So where have I been?
XOTT
Posts: 0
So where have I been?
Well...been busy being flattened financially, and having major computer problems, and being ill.
Unfortunately.....my installations of Poser has been wiped out not once...but TWICE! from 2 different internal hard drives failing (one suddenly), and so that was a big disincentive to get back into 3D artwork all again until I got this new more powerful computer system which can handle rendering better.
I had my runtimes organsised so that only the stuff that HAD to go into Poser's own runtime was in there. Everything else was in outside external directories....the usual thing.
And in case you were wondering, I've determined that the hard drives died in my desktop system from a computer power supply crapping itself. In all, I had 2 hard drives and 1 DVD burner all die on me because of that, with one of those hard drives being suddenly power-dead completely after it had suddenly developed that ominous 'clattering' noise. In fact, the second hard drive died whilst *I was in the actual process of hurriedly burning off discs of the stuff on the drive, AND the DVD burner was dying at the same time too!- That even included stuff to save AND also from my ancient system put onto there to burn off and save! -- Multiple arghhhhhh's >:-(
My other hard drives were full at the time and so I couldn't copy the stuff onto those either. I was in the very process of burning stuff onto DVD's (with a failing burner but I didn't know that for sure at the time), and so that hard drive crash was just the cherry on the major disaster cake.
Later.....hard drives were replaced, as well as a new burner (I also bought a spare!) and I installed a beefy power supply so this wouldn't ever happen again.
Taking ages, I rebuilt my external runtimes in a more organised fashion and installed Victoria 4 etc from my many old CD's that I'd burned-off long ago of all my storebought stuff as well as freebies. I also got more runtimes full of stuff from my older (ancient) system as well and joined them into the collection too (using different foldernames to make things clearer whilst doing some housecleaning of the files as well).
Via DIM, I've been downloading lots of primary Poser stuff that I use in my artwork and I've made up a couple of DVD's of the collection of my storebought stuff. Not only is it handy to have to do this new install, but it's also for future installing use too, especially since the base versions etc have been updated. For instance, I've only got Victoria 4.1 on disc in my archives as a DAZ .exe file.
So at this time I haven't yet installed Poser 2014 on this newest computer system.
On my other system I previously had Poser 2012 and Poser 7.
On my ancient system I've been using Poser since about version 3 or 4.
Buying a new powerful computer system wasn't exactly cheap either, so that's why it's taken quite awhile.
During the interim period away from 3D artwork I've been into my DSLR photography. I also bought a video camcorder. And I've been buying software online for them such as software for making HDR photos from my shots, and also video editing software, all of which was because they were on deep sale and I got them in readiness for having a computer system that was powerful enough to handle them easier. Not exactly cheap but much cheper because they were on sale. And because of that, I'm on the 'update pricing' policies which makes getting newer versions much cheaper.
I recently installed BRYCE 7.1 on this new system to try out things and it's definitely faster, especially with this Intel i7 CPU. - The next thing to do with BRYCE is to add-in all my previous libraries (or runtimes if you like for Poser users thinking), and once again they've been collated from many years of freebies collecting of MATs going back to me using BRYCE 5, freebie stuff you just can't find anywhere on the internet anywhere anymore but of which are still great to use for certain artwork.
BTW, I've been spending *ages* getting this Windows 8.1 OS up to speed and to my liking, with the first absolutely essential thing being the freeware "Classic Shell" (www.classicshell.net) being put on it so I wouldn't go crazy with what Microsoft thinks is a great user interface. I don't ever use the AERO interface at all, even on my Win8 laptop which also has classicshell on it.
Then installing basic and essential software came next taking up a ton of time configuring settings in such things as browser, email (I even had to contact my ISP phone support because I forgot my email accounts passwords and I couldn't find my written-in-a-real-notepad notepads anywhere!), video codecs & media players, system utes, anti-virus, and on and on and on.....
That's another reason why I installed BRYCE, so I could relax from all of this for just awhile! >;-)
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And finally, just to top it all off....I've just tonight discovered my c: drive on my ancient system is stuffing up!
I'm moving things across the network here at home so stuff can be burned off because I can tell that once again, something will fall-over and die. -- At least this time I've had some warning.
Great....now I have to concentrate on shifting over stuff that needs to be saved/burned off, and then actually burning it all off to discs since that hard drive or OS wants to commit suicide.
And you wonder why I'm worn threadbare? :-\
Z.
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BTW, I'm online but I'm currently mentally overloaded with running 3 computers at once over the home LAN trying to salvage stuff off one computer system before a hard drive dies. >:-(
That's also complicated by 2 systems using 1 monitor that I have to keep manually switching between so I can see for sure what I'm doing. ;-)
Talk about mental congestion.
3 desktop systems, 3 keyboards, 3 mice (on one mousepad), using 2 monitors.....all because there's no room at all left where my computer system(s) are set up.
Good thing I can mentally multi-task a bit. ;-)
The home LAN is getting a heavy workout tonight shunting gigs worth of stuff about.
--
In the end I'll only have 2 systems running here.
The ancient system is going to be finally retired after about a decade of use. (no kidding)
The newest system will be for art work creation etc, and the less powered one for menial tasks.
It's handy to have two so that when the main one is working on something (say a render that's taking ages), I can still go online with the other one and not be left twiddling my thumbs.
Oh, and hopefully I'll have a dual monitor system set up somehow so I can work easier on this new, more powerful system. That'll come in handy spacing out all the control palettes and so on that many programs use these days.
--
And now...back to work saving ancient stuff before it goes *POOF*!
What are the specs of the new system?
Here's the thing, everytime I get a new system, the specs don't last very long until they're outdated and it's considered 'old' then not long after it becomes 'ancient'. So I don't harp on about anything. Its there to do a job and make life easier than the previous computer and not to brag about. :coolsmile:
* It's an intel i7 system, a Haswell 3.4ghz version.
* 32gb of memory, 1600MHz 'lifetime guaranteed' (we could have gone to 2400MHz but we ran out of money.)
* Windows 8.1 (ugh! - a nice 64bit OS under the bonnet, but with a terrible interface)- (freeware Classic Shell to the rescue!) :-)
* several 1tb drives (I can update when the price of higher capacity ones come down and are more reliable)
* 24" monitor (though I now also have 3x 'extra' 19" monitors because of retiring systems in the house to add in if I can find space) ;-)
* a 2gb Radeon card (with extra monitors support outputs) - (and no, I'm not into modern gaming with 3d shooters etc)
* a 750w (I think) power supply.
All in a nice, reserved, plain ol' black case (no glitzy widowed side panel) with a front panel consisting of (inbuilt) 2xUSB 3 ports etc, TOGETHER with an add-on panel of a '30 in 1' interface to accept most kinds of memory cards from things like my DSLR, movie camera etc., and another USB there.
There's plenty more USB's at the back, both USB 2's and USB 3's coming from the motherboard.
I've used up most of my available space in my hard drive bays with my current drives because the damned video card is so long that it's too much to cram in more hard drives behind it's end. - So I'll just convert a few of the large 5.25" bays into 3.5" ones to do the same job. No problems because they'd be empty in any case otherwise. (no pun intended)
And we got 2 of these systems exactly the same, so it cost twice the amount of course.
One is for my use, and the other system is for the insignificant other to play games and do stuff with.
I wanted 2 exact systems so that in the future, if there's any problems with one then we know what to do with the other. Case in point was that the insignificant other's system made a small clattering sound when started up after we brought them home. I figured it out to be the large aluminum heatsink sheet panel of the graphics card (which carries heat away from the copper tubing underneath it), the heatsink metal was just touching one of the two fans of the graphics card. - A bit of 'gentle persuasion' by flexing the heatsink panel fixed the problem. - If it ever happens to mine then I know what to do straight away.
I'm not going to give brands or models because I'm not interested in someone saying coulda, woulda, shoulda about anything.
It's a capable system that'll do what I ask it.
It's not the greatest system but it's better than alternatives.
There's other people with 64gb systems with hamsters in wheels that run on pure Jolt cola and cold fusion power with ribbons of flashy LED strung throughout it all. - I'm happy for you.
When I (eventually) get this thing up and running to my satisfaction with everything installed, configured up and singing how I want, then it'll already be out of date. :lol:
BTW, unlike my old computer systems, this one is deathly quiet.
So much so that you only know its on from the front panel lights (power and hard drive activity).
Two big near-silent 120mm fans keep things cooler in the case but when I get a chance I'll be adding another fan.
The graphics card has 2 fans on it and they're quiet but not silent since they're of course much smaller. BTW, the graphics card auto-powers down to a standby when it's not being used much or under load and that also keeps things quiet and cooler.
We bought the systems from a long-established shop that we've used for decades. They put systems together from your choices and then wrangle it all together. All up, it costs not much extra having them do it all rather than buying the individual components yourself from them and having the hassles of putting the system together yourself. - And it comes with a 1 year warranty. (apart from any component warranties too of course)
So that's about it.
I hate this new keyboard so I'm going to plug in my 10year+ old 'Genius' 101 keyboard instead. You spend years using a certain keyboard and then having to adjust to a new one is too jarring. :coolsmirk:
Hi there XOTT!
Just wanted to say welcome back.
Hope things are much better now. Reading your post was a little like deja-vu for me what with the computer problems, new system setup, illness, etc. Kind of weird. ;-)
Best regards.
7thStone
It seems I'm not the only one bit by the digital killer bugs. I lost all my back ups due to bad drives from Seagate. Stay away from any of the external backup drive solutions, I heard and read they are all mostly faulty. Buy internal drives and get a enclosure and make your one external backup solution that way.
I'm so sorry all this has befallen you. It's really no fun. Aside from your computer issues, your health and your finances too... no fun. Same with me and lost one of my dearest friends earlier this year on top of it all. Yea, no fun but keep your chin up and as I like to say "onwards and upwards"!
Take good care!
Richard
I don't use external hard drives. I've just seen too many bad stories from people losing stuff.
It's bad enough when a desktop system hard drive goes, but to have multiple things occur all at once or one after the other is worse.
What really made the entire situation back then worse was that there *was* a small avenue of hope but because I was so harried at the time with that and real life events, my mind wasn't on the task.
I had my system on for days at a time because everytime it was shut down and started up again, more data would be corrupted during the powerup stages. So I kept it running as I tried to salvage stuff.
What I *could* have done was to copy stuff from the dying hard drive across the home LAN to the insignificant other's computer system in another part of the house. But that thought never occurred to me until months later.
And what's just as bad is that I was actually in the process of burning/saving all the stuff off after I'd spent literally ages organising it all to proper DVD sized packages, but the damned DVD burner started dying in the process.
DVD burners wear out, I know that. I've gone though some in my time since I'm always saving and backing stuff up. But to have it die at the very moment that I was working with it is just cruel.
---
Sometime later on we had another blow.
We had both of our dogs die.
They were old but good for their age (around 10 years old).
One had gotten very ill and died at the vets. But previous to that I was taking 24 hour care of him when he got ill.
The other we had to have put down because her 'quality of life' was becoming very poor. - That makes it worse because she could have stayed alive for ages more but that's a selfish attitude to take because she was having a dreadful time of things sometimes.
I could see the writing on the wall for her so we went and got two new pups (Rottweilers) before she went, despite the insignificant other's protestations based on worry and emotions over our remaining dog.
They used to have fun playing with her German Shepherd tail all the time and then suddenly one day she was no longer in the house forever more.
I had to personally bring the pups up, sleeping with them for months, and toilet-training them.
They're both from the same litter too so they have each other for company. You could call them 'twins' and they look very much alike but not in temperament.
If you think bringing up one pup is hard, two aren't twice as hard, it's much more than that. They kept upsetting each others training and its harder to keep an eye on things when there's more than one dog at a time.
People loved them as pups because they were so well trained. They'd sit, come, all that sort of thing even though they were little anklebiter sized.
Now, they're older and are so solid they will knock you over just with their bulk if you let them (which we don't), and that's why all that early training is so important since I knew they'd become big, solid dogs.
People who saw them growing up, love them. Strangers are wary (as they should be) and when they're with us they're fine. The dogs protect us here at home and mightily dissuade any gits.
They're Rottweilers and they have tails. None of that tail-docking garbage for us! - Tails are an integral part of what a dog is and its used as body language and communication. Why would anyone not want to see a happy, tail-wagging dog?
All our dogs we've had are not 'furkids', and they're not guard dogs, they're companions. And that makes it harder when they're ill or worse.
And to finish on an upbeat note, here's some pics of the pups from their very first day at home....to a few weeks later.
(engaging cuteness mode)
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...and a few more.....
(it was the depths of horrible summer heat)
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...and the last pics I'm posting of when they were pups.
One shot shows typical puppy 'dagger teeth' as I call them. Very sharp and pointy and it's great when they finally get rid of those and have real proper teeth that don't puncture your fingers like daggers. ;-)
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Hi XOTT,
Sorry to hear about your computer woes. Been there myself this past year. The backup drive on my computer went bad, and I'd moved everything to the main drive. Then the motherboard in my husband's computer died, and just as we managed to buy the parts to build him a new system, one of the main drives in my system died, so I lost all the stuff on my backup drive as well as everything on my main drive. Unfortunately, a lot of stuff I did not have backed up. I'm saving the main drives (was an array) hoping that one day I'll be able to afford the thousands of dollars I imagine it would cost to recover my files (if recoverable). Both of the drives were Seagates. Needless to say, I will never buy another Seagate drive. I'm currently running the ten year old Western Digital drives that were in my husband's old system until I can get new drives for mine. And, my husbands battery backup died the other day. Made a big pop when turning on his system. At first, I thought it was the new system, so it gave me a real start. Here's hoping we have no more computer problems for a while. ;)
Sorry about your doggies too. I know how heartbreaking it can be to lose a longtime friend. Hope your new puppies aren't as needy as ours are. ;)
...first of all, Welcome back (thought I saw a comment from you on another thread last night).
Second: condolences for you former four footed companions however congratulations on the two new ones.
Third: congratulations on the new systems.
Went though similar computer misfortunes though not on as large a scale. Lost one HDD in the notebook with all my early stuff on it. Also turned out that several of my backup DVDs were corrupted (including one that had a lot of useful freebies that are no longer available) so I had to go back and download a lot of older content (nice that Daz keeps that active) and search for as many of the lost freebies as I could find.
Realised if I wanted to keep doing this I needed a new dedicated system with better processor and memory support to handle many of the new features in Daz Studio and Carrara. So, took over 18 months to learn about hardware, how to design and build a system myself, (getting the parts when I could afford them) as I couldn't afford a complete system from a custom build house.
Much more modest in comparison - old Bloomfield i7 with 12 GB, 1x 1TB + 1 x 250GB HDDs, a 1GB nVidia GPU and a 750w PSU as well. However, all the components were selected for the best compatibility and it is still a huge step up from what I had been working on for almost five years (I can finally use raytracing, IBL! and not live in fear of transmaps or reflectivity).
I like to call it my "One Piece at a Time" system (after the song of the same name by Johnny Cash).
Oh, and it's in just a big ol' gunmetal grey enclosure with a half dozen fans and lots of "breathing room" inside, no side window, fancy lights, or "Gundam/Transformer" styling. When it comes to computers, it's what's "under the bonnet" that counts.