I decided to sort out my virtual aquarium project today...
I've been mulling it over for the past few months, I wanted an aquarium but didn't want all the mess involved with transferring the fish, cleaning the tank, water spillage, slime, smells etc.
So I decided to make it virtual instead, which would involve a PC and monitor, I have a spare PC that I can dedicate to running the aquarium, I just needed a monitor.
I have some space on my sideboard in my lounge (which is where I would have placed a real aquarium anyway) however the vertical space above the sideboard is limited as the ceiling angles down towards the sideboard and ends roughly 350mm above it. The horizontal space, however, is much, much longer. This meant that I needed to get a monitor slightly wider than normal and with a fairly low stand so it could sit back against the wall and not touch the sloping ceiling.
I did some shopping around and found that LG produce a 25" 2560x1080 resolution monitor, HDMI with built-in speakers. I also needed a 7.5m HDMI because the PC was nowhere near where the monitor needed to be and I couldn't move it.
So today I set out to purchase either the monitor described above or an equivalent, I didn't want to order it online because I wanted to get on with the project today and didn't want to wait for delivery. Even if I did have it delivered, I didn't want to have to have it delivered to my workplace and have nosey management/coworkers asking me what it was for and I didn't trust an evening delivery service to my home to happen when I'm there (Sod's Law dictating that it would come when I'm still on the train heading home).
So I got to [shudder] PC World...
I wasn't surprised to be informed that they didn't have the LG monitor in stock but the girl serving me said she'd be happy to order it for me. I mentioned that I wanted to sort it out today so I went with a second-best choice, which in the end was a Samsung 25" widescreen TV with HDMI and speakers, it has 1920 x 1080 resolution so not as good as the one I wanted, but I chose it because it was the perfect physical size to fit in that area on the sideboard. I also got a 5m HDMI cable.
The cable isn't long enough but I knew that anyway, it does reach but not enough for it to be properly hidden so, for now, I've fudged it around stuff (I rarely have visitors, so aesthetics don't matter). The TV itself was a doddle to set up and the PC's graphics card (a nVidia GT610 low profile card) is working fine at the TV's max resolution... it's not as good as a native monitor res but it's good enough.
As for the aquarium, I've used serenescreen aquarium, $19 for the full version, it's really good, has a shitton of configurable options for different species of fish, background colours, sound and even personalised logos. To start with, I've gone with 7 Lionfish and they look great! The bubbling sound and visuals are very therapeutic, I found myself sitting there for half-an-hour today just staring at it, in fact, with my medical condition the way it is I think it'll really help in the future. I may even fuck Sky TV off and just sit there and stare at it each evening, or maybe just read my Kindle and enjoy the bubbling sound in the background! It's nice to have alternatives to just staring at TV shows/Films when I get home from a hard day's work.
So my little virtual aquarium project is off and running, whenever I'm home I'll have it there, running in the background to chill me out. It'll 'evolve' over time as this setup is very much version 1.0 right now. In the future I'll probably get a better, more widescreen monitor plus a longer cable longer HDMI cable, plus they may bring out a newer version of the aquarium software too or something better may come along.
Ah, it's these little computer projects that keep me sane... some people collect stamps, or paint model army figures, or collect film memorabilia, I collect computers and try to come up with novel ways to use them!
