[ale] [OT] Wide Screen monitors / using screen real estate

[Scott Castaline]

On 09/09/2011 08:03 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
> Thanks for the links.  That weather site is cool.  However, I don't
> think they have any stand alone sizable and movable radar app.  I've
> heard of conky before.  I don't think it can do a standalone sizable and
> movable window either.  If I come across anything relevant, I'll post it.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
You create config files for each widget that spells out the xy 
positioning on the desktop as well as the min/max width. These config 
files are just plain text files and fairly easy to read once you get 
used to the different commands and options. I can send you a couple of 
files of mine if you want to play with them and see what you come up with.
>
> On 9/8/2011 9:48 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
>> On 09/08/2011 05:47 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
>>
>>> Hi guys,
>>>
>>> I thought I'd post something a bit light hearted, since I usually post
>>> serious stuff.
>>>
>>> Every once in a while, I save up enough money to get some new tech
>>> toys.  I just got my hands on an LG 23" 1080p wide screen monitor, to
>>> replace a 19" "square" monitor that I had.  I TOTALLY love it.  It has
>>> almost as much vertical space as the old one, and having the extra side
>>> to side electronic real estate is great.  I've noticed that many web
>>> pages, particularly forums, are not set up to handle reduced width
>>> properly, and don't reflow text very well.  So, I read part of a line
>>> then scroll over to read the rest then scroll back.  I use treestyle tab
>>> in Firefox to make a vertical bar of all my tabs, which reduces the
>>> width a bit more.  That problem won't happen with the Firefox window
>>> almost 2 feet wide.  However, generally, I'll probably either tile two
>>> windows side by side on the monitor, or have one window take up 2/3 of
>>> the width and do something else with the rest of the space.
>>>
>>> So, that's what I have the question about.  Note, that I routinely
>>> alternate between Windows and Ubuntu.  So, these questions apply equally
>>> to either.  I know some of you work with Windows too, so feel free to
>>> send me tips for that as well as Linux.  The apps involved don't have to
>>> be the same on both platforms, but that would be nice.  I routinely
>>> leave about 1" to 1.5" at the bottom of my screen to leave space for cpu
>>> monitors, background processes I'm monitoring, terminal windows, weather
>>> data, etc.  Now I am going to be leaving about 1/3 of the width of my
>>> screen open (unless I need it) for similar things.  This works out to be
>>> about 6" of width.
>>>
>>> At the very least, I'd like to be able to place any or all of the
>>> following in this empty real estate:
>>>
>>> * Video.  Like YouTube, etc.  Could also be a video file, like an MP4, etc.
>>>
>>> I know I can play video files in Windows with Media Player and in Linux
>>> with Totem or whatever Ubuntu comes with.  These applications seem to
>>> scale to a reduced size pretty well.  I don't think I've tried to go
>>> really small with Totem.  However, I haven't found a good way to scale a
>>> flash streaming video like YouTube very well.  I know I can use the zoom
>>> out (ctrl and -) function in Firefox, then drag the window off the edge
>>> of the screen so only the video shows.  But that's really messy, and it
>>> makes it impossible to read the website again without zooming back in.
>>> I'd like a better solution to that.  So, I need a way to play video,
>>> resized to whatever space is available on the screen, even very tiny,
>>> whether from flash or a media file, in Linux or Windows.
>>>
>>> * Weather Radar
>>>
>>> I'd like a live weather radar showing the metro area, updated
>>> continuously or at 5-10 minute intervals, that never times out, and that
>>> never reverts to the local meteorologist moving the radar picture in and
>>> out and zooming around.  It needs to be sizable to any available screen
>>> space just as with the video.  Now, I know I can point my web browser to
>>> weather.com and get a flash based radar map.  The problem is that it
>>> times out fairly rapidly and is not easily scalable due to the flash
>>> issues discussed above.  I'd like to do the same thing on either Linux
>>> or Windows.
>>>
>> Weather Underground
>> wunderground.com
>>
>>> * CPU monitor.
>>>
>>> Here's the deal.  In Ubuntu, in Gnome, I can use two panel applets to
>>> monitor the CPU.  One is the system monitor, which gives a basic graph
>>> of the CPU utilization.  The other is the CPU Frequency Scaling
>>> Monitor.  This allows me to monitor any CPU core and tell what frequency
>>> it's operating at, so I can see when the frequency is reduced during
>>> light demand or increased in heavy demand.  By loading multiples of the
>>> FSM, I can monitor the frequency of each core.  That's very handy to
>>> observe how heavily loaded each core is.  On the windows side of the
>>> fence, Task Manager is my go to tool.  It displays a graph of the
>>> utilization of each core.  The problem is that it doesn't display the
>>> frequency, and it cannot be scaled down less than about 1.5" x 4".  So,
>>> what I want is something which will display a utilization graph of every
>>> core, and display the real time frequency of every core (as a number,
>>> not a graph), and will be resizeable to any size, placeable to any
>>> location, on either operating system.
>>>
>> conky
>> http://conky.sourceforge.net/
>> http://www.howtoforge.com/conky_system_monitor_on_ubuntu704
>>
>>> Suggestions for other cool small size apps are welcome.
>>>
>>> I was going to talk about Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games,
>>> but I'll do that in a separate message.
>>>
>>> Any help is greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> Ron
>>>
>>>