Stuffed with pistachios and assorted dried fruits.

Sorry, been busy.

And some of my attention has been directed towards my Apple Cinema Display which has continued to sulk on an occasional basis. I finally took it back to the Apple store in Chonburi where it obliged by failing to work for them too; so it is now in their hands and they will hopefully fix it for not a lot of cash and I will then immediately sell it; because there is now something bigger in my life.

When I bought my Apple display several years ago, the only real quality alternative was something from HP; at an even higher price and almost impossible to find. There were some attractive models from Dell, but Dell didn’t sell monitors in Thailand at that time. Now they do, and I spent many hours researching the options. Eventually I decided on the Dell U2713HM.

It’s a 27" monitor, bigger than my current display but the same size as the latest Apple displays. Put next to my Apple,and the first thing you notice (apart from the size increase) is that the Dell is less glossy.

The Apple glossy screen looks great for movies in a perfectly lit room; but otherwise the reflections can be a nightmare. My crappy Samsung has a matte finish; but it is like looking through grit. The Dell has an anti-glare coating that avoids the worst of the reflections while still being good to look at.

The next useful improvement is that the height of the Dell can be adjusted, unlike the Apple. I wear bi-focals, so I like to have the monitor well below my eye-line; now I can. It can also be positioned high if that is your thing.

Not something I would need, but you can even set it in portrait mode.

The Apple display offers a Mini Display Port connector; and that’s it. The Dell has a wide range of connection options.

This means that I could connect my Xbox to the display and enjoy Grand Theft Auto 5 on it in a few weeks time. There’s a thought.

The size of thing is somewhat daunting initially; it’s a load of real estate for the eyes to cover. Many web pages (Pattaya Days is an example), look rather lost in the 2560x1440 resolution. But it is perfect for Lightroom, with a nice big image in the middle and plenty of space for menus on the sides. This is just as well, because my previous two monitor approach would no longer fit on my computer table. Now there is only room for the single monitor, which pleases the cat because there is space for her to lie down and help me with everything.

Perhaps most important of all, how is the screen quality? Damn fine is the answer.

You receive some immediate comfort when you open the box to find a calibration report produced in the Dell lab for your monitor. If you are of a mind you can perform further hardware calibration; but as I am not sure what this would mean I haven’t investigated further. Software calibration via a Spyder or similar is still advised.

The panel is an ips type. same as the Apple, which means you can view it from almost any angle and the colours and brightness remain consistent.

The monitor offers 98% sRGB coverage which is ideal for someone playing with photos which will mainly be viewed on a screen. This is the same colour gamut as the Apple monitors. If you need a wider gamut, Dell will sell you one for a good deal more cash; but it can present all sorts of colour problems if you then want to to work in sRGB; so the 2713HM was OK for me. Colours look wonderful, text is crisp, and the lighting of the screen appears uniform. And far less glare than my Apple.

I tested it out by playing Far Cry 3 at maximum resolution and very very good it looked too. No sign of ghosting, and the big screen makes for very immersive experience. Movies look great; although HD is being scaled up so you can see some degradation. Apparently 720P can look better than full HD because the scaling involved is more straightforward; haven’t bothered to check that out.

Best of all is the price. The Apple 27" Cinema Display would cost me 33,900 baht. The Dell was 18,900 baht That’s a lot of monitor for not much money. I bought mine from InvadeIT in Hua Hin who offer free shipping and excellent service.

Right, off to play Sim City on the big screen.

Five years before Micro Four Thirds came along in 2008, there was the Four Thirds system. Spearheaded by Olympus, Four Thirds was Micro Four Thirds with a mirror box, a smaller-sized DSLR.

The system was never a huge success, the mirror box did not allow Olympus to take advantage of the smaller sensor and make a diminutive body; but that didn’t stop Olympus releasing fifteen bodies over a seven year period, culminating in the E-5 which can still be found for sale today; if you look hard enough.

Today we took a trip to Central Chonburi in order to address the problem of my dead monitor. There is a shop there that has access to a little man that fixes Apple gear for a reasonable price. Sadly, the shop was gone; so instead we went to the iStudio outlet which actually had a service counter. I handed over my monitor and they said they would have a look.

My neighbour Nik has a way with technology, and it is not a good way. Almost everything he owns tends to expire in a shower of sparks or cloud of smoke, long before you would normally expect to see sparks or clouds.

His latest disaster is his Olympus EM-5 which has a hole in the sensor, or so he reckons. I reckon it is just a big dust spot which needs a professional clean, but it could end up being a hole given the way he keeps jabbing at it with assorted implements; most of which should not be seen within a centimetre of a sensor.

Number 1.

This:

What’s worse, this is only one of four cookbooks that I picked up on a recent trip to Bangkok. My move to vegetarianism has automatically eliminated many of the restaurants that I previously favoured with my custom. As a result, I am reduced to a much smaller selection of outlets, and a more limited selection of suitable dishes at those outlets. The alternative is to prepare something at home. Juicing and salads are all very well for a while; but I felt the need for some variety; hence the cookbooks.