Miles Davis & John Coltrane - SO WHAT

nobody likes a smartass

Nobody likes a smartass, so if you are one, keep it to yourself, or better still, pretend to be a dumb person. Of course there are limits to this, but the point is, pretending to be dumber than you are will make you appear less of a threat to people. This will more likely get you further in your chosen profession, if not indeed, life, generally speaking.

Extending your desktop to your TV with s-video

Recently I'm getting into watching video torrents for the first time, X-vid DVD rips and the like, so it was necessary to get an s-video cable to watch them on TV i.e. to export the signal from the PC to the TV. Well, after a fair amount of trial and error, research, etc. I discovered that if I simply stick one end of the s-video cable into the front of the TV, where the yellow (video), red and white (sound) and s-video interface panel is, the PC desktop will refuse to extend to the TV. As far as I understand, this is the way things should work, but they don't, so here's how I got around the problem: instead of plugging the s-video jack into the front panel on the TV, I stuck it into one of these specially designed SCARTS (which goes in the back of the TV), and which has an 2-way functionality i.e. input/output switch AND an s-video interface. You can buy one from any specialist store. But is it that simple? Oh no! Here's the real beef: when you have done this, you CAN then extend your desktop to the TV, but you will only see the extended desktop in black and white. Not very nice for watching the latest movies (post-1950-something or whatever), right? Right. So here's what you do: after you've successfully extended your desktop to the TV in black and white, you then simply REMOVE the s-video jack from the special SCART, and stick it in the aforementioned front panel (where it refused to work in the first place), wherein you have the yellow, red, white and s-video interface, and presto, your PC desktop is extended, in color, onto your TV. The moral of the story is: things don't always work as they are designed to, so you need to adapt, and maybe even fool them into doing what you want.

Paranoia.

Sometimes, the question isn't "are you being paranoid?", but rather, "are you being paranoid enough?".