Topic: Ask something - We can help.

[Khris]

What you can do is find the exact same HDD model and replace the entire circuit board. I did that twice already and it worked fine both times. It's just a few screws and a flat cable, should take a few minutes tops.
They have them on ebay starting at ~35 Euros.

[Stee]

The chips normally have a serial number on them. Google it and hope to find a source for the parts.

Those components however are surface mounted, so you would either have to have a machine or an insane amount of soldering skills to replace that chip. That's even if it is that chip that is dead for certain.

Also I was under the impression you could swap the circuit boards on hdd's as long as they are like for like the same model.

If it's all that important to you, I'd just bite the bullet and get a pro to fix it for you. If it's a genuine backup drive and you are backing up properly it should be redundant anyway as long as the original drive is still functional.

Invest in a surge protector too. It's possible that's what killed your last drive too, and it will randomly kill other components in your pc. Seems to be loads of dirty power in the south

[Mods]

Thanks for the info guys, I like the idea of getting another one of the same spec and replacing that circuit board, seems easy enough, never thought of that as a possibility

Unfortunately the burn mark goes right across the serial number, it's unreadable. Cheers for the ideas!

[Snarky]

I think I read the largest chip is where all the data is stored, but wasn't able to verify that.

Well, that bit is certainly not true. Hard disks store the data on magnetic platters (disks), not in chips.

[Anian]

You can see the sort of waves I'm looking for here. There will be various objects casting light, which is why I want reflections. The cartoony part is less essential, and I can experiment with shaders and filters to get the effect I need.

OK, that's not that bad, what you need to look for is animated bump textures or just regular animated textures, because that's basically a plane. The "reflectiveness" comes from the glossiness of the surface. This should be something you'd need: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6e7vn69Vr4
You can even put a boat on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q23WFVrQ7GI

[Snarky]

Thanks Anian. I definitely can't just use a "regular animated texture" (I need the reflections of other objects in the scene to follow the wave geometry), but the videos you link, and other YouTube examples of Blender with and without Ocean Modifier, look promising.

Not having watched the full tutorial yet, I take it there's a relatively straightforward way to create a looping animation using this technique? Googling the question didn't bring up any definite "Yes, here's how you do it and it works fine" answers.

[Anian]

Not having watched the full tutorial yet, I take it there's a relatively straightforward way to create a looping animation using this technique? Googling the question didn't bring up any definite "Yes, here's how you do it and it works fine" answers.

...well if it's like an island in the sea, then you just make a simulation of say 30 seconds, copy it and reverse it back to front (in reverse) - those 2 parts combined make a 1 minute loop.

[Snarky]

...but then every 30 seconds the animation is going to suddenly reverse, and I have to think that's going to be pretty noticeable. 

Thanks for the help, though!

<--- I'm not actually a Mittens Founder, btw.

[Eric]

If you take a closer look at the video you shared, it's kind of doing just that. Those ripples roll to and fro, but they have a separate horizontal movement.

[Ali]

Thanks Anian. I definitely can't just use a "regular animated texture" (I need the reflections of other objects in the scene to follow the wave geometry), but the videos you link, and other YouTube examples of Blender with and without Ocean Modifier, look promising.

Not having watched the full tutorial yet, I take it there's a relatively straightforward way to create a looping animation using this technique? Googling the question didn't bring up any definite "Yes, here's how you do it and it works fine" answers.

In the case of that tutorial there is. You set the displacing texture to be controlled by an object, then rotate the object causing the displacement to ripple in a cyclical fashion.

It is much easier to create an ocean effect in newer versions of Blender because of the built-in ocean modifier. Those tutorials are pretty old. However looping doesn't seem possible with the new modifier, unfortunately.

In case you're not used to Blender, here's a quick example: http://ali.agser.me/seademo.blend
The built-in sim is on the right, and the loopable version is on the left. When you see them move, it's clear that the left requires a lot of tweaking to get a good effect.


EDIT: I mean the cogfilms tutorial is pretty old but loopable. I didn't see Anian's youtube links.

[OneDollar]

I've found free software to cover almost everything I want to do with my PC, but I can't find a decent free video editor. There seems to be a few programs for Linux and Mac but not many for Windows. Those that do run on Windows are either unfinished, unstable, low on features or don't support many file formats.

I'd like to be able to have multiple video and audio streams, mask video, speed up/slow down video and audio, and obviously cut video and audio up and move it around. All while being able to preview in realtime. So, you know, not much.

Does anyone know any free software that runs on Windows that would do all that? Or failing that, anything out there that's cheap that people would recommend?

[Eric]

Sort of related to the previous question...I'm getting the final component of a new PC tomorrow. What are the essential programs for you guys? Free, paid, shareware (does that phrase even still mean anything?), whatever. What keeps you productive and happy? What would you load on a new computer?

[Ali]

I've found free software to cover almost everything I want to do with my PC, but I can't find a decent free video editor. There seems to be a few programs for Linux and Mac but not many for Windows. Those that do run on Windows are either unfinished, unstable, low on features or don't support many file formats.

I'd like to be able to have multiple video and audio streams, mask video, speed up/slow down video and audio, and obviously cut video and audio up and move it around. All while being able to preview in realtime. So, you know, not much.

Does anyone know any free software that runs on Windows that would do all that? Or failing that, anything out there that's cheap that people would recommend?

I think Lightworks is one to watch: http://www.lwks.com/

It's been around for years, but the open source version is still in the early stages. I haven't tried the latest release, however the last version suffered from a bad case of 'Unique Working Method'. If you've used Avid you will be OK, if you've used Premier or Final Cut (or any normal computer programs) it will take some getting used to. Blender had the same problem when I started using it, but has become much more accessible, so I hope Lightworks will achieve something similar in time.

[Anian]

A weird question that kind of bugs me and I don't even know how I'd look up such a thing:
is there like an unnamed class of people that co-write books with authors, and by books I mean stuff like fantasy or sf book series (stuff like Song of fire and ice, Stephen Kinds works etc.)? I'm not trying to say those people are hacks or anything it's just that the size of the books just seems like too much for 1 person, to write 600 pages in 6 or such months. And plus there's a lot of editing to be done (not only does it have to be edited but read a few times as well and I doubt you can speed read through books and edit them at the same time) on top of that, I'm sure books get rewritten in this process more than a few times, plus printing and distribution, all that takes time and it just seem weird to me people can write that fast and make it coherent.
There are ghost writers that help write biographies, but that's for people who are not writers themselves, and I know there are writer's assistants who help with continuity and such, but still I think it's not far fetched to think there are people who co-write.

[Eric]

I'd say what you're describing is a ghost writer, which is any situation where work was contributed by an uncredited author. Sometimes they work from outlines that the author provides. Sometimes, they can be brought in for specific elements, like polishing a draft, or writing descriptions of place that the author might then go back and adjust stylistically. Sometimes -- I don't know about Martin, but certainly Tom Clancy and most of the major mystery writers -- a ghost writer will write the whole damn book with little input from the author, but publish under the author's name to take advantage of the brand. Editors for major authors also do a lot more behind the scenes than the public gives them credit for.

[InCreator]

Okay, I need some programming/math help again:

Circular/spiral motion

I want something to move along circle, or even better, a spiral that moves in a direction and gets smaller.
Imagine smoke clouds or fallen leaves in a wind, as they roll and make smaller and smaller circles as they move away.
Can anyone help me with some pseudocode as what formula would change X and Y of the smoke/leaf/whatever to get such motion?

Since it's pretty clear that trigonometric function (sin/tan/etc) lies in this problem somewhere, I'm at loss.

Epic mspaint to illustrate:


Spiral as described would be awesome but I guess I could work circle (with variable-adjusted radius) to become spiral also.

[Khris]

Code:

Code: Adventure Game Studio

1. int t;
2. float r;
3.  
4. float fx(int tp) {
5.   float ft = IntToFloat(tp);
6.   return ft/5.0 + Maths.Sin(Maths.DegreesToRadians(ft))*r;
7. }
8.  
9. float fy(int tp) {
10.   float ft = IntToFloat(tp);
11.   return 100.0 + Maths.Cos(Maths.DegreesToRadians(ft))*r;
12. }
13.  
14. bool first = true;
15. int old_x, old_y;
16.  
17. function room_RepExec()
18. {
19.   DrawingSurface* ds = Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground();
20.   ds.DrawingColor = 16;
21.   r = 50.0 - IntToFloat(t)/50.0;
22.   int x = FloatToInt(fx(t), eRoundNearest);
23.   int y = FloatToInt(fy(t), eRoundNearest);
24.   if (first) {
25.     first = false;
26.     ds.DrawPixel(x, y);
27.   }
28.   else ds.DrawLine(old_x, old_y, x, y);
29.   ds.Release();
30.   t += 3;
31.   old_x = x;
32.   old_y = y;
33. }

Result:

x1 x2 x3 x4

[InCreator]

Thanks mate, I can use this

E: Boy, AGS sure makes simple things look complicated. Here's how I do this in Game Maker (adjusted for looks and minus line drawing)
No defining functions, anything

ft+= 4;
t+= 9;
r = 50 - t/50;
xoff =  round(100 + sin(degtorad(ft))*r);
yoff =  round(100 + cos(degtorad(ft))*r);
x = mouse_x + xoff;
y = mouse_y + yoff;

[Khris]

It's not that much more complicated, I just created the coordinate functions separately to show the math involved.

[Nikolas]

Say...

I'm looking to start creating newsletter for the publishing house. WEBSITE LINK HERE

Two questions:

1. I'm almost in love with the general graphics of the site and the logo and all. I think the website works great. So it's reasonable to want to use a template that's very close to that, right? Or should I strive away from this aesthetic?

2. After searching for quite some time for a newsletter template, I couldn't find one that fits the bill, nor one that is so customisable that I can input my own images completely. Tried a few sites. How difficult is it for someone to create a mockup of a newsletter in PS (I don't know photoshop, and have rather limited knowledge of gimp) and/or create the first newsletter as some kind of a template that I can edit later on with new text and images? Am I asking too much, or taking the difficult route home?

Cheers