Biased

I know I’ve written about bias lighting before, but today I noticed this article.

Bias lighting is the best for-the-price change I’ve ever made to my computing experience. Incredibly cheap, and improves the experience of viewing a monitor, especially long-term, enormously. If you think you don’t care or it won’t improve your experience, you’re almost certainly wrong. Why? Physiologically, humans experience large brightness changes very similarly and because the differences are so large and humans eyes are nearly identical physiologically, eye strain will happen to everyone about the same.

In other words, bias lighting will benefit you and it’s incredibly cheap. Just get you some. (If your monitor is already against a bright background like a window, this won’t help you much — the only exception.)

For me, bias lighting improved the time I can read at my screen and greatly decreased my likelihood of getting a migraine from doing so. Best $25 I ever spent on computer-related stuff.

Lack

Oh, fun.

*After I’d been a working photojournalist for five years and had publications in nationwide outlets (not just Army), was told while applying for a similar job that I had “no experience.”

*When I was attempting to break into the IT industry, I interviewed at a large regional public-facing computer repair shop. While I was waiting around at the front to be interviewed, a customer came in and was frantically looking for help with a problem. I glanced at the front desk person with a “Can I help this woman?” look and he nodded his head yes. She told me she’d brought the computer in three times and they’d not fixed it. I fixed the issue in about five minutes. After the interview, I was emailed back and told that — you guessed it — I had “not enough experience.” That’s one of the few times I’ve ever sent a really nasty reply email stating that I fixed when I was waiting in the front a problem that their own techs could not in three times of trying, and that not hiring me was their fucking loss. A year later, they were out of business.

*Was rejected from another IT job because I my technical skills were so far beyond those of the interviewer that when I corrected him about something that was easily possible, he basically kicked me out of the office and argued with me about it. Glad I got that early warning, because otherwise the job sounded great.

Goth Before

One of my favorite songs ever written. I’ve never seen this performance before, but found it the other day when I discovered the Concrete Blonde “Everybody Knows” video.

The audio quality is potato and the video quality is mashed potato, but Johnette’s voice is just unbelievable. My dudes and ladies, that cannot be faked. Fucking hell. I’d forgotten just how absurdly talented she was. She was goth before anyone knew what the hell goth was. That dirty swamp guitar of James Mankey…what a performance.

And Johnette’s growl at the “Ohww you were a vampire….” during the first part of the song….