Joseph K. Myers
Monday, December 2, 2002
I wish it weren't so hard, but every time a new computer comes, it takes a year to break it in, and then I begin assuming that all its wonderful habits are going to remain when I upgrade to the newest fire-breathing monster.
They aren't, of course. I'm using an Apple Macintosh iMac, 333 MHz, grape flavor, and I'm running OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
Our Macs are named g3-1, imac1, and imac2. They used to be long names with spaces, but this brings me to my point: short ones are better, without spaces. It's even better when you have a server, so you simply connect to something like http://imac2.local:8080/ instead of something awful.
I know that bad colors and bad screens give me a headache. I do not start using a computer with poor color calibration, brightness, or contrast, if I am able to change them.
I open System Preferences from the Apple Menu and choose "Displays" from the Hardware category. I use 800 x 600 for resolution. (The default is 1024 x 760, which is eye torture.)
I find some way of setting the contrast and brightness to maximum contrast and minimum brightness. (Other monitors use external controls, and may be different.) I use Geometry to set the height and width to fill the maximum area, and the center the screen position. Sometimes a setting of Pincushion, Rotate, Keystone, or Parallelogram is available. (Other monitors may have similar controls incorporated externally.)
Setting color and contrast correctly is critical before continuing. Making sure that the contrast is high and the brightness is moderately low (estimate with your eyes, not with the scale), you may choose the Color tab within the Displays control panel preference pane and click the "Calibrate" button.
The "Display Calibrator Assistant" application is opened. It has a number of controls, which may vary depending on your type of monitor. Check the box that says "Expert Mode" to turn on extra options before you click the arrow to begin calibration.
The computer may automatically reset its colors at this point. If it has, change them so contrast is very high and brightness very low. At this point the screen should be bright enough to see comfortably.
The computer provides a box with a light and dark side, and an oval in the center. Supposedly you set brightness to where you can just see the oval, but not the line between the light and dark sides. The result is usually rather silly, however. Most importantly, you want the computer not to be too bright or dark, because that will negatively affect your choices of color in the following steps.
One screen will show you three apples, red, green, and blue. You are to position a slider below each apple so that it disappears inside of its corresponding red, green, or blue background. It is impossible to blend perfectly, so you must settle for the best you can get.
Then you must choose a target gamma value. You may choose anything that looks good, but you may wish to choose values close to standard settings of Windows or Macintosh computers. It is useful to stay at or above 1.8. After this you will have to "select a display" which best fits your current monitor.
As the last step before saving the new color profile, you need to choose a target white point. You computer may have been set very blue or yellow to begin with, so before evaluating a setting, you should leave your computer and find some natural light. (If you can't go outside, normal incandescent light is better than florescent.) After your eyes have adjusted, return to your computer and choose the most natural-looking color of light. If you aren't sure, try a rather warm color temperature (it may look slightly yellow at first.)
Also at this time your computer may look strange if it looks too dim. Next to the step where you blended the colors of apples, this step is the most important, so be careful that your eyes don't respond just to the screen brightness instead of the color. You will be able to readjust brightness and contrast separately.
Apple comes with a "text editor" which is also an RTF application. As a text editor it is extremely good (a few emacs keystrokes, such as ^k and ^y, are silently included). However, I have to set it to make it most useful.
I change the default format to text, or else it will be a royal pain changing the document type every time a whim suits me to write a paragraph on something (which is often). I check the box "ignore rich text commands in HTML files" in order to open and edit HTML. (Except I use emacs for that, anyway.)
I do not want my spelling to be checked as I type, and so I uncheck that box. I also perform the strategic measure of setting the default plain text encoding for saved documents to Unicode UTF-8. Macintosh users should never curse the Internet with a file generated in Mac Roman, or for that matter, anything else except Unicode.
I never bother with setting a default browser, so of course I hate the included Internet Explorer (Internet Horror). What I do instead is download _Camino (Chimera)_ (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/camino/ Camino, Browser for Mac OS X) and place its icon into the Dock.
Then they came out with Safari for Mac OS X. If Apple wants me to try it, I will if it's free, so I did.
6-24-03. Yes, use Safari now. You do Command-T to open a new tab. It's nice.
A dedicated Internet connection would be ideal, but it is costly. At my age, I haven't any say in the matter, but, as with cars, my notes may be worth something.
Like many people, I use the Internet through an ordinary modem (PPP dialup). It is a convenience to allow the computer to disconnect automatically (after a 10-or-15-minute idle delay), but not a convenience to allow it to connect automatically. (Mainly because so-called "internet applications" do so much unwanted "connecting.")
I have sound off (and generally, I do not like sound effects bothering me of any kind), and I allow the helpful features such as TCP header compression. I certainly do not allow it to prompt me to maintain my connection. It would ruin my days, and nights, too, when I need to download large files.