peanutbutter126

I just bought a new desktop computer today (yay!) but there's one problem that I hadn't seen coming (not so yay)...

I have a 4 year old Dell monitor from my first computer. I think it's a 19 inch. When I hooked it up to my new computer, I noticed that everything was very... small. The text, icons, taskbar - everything made me squint. It made sense when I checked the resolution - after all, it's on 1680x1050 (recommended setting) on an old and not exactly big monitor. I figured everything would be fine after I lowered the resolution... aaaaand was wrong >.> All the other resolutions looked very stretched and enlarged; the only one that looks proportional is 1680x1050. I've enlarged the text and icons to 125% through one of Windows' settings, but it's still causing me quite a lot of grief - the text is miniscule when I open other programs, like Steam! The size of everything isn't exactly consistent and I'm pretty sure it's not doing good things to my eyes.

I've used this monitor for my old desktop, and after the desktop died had it hooked up to my laptop's display for the past few months. On the old desktop, the resolution was 1024x768 and everything was very snug and comfortable. On my laptop, which has a recommended resolution of 1366x768, the display distorted a bit but having a quick play with the resolution solved the problem. Problem is, I can't do anything about how the monitor is behaving to this new computer and staring at that small text is literally giving me a headache :/

I did a bit of googling and it seems that the problem might have something to do with the monitor and graphics card being incompatible or something. I don't know how to check the monitor's native resolution (though if I took a guess, I'd say it was very good at 1024x768 actually, after a bit of research I'm starting to think it's 1680x1050... and now I'm confusing myself @_@), but I know the graphics card is an AMD Radeon HD 7450. The computer is a HP Pavilion, 3rd gen Core i7.

Soooooo. Are there any settings I can fiddle with to fix this problem? If not, does that mean I should get a new monitor? I'm praying there's an easy solution out there...!

Since I'm sure I did a terrible job explaining, I took some photos of the monitor at different resolutions (not sure if they help though) XD

1680x1050
1280x800
1024x768

I have no idea what I'm doing. Any help is greatly appreciated!

What process do you go through in writing fanfiction? Share your experiences!

I've been all over the place. For years, I just winged every chapter. Sometimes I'd have a rush of inspiration and envision what future chapters would include, but never jotted it down (and so usually forgot them). Most of the time I just ran with what I had, and sometimes I reckon it's the worst thing I could have done. Lack of foresight really narrows your choices down when you're trying to tie up a story... as I've learned.

Then for one of my stories, I actually sat down and planned out everything beforehand, chapter by chapter. The details change a little as I write but the skeleton of the story stays the same. It's quite a reassuring method XD

Now for another unpublished story I have, I've written a few whole chapters already - I promised myself not to publish it until I finished one in-progress story, so I've just been picking at it every now and then. So far I actually think I like this method the most. I had sudden epiphanies about characterisation problems that I could only realise after a few chapters, and having the story unpublished allowed me to make the changes without a worry. I'm also planning out future chapters for this story and I'm stuck near the last few chapters. It's quite a fun ride behind the scenes

I've had this poll on my profile page at ff.net for a week as well and here are the votes so far:

1 Oh, a combination of ways. Winging, planning - been there, done that - 8 » 32%
2 WING IT, CHAPTER BY CHAPTER - 5 » 20%
3 Plan out the whole story beforehand and post each chapter as you finish them - 4 » 16%
4 Write the entire story behind the scenes, edit, and finally post - 4 » 16%
5 Non-author here - 3 » 12%
6 Write some chapters beforehand, then start posting and update as you go - 1 » 4%
7 Other - 0 » 0%
Unique voters: 25

I searched and didn't see a particular thread for this, but I'm sure I'm not the only one on these boards who has heard of Nico Nico Douga. If you know Vocaloid, there's a big chance you've heard NND covers of some songs. To those that haven't heard of NND, allow me to introduce you to this bubbling pit of talent!

Essentially, Nico Nico Douga is like the Japanese youtube. It's a video-sharing site, and home to dozens of musically-talented users. The singers mostly cover Vocaloid songs but some also release original songs and even albums. What really strikes me is that these are very normal people (most of them anyway) who have great talent and potential. They're like the Sam Tsui, Tyler Ward, Christina Grimmie etc. of online Japanese music. Just... in greater abundance, and lesser known.

Some of my favourite songs:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you rate your inner Master Chef?

0 = can't cook. Full stop.
1 = *kitchen implosion*
3 = might be able to produce something edible with strict guidance and recipes.
5 = not the best but enough not to starve.
7 = pretty good, a few specialty dishes. Occasionally experiments, with varying results.
10 = can make anything, and damn well too!

You can decide where to put yourself if you make nothing but instant foods

I'd say I'm around a 6.5 XD I can indeed cook without posing a threat to myself and those in my apartment block, but I'm lazy enough that I only make the same meals over and over again. If I feel like something different, I experiment a tad - the first trial is usually edible but either too tasteless or too salty. I've got a bad instinct for how long to cook things because I lack common knowledge from being spoonfed by my chef of a dad (I know, you'd think the gene carries)

So how do you guys fare in the kitchen? Feel free to share experiences, favourite dishes and catastrophes!

How exciting - I've actually never posted a thread in the Ninja Academy before! 8D

I told myself I'd revive myself after my final exams. I still have a week to go buuuuttttt... I missed H&E heaps and couldn't help myself

I'm pretty sure it's been way over a year since I've last been on the boards. I got too busy with my last year of high school and before I knew it I'd dropped off the face of the interwebz to be buried under stuff like physics and economics. Oops...?

So! How's everyone been? I've taken a quick look around and I'm really happy to see some familiar faces SOMEONEBRINGMEKRISK still hanging around Looking forward to catching up with people and meeting newcomers (who have probably become old timers by now, haha)

Anyway, just dropped in for a quick hullo before I hit the books again. And can I say, I'm really really really excited to be back. I love this place!