merrimac into monitor

[calimac]

The Merrimac (yes, I know the Confederates changed the name) was a large book on my desk, which bumped into the Monitor - the computer monitor - and turned on the control buttons across the bottom.

The only problem is I can't figure out what it did.

The print on the screen is much brighter and clearer now - except for the text in web browser address fields, strangely enough - but now it's so bright that I can no longer tell the difference between regular and bold text in Word or Excel. As I've marked some important things that way, this makes life difficult.

The only controls I can find that affect this are Contrast and Brightness. I've jiggled both and nothing seems to affect this. This lack of contrast caused by brightness. Puzzling.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Have you tried changing the software settings? If you're on a mac, the brightness controls are on F1 and F2 (next to the esc key) or in System Prefs. The monitor itself probably has hardware controls on it someplace; I assume that's what you jiggled.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm on a PC. I know where the software controls for things like screen color and background are, and making sure the software knows the size and resolution of the monitor, and the same two hardware controls as on the buttons at the bottom of the monitor can be accessed from there, but I don't know of any other way to adjust brightness and contrast than the brightness and contrast controls.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Well, your next recourse is to a) shut down your computer, unplug the monitor's power for a few seconds, replug and restart and/or b) call the monitor's manufacturer for support.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have books piled under my monitor too, a lot of the time. Currently I have volume one of the GURPS Basic Set and Rudyard Kipling's Kim.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The culprit was Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. The 2000-page edition. The one in which I looked up the guy who arranged Schubert's Erlkönig.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

If you walk through all the options on the monitor menu, you might find one that says "reset to factory defaults" or some such. Doing a web search on the monitor model number might pop up a user manual that would give a hint of how to find it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I found that. Changed the numbers, definitely, but didn't solve the problem.

In most respects, I like the change: I'd been having trouble reading the screen in some types of light, and it hadn't occurred to me that I could do anything about it. But to have the address bars rendered hard to read and boldface unusable, that's just kind of odd.