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4401
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows vs. Mac: I'm starting to change.
« Last post by superboyac on October 01, 2009, 10:53 AM »
So many well thought out replies.  Sorry if I don't get to all of them!

Innuendo, there's no change coming any time soon...like in the next 5 years.  I just built my PC, I'm going to go down with the ship if anything.  I also realize that much of the hoopla around both Vista, Macs, and even Windows7 is extremist hype.  The truth is always more complicated and somewhere in the middle.  I know that.  And I will always want to get down and dirty with the geekiness before commiting to any kind of computer equipment and software.  After all, that's what brought me here to DC and it's something we all share.  But we are the minority.  And whenever we talk about, "oh, this is better, and that is not so good.  And this is why..." we should take a step back and be aware that most people are not in our shoes and they never will be.  So if something "just works" or even if they just BELIEVE that something just works, well, that's what they are going to get.  And we can't ignore that.

Of course macs have their fair share of issues.  Also, I'm sure that if there were as many Mac users as PC users, their issues would increase exponentially and they might actually be in the same situation that Windows is in.  It's a complex issue.  But I have seen in the past year or two that Macs have really made some strong strides forward as Windows failed miserably with Vista.  To me, it's very interesting to see how the whole story will play out.  In the meantime, I'll be using my PC.  I can't give up my favorite software applications just yet or anytime in the near future.  But in 10 years?  i don't know.  I guess for me, the question is really this:  will I someday give up this need to figure out and tweak every little aspect of my computer experience?  If i do indeed give it up, my choice in computers will change.  But that is so far away, so who knows what my preference will be then?
4402
General Software Discussion / Windows vs. Mac: I'm starting to change.
« Last post by superboyac on October 01, 2009, 02:13 AM »
I'm beginning to see that there is something inherently wrong with the Windows OS.  It's not just specific things about XP, or Vista, or even Win 7 (which I haven't tried yet).  It's about issues with Windows that are not getting solved, and I don't think will get solved anytime soon.  By the way, I am speaking from a application/user standpoint, not about specifics and technical stuff.  I know there are several other threads talking about the under-the-hood improvements of Windows 7 and stuff.  That's not what this is about.  This is about something bigger, something more general.

Now, what started this for me is the following:  I built my computer in January (you can see the thread here).  For all practical purposes, this computer is a beast.  There should be nothing that it can't do that I would want to do.  I'm talking about music applications, office applications, and a bunch of little software here and there.  Actually, it is way overkill for anything like that.  Speed and performance should not be an issue.  Ever.  Don't even try to tell me otherwise.  Yesterday, I started using Photoshop on my computer.  I made a big file, like 4000x4000 pixels.  Still, my computer should handle it easily.  I started doing stuff, and there was a noticeable lag on it, like a ghosting effect when things were dragged around.  Forget about that, that's not the point.  The point is that I should not be experiencing any sort of performance issue doing that on my computer.  It was somewhat solved with an update.  Again, that's not the point.  I can think of several other things that are related to performance and speed issues that leave me wondering because I know for sure that my computer technically has the power to handle it and 100x more.

I talked to a guy at work today about Photoshop.  Photoshop runs much more flawlessly on the Mac and that's what everyone uses there.  Now, i know some of you are thinking we can get it working fine on a PC.  But that's not the point either.  Over the years, I've had to spend a lot of time and energy becoming a Windows expert so that I can fix all these problems.  Well, the truth is that the commercials are right.  Macs just work.  Believe me, I'm the most die-hard PC guy there can be.  I love my little programs here.  You guys know this if you've read anything I've put here.  I'm hardcore.  I can't live without my Windows programs.  But I'm growing up, I'm changing, I'm doing different things with my life.

Now here is what I've noticed recently.  And please, I want to emphasize again that this is not a technical discussion, but more of a sociological one:
When Windows came out with Vista, it was a disaster.  Things started changing.  The Mac started to surge.  I don't mean things you read in articles, I mean I've seen this in my personal life.  I've seen more than a handful of my friends and family switch from PC to MAC in the last year.  And they are very happy about it.  Guess what?  All the young, student age workers that I know got Mac laptops in the past year.  Why?  They look good, they work without fussing around with it, and everything that it does is COOL.  We make fun of those things because we here are very practical minded geeks, but even I have to admit that everything the Macs do are really, really cool.  I was actually very impressed by their new touchpads, with their large size and awesome multi-finger features.  Why didn't PC's come up with anything like that for years and years?  In fact, Dell's touchpad has gotten progressively worse as the years have gone by.  Anyway, all the kids have Macs and they're using them in their classes and lives.  Guess what is going to happen?  They are going to get jobs, and they are going to want to use Macs.  Companies may resist for a while, but the demand will build.  Then, the workplace (which is monopolized by Windows right now) will start shifting to Mac.  Once that market gets big enough, Windows will be in real trouble.  That's their bread and butter--the workplace.

A PC is such a pain in the ass to use and get it running smoothly.  Very few people have the ability, patience, and willpower to do it.  We're not the norm here.  Someone like me who knows so much about using Windows is very, very rare in my workplace and industry.  The problem is that if you're not like me or us here, you WILL run into issues with the PC.  Constantly.  Our graphics department told me they could not use PC's for what they do (all that video, photo editing) unless they had an IT guy camped right in the middle of their offices.  That's how much of a pain it is.  One guy told me that he was even more die-hard PC user than I am and he switched over to Mac and never looked back.  In fact, his wife will attest that his LIFE dramatically changed when he switched to Macs.  This is no exaggeration.  This guy does video, audio, photo editing day and night.  He lives in it.  At some point, you just have to throw the towel in.

Let's talk about those IT guys, if it weren't for all the Windows issues, I bet we would need them only half as much.  I don't mean managing the servers and all that behind the scenes stuff.  I mean helping all the people who run into a little issue here and there.  More often that not, they place an undue amount of restrictions on our PC's because they just don't want to deal with everyone's problems anymore, and they say it's for security reasons.  But that's not really the solution.  The problem is that Windows runs into problems way too easily and way too often.

I'm not saying I'm switching to Macs right now.  But I feel it coming.  How much longer do I want to keep tweaking my PC and keeping up with all the options and little solutions to the dozens of programs that I like to use?  I love it on one hand, but it's a lot of effort and time on the other.  What if I don't quite love it so much anymore?  What if I don't have as much time for it?  I'm already sick of having to fix all my family and friends' problems.  Actually, I've stopped offering my help for the most part the last few years.  I just do it in real emergencies (or if I like a girl, ha!).  My dad is afraid to do anything remotely adventurous on his laptop because he doesn't want to annoy me by calling me for computer help.  So he has this real nice laptop and all he does is use Outlook, Word, Excel, and browse the internet.  He will literally not do anything else.  It's sad.  And all because he's run into a few little issues here and there in the past, and I've had to fix it by spending a few minutes on it.  There are a lot of people like that.  Mac users are not like that.  They are quite content in a very non-PC user kind of way.

So that's it.  I think the Mac wave is coming.  Vista sucked.  The young people switched to Macs.  These people will eventually influence the workplace.  Slowly, the workplace will start using Macs.  Windows may start dying slowly.
4403
General Software Discussion / Re: Installers: "This may take several minutes."
« Last post by superboyac on September 30, 2009, 10:36 PM »
Of course, there's always the option of capitalizing on how long the general population thinks such things will take...

Okay, I don't have a link for this, it was a looong time ago. But. I read once about a shareware developer who was selling a program to crack passwords in Excel and Word files (or was it WordPerfect? I really have to find that piece!). Encryption in those days was so weak, the results were delivered practically instantly.

Users didn't like it! They thought there was cheating involved, since they expected password cracking to take some serious computing. If it was so easy, why were they paying for it in the first place? So the developer put in an artificial delay loop, to make it appear as if the program was doing a lot of important, wizardry work. Users were happy, and sales went up.

I swear I did not make it up.
Yup.  That sounds about right.
4404
General Software Discussion / Installers: "This may take several minutes."
« Last post by superboyac on September 30, 2009, 05:56 PM »
We've all seen this message whenever we install programs.  My question to you is this:  Has it EVER taken several minutes?  Not to me.  We're not talking about Adobe Acrobat, or the MS Office Suite.  I'm talking about all our little shareware programs.  Isn't it time we got rid of this nonsense?

I'm just being facetious here.  I know it's just the default thing of these installers.  It's funny because for most of these programs, the installation barely lasts a couple of seconds.  I'd love to hear some funny stories if you've ever obediently waited several minutes installing some 2 MB program before deciding that something was wrong.

You:  "Um, I've waited several hours now, and it's still not done.  The message says several minutes, so should I cancel?"
Tech Support:  "Dude, it's just a stupid little message.  It doesn't actually mean anything."
4405
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 29, 2009, 04:24 PM »
So, I've officially embarked on this project.  It would be an understatement to say how overwhelmed I am right now.  But it's a good kind of stress.  I've been reading a lot of tutorials and watching some youtube videos.  most of them are not that helpful, but I've found a couple of gems.  I swear, some of these people are uncanny.  I saw someone start with a blank page, smear some skin color on the page, and in the end it looked like it was taken by a professional photographer.  They talk about how to do eyelashes and all the little things.  Just crazy.  I have to be careful to stay within my bounds.
4406
Tranglos your system reminds me of what i've always wanted for DC:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=3689.0

My interest has always been on a tool that would take a directory tree of flat files and make a website out of them.
I never knew about this...cool idea.
4407
True, app.  You can have the link addresses however you want.  But it doesn't change the fact that wordpress is fundamentally structered around a chronological system.  And to do otherwise means you have utilize a lot of tweaks and workarounds that essentially fight against the nature of wordpress (e.g. using static pages as your main content vs. using posts).  So while wordpress is flexible enough where these things can be accomplished to some degree, it's not in the nature of the application.

And that's what tranglos is talking about (I think).  He's asking for a platform which is INTENDED for creating a website to organize a bunch of 'things' in a flexible, yet facilitated manner like wordpress does for blogs.  I'm onboard with the idea, in case you couldn't tell.
4408
Once again, tranglos, you touch upon a subject I have come across without actually bringing it up for discussion.  I went through this thing when I was first setting up my website here at DC.  i am not a programmer, so I wanted a way to do exactly what you have said above:  a pre-packaged template that i can tweak a little for my own needs.  From the start, I absolutely did NOT want the website to be a blog, and if you go through my thread, you will see how I struggled with that for quite a while:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=14095.0

Eventually, I used wordpress and a special theme (the style is called "magazine-style" themes) so that it wouldn't look like a blog.  I didn't want a blog because the chronology of my content was of no concern to me.  So, eventually, I had to use a blog platform (wordpress) and do it in a way where even though it is technically a blog, it doesn't feel like one.  however, the problem of chronology still remains, there is no escaping it without a lot of tricks and workarounds, which inevitably break the wordpress backbone eventually.  So, in the end, I gave in somewhat to the chronological aspect, but tried to mask it as much as possible visually.

I completely agree with everything you said.  you're right, something like this does not exist, at least not when I tried to find it.  My situation is the same as yours, except instead of software, my content is made up of articles.
4409
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 19, 2009, 11:58 AM »
Thanks 40hz, those are very encouraging words.  I didn't realize that about Alice in Wonderland. 

I just received a voice mail from my friend a few minutes ago, and he had never seen my drawings.  He said a light went on for him and I just have to do these drawings.  It will make the project make so much more sense and just give us so much more freedom, in addition to allowing us to better create the personality we want to express through the words and art.  Like you said, even if it's technically not great, at least I can capture the mood exactly the way I'm thinking.
4410
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 18, 2009, 06:32 PM »
So here are some of my old sketches from high school, hopefully I can improve on my abilities. The scan is pretty bad, especially after resizing, so they look worse than they actually are.  But you can get an idea.
Aram_old-sketches_Page_1.png
Aram_old-sketches_Page_2.png
Aram_old-sketches_Page_3.png
Aram_old-sketches_Page_4.png
Aram_old-sketches_Page_5.png
4411
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 18, 2009, 05:58 PM »
OK, third option...
It seems like I may try doing these illustrations myself.  I used to draw quite a bit when i was younger, and they were pretty good.  But it's not something that i felt came easily to me.  However, it may be the only affordable way to do it for now.  And it gives my friend and I a chance to collaborate with no headaches.  I'm going to explore the world of Photoshop for a while and see if I can use technology to assist me with the task, especially for repetitive tasks like shading or drawing grass, fixing mistakes, etc.
4412
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 16, 2009, 04:17 PM »
Yeah, I'm definitely considering that also.
4413
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 16, 2009, 12:19 PM »
40hz, thanks so much for the information above.  I truly appreciate it.

We definitely won't be able to afford anywhere near $300 per illustration.  We were hoping for and can't go too much higher than $20-50 per illustration.  If price is an issue, we will have to sacrifice quality first and foremost.  I realize that the illustrations I have shown as examples are very ideal, I don't really expect anywhere near that quality.  Those illustrations are done by a relatively well-known and experienced pro (aren't they great?!).  I mean, he goes around the world and gives talks and seminars about art.  But it gives an idea of what we are shooting for.

As for the legal stuff, thanks for that.  It's something we are aware of, but obviously don't know the details of.

Also, I appreciate your optimism, but cmon!  I would welcome a situation where the book became so popular that movies and video games were being made and royalty issues came up.  Ha ha, that's not really a bad thing.  But I get your point.
4414
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 16, 2009, 10:48 AM »
Artist-brochure.png
4415
Screenshot Captor / Re: NOD32 False Positive
« Last post by superboyac on September 15, 2009, 01:02 PM »
Tranglos, I'm curious, did you ever settle on an antivirus suite? 

Yeah, I did go with Kaspersky, thanks for the suggestion. I chose the AV, not the firewall (which I liked, but decided to go without). I really like the UI (I'm a sucker for nice UI's, so that was easy), and I see no delays when opening/viewing large files. I had that problem with ESET, where the real-time AV would cause perceptible delays e.g. when viewing files in Total Commander's lister, or copying various installers between folders. Kaspersky seems faster here, and I'm quite satisfied with it.

I've discovered how to exclude files by extension, which wasn't immediately obvious to me: in Settings -> File Anti-Virus -> Threats and exclusions -> Settings again. I needed this because after installing the AV I started getting strange crashes from an application that often updates a large MS Jet database. It was throwing unlikely errors like "disk or network resource is no longer available", then crashing and taking some of my work with it. It suppose Kaspersky was scanning the DB in real time (on every access?) and maybe was locking the file, who knows. It seems to have stopped after I excluded the specific extensions from scanning.

I've already found a likely false negative too. I received a piece of spam with a typical come-on message and a zip file containing a randomly named .exe file. No idea exactly how harmful it was, but definitely not something you'd want to run. I unpacked the zip file, but Kaspersky gave no peep when viewing the exe file, copyng it, or scanning that specific file. Of course in the past on occasion I did the same kind of experiment with ESET, and it didn't flash the red light at me, either. Maybe I should turn on heuristics, after all :)

Interesting information, thanks.  I've been recommending Kaspersky a lot the last couple of months to people.  It seems like there have been a lot of virus related issues lately.  In the past, i've been hesitant to recommend it because there are so many settings and I was afraid people would look at that and freak out.  But the last couple of years, they've really cleaned up their interface and it works pretty well right out of the box.

yeah, I don't know about the firewall.  I used to leave it turned off, but I turned it back on recently, i don't remember why.  I think I had some problems that seemed suspicious, and i thought i was running some harmful software.  Something like that, anyway, I turned it back on and I've been okay.

Well, I'm glad you like Kaspersky.  That's encouraging.  I always like to know if the software I recommend is helpful to others and not just a quirky choice of mine.
4416
Screenshot Captor / Re: NOD32 False Positive
« Last post by superboyac on September 15, 2009, 11:34 AM »
I always run a full scan after installing a new AV package, just to see if it comes up with anything. But you're right, there's not much point in doing it later, unless you expect an infection missed earlier.

The shaky mouse movement during full scan worries me somewhat, because it may reflect on the performance of real-time scan as well. And even when I selected "Objects scan" and "By extension", Kaspersky still seemed to be scanning *.pas files - that's weird, and I couldn't find a way to customize the list of extensions.

That said, with Kaspersky I see no perceptible delay when viewing or executing large apps, while with Eset there was always a small pause. I like it a lot so far.

Tranglos, I'm curious, did you ever settle on an antivirus suite?  I ran a full scan again this past weekend, and there was no mouse jumping, but it does hamper the performance of my pc pretty significantly.  That's annoying because my pc is very new and pretty powerful.  But other than that, I have no problems with kaspersky.
4417
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Total Commander 7.50 public beta 1 - mini-review
« Last post by superboyac on September 10, 2009, 10:26 AM »
Minor wishes, maybe. Here's a great concept that TC might steal from DOpus: as-you -type selection with the colon key: The : key opens the Lister Search field in selection mode. In this mode, all files and folders that contain the entered search string are selected. For example, to quickly select all text files, press :.txt and then return. To cancel the selection press escape.
I did not know that!  Way cool!
4418
Living Room / Re: Help with music video/song/group ID?!
« Last post by superboyac on September 09, 2009, 10:46 PM »
I found it!!

The song is "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand.  I was way off.  Man, that was bothering me since 3pm.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=gd0KIJPv5Q8
4419
Living Room / Re: Help with music video/song/group ID?!
« Last post by superboyac on September 09, 2009, 10:21 PM »
Actually...
The song has a similar feel to "T.H.E.H.I.V.E.S." by The Hives.  In fact, the Hives look like they may the band.  But I have a feeling the song is older than that (this one is from 2007).  It may be from 2005 or something.  I think I'm getting closer.

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=BJBlS6Ip9hM
4420
Living Room / Re: Help with music video/song/group ID?!
« Last post by superboyac on September 09, 2009, 10:11 PM »
40hz, no those are not it.  It's actually one of the modern bands like the ones I listed above.  I know Cheap Trick, they been around for decades.  No, it's something like the Killers or something.  They had a British invasion throwback look to them.  That checkered tile floor reminded me of what I was looking for, but I'm not sure about that either!  I know, I'm not helping...
4421
Living Room / Help with music video/song/group ID?!
« Last post by superboyac on September 09, 2009, 06:06 PM »
i was just thinking about this rock video I saw a few years ago on MTV and i can't remember anything about who or what the artist/song was?!  It's driving me nuts.  All i remember was that the video starts with the band playing on a stage that has lots of blacks and whites everywhere.  The beat is very steady and driving...like donk--donk--donk--donk, quarter notes, but alternating low--high--low--high.  Then some cool visual effects were happening with the cables and stuff, I can't remember exactly, but something like the mic cable becoming like a liquid or something.  Man, I just don't remember.

It's a rock band of some sort, but the song has a very oldish, classic-rock feel to it.  it's from the mid 2000's, maybe 2006 or so.  It was a very popular video, maybe it won awards.  I want to say it's a band like the Killers, Strokes, White Stripes, something like that.  but I've been searching forever now and I can't find it.  if this rings a bell with anyone, please let me know.  Don't you hate it when this happens??
4422
General Software Discussion / Re: Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 08, 2009, 06:54 PM »
Thanks, 40hz, for the information.  This is not really a graphic novel.  It will be much more in the educational/literary category, but fun.  Essentially targeted to the same crowd, same age group, albeit the more intelligent ones.  So, from my perspective, the target crowd will be kind of small.  I don't want to get into the whole thing.

But I'm sorry to hear about the commitment level I can expect from inquiring artists.  Hopefully I can find someone reliable.  After all, there is SOME money in it.  And if I know myself or my friend well enough, this project WILL get done.  Some way, somehow.

Thanks for the website idea, I will definitely consider that now that I have a little experience with it.
4423
General Software Discussion / Re: Grpahic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 08, 2009, 04:49 PM »
I was going to suggest looking for someone to join in on the project too - that way you could possibly get someone doing it for love + whatever cut of possible profits & maybe get much higher standard stuff

btw why wouldnt it sell!?
If you going to go for it - then go for it man!
yeah, i was thinking about that.  but I just don't know if we'll go for it.  This is sort of a lifelong dream of ours and we've been through a great deal of stuff to get to this point, I don't know if we are willing to share it with anyone who hasn't been involved in all of that.  It would be easier to just own it.  But it's not something I have thought about enough, or know enough to say definitely.  I mean, what are we talking about, as far as sharing?  If it's low like 5%, then maybe we consider it.  but I doubt we consider something like 30%.  It's not that we don't understand or appreciate the talent involved in the work, it's just that we can't justify the sharing knowing what we've been through.

As for the success of it, I don't know.  The things i like are never really that popular.  We are going to go all out on it, but success is such a tricky thing, and the things we like don't normally fall into the successful/popular category.  At best, they are acclaimed critically.
4424
General Software Discussion / Re: Grpahic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 08, 2009, 04:18 PM »
But one big question for you before we start: Are you open to a collaborative partner (i.e. Story by: X Illustrated by: Y) or are you looking to do a "work for hire" agreement whereby you pay the artist for full ownership rights?
Thanks for the response, 40hz.  That's true, I forgot that you are an artist!  You did my computer building illustration!

Yes, good question.  We need to have full ownership rights so we can reproduce it freely.  I don't know what all this entails.  For the moment, I don't have much money to spend on it.  And I doubt it will be a financial success, so I can't count on that.  So I don't really know how to approach this.  I've seen prices that were surprisingly low, and some very high, so I have no idea what to expect.  I am rather certain that I cannot expect the quality I have shown above for anything I can afford.
4425
General Software Discussion / Graphic Design question: Services and prices?
« Last post by superboyac on September 08, 2009, 12:59 PM »
Hi everyone, I have a question about a topic I am unfamiliar with.  I am writing a book (medieval fantasy/warrior type).  I want to have lots of illustrations in the novel, but the cost for good ones will be way too much.  That is, hiring an artist to do it is not within my budget.  So, the easiest and cheapest solution I can think of is to do the art on the computer, and that way it can look, clean, attractive and eye-catching, without all the manual labor.  I don't like computer art, I prefer hand drawn stuff, but doing it on the computer will get more bang for the buck.

So, I wanted to know how much services would cost to hire this kind of thing.  If any of you are familiar, please chime in and give advice.  I'm initially thinking of hiring a kid, like a high school student or college student who needs a little money.  I used to draw when i was in HS and a few bucks for it was a big deal.  I won't be able to afford a real pro.  I'm probably going to need around 100 rendered scenes.  Some with mostly scenery, and others with warriors (knights) fighting.

Some of the options I thought of are listed below, but I don't know if some of these things exist:

--Could I buy some kind of ready made package of pre-created 3D templates (humans, trees, landscapes, etc.) and use them to put together my own scene in a software package?  Then I can render and color and slightly tweak the things myself.  I can pose the figures and so on.  I am imagining this to be my cheapest option, but I am not sure anything like this exists.

--The other option based on the above, is to just hire a computer artist to create all the things himself, and then I tell him how I want the scenes to be and he does it himself.  But he wouldn't have to keep drawing the same characters over and over because it would be on the computer.  He'd just need to use different poses and different scenes.  This should be a lot cheaper than an artist creating each scene by hand.

So those are my ideas so far.  Anyone have any insight into this?  Thanks.

The "look" I am going for is shown in the examples below.  Obviously, I can't expect that kind of quality, but that is the goal.
12341912512.jpg
WARRIOR.jpg
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