Thursday, June 22, 2006

The case of the colour blind monitor






One fine day (I didn't know about the weather at the time - was inside and online for quite some time), I was calmly browsing and blogging away when I saw it ... (that's called an ellipsis , the 3 dots)

A computer screen which looked unique - different - one of kind. There was something about the way it looked (or rather showed) that caught the eye ... It took a few seconds (guess that less than 60 is few..(now that's not an ellipsis-that's just 2 dots-small things make a big difference)) to figure out that it was missing a color - Red. Almost saying - Gimme red !

Then I remembered....

Flashback
Anatomy class ... having a prized LCD projector , the department finally wanted to show a powerpoint (like xerox became a term for photocopy, powerpoint for presentation)...

Topic : Genetics ...

It was only halfway through the class that people realised that the projector was not showing its true colours. And then when we reached inheritance of colour blindness (color blindness for short - US spellings are shorter I guess- refer earlier post about partiality of Google). The teacher, who by now had realized that we were seeing the ppt without the red, joked that the projector must be having color blindness(there, short n sweet).
After class, I lingered back to examine it and discovered the defect - diagnosis: a broken pin. If I put in a small metal wire, maybe it could see again...

Quickly, I shut down the computer (quickly shut down - an oxymoron) . I pulled the monitor's plug and examined the pins - strangely everything was nomal ( two different problems can have the same outcome ) ... I was trying to break my head over the problem when I thought - maybe the other end of the cable...

Quickly (now truly) , I pulled out the other end from the monitor (usually it's fused to the monitor - a fact that I luckily forgot at the time (this was an LCD monitor in which the other end was detachable)) and examined it. ... ... ... nothing - everything normal ...

Sometimes, u feel frustrated when there is nothing worng ... u kind of feel that everything being right is kind of wrong... Dejected, I plugged in the cable and booted the comp. What do u know - the full colors were back !

Micro flashback
When I was pulling out the second end of the cable , I had noted that it was not screwed on tight.
Sometimes, u do things right even without ur knowledge...

2 comments:

ghee said...

Hi John!Paying you a visit here again..
what happened to your tag board?

nina said...

ha! funny...that translation thingie translates "post" into the german equvalent of "pole" or "stake"
anyway, thanks for your comment. how did you find my blog?

greetings from cologne

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