Friday, January 16, 2009    I’m deep into final layout for the February issue of Horizons magazine.  That’s where all my focus and energy has gone this week.  My office is a maze of papers and Post It Notes.  Last year when I bought a new computer, a wide screen monitor came with it.  The new monitor had taken some getting used to, since everything was not only wider now but bigger as well, but I got used to it pretty quickly. 

I did have a problem learning to resize photos, since the wider screen stretched out the photos and there was no adjustment for that in the monitor settings.  I’d think I was doing fine, then I’d see a photo in Horizons Magazine that made someone way too tall and skinny.  I’d grumbled about it to myself for about a year until I just today realized: I can go back to my old monitor.  I had forgotten that was an option.

Somehow in the busy-ness of work, I’d forgotten that I had a flat panel standard width monitor I could hook it up if I wanted to.  Which I just did.  Wow!  Everything looks smaller and narrower, but it looks on screen exactly as it will look on the printed page.  All my photos look the right size and … well, I just can’t believe I forgot for a year that this was an option.

I wonder what all else is an option for me that I have either forgotten about, or just not considered for myself.   How about you?

After Note:  Ok, now I remember why I don’t use this Dell monitor.  I need something with better resolution and more advanced contrast settings. It worked fine on my old computer.  Drat.  Back to my Hanns G HW191 19” wide screen monitor – I wish it had a setting to not use the entire width of the screen unless I wanted to…  whine, whine, whine…

After: After Note: I have a new appreciation for my 19” wide screen monitor which I just reconnected.   Sometimes you just need a little contrast to appreciate what you have.  I love my wide screen monitor!