Recent Posts

2301

Living Room / Re: Custom dice for board games, etc.

« Last post by Deozaan on April 28, 2016, 06:33 PM »

On the subject of stickers, I still need to check a local print shop, but I did find a couple places online that seem like they could do it:

For the USA: http://www.stickeryou.com/
For the UK: https://www.stickythings.co.uk/

Looks like StickerYou could possibly do it for about $10 while StickyThings can possibly do it for about £24.00.


I also went to a local print shop today and found out I can print out a 12"x18" sheet of label paper for ~$2.85 per sheet. I'm thinking that's probably what I'm going to do. Now I just need to figure out how to cut out the individual images from the sheet efficiently and accurately. I haven't had any luck finding a square hole punch at the size I'd need. I'm starting to consider if it would be worth it to build my own somehow.

2302

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 27, 2016, 05:36 PM »

ACHIEVE: Find Out Who You Are, What You Really Want, And How To Make It Happen :
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EK2LPYS (free today)

-panzer (April 27, 2016, 09:18 AM)

Thanks panzer! And thanks for giving us the title, too.

2303

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Deozaan on April 27, 2016, 05:35 PM »

Blue Man Group - The Complex Rock Tour Live (75 min)

-4wd (April 27, 2016, 12:09 AM)

I was fortunate enough to see Blue Man Group in concert. It was awesome! I highly recommend it to anyone who gets the opportunity.

2304

Living Room / Re: Custom dice for board games, etc.

« Last post by Deozaan on April 27, 2016, 05:16 PM »

When looking for specialty stickers, did you check your local copy/print-shop? They usually have a high-res color laser printer and sticker backings that would do just fine, for an acceptable price.

-Ath (April 27, 2016, 03:50 AM)

I haven't checked any local brick-and-mortar places. I didn't think I knew of any local copy/print shops, but one just came to mind. Thanks for the suggestion!

If you're willing to use stickers, why not just get some medium - to any - size labels, print what you want on them (including face/background color), and then trim them to size for the die face.

-Stoic Joker (April 27, 2016, 11:26 AM)

This is an option I have considered, but was hoping to not have the imprecision of cutting them out myself. If I could find some template stickers that were the right size/shape, it would be much preferable than having to cut them out myself. Another possible option would be to find a hole punch that would make it easier to punch out a sticker in the right size/shape.

Recently a company put out some dice with colored sides that you can remove and change -- designed to be useful for prototyping games:
http://boardgamegeek...nes-prototyping-dice

-mouser (April 27, 2016, 10:50 AM)

Those look interesting, but still not quite right for what I want. I want the colors & designs on each face.

It's looking more and more like I'll be going the printing route.

Anyone know if 3D printers can do what I want? That would be cool.

EDIT: Looks like it's possible. Sort of. But that one looks like it can only do 3 colors at once.

I also found this which shows off a printer capable of printing up to 390,000 colors, but that seems to be a site for buying the printer itself. Who knows if I could find a place that would let me make a custom order from them without buying the printer, or how much it would cost for such an order?

2305

Living Room / Re: Custom dice for board games, etc.

« Last post by Deozaan on April 26, 2016, 11:38 PM »

Dice & Games LTD (UK) do custom dice with different colour each side, minimum order is 25 though.

But there may be companies in the USA that also do laser engraving.

-4wd (April 26, 2016, 11:02 PM)

Thanks! There are definitely US companies that do laser engraving, but none that I've found that allow me to choose different colors for each side.

That site looks potentially promising. Except now that I think of it, the images I wanted to use don't exactly lend themselves well to the silhouette design required for laser etching. But maybe I could modify them to fit that style. And I also have no idea how much it would cost to make. I clicked everywhere that seemed like it might lead to me a price, but I could never find one.

And again, because I had already ruled out laser-etching and was focusing on finding stickers to print, I guess I forgot to mention that I would ideally like to have 2 colors on each face. I'd like a foreground and background color, unique to each face. But if I had to, I could just go with white dice with a single (but unique) color on each face.

And having a minimum order of 25 is a bit much. I mean, I want to order maybe 20-30 dice, but that's with 10 different designs. I really don't want to have to order 250 dice to get my 10 designs made. This is yet another reason why using stickers might be best for my wants/needs.

2306

Living Room / Custom dice for board games, etc.

« Last post by Deozaan on April 26, 2016, 10:16 PM »

Hello,

I've recently been playing with the idea of having some custom dice made, but I have some fairly specific needs that don't seem to be covered by anything I can find in my searches for companies/sites that will make custom dice. I'm wondering if anyone here knows something I've been unable to find or has suggestions for me.

Here are my needs:

• Normal, six-sided die.
• Each side of the die has a different image/design (not numbers or pips).
• Each side of the die has a different color.

And that's about it. None of the services that laser-etch the dice seem to allow for an option to make each face a different color. So that seems to leave me only with the option to buy blank dice and label each face with stickers.

I can find plenty of blank dice for sale on Amazon, but every single result for stickers are just dots (circles) instead of square stickers. If I have to resort to stickers, I'd really like to get square (preferably with rounded corners) stickers to cover as much of the face as possible. Any square stickers I find anywhere are not sized appropriately for dice, which usually seem to be 16mm³.

I'd also be glad to hear suggestions on how to make the stickers more permanent, i.e., keep them from peeling off or having the image worn away. Or if you have other ideas or suggestions for getting custom dice made other than blanks+stickers, I'd be glad to hear that as well.

Thanks!

2307

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 26, 2016, 03:46 PM »

Fixed it for you... 

-Shades (April 26, 2016, 03:05 PM)

Thanks.

2308

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 25, 2016, 02:58 PM »

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EKNN4LE (free until April 28th)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C2334GO (free until the end of the week)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X2G2JCQ

-panzer (April 25, 2016, 08:06 AM)

It would be really helpful if you'd include the titles of the books at the very least, if not a short description of what they're about so we can tell if we're interested or not. Just because a book is free doesn't mean we're interested.

And clicking links can be "dangerous" due to trackers. I don't want to click a mystery link to a product and then start seeing ads or other "you might be interested in this" links everywhere on the internet related to a product/subject that I have no interest in.

2309

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 21, 2016, 07:25 PM »

Flu kills older people, so it makes sense.

-wraith808 (April 21, 2016, 04:37 PM)

Is 57 considered "older" these days? I thought 50 was the new 35. Or all the marketing departments just lying in an attempt to appeal to the baby boomer generation?

-Deozaan (April 21, 2016, 06:04 PM)

Biology and Physiology don't subscribe to anything but science.

-wraith808 (April 21, 2016, 06:13 PM)

Science has made it so that people can live longer, healthier lives. So, considering the improvements in science and medicine, is 57 still considered "older" these days?

Patrick Stewart doesn't seem too old at 75. Christopher Lee, while definitely "older" was pretty active and accomplished up until he died last year at 93.

Of course, those may be outliers. But my point is that years are just numbers. There's nothing, biologically speaking, that says no matter our circumstances, health, diet, etc., that we are "old" at a certain number of years. The numbers seem to be trending higher (meaning people are still looking "young" and being healthy at increasing years). And while these things tend to vary wildly, most people I know in their 50s don't seem that old to me. But there are a lot of possible explanations for that.

And since "older" is a relative term which isn't well defined, you and I may have different ideas what it means to be an "older" person. Really that's probably the issue here. I didn't really mean anything by my comment about 50 being the new 35. I guess I was just surprised at 57 being considered "older" because to me it doesn't seem to fit my idea of an "older" person. Time for me to adjust my perspective.

2310

Living Room / Re: Be prepared against ransomware viruses..

« Last post by Deozaan on April 21, 2016, 06:09 PM »

Interesting to read that there is no real decryption, just the use of backup and other solutions to recover files !

-MerleOne (April 21, 2016, 08:34 AM)

I think there is a real decryption if you pay the ransom. But if you don't pay the ransom, you don't get the encryption key and therefore you can't really decrypt anything. So you have to restore from backups.

2311

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 21, 2016, 06:04 PM »

Flu kills older people, so it makes sense.

-wraith808 (April 21, 2016, 04:37 PM)

Is 57 considered "older" these days? I thought 50 was the new 35. Or all the marketing departments just lying in an attempt to appeal to the baby boomer generation?

2312

General Software Discussion / Re: ActivePresenter: most powerful Screen Recording free solution

« Last post by Deozaan on April 21, 2016, 02:16 PM »

Ugh. Please tell me there's a way to get ActivePresenter to stop yelling at me.



I can't stand TOOLBARS IN ALL CAPS. It's so ugly and annoying. . .



EDIT:

This was the best I could do:

2313

General Software Discussion / Re: ActivePresenter: most powerful Screen Recording free solution

« Last post by Deozaan on April 21, 2016, 02:21 AM »

Can you customize what your mouse cursor looks like in the presentations? For example can you make it so it looks like a hand with a pointer finger (like hovering over links in a browser) or something similar?

I've been using OBS for the past few years whenever I need to record my screen, but this looks very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

2314

Living Room / Re: Surface Pro 4 (etc); observations from long term use?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 21, 2016, 02:06 AM »

because I viewed it as a tablet, not a laptop replacement.  Even in their marketing, it's an afterthought. [...] They don't market that perspective enough (or even at all, from what I've seen).

-wraith808 (April 20, 2016, 09:41 AM)

My experience has been different. It's practically the first thing I see in their marketing:

Surface Pro 3:



Surface Pro 4:

2315

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Deozaan on April 20, 2016, 12:10 AM »

I tried (and am trying) the Android ecosystem.  I still prefer my iPhone and iPad.  Got rid of the Mac- that's mostly propaganda, IMO.  But the iDevices to me are better, even for their annoyances.

-wraith808 (April 19, 2016, 12:29 PM)

IMO most Android manufacturers ruin the Android experience by adding their little custom hooks and things into Android. Vanilla Android is pretty sweet. But some of the most popular Android devices (Samsung anything) run a customized version of Android, which has lots of little things about it that annoy me. I wish they'd cut it out and let people experience Android as it was meant to be experienced. But then again, that may just be down to "what I'm used to" in Android.

And this is getting off topic, so I'll stop there.

2316

Living Room / Re: Surface Pro 4 (etc); observations from long term use?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 20, 2016, 12:05 AM »

I want a Surface Pro 4. The only reason I haven't gone for it yet is because I'd need one of the more expensive ones for it to be powerful enough for development, and that's a bit out of my budget for the time being.

I don't think I'd even want/use an Android or iPad tablet anymore if I had a Surface.

Don't get me wrong: I like Android. But it's an entirely different ecosystem than what I work with daily on my Windows machine. I'd much rather have my daily driver in a portable format (Surface Pro) than the much different offerings available for Android.

Basically it comes down to the difference between ARM devices and x86/x64. I really want to like all these little new technologies being built upon ARM devices, but so far there's just so much stuff made for x86/x64 that hasn't been ported to ARM yet. I really like that a Surface Pro can run everything I'm already familiar with.

2317

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on April 19, 2016, 11:56 PM »

^Bizarro Firewall kills Start Menu behavior has now been confirmed on four different machines at that location.

-Stoic Joker (April 19, 2016, 12:34 PM)

You should report that in Windows Feedback so that it can be fixed!

2318

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Deozaan on April 18, 2016, 08:25 PM »

I don't fight that needless battle. 

-wraith808 (April 18, 2016, 07:47 PM)

Ditto. Which is why I don't own any iDevices.

2319

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Deozaan on April 18, 2016, 01:17 PM »

Is this just their way of lashing out at Apple for not cooperating before?

2320

Living Room / Re: I am fed up with skype but is there an alternative?

« Last post by Deozaan on April 17, 2016, 02:12 AM »

I know you specifically mentioned options for "videochat" but FYI if you don't need video, there are a lot of options.

2321

General Software Discussion / Re: Android N

« Last post by Deozaan on April 13, 2016, 10:10 PM »

Google just released its second preview version of Android N

-Arizona Hot (April 13, 2016, 02:50 PM)

Wrong thread.

2322

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on April 13, 2016, 01:32 PM »

I posted about a similar issue in the Windows 10 Tips thread.

-Deozaan (April 12, 2016, 05:01 PM)

Oh that's where that went ... Crap! I knew I'd seen it somewhere around here but couldn't fine it again.

Reeally annoying issue ain't it?

-Stoic Joker (April 13, 2016, 07:04 AM)

Yes. I know someone who encountered that issue but nothing we tried would solve it. Even doing a system reset only "fixed" it for about 24 hours before it started up again. I just helped them reinstall Windows 7.

2323

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Deozaan on April 12, 2016, 05:01 PM »

Just in case anyone else is having fun with the Windows 10 start menu disappearing periodically I'll stick this here. I never did find a specific trigger, but periodically the Action Center, Taskbar context menus, and start menu would all become completely unresponsive. Everything else worked fine...just those stopped working ... And that got annoying really (really...) fast.

The commands I found online that were supposed to fix it and their results are below:
1.   SFC /SCANNOW    -This one found and corrected some issues but ultimately had no effect.
2.   DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth    -This one did - best I could tell - do nothing.
3.   Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}    -This one finally got things moving again as all of the aforementioned problem children suddenly decided to spring into view about 2/3 of the way through its run. 24 hours later the machine is still behaving ... But time will tell.

-Stoic Joker (April 12, 2016, 06:48 AM)

This is definitely useful.

I posted about a similar issue in the Windows 10 Tips thread.

2324

DC Gamer Club / Re: Somebody actually made an Ikea furniture building simulator game

« Last post by Deozaan on April 12, 2016, 03:33 PM »

Looks like an April Fool's joke, but then again, so did Goat Simulator.

Funny stuff.

2325

Non-Windows Software / Re: Remix OS for PC Beta Launch

« Last post by Deozaan on April 11, 2016, 02:15 AM »

Sorry it messed things up for you.

For the record, it worked fine for me.

That said, I think it did make a "hidden" partition that Windows couldn't erase/see/format, so I had use something like GPartEd on Linux to get the thumb drive back to normal once I decided to try out installing RemixOS to the main drive instead.