Question: David asks, "I got a new monitor and now some of my games have black bars on each side. What happened?"
Answer: Good question David. From the earliest days of CRT screens, whether used in TVs or Computers, they all had the same aspect ratio of 4:3, which means that the screen is roughly square. In the last 10 years or so, we've had widescreen TV's and monitors, that are at a ratio of 16:9. Because of the difference in Aspect Ratio, some programs that were designed to be displayed only in the more square 4:3, will center themselves on the wider screen. This results in the black bars you're seeing. You can change that by adjusting your display resolution. You'll right-click the desktop and choose either Properties on XP or Personalize on Windows 7.
Cool Site: GasBuddy.com: Well, the price of gas is on everyone's mind right now. Our cool site of the week this week is GasBuddy.com. The basic premise of the site is to help folks find the lowest prices for gas for a given ZIP Code. This is helpful as everyone is gearing up for summer travel, or just getting around. Features of the site include a heat map showing what the prices are like geographically for both the US and Canada. For instance, the cheapest gas in the country is found in Wyoming, and is around $3.65 or less almost statewide. There are tips to helping with your mileage, a trip cost calculator, a blog, and mobile apps for your smartphone. The site has a new opinion poll each week. This week I found out that 29% of respondents don't use a phone while driving, 27% use one, handheld. Each week the site has a prize giveaway, which has been a $250 prepaid gas card for as long as they showed. You have to create an account in order to win, and post gas prices from around the area where you live. This is how they collect their data. They give you points for participating in the site's activities, like voting in a poll, updating gas prices, etc. and for every thousand points, you earn another chance at that gift card. But for those weeks you don't win, you're at least helping other folks find the best gas prices.
Cool Gadget: Laser Spark Plugs: Continuing the theme of what to do about rising gas prices, our cool gadget this week comes from Gearlog.com, who reported that a team of researchers working both with Toyota and a spark plug company, has developed tiny lasers that can be used to ignite fuel. The lasers are 11mm long. The idea is to make them into replacement spark plugs. They can ignite leaner mixtures than conventional spark plugs. Conventional spark plugs can do it, but the higher spark energy burns up the electrodes too fast to really be economical. More work is needed, so don't look for them at your parts store too soon. There are problems like the soot problem inside cylinders fouling the optics, possible timing issues, and of course when they first come out, they'll be expensive and probably used in some type of racing car, where races can be won or lost by making one less pit stop to refuel the car. But yeah, laser spark plugs may be in your future.
It's All "Geek" To Me: SMTP: This week we have an acronym: SMTP. SMTP stands for Simple (yeah, right) Mail Transfer Protocol. This is the protocol that is used when we send email. When you send an email, your message goes to an email server, this is known as your outgoing mail server. That server uses SMTP to send your message to the recipient's mail server, where it's stored until they pick it up using a completely different protocol. So, if you have ever had to set up Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or some other email program that you don't need a web browser to get to, you have had to know the name of the Outgoing Mail Server and might have seen SMTP after it. That's what it means in a nutshell: SMTP – Outgoing email server
