Category Archives: Uncategorized

T20

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16°C, clear.

New speakers for the PC.

Though a vast improvement in the sound quality over the previous pair, the bass is a bit bloated. Treble & mid are clear such that they actually sound sterio rather than 2 mono channels. I expect with a bit of fiddling that they will sound better. Music is always the real acid test, but I rarely listen to mp3s, more often it’s internet radio, both of which suffer poor sound quality in the first place. There is always the limitation from the quality of the sound-card which is a generic motherboard mounted job. The better sound cards are separate – and the best are external to the computer case to reduce hum.
Creative have fallen onto the marketing ploy of stating the output wattage as a guide to it’s loudness. Such a practice is absurd, 14W rms has no connection to how loud they go, we need to know the sensitivity of the speakers to find that out. the units to look for are db/W (decibels per Watt). At least they didn’t publish pmp in watts ( peak music power), that is the most misleading spec that pseudo-hifi companies use.
…that completes my recent run of of oders from Amazon.

Editing Videos

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16°C, clear.

Premier: using Adobe Premier Pro 1.5 is far easier than the old version 6. The trouble now is getting the output files small enough to upload to photobucket. They use a flv converter built into the web server, but it has limitations. Some of the DivX attempts have been corrupted with multicoloured blocks flying around the screen Both frustrating and taking up time, at least DivX renders quickly, muich more than WMV encoding does.
Good job I’m patient isn’t it?

 
OK Ok getting somewhere, here is the first one to successfuly upload. OldWarden_ Gladiator
Secondly, The Old Edwarians, planes from before WWI. These are the oldest flying aircraft in the world. Edwardians.
Finally, a render from an imported model which is a fun thing to play with, it’s ready rigged so I can just get on with animating it.

lollygaggers, gallinippers, gollywhoppers, doizabizzlers & flipadoodles

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21°C, clouds

A year on…
Reading through old entries is interesting, for comparison with the now.
I was avidly painting as well as finishing a 3D animation for the Whitley Project. this year I have but one painting on the go, I grumble about tiredness but that has clarified itself into a head-cold now.
The Walrus is despirate for a completed animation clip, in addition to a new plan that is old. A few years ago I made an animated video for the Stirling Association AGM. The guy I swent to Shuttleworth with last weekend tells me that they are very keen to see more and ask of me every time they meet. As a carrot & stick, they are having  a big "do" next winter which should be attended by their Chair – Dame Vera Lynn. The request was to get the film built up for that occasion. That puts me now in the planning phase again, storyboarding and keen to include the Walrus in a walk on part.
Making the storyboard also produces a shopping list of models to make, I have the various planes, crew and an airfield. It needs populating with buildings and vehicles (see below). Deespona’s 500 3-D collection should help here, though I prefer to do all the building myself. It will have sounds.

If you are a silly looking creature is it better to have a silly name?
lollygaggers, gallinippers, gollywhoppers, doizabizzlers, flipadoodles. And here was I thinking Daddy-long legs was a silly name.
BBC have featured an article on the Crane fly, but it doesn’t seem to provide an answer to its own title "What’s the point of daddy longlegs?".
The population round here has crashed, it seems a species that only lives about 2 weeks. They are still going in my painting, crash or not.

Spaces Live

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16°C, clouds & liquid sunshine

Uh oh! I don’t mind the new formatting bar a couple of problems:
  • the page is too wide, looks fine on my 21" monitor but most people are on 19" screens and that forces side-scrolling
  • no option for a black background for text boxes, this grey is fine except many of the old posts have highlight-colours chosen against black.
  • I prefered the tabbed preview pane
"Live" may fix this sometime.

Live®Messenger

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27°C, +wind & showers.

Live messenger: do I need it, is there any advantage from new features. It should work with Win 2000, but does that mean a bigger memory footprint? Does anyone know?

Follow up: well, that did exactly nothing. I downloaded live messenger and installed it, all it has done is reinstall MSN Messenger 7.

Putting the windows back in

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27°C, hot

Re-installation is tiring: It takes ages to put windows back on, the OS is the easy bit, but it’s all the fiddling with different software. MS Outlook is still generating errors, possibly due to this version of ZoneAlarm. The whole idea is to make space for things, Win 2000 needs at least 10 Gb to hold all the files for 3 users and leave room for defrag to work properly.
Aand, I want a separate OS to run 3D animation and video editing software. That one should be without firewall or anti-virus software so it runs faster. That means no internet access with it ( WinXP). I shold have warned you that this bit isn’t very interesting. It has taken most of the afternoon to do , and taken away some paitning time.
 
Turpentine: started submarine swimmer picture. More tomorrow, it’s drying right now.

Error 651

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27°C, some clouds+humid

I’m baaack!
Last Sunday, I switched on the computer and windows wouldn’t boot up. It reported a corrupt file in the system32 folder. I tried all afternoon to get it running, endlessly loading up the four floppy dics needed to run the installer & repair modules. In the end I reformatted the drive and put a fresh copy on. Unfortunately the boot drive had to be formatted too, so I’ve lost the dual-boot up too.
 
Anyway. Now I have a fresh installations, but the modem wouldn’t work, giving the above error code. Finally after about four days of trying things out to fix it, I had a nagging feeling the modem wasn’t talking to the motherboard properly. Today, I removed the modem completely, then took out the motherboard drivers. Cleaned out everything to do with the modem and finished with putting stuff back in with more care over the order they they are put in.
 
Things learnt:
  • Install motherbaord drivers first
  • Backup the boot drive
  • Backup the OS partition (move all temporary folder to another drive to make this easier)
 
Tomorrow, the virus checker gets put back in, but it’s amazing how much faster the system runs without it.
More arty talk tomorrow…
 

You’re not allowed to say that

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Chicken is a banned word in Space titles:
 
See the attached picture, We’re prohibeted from using the word "chicken" in our  titles.
Instead I am going to say it in my post here:
Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken & so on…
 
See! it lets me do that!
 "Chicken" must be either obscene or blasphemous in American English (since msn is American I can only assume).
try that in your next entry title & let me know if the same thing happens. It made my last post rather difficult to post intill I could isolate the "offensive" word.
Hold on! has an American corporation patented the word "chicken" and blocked me from using it without paying a license?
 
puzzled.

Streaky printer- the sequel

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20°C, sun

830U: still needs a heart bypass operation, it has bad veins which seem partly blocked. Adding the spirit-cleaner has triggered the error light which has not gone away for a few hours. the printer driver claims that the colour ink has run out- hard to believe since it was half-full before.
 
Laterz: it’s working now, except the yellow is still blocked. So an improvement.
Linseed: posted the Handprop picture in the "Finished" section of the photo galleries.

Epson 830u

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14°C cloudy

Unreliable printer: in one last desperate attempt to get this infuriating printer to work, I’ve ordered a set of cleaning heads. The cleaning routine doesn’t work at al now, in the past it has needed 6, 8 or even a dozen runs to get rid of the white streaks in the page. Usually it still has streaks in the printout up to time the self-clean routine has been run so many times that the ink cartridge has emptied. There are plenty of references to this problem on line, so it’s not just me.
 
Hope isn’t all lost yet though: here is an interesting tip

 

Try the Windex trick… I tried it on my Epson Stylus Photo 890 and it worked great:

1. Open up the printer cover.
2. Get the print head into the center: you can do that by starting the cycle to change the ink cartridge.
3. Now, turn the printer off (with the catridges unseated in the centre) from the mains (to prevent the printer from automatically returning the heads before power-down).
4. Look to the area where the printer head usually sits when it is not printing (it’s on the right hand side on my 890). There should be a pad/sponge there.
5. Using a dropper, transfer 6-7 drops of Windex cleaning solution (those blue ammonia liquid that they use for cleaning windows) onto the pad/sponge. Try not to touch the sponge (according to some websites, this sponge is spring mounted and touching it may damage the springs). Try not to overspill the Windex solution as well.
6. Turn the printer on again so that the print heads are reseated onto the pad/sponge.
7. Now turn off the printer the usual way (the printer will reseat the print head properly before power down).
8. Leave the print head to take up the Windex for 1-2 hrs.
9. Do the usually print cleaning cycles/nozzle check.
10. Your printhead should be unclogged by now.

For the really stubborn clogs, you might want to leave the print head overnight for soaking in Windex.

Finally a more detailed suggestion is here: InkjetArt
Who knows what Windex is, but there is a bottle of cleaning solution up in the cupboard there *points*.
 Printers at work are quite exaspirating too.
 
Anyway it’s Sunday, so time to get the bike out and ride off….