Category Archives: Uncategorized

Game screen

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24°C, clear & warm

Took the day off today and drove to work. Exhaustion set in again- frustratingly.
 
Two pictures today-
1/ Game screen of a bunch of characters who all seeme magnetically drawn to the spot over a fallen foe. The all bunched toghtly together and looked upwards in a detatched religious way.
2/ Our cat sleeping in the shower.

2-pass render elements

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20°C, same old showers, humidity and snails everywhere.

3DS max: Trying to fix a problem with that render from yesterday. The light cones increase the exposure of the background. So ( it’s going to get geeky here…) have rendered out a 2 pass render elements job. That givesa background pass, and an stmospheric effects pass (the volume light). The light glow pass didn’t work, that needs sorting before I can use the file. Oddly, Premier doesn’t offer DivX as an output compressionh codec. Clearly, I have some reading-up to do.
As you can see, this is not so successful, the light glow has gone, but the light-beam is definitely better.
 
When this is done, I’m off to play STALKER.

Tchernobyl- and STALKER

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15°C, N wind and sunny(mostly)

GAME: playing a new game- as mentioned a few posts ago. This is work commenting on because it’s so immersive, there are lots of detailed touches that make the game worth exploring as an activity in its own right. there is a trading element to it, but primarily- it is a fps game based around The Zone- the exclusion zone around Tchernobyl in northern Ukraine. Do I need ot explain the story of that place? No probably not.
Here is a Wiki article of you need it.
 
See the screenshots for a taster– one is of a camp- where one of the stalkers, wearing a radiation suit occasionally whips out an acoustic guitar and strums a tune. There are strange wild animals around and the weather is very changable, heavy rain showers are frequent. The characters speak Russian, but the interface is in English- unfortunately, I don’t speak any Russian. There is very little to spoil the immersion in the game- some of the character animation smarts, especially when figures are walking upstairs- but then I have never seen that done well in any game. The whole thing really needs the newest computers to run though, it does support widescreen monitors, and represents DX9 shown off to its best.
Normal mapping and shadow mapping is very well done- though the former seems a little over-sharpened in my opinion. Another area I admire is model making, especially buildings and all those wrecked vehicles- rusting Lada cars are around, with flat tires and flaky paint. I really ought to try out normal mapping more often in 3DS Max. The overall effect matches the mood of those photos of the city of Pripyat that have been published in recent years. the Tarkovsky film "Stalker" is an obviousl link, my copy arrived this week and from the first bit I watched looks set to be an excellent film- it has been over a decade since I saw a Tarkowsky film- Solaris.
 
Oh well, more tomorrow. I really mustn’t let this game take up any sleep time though.

Boot sometimes

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21°C, heavy showers and sun

RAM delivery arrived yesterday. It’s not right again- sometimes it fails to boot up, with only the fans and hard discs starting up- no bleeps or anything. Putting in both RAM sticks worked well enough the first stime, enough to install some woftware, drivers and stuff. So I shut it down to take the dogs out and on getting home- it would not start up. That was the point where I started finding all the combinations I can, different cards in different slots to find a pattern. Now I am running memtest86. The first chip seems to be passing- but it does take a long time.
How tedious.
 
Below is a screen photo of the test after four hours. The second was a test shosen from the menu, I have little idea what it all means however.

waiting a week…

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14°C, rain, lots of it.

Eclipse computers: have an answer phone system that doesn’t answer. I phonesd to get a a loud electronic voice saying
"all our customer advisers are busy, we will answer shortly; you are number one in the queue"
this went on for 52 minutes. All this was to confirm my address for a returned faulty memory pack for the computer. I had actually made the same phone call last week. Why do they need my address, they didn’t need to send the memory successfully here the first time.
This is the pinnacle of all the frustrations during the purchase of a series of upgrades for my computyer. Origonally, I placed the order on the 27th March; just in time for Easter when I have free time to build the new gear. That was two holidays ago- three months with a useless box of gubbins that cost a lot and can’t be used.
 
Needless to say, I want a damned good reason why I should consider using that company again.

Boy’s toys

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16°C, rain clearing to bright sun.
The computer hardware market is ever-so-slightly silly. Look at these pictures-
The OCZ thing is a memory module, it will be fitted inside the case and is fairly small. Why then does it come decorated with a camouflage pattern? Furthermore, it has "cooling" plates on the faces, with vent holes, OK I know that modern memory chips do get warm- especially if they are over-clocked- but take note of the sticker warning that the warranty may be void. that sticker is blocking the cooling holes.
The photo is of the faulty card that I am sending back for a replacement. Hopefuly they only have non-camouflage ones in stock.
 
Linseed Oil: keep the session short, and easy- too tired to do anything complex.

Monitored

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14°C, showers, some heavy. Strangely, feels warmer

Post: New monitor arrived today, this room is filling with clutter- boxes, mostly computer things and so far- no luck with networking the two machines to copy files over. There seems to be a faulty network card to blame.
 
Tomorrow will be a strange day for some at work- Y11 & 13 go on study leave, some Y11s have lost this right however, then they often go bezerk on this day each year. I’ve had some nice leaving cards from an Art group- thanks Sophie, Gemma & Louise.

Installing Windows

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20°C, cloudy then pure SUN!

Installing: windows on the other machine as I write. So here I am, all geeky, setting up a computer that is also plugged into this monitor. It’s a long, slow process but this time I have net access so any questions that comer up- get answered after "Googling". Usually, installing windows winds me up- but not today. It promises to be a super-fast machine but needs a little more work before it takes over.
It says on one website consulted that you can partition a Hard drive using windows 2000? Surely not!
 
Tomorrow: Climb Scafell Pike.  That means an early rise- 05.00 hours then drive to Cumbria. It looks like a complex route from the map. Obviously I will report here after the trip.

10,000 views

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7°C, dull & misty. 68 miles.

Blog: statistics claim 10,000 views today. I knew something was wrong with that feature. Since the new look, the count has been impossible to believe. Now it has jumped 9,000 in one day.

DIMM slots unreliable

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2ºC, snow thawing.

Started the day Painting: continued with fine tuning, moved the vein on the horse’s muzzle, adde a layer to the man’s face and so on. I have an idea for the background, so that could change tomorrow. this picture will easilty be done in the next few days.
Computer fixes: I just put the RAM card back in this computer to see if it runs ok. After a few false starts, it seems that the problem lies with the slots on the motherboard. The cards don’t seem to be making good electrical contacts, so after some fiddling- they are back in. Now running at 1572 MB I am on the lookout for any signs of a crash. Usually programs start reporting errors. Barring IE6 crashing and loosing my first entry this morning- it’s ok for now.

Flickr: has a more lively community than here. Comments are more forthcoming and the response to my phtogrphs has been very good. There seem to be fewer juvenile spangly-glitter posters than here. In fact, it’s encouraging me to take more interest in my camera. Now I am taking all shots using manual exposure settings and it’s like old times. When I used ot use the Olympus OM2sp I always set exposure and focus manually, it makes you think more about what you are trying to get ina picture. the same works on the digital camera. I bet the quality of my photos will improve as a result.

It’s snowing again.