13/02/2012 [DMFA #1285] - Living like a Being

[Tapewolf]

That's more detailed, but his habit of eating and sleeping seemed like the most sensible explanation for dreaming once we'd established he really was.  I wonder how his night shift job is going to affect that?
I'm curious about active vs. passive feeding as well.

Amber, can you get a new CRT on ebay?  Last I looked, they go for a song because not many people want them, but they are usually collection-only because they're so heavy.
One of these days I'm hoping that we'll be able to get affordable OLED monitors, because that should work nicely for colouring too.  Unfortunately, LCD monitors are good enough for games and for facebook so we're kind of stuck with that technology for the moment.  Heck, economics of scale means monitor tech has simply gone backwards - now that most of them are 1080 TV screens, you can't really get 1200 screens anymore, like you used to have in 1998...

[Talis Mahn]

Hmm, another possibility is someone has decided to recruit Abel.  Why else would he dream.

On the monitor front, I just bought 2 Viewsonic LED monitors ($150 USD each).  I'm liking them muchly.  I still have to get a color correction kit tho.  But they make my regular LCDs (TV and Laptop) look so faded and dull.  OLED would be nice but I think it will b a while until the price comes down.  And I see Acer LED backlit monitors going for $130USD

[Ignuus66]

From this I'm gathering Aary still wants abel.... If you know what I mean...
http://missmab.com/Comics/Ab_098.php
I noticed the archives are still not updated, I'm (relatively) new to this comic, when does Amber usually update the archives after starting a new chapter?

[Baldur]

Just had to register and comment on the monitor problem:

Cheap LED backlight LCD monitors are worse on color reproduction than older CCFL backlight LCD:s, the LEDs used give worse color gamut with more errors even within the gamut than the a CCFL gives. And the LED backlighting will just get more uneven as time goes by and the LEDs age, where as CCFL ages uniformly.

Getting anything besides TN would solve the viewing angle problem, only TN suffers from the horrible color shifts with even small deflection.
IPS and VA have much better real angles before problems start. Unfortunately the manufacturer posted numbers for viewing angles are no use, they mean when you get 10:1 contrast or something like that, not what the usable angles are.

Last problem is that many of the cheap monitors are only 6bit with dithering to display 8bit, including almost all TN panels and some of cheaper IPS panels (e-IPS). For most this doesn't really matter much though.

Also, forget the dynamic contrast ratios manufacturers tout, the real contrast for the monitors is between 500:1 and 1000:1 with couple panels with better. One of the few with better contrast is the new BenQ line with A-MVA panels that gives about 3000:1 contrast with 8bit colors and good viewing angles, all are LED backlight unfortunately.

Personally used Trinitron CRT:s for a long time (until 7 months ago) until I was able to get a 24" IPS monitors (HP ZR24w) with 8bit colors, paid 400€ each for them, but worth to me over a cheap TN.

So as minimum I would recommend any non-TN monitor. Non-LED has its good sides, but are starting to get hard to get. Real 8bit color reproduction would be a plus, but finding out which monitors have it is really hard, all manufacturers say in their specifications that the monitor displays 16.7M colors, but don't tell if its real, or with dithering.

Now back to lurking in the shadows.

[Ignuus66]

I know how you feel amber, My monitor has been just barely working for a year now, every hour or so the screen starts flashing, and after that the refresh rate dropped.
The only "fix" I found was hitting the monitor a few times.   (I presume it's a connection problem, but I'm too lazy to find it out or find a way to permanently fix it)

[Alondro]

Ponders making a song parody of "Living Like a Being", like Weird Al's song "Living with a Hernia".   Hmmmm...

[joshofspam]

Ah, yes!

The perks! Always think of the perks!

One day Abel will bask in the brilliance of Aaryanna. Till that day, Trolling Abel should be enough.

[MT Hazard]

Reverting back to Being 'dependencies' is something that won't be a problem for Dan, unless something unfortunate happens to his grandmother that is. I imagine it changes with age as well, Aary is only slightly old than Abel but it doesn't seem she has any occasions of dreaming or needing to eat.

[Viking ZX]

I find it interesting that Aary wears a lot more clothing now that she is older. Experience and wisdom methinks?

[Gamma]

*De-lurk*

First off, I've been enjoying the direction of the comic and all that's going on so far. Ship that Roo-Rat!

Second, I dunno if you're interested but I still have my old monitor kicking around. Aside from the dust its collected it still looks brand new.
Diamond Pro 930sb
And I might even still have the box in storage somewhere, I'll check tomorrow, that would make shipping it massively easier. And I could probably score an over-pack box from work that would fit it.

I did a quick function test on it, no magic smoke and it still shows the color range I left it at.

I've also got a 17' HP CRT that I always liked the colors onl.  HP seems to have prided them selves on making a pretty nice monitor for the money for quite some time. My current main monitor is an HP and it has relatively little color shift for being an older CCFL LCD. I got it refurbished or I woulda paid through the nose.
These guys have a pretty good selection of refurbished monitors and some new. It's where I got mine and my fathers. Both refurbed HPs are chugging along nicely for the past two years.YMMV

Snapped a couple pics of it. ISO sucks on my camera phone so its washed out and grainy respectively. Plus the refresh rate was visible to the camera.
#1  #2

[Surzsha]

Okay, the correlation between straight-up energy absorption and physical regulation of energy intake is a theory everyone should know by now, but I am curious with how this also affects the need to dream. Dreaming is mainly the subconscious keeping itself entertained until the body gets up again in the morning. It's not exactly an energy-revitalizing function, as far as I know, but more of a result of sleep, which is an energy-revitalizing function.

I can understand that since cubi don't need to sleep, most don't bother to and therefore don't get the chance to dream, but with those who do and find that they can't does sound like a mystery. This makes me wonder now how magical energy affects the subconscious, in this universe...

[Trias Pandora]

I thought dreaming was the brain's way let your subconsciousness deal with the information that your consciousness intakes on a daily basis?

[lilpuppy23]

I thought dreaming was the brain's way let your subconsciousness deal with the information that your consciousness intakes on a daily basis?

I thought dreaming was the side effect of neural pruning? (Has been reading too much Freefall)

[Surzsha]

I thought dreaming was the brain's way let your subconsciousness deal with the information that your consciousness intakes on a daily basis?

I'm sorry, you're right. Dreaming is the subconscious processing information in its own manner, whether it be information you gathered recently or distant memories you've carried with you for years and may have even forgotten. There may be some other details I'm missing. After all, dreams are more complicated than at first glance.

[Trias Pandora]

Yeah.  But then, the brain's a weird organ anyway.

Also, I love Aary's facial expressions.  Especially the last one.