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Overscan Fix for Intel on a Cheap TV

I got a re­al­ly, re­al­ly cheap 24" 1080p TV to use as a mon­i­tor.

Once I fi­nal­ly got hold of the mi­cro-HD­MI->HD­MI adapter and plugged it in, of course, I ran in­to over­scan is­sues.

What's overscan?

When TVs get a full res­o­lu­tion feed over HD­MI, then zoom it a bit and trim the edges be­cause tv sig­nals usu­al­ly have garbage there.

How­ev­er, com­put­er's don't. In fac­t, be­cause of Fit­t's law, the edges are some of the most in­ter­est­ing bits of the screen.

The usu­al so­lu­tion for this is to set a spe­cif­ic mode in the TV menus, like "1:1" or "Just scan" which dis­ables over­scan. But this is a very cheap TV and has no such things.

The sec­ond usu­al so­lu­tion is to use nvidia util­i­ties and con­fig­ure "un­der­scan". But I have an in­tel board and can't do such things.

The third usu­al so­lu­tion is to use "xran­dr --­trans­for­m" to tweak the screen. But that makes the right and bot­tom edges be hid­den.

The fourth usu­al so­lu­tion is to set­up a cus­tom mode that does­n't trig­ger the TV's over­scan, but that means you are not do­ing 1:1 pix­els and things look ug­ly

The fifth usu­al so­lu­tion is to use a VGA in­put, which has no over­scan. But my VGA adapter/­ca­ble com­bi­na­tion pro­duces fuzzy im­age and the TV can't quite sync it, so I lose the left edge.

The sixth (not quite usual solution) is to use xrandr --out­put HD­MI --set au­dio force-d­vi because that will trigger some random combination of side effects in the intel driver and make the TV believe it's getting DVI input (the TV even says DVI on its mode info!?!) and not overscan.

But that made my screen look pur­ple.

So, seventh solution, which worked for me: xrandr --out­put HD­MI --set au­dio force-d­vi --­mode 1920x1080i

UP­DATE: The im­age qual­i­ty in 1080i is not as good as 1080p, and the pur­ple tint is prob­a­bly fix­able us­ing xran­dr's --gam­ma op­tion.

And no, I have no ex­pla­na­tion for it.

Changeless (Parasol Protectorate, #2)

Cover for Changeless (Parasol Protectorate, #2)

Review:

I have very mixed feel­ings.

It was en­ter­tain­ing, but it seems I can't buy book #3 be­cause of re­gion­al re­stric­tions in the Kobo and Ama­zon book stores. I *can* buy #4 and #5 but why would I do that if I can't read the mid­dle book.

This may just be an­noy­ing enough to put me off the se­ries :-(

Nikola Themes Repo is Now Official

As of 1 minute ago, Niko­la github mas­ter's "in­stal­l_the­me" com­mand pulls themes from http://themes.niko­la.ralsi­na.me

So, sud­den­ly, in­stead of 2 themes for down­load, you have ~65 (although of course, most of them are bootswatch vari­a­tions in 2 themes, jin­ja-de­fault looks ex­act­ly like de­fault, and or­phan is use­less ;-)

And you can con­trib­ute themes now!

How?

  1. Give me a pull re­quest at http­s://github.­­com/get­niko­la/niko­la-themes

    All you have to do is add your theme in themes/ and pull re­quest.

  2. Send me a zip of your theme and I'll do it.

Con­tribut­ing themes will take a while be­cause the theme has to be ex­am­ined for ma­li­cious code in the tem­plates, but I will process them, slow­ly but sure­ly. If you have sent me a theme in the past and I have not done it, I am ter­ri­bly sor­ry and hope you can find it in you to try one more time :-)

The themes site it­self is not ex­act­ly awe­some, but it is func­tion­al, and you can get themes from there too, and see de­mo sites for each the­me, and even look at au­to­gen­er­at­ed screen­shots (which sad­ly don't show web­fonts)

Necessary Evil (The Milkweed Triptych, #3)

Cover for Necessary Evil (The Milkweed Triptych, #3)

Review:

Wor­thy clo­sure for a great tril­o­gy. It makes the bleak­ness of the sec­ond book mean­ing­ful, and, like the first two, it just feels re­al.

That is not a small achieve­men­t. Char­ac­ters are fleshed out, ac­tions make sense, plot moves for­ward like a train.

Re­al­ly liked this book.


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