work perfectly. By 'long', I mean just long enough to lull me into a false sense of security, not so long as to allow me to get too complacent, not so short as to be inevitable, and totally random and unpredictable.
I'll be staring at the monitor, doing something of vital importance (I don't mean porn, I mean, who in their right mind would spend their free time jacking off to beautiful voluptuous bisexual blondes frolicking in a soap-filled hot steamy shower playing with each other and splashing water over their heaving bosums compressed into FLV on a 110MHz StrongARM? Waste of time, I tell you) and I'll move the mouse over something I intend to click on, and just as my full attention is focused on the screen... BLIP. It doesn't happen every time, and this is worse, because it makes me paranoid and tensed up for the screen to jump, and then be just as shocked when it doesn't.
What this monitor has got down to a fine art is the reverse psychology of doing exactly what I'm not expecting it to do. If I expect a flicker, the screen will remain smooth as the bonnet of a Porsche. And it'll continue doing this until I let my guard down, and I look casually at the screen, and I focus on it, and I'll forget all about it, and... BLIP. The screen will leap sideways like an electrocuted frog, and my eyes will attempt to follow it (a very uncomfortable sensation). And then it'll be back again faster than Wayne Rooney chased by Fergie waving a huge cheque, and my eyes will be on a heightened state of alert for the next time, which won't come, and I'll start to let my guard down, and I'll forget about the last time, and I'll relax my gaze, and BLIP, and the cycle starts again, and I've been sitting at the computer for a couple of hours and my eyes are being run into the ground by this villianous monstrous machine.
I've tried everything. I've wiggled the video lead, and I've tightened the screws, and I've wedged it hard against the wall to stop movement, and I've uplugged and plugged it back in again, and I've hit the monitor, and bitten it, and shaken it, and sworn at it, and given it the silent treatment, and written incoherent rants on uninterested forums about it, and turned it off and back on, and shaken it again, and turned it off and back on with extreme malice, and attempted to drop-kick it, and swivelled it, and suggested to it that we could still be friends, and shaken it once again for good measure, and it'll appear to be cured, and I'll start to forget about it, and I'll relax my gaze, and BLIP.
Sometimes it has an extended coughing fit where the picture twitches wildly for several seconds like an AD/HD kid in a magical chocolate factory without medicine, and I'll try to cure it again, and then it'll regress to the mean and I'll mistake this for actual evidence of causation, and I'll remember what happened the last time, and I'll stare at it as hard as I can, all tensed up, and I'll try to continue my work, and gradually I'll find something that needs doing that requires actual concentration, and I'll think about that, and I'll forget about my death glare, and then I'll decide something, and shift my gaze to a part of the screen to do something in it, and just as it has my full attention, BLIP.
Nothing has worked. I've looked away every fifteen minutes, and all that does is make me more complacent. I've sat upright with appropriate lower back support, and it's so bloody uncomfortable I forget to concentrate. I've supported my wrists properly, and wondered what that ever had to do with anything. I've considered going out and doing the shopping, but decided I wasn't that desperate. All that happens is that I get distracted to the task at hand, and when my monitor judges my mind to have wandered insufficiently, BLIP.
It's driving me round the bend. I've fantasised wildly violent scenarios involving me and my monitor. I've seriously considered throwing it out of the window, and realised that such an action requires more forward planning than conventionally depicted, given that it's screwed into the video port and plugged into the wall socket some distance in the opposite direction, and all that lies in between is the legendary Lovecraftian mess of sanity-draining tentacles from my mouse, keyboard, monitor, computer, network card, and god knows what else lurks behind my desk where I don't have to see, and therefore worry about, it. And in the time it took me to disentangle all that, and lug the monitor some five metres to the nearest window, which sticks something dreadful and requires a large amount of physical force to open, I would have had ample time to reconsider the wisdom and consequences of my impulsive actions, which more or less renders such an act impossible.
The situation has got so desperate that, in attempting to fix illusory wiring problems, I have been forced into fixing actual hardware problems which I have been putting off for months, such as getting my RiscPC's lid on properly and managing to get the right-hand rear screw to twist all the way around.
And in all this time I have not done one jot of work. I haven't even been properly testing the work I have done. Here I am, with a development version of MBBack which may possibly have fixed the last of the issues of white borders appearing around scaled images, and I've been pounding on my keyboard into NetSurf dreading the next occurrence of the dreaded BLIP.
All of you up-to-date folks sitting at home with your dual-screen LCD monitors and your nuclear-powered graphics cards and your automated caffiene dispensers and leather-backed swivel chairs and personal beta testing wenches are wondering what on earth I'm so upset about. Imagine if, every day you left your office, a man dressed as a pineapple wearing a paper hat from KFC were to jump up and down across the street, wave at you and shout "COCKLES AND MUSSELS ALIVE-O!!" The first time it happened, you'd probably think, hah, that's cute. The second time it happened, you'd think, what an odd chap. The third time, you'd think, I wonder what he does in his spare time? The fourth time, you'd think, does he come here every day? The fifth time, you'd think, is he one of those advertising people? The sixth time, you'd think, this is getting downright weird. The seventh time, you'd think, doesn't he get bored of that? The eighth time, you'd think, does anyone else get this too? The ninth time, you'd think, why does this keep happening? The tenth time, you'd think, never mind him, I'm getting bored of this now. The eleventh time, you'd think, what is his problem? The twelfth time, you'd think, oh no, not him again. The thirteenth time, you'd think, maybe I could get out of the building another way. The fourteenth time, you'd think, what would be my best defence if I stabbed him? Now picture this happening for five years. At first it doesn't seem so bad, but by the end, you don't see him an more because you're in one of those nice leather-furnished hotel suites with clothing provided and lots of nice people around, sitting in a corner gibbering about how the flying monkey king is coming to take you off to the Purple Passion Fruit Planet where you'll be given a nice bundle of uncannily sharp blades and six cheese graters and a large bucket and a tuning fork and two pairs of forceps and a Leona Lewis CD and precise directions to the personal abode of the man who tormented you every day for five years with a deep personal insult so minor that nobody but you could ever understand its true significance and what it means for the fate of humanity and THE WORLD.
BLIP.
I can't stand it any longer. It's it or (BLIP) me. I'm going to (BLIP) the life out of the horrible electronic (BLIP) and the little (BLIP) won't even know what hit it before it shatters in an almighty outmoded explosion and spews its mechanical guts in a massive (BLIP) mushroom cloud over an area the size of North America, and the parts are flung far out into the deepest reaches of space and spread lightyears upon lightyears apart just so they can never come together and (BLIP) reform once again into this terrible, tormenting evil (BLIP) and once again perform this unforgivable (BLIP) flickering and (BLIP) twitching and (BLIP) jumping and no-one will ever see anything more of it again. And then I will place the Elder sign upon my video port and hose my room down with a lethal dose of beautiful, liberating, cleansing gamma radiation, and I'll wipe down all services and hang a 'KEEP OUT' sign on the door and crucifixes and garlic shall cover every available surface and the blinds shall be drawn and the roof plated with tin foil and an anti-static wristband donned and then, maybe, just maybe, I will be able to move on. But it can't happen yet. I just need some form of closure. Twenty tons of TNT will do just nicely.
BLIP
AAAAARGH! |
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Joel Grounds |
Message #115819, posted by iomanoid at 21:42, 6/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
Member
Posts: 23
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...have you tried turning it off and on again? |
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keith dunlop |
Message #115820, posted by epistaxsis at 22:11, 6/11/2010, in reply to message #115819 |
Posts: 159
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...have you tried turning it off and on again? He's obviously on Substance D and has reached the point where the other side of the brain is beginning to become apparent.
& I thought it was just sci fi & paranoia on the part of Mr. Dick...  |
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James Lampard |
Message #115821, posted by Lampi at 03:06, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
Posts: 190
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Buy a new one. |
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Trevor Johnson |
Message #115822, posted by trevj at 07:03, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
Member
Posts: 660
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(BLIP) Buy a new one.
Sounds exactly like the kind of kit which unscrupulous people claim is untested and then sell on ebay.
Anyway, who's Leona Lewis? |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #115823, posted by filecore at 08:36, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115822 |
Posts: 3868
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Anyway, who's Leona Lewis? <standard troll>
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Leona+Lewis
</standard troll> |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #115824, posted by filecore at 08:38, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
Posts: 3868
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(I don't mean porn, I mean, who in their right mind would spend their free time jacking off to beautiful voluptuous bisexual blondes frolicking in a soap-filled hot steamy shower playing with each other and splashing water over their heaving bosums <additional troll>
Heaving bosuns? They're onboard a ship?
</additional troll> |
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VinceH |
Message #115825, posted by VincceH at 11:09, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
 Lowering the tone since the dawn of time
Posts: 1600
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personal beta testing wenches I don't have one of these.
Where can I get one of these? |
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Blind Moose |
Message #115826, posted by Acornut at 11:12, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
 No-eye-deer (No Idea)
Posts: 487
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Have you Hit the Button?
Or is that the Brazilians trying to do that?  |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #115827, posted by swirlythingy at 12:21, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115821 |
Posts: 460
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Buy a new one. I probably should. This one's so old it doesn't even support EDID, which caused RISC OS 6 no end of confusion when it emerged that, in adding support for EDID, they removed support for everything else.
Unfortunately, I've only just had a new monitor (to replace a similar model on the Iyonix, which had started distorting colours and making static buzzing noises, and hence was a rather more urgent case), and it cost £135, and I'm not convinced I could persuade the Walking Cash Dispensers to shell out for another one. |
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Trevor Johnson |
Message #115828, posted by trevj at 19:14, 7/11/2010, in reply to message #115823 |
Member
Posts: 660
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<standard troll>
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Leona+Lewis
</standard troll> Cheers - I had actually bothered to get as far as checking her Wikipedia page before posting that... but switched off when I spotted the X-factor reference... and chose to post a pointless question anyway. |
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Paul Stewart |
Message #115829, posted by sa110_mk at 08:58, 8/11/2010, in reply to message #115827 |
Member
Posts: 144
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You need to trade your "Walking Cash Dispensers" for ones that are more used to giving out cash! |
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Blind Moose |
Message #115830, posted by Acornut at 16:36, 8/11/2010, in reply to message #115819 |
No-eye-deer (No Idea)
Posts: 487
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...have you tried turning it off and on again? Another IT Crowd fan. |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #115834, posted by filecore at 21:30, 8/11/2010, in reply to message #115830 |
Posts: 3868
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Pfft, who isn't these days. Welcome to 2006. |
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Chris Evans |
Message #115838, posted by CJE at 13:46, 9/11/2010, in reply to message #115818 |
CJE Micros chap
Posts: 228
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My monitor flickers.
I don't mean a continual shimmer like a maladjusted AKF12. I don't mean prettily, like a candle flame. What I mean is an evil, spiteful, malicious, calculated to inspire maximum annoyance little blip.
We've seen this before on RiscPC's and fixed it with: http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=CAB-PIN12 |
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The Icon Bar: The Playpen: Flicker... flicker... |
