I is smarter now?

In my lAst blog entry (ha! I'm evidently still having the "overreaching" A/caps lock issue, and am leaving in my little faux pas as a self-deprecating jab at how I'm picking up the hard stuff, but struggling with the eAsy stuff....)

Take 2:

In my last blog entry I said I hoped my next one will read more intelligently. Does it so far?

I'm a pretty quick learner when it comes to computer-ish things, and I'm beginning to get the hang of the way things work in mac-world. I am able to be much more specific in my pleas for help. Of course, I have yet to set up Windows on a VM and work with a dual OS, so we'll see how my panic progresses as the days pass.

Right now my main WTF issue is with the graphics/resolution stuff. I have an nvidiA (jeez) GeForce 8600M GT on this thing, and I can't seem to find out how to customize it at ALL. I can change the display resolution easily, but that's all done through the monitor settings in system preferences. Default is 1440 x 900, but I would like to switch down to 1280 x 800. When I get XP and the game installed, I think I'll need to be playing on 1024 x 678, if I'm remembering correctly. Right now, though, when I change the res, things get blurry. The way it is by default, things are crystal clear, but it's killing me trying to read such small print.

I KNOW I've been through this with all my other laptops. It's been a while, but I *think* all the advanced tweaking options only became available once I upgraded my graphics drivers to specialized omega drivers. I don't even have directx, yet (do I???). Right now I can change the res, and I can calibrate the color profile to my liking (pretty much), but that's it. Nothing about pixel shaders, direct 3d, open GL, refresh rates, rotation, overlay, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, mipmap, vertical sync...NOTHING. That's the stuff I'm trying to get to. I can't find any control panel for nvidia anywhere.

I feel a little helpless squinting at my monitor like this. Damned if I do change the resolution (blurry!), damned if I don't (tiny!), and, although I can temporarily adjust the text size to a larger size (done), it's just a band-aid solution to what I'm really going for.

But it's so cool how the monitor adjusts its brightness as the ambient lighting changes. I'm sitting here in a dark room with my MBP and my pc notebook side by side. I open up the pc notebook, its monitor lights up, and this one dims. So, here I sit, unable to change my anti-aliasing options and barely able to read the screen even with my glasses on (new prescription, too!), but perfectly content (for the moment) opening and closing the pc notebook and watching the light change on my mac.

Open.
Dim.
Close.
Bright!
Open.
Dim.
Close.
Bright!

Okay, snapping out of my trance...it may be a while before I do any work with video. Or graphics, in general. HAve patience, children.

Open.
Dim.
Close.
Bright!
Open.
Dim.
Close.
Bright!