Now I appreciate the illusion of 3D. I like drop shadows. I like flippy things. But I don’t want to wear stupid glasses to see something in “3D.”

Movies can be in 3D. They will be for a time. Unless it’s done well, which was James Cameron did in Avatar, it’s going to be a fad.

Another thing I don’t see coming is transparent monitors. They were popular in Avatar and other science fiction media.

The advantage of transparent monitors is that you can see through them. That advantage is only evident for dramatic purposes; it’s cool to see someone’s expression when they’re using a computer. It makes for a more interesting camera angle. That’s it.

In real life, a transparent monitor would be a pain in the ass. Your eyes would lose focus. Bright objects behind the monitor would obscure what you see.

My experience shows that a majority of all computers are positioned by a window, often right in front of the window. That’s not going to work for transparency.

One trend I do see happening, and which was shown in Avatar, is the curved monitor.

Monitors are getting larger. My new iMac has a 27-inch screen. That’s huge. Any larger, and I wouldn’t be able to see the left and right sides of the screen. Or, to see them, I’d have to sit about 4 feet away from the monitor.

The solution is simple: curve the screen.

My guess is that you’ll see curved screen monitors appear sporadically. There are already expensive, boutique monitors, such as the Ostendo CRVD:

That’s 47-inches at over $6000.

Eventually, I predict, Apple will come out with a curved screen iMac. That would legitimize the market, and open the floodgates for all the other manufacturers to sell curved monitors and for users to demand them.

I don’t think it would be a wild curve, just a subtle arc. But I think it will improve visibility, and allow monitors to get larger without becoming useless.

The final step? Retina display monitors. That is, monitors with a resolution so high that the human eye cannot detect the pixels. That would be something.

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No, that isn’t a new airfoil. It’s what happens when the shutter on a digital camera moves too slowly to properly capture a moving image. The result is a stroboscopic effect on anything moving the image, a non-reality.

The reason for the effect is that the shutter on a digital camera, such as the typical cell phone camera, rolls across the CCD. So the left or top portion of the image is captured first, and then the middle part, and finally the rest of the image. That time span is fast enough to capture most images, but slow enough to make mincemeat out of moving images.

Occasionally, however, the rolling shutter produces some curious effects on rather static images:

In the above image (click for a larger version), you see what appears to be the reflection of the little boy’s internal demon on the right; the demon has his eyes open and the little boy (not the reflection) has his eyes closed. Again, the reason is a rolling shutter.

In the case of the little boy, the timing was just perfect enough to catch the boy blinking on the left, but with his eyes starting to open on the right. (Or it could be the other way around.)

As cell phones become more common as cameras, you’ll doubtless see more images like the ones shown in this post. In fact, you can search Google Images for rolling shutter and between the images of windows blinds you’ll find some excellent examples.

Or maybe some rolling shutter images already exist inside your digital camera or phone? Who knows?

Despite there being no point in trying, I did so anyway.

When a member of the Brazilian militia kills you in Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2, he says something that sounds to my ears like, “Aboo nil, trolly zodd.”

Venturing over to Google’s Language tools, I tried typing in just about every variation of Aboo nil, trolly zodd into the translator. No luck. I have no idea what it means, mostly because I can’t spell it properly for Portuguese.

So I gave up.

In World at War, I could sometimes make out what the Germans were saying. I don’t speak German. I can’t spell in German. But when I threw a grenade at a German soldier, he said, “Scheiße! Granate!” That was easy to figure out.

In Modern Warfare 2, I can make out some of what the Russians say. I studied Russian in both High School and College. I’m far from fluent, but some of the Russian I can understand.

If you mess something up and a Russian character in the game notices, he says, “что тут.” That sounds like “Chto toot.” It means “What’s here?”

The funniest thing the Russians say is, “мне нужна врач.” They say that when they notice something is wrong and they’re all scrambling around to find your guy. The problem is that “мне нужна врач” means “I need a doctor.” It’s probably something the game developers coded as sound to play when one of the Russian characters is injured.

For example, in some games, your guy cries out “Medic” for help. It makes sense that the Russian guys would do the same thing. It doesn’t make sense that they would walk around saying “I need a doctor” when they’re looking for an intruder.

That discrepancy makes me wonder whether any other foreign language sound bytes are equally incorrect for the circumstances. For example, “Aboo nil, trolly zodd” might just mean, “No, you cannot date my sister.” Who knows?

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Or am I?

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You probably think I’m crazy for buying any book. After all, a lot of the “good stuff” is already online, right? For an old fart like me, it’s just not the same.

I could go to the online PHP manual to look up a function. I’ve done in many times. But my PHP in a Nutshell book is a far better reference. For one, it’s better-written. For two, I can scribble in the margins. For three, I can dog-ear popular pages, which still beats any web search no matter how fast the Internet connection.

Actually, being better-written is what a computer book is all about.

The Internet is full of schlock. In fact, a lot of what you find when searching for reference material on the Internet is repetitious stuff. Rarely is there anything unique or insightful. Try looking up any Unix command line function like ifconfig and you’ll see what I mean: It’s all the same documentation.

Of course, computer books can be just as bad.

The problem with laying down good money for a computer book is that you’re taking a risk. It’s a risk that the content will be junk. That’s why I prefer to buy computer books at a brick-and-mortar store instead of online.

Recently I bought one of the worst computer books evar. I won’t name it, but it was supposed to be a technical reference for a programming language. The book is sloppily organized, contains meandering text, and for a programming language reference contains no examples.

I mean, when I want to look up the fragus() function, I want to see more than just text that reads:

The fragus() function returns the fragus computation for the most significant byte of the operator. It returns an error status of 0 otherwise.

No examples. No reference to what a fragus computation is. No mention of why it’s necessary or how it’s used.

One of the most important things missing is how to react when things go wrong. Most of the idiots who write computer books must be so good at what they do that nothing ever screws up. Yet, the reason people are buying a reference is that they probably don’t get it and are experiencing massive screw-ups.

Oh I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

Perhaps the best advantage of going to a brick-and-mortar bookstore is that you can relish the satisfaction of returning the book and getting all your money back.

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