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19day

2004-12-30

website changes and current events

Filed under: General — 19day @ 22:14:14

If anyone actually visits this site, they might notice that I’ve gotten rid of the long standing frames. Now the menu is a div element and sits to the left and CSS tries to mimic the effect of the frame. I’ve tested this in NS 7 and IE 6, but haven’t had my own comp on the net for the holiday so I’ll have to make sure Firefox doesn’t barf on it.

As for what I’ve been doing the past few days: Watching endless Red Dwarf episodes, got seasons 1-4 for xmas, now on to M*A*S*H season 7. And I’ve been working on yet another animation for my brother, for DVD’s he’s trying to make. He wanted a scene with an infinite number of lockers, that the viewpoint zooms through, basically a rip off of the Matrix effect when they are in the pre-area and ask for guns, and the infini-racks appear. Doing that with carefully constructed lockers is near impossible with 3d studio, as to make it converge to the horizon, you need a lot of them, and the system just bogs down. So for the zooming part, just using long strips with locker texture on them… the result is…….. less than sucessful, but tweaking remains to be done.

Poor computer wasn’t meant for such abuse. I need more memory.

2004-12-28

Adventures in DVD writing

Filed under: General — 19day @ 17:55:49

So I made the mistake in trying to upgrade my computer yesterday, yes, should have learned, but I never do.

I went out and bought a DVD writer, an LG 16X Super Multi DVD/CD Rewriter (why do they need the super, ugh), and put it in the computer… restart….. windows has detected signigicant change in your computer hardware and must reauthenticate within 3 days. (changing one component is significant?)

So I was going to phone in the code like I did when I first bought the thing, except, where the code was supposed to be, nothing…. the screen had all the info on it, but it seems it forgot to display the code I needed to phone in. Contacting customer support helped nothing, as they hadn’t seen this problem before, and upper support claimed the computer, given it’s serial number, was supposed to be running 64bit windows which was impossible and what the hell are Staples, Proteva and Synergio respectively. That got us nowhere.

Finally, rebooting the computer seemed to fix it. I’m sick of that, no reason for it to fail, but it did…. fine, phoned in the code, authenticated windows again, and vowed to pirate ever after.

Not that any of this helped though, the DVD writer doesn’t quite work. I’ve got that drive, and also a simple DVD ROM drive not 2 years old in it, but when trying to copy a DVD disc to disc (even a DVD I had just burned myself with some test files on it) it would immediately crap out saying it couldn’t be done, but of course, gave no reason. This is in Nero Express, came with the drive.

Couldn’t even make an image from a DVD that sits in the old drive, had to move it to the writer drive to even save an image to the hard drive…. so I took some DVD my father wanted copied, a memorial movie about a company he was involved with, it had been burned too, so I figured there shouldn’t be any problem. After burning 2 copies of it via the image-to-harddisk method, here are the results.

My Computer’s DVD software:
Original Disc – Freezes and crashes DVD software when accessing some menus
Burned Disc – same thing in the same places

My parents’ new standalone DVD player:
Original Disc – Plays fine
Burned Disc – Says the disc is incompatible with the player, even though the manual says it can play virtually every format, including and explicitly the one I used.

My brother’s old standalone DVD player:
Original Disc – Plays fine
Burned Disc – plays for a while, craps out in some places, turning the player off.

That’s some consistency. I should have stopped when I was ahead (merely wanting a DVD writer, rather than having one, and wanting to tear my hair out)

At least writing simple files to the damn thing seems to work, so I can finally shift some crap off my computer, gig’s and gig’s of star trek. god I’m lame.

2004-12-26

xmas

Filed under: General — 19day @ 20:12:45

So another xmas come and gone. Didn’t really have any xmas atmosphere here, as my parents are renovating the livingroom and kitchen, so everything is a mess. We only have a little fibre-optic tree going, alas.

My main gift was from my brother, a UPS, which is something I’ve wanted for a while now. It lists itself as 50 minutes, but of course, it’s a lie, or rather, for a very specific computer setup that makes the thing look good. with my computer, it estimates 6 minutes… well, no bother, what I really wanted it for were the little power flicks I get at the place I’m living at now. Then after that, it’s handy to have 6 minutes of power, and then the usb connector to the thing can handle saving whatever is open and shutting the comp down, which is nice of it, so I’m pleased.

Something I didn’t get at all, in any form, was a DVD burner, but I expected only the UPS or the burner, not both, and the UPS is easier to shop for. So my next move is to buy a burner, not sure if I should get an internal or external. All four IDE connections are taken, but I’d probably remove the CD writer and put the DVD writer in there, as any one I get would be able to burn CD’s as well. But I need one desperately, my drives (two 120 gig’ers) are nearly full, only a couple gig left on both, damned downloading episodes, argle.

Anyway, merry xmas, and a happy new year… I seriously wonder if I’ll be doing anything on new year, no plans have been made thus far, so I might spend another one alone. It’s not great, but hardly terrible.

2004-12-25

Burroughs

Filed under: General — 19day @ 02:27:49

Thought I’d post a picture of the new family cat, just to put some content in this thing, and also, he’s a fairly cute cat.

Burroughs

Katamari Damacy

Filed under: General — 19day @ 01:48:16

Katamari Damacy

I suggest that everyone try to play this game, or at least see it played. It is simply one of the most amusing and addictive puzzle games I’ve played, and the soundtrack is perfectly enjoyable on it’s own.

See the crazy opening movie here

Oh, and merry xmas all.

Back, apparently

Filed under: General — 19day @ 01:34:13

All of a sudden, things started to work again. Accouding to php’s info, the version is still the same, but things work, so I assume that Zend was upgraded, I’m surprised, the office is supposed to be closed.

Anyway, my other entries will return in a bit, I’m off to a family get-together right now.

2004-12-23

Investing in Next Term

Filed under: General — 19day @ 07:40:53

Hmm, some of my marks have appeared already, including the dreaded Actsci 231 mark. If I had failed that course, it would have totally derailed university, and I would have had to take another term to make it up, which would have sucked incredibly. But, it seems, against all likelyhood, that I passed it, and it’s not even my worst mark ever either.

It’s my second worst :P

Gender Issues in action

Filed under: General — 19day @ 04:55:28

I just wanted to rattle this off while the idea was in my mind.

I took a philosophy course this past term, Gender Issues, and I thought I was aware of such issues before the course.. well, not to say my eyes were opened, but they certainly were opened a little wider. Over the course of the term, I’ve become a little more observant of things, perhaps to the point of overcriticising, like beer commercials that don’t so much advertise beer, as advocate infidelity, and lying to ones girlfriend.

So anyway, the point, is I went into a clothing store today to chirstmas shop for someone, and as I looked around the store, the layout struck me as both interesting, and indicative of one of the views of society. In the back, were the clearance items, so I’ll ignore that end of the store. In the middle right of the store, was the Women’s area, to the middle left, was the +Sized Women’s area. Contrast that to the single Men’s area in the front left of the store, which has +sizes for men (if they are even called that, which they aren’t) as well as "normal" sizes. Plus sized women must be the exception, right?

Further, past the Men’s section on the front left, there was the Boys section on the far left. So one would imagine that Women’s should be front right and Girls would be far right, to make it symmetrical.. but as I said, Women’s (normal and plus) was in the middle. Girls was indeed far right, opposite side of the store from Boys, but where the opposite of Men’s would have been, there was Junior Girls. I see, Boys become Men, but Girls become Junior Girls become Women, and possibly then, Plus Sized Women. The girls stuff, from afar, looked like the usual overgirly hyperpink stuff, then the junior girls were midriff exposing lacy Don’t-ask-me-I’m-just-a-girl finery, and then back into the more adult versions of the Girls stuff in the Women’s area, just less pink.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, it was just interesting to see how at least one store will slice up the genders and their respective developments, and I’m not sure I like it very much. But then again, that could just be me.

The first post (revisited)

Filed under: General — 19day @ 00:14:54

Well, not sure how this will look, as it appears I’m typing right into the menu in the entry-composer. I guess this thing doesn’t like the version of NS installed on this comp. I’m back home, at the moment, from ‘loo, on the family box.

Anyway, hopefully this blog will be more frequently updated, and less frequently embarassing/personal/painful than my old journal, as this is not a journal. I’ll make a proper website button to convey that, but I can’t until I get my comp up and running, as I made the buttons in 3d studio.

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