by Matt | Feb 8, 2003 | Imported Entry
Well, the past few day have been pretty interesting. It turned out that I didn’t have my critique on Thursday, buying me precious time to shoot more film. Thursday night I had ever intention of shooting when we went out as a group but it turned out I was having far too much fun to bother with my camera. Lauren, Sarah, Brittney and myself went to Savannah Smile: a dueling piano bar. It was A LOT of fun. I can see this being a recurring theme for me weekends to come. They play old standards, classic rock tunes and a few eclectic favorites on two beat-up old baby-grands. All the pianists were great and more than entertaining. Drinks seemed a little pricey but that’s probably because the door charge is so low. It was a little empty on Thursday night as one might expect so we decided to go back last night. We were right and the place was definitely at full tilt last night. I guess Friday is the night to go. I took both evenings opportunities to take some pictures so that turned out to be a good plan.
Friday afternoon was a little less eventful but helpful none-the-less. I had a midterm conference at 2pm downtown so I headed off to that as Lauren got to work on her AutoCAD projects. The conference went well and I have an A so far. Jenny (my professor) took a look at what I had an suggested a few interesting ways to proceed from there. From there I picked up a few movies from Hollywood Video and some flowers for Lauren as a surprise from the grocery store across the street.
Today Lauren’s friend Ashley is coming to visit from her school in Charleston. It’s Ashley’s birthday so they’re going to go out to dinner as a “girls night out” sort of thing… but not before posing for some pictures. Lauren asked if I could take some pictures of the two of them since they don’t really have any. I agreed figuring I could kill two birds with one stone and take some pictures for myself as well.
That’s my basic plan for the day. I also just finished Unreal 2 so I’ll try and post a review of that over at Chocobo.cx. I might post a SimCity 4 review as well but we’ll see what I have time to type. I might not get to it until this evening though so don’t be waiting with baited breath.
I was also going to rant and rave about so typically Matt Brand social injustice, computer issues, free speech, the stupidity of our president and so on, but that’s just a downer so I’ll skip my usually rant for today. You should however, check out michaelmoore.com. Mike has some insight into just about everything. Pay special attention to the Homeland Security section. There’s some good reads in there. I’ll also link to a story that boarders on sensationalism as well as stupidity. The story itself isn’t that interesting, it’s TCPA stuff that you’ve heard me rant about before, it’s the shear quantity of ridiculous comments, both for and against that should be read. Yes, those are separate links.
Anyway, that’s about it. Later.
by Matt | Feb 5, 2003 | Imported Entry
Well, photography work has kept me busy for the past few days. Being sick also makes it so incredibly difficult to stand in a small, warm, dark room for a few hours without nearly falling asleep. As for the photos themselves, they turned out ok but there are far to few of them. I should have shot more film this week but didn’t for various lazy reasons. This weekend however I have to make a concerted and definite effort to shoot my entire supply of film, about 20+ rolls. I’ll order more from B&H, I don’t care, but I need to shoot some film. I also need to work out the technical issues that have cause these first few shoots to end badly. One of my rolls is bright orange (I have no idea why) and two are woefully underexposed (forgot about the distance restraints on my flash). I should be able to work something out. My hope against all hope is that we won’t have time for my critique tomorrow and I can stave off execution until Tuesday when I should have more work to present. It’s not that I don’t have work right now, its just that I don’t have as much work as I’d like. Anyway, to completely contradict what I’ve just rambled on about, I plan to do nothing in the way of homework tonight. I spent all day printing and if fate decides that I need to show work tomorrow, then so be it. I’ve worked as much as I could under the circumstances and now I have ever intention of sitting on my ass until I go to sleep.
Thats about it. Nothing else interesting. This weekend I’m shooting film. Tomorrow night Lauren and Sarah and myself (and possibly Nagle) are going to Savannah Smiles, a dueling jazz piano bar, to drown our troubles in sophisticated alcoholic beverages while listening to some bubbly southern jazz. Friday night is up in the air but Saturday Lauren is having a “girls night out” so I’ll see if Nagle is up for doing something. Friday and Sunday are homework days as is Monday and that takes us right into next week. There you have it kids, the life of a art student. Tough huh?
by Matt | Feb 3, 2003 | Imported Entry
Besides that computer stuff, I was knee deep in photography today. I realized late yesterday that I had a critique at 3:00 this afternoon. I hadn’t printed anything for it because I thought it was on Wednesday. I spent all morning in the darkroom printing some pretty crappy images for my self-portrait project. I just couldn’t come up with any interesting ideas for it. I hate taking pictures of myself. It’s the whole reason I chose to be BEHIND the camera and not in front of it. Anyway, one or two of them came out alright and I might scan them if I find the time. Tomorrow I have to reshoot my self-portrait after class in hopes of getting better results and then print some more for Thursday. Wednesday, same thing, more printing and more shooting. I have another critique on Thursday for my Personal Vision class and I need to get those prints done for that. After that I can take a minor breather this weekend but then I have to get back to shooting.
Oh, and before I head off to write a paper for class tomorrow, I wanted to offer my first impressions of Unreal 2. Most of you won’t be able to buy it until tomorrow but if you do, don’t have high hopes for it’s brilliance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, it’s just not the “end all” of First-Person-Shooters like some people thought it would be. They did a lot of things very well. The graphics quality is on par with its multiplayer sister title UT2003 and even adds some interesting effects. Watching burning enemies scamper around after you hose them down with the flame thrower comes to mind. The main draw back to Unreal 2 is that it’s seriously short and has the “been here before” sindrome. It’s the same old type of level: run this way, hit the switch, run back, continue on. It’s been done before and I for one am getting a little tired of “find the button” based levels. Even Red Faction had better scripted events. The game is PURE eye-candy. If you have a sweet-tooth and really want to see what your graphics card can do, then this is for you. If you’re looking for a first-person story, better wait for Doom 3… as if that will have any “plot” to speak of either. I’ll talk about it more once I finish it but at the moment this is what I’m feeling.
Later.
by Matt | Feb 3, 2003 | Imported Entry
My computer is starting to do some funny things and it’s making me quite worried. It’s booting fine and even getting to the Win XP boot screen, but when it loads and switches to the login screen everything goes black. I can also tell that it hasn’t loaded the USB drivers yet because my mouse and keyboard have no power. So, instead of a Windows logon I get a blank screen. Then, when I restart, it tells me that Windows didn’t finish loading last time and asks if I’d like to start it in Safe Mode. I choose “start normally” and everything is fine, OR it does it again and requires additional restarts. I could either be the graphics card not wanting to refresh at that resolution or something video related or it’s Windows being weird and might require a reinstall. Any ideas guys?
by Matt | Jan 31, 2003 | Imported Entry
Well, I got my first haircut in 8+ months today. I was a little frightened having had a horrible experience the last time I tried to get my haircut in Savannah but thankfully everything turned out ok this time. Actually, it’s probably one of the best haircuts I’ve ever had. I chopped off a good five inches and it’s a lot less “girl-ish” finally. It’s still a longer length than your typical haircut but it’s reverse layered and shaped correctly. It’s good. I also only paid $30 for it too. Usually they charge $50+ at the type of places I like to have my hair cut. I was very happy.
I also got my Clie case/wallet today. So, not only like my head stylish but so is my pocket. I got a nice black leather flip case and a screen protector from eXpansis. It took them far too long to ship it to me but the quality of the case is nice so I won’t complain.
Last night I also managed to shoot 3 rolls of film and get a 4th almost finished. I still need to shoot more this weekend, probably 10 rolls total, but this is a good start. I’ll shoot more tonight with the help of Lauren and her friends and then possibly some tomorrow with Nagle. We talked about bowling but I’ve still got to call him and ask.
That’s about it. Lauren and her friends are off looking at dresses for a wedding and I’m about to play some SimCity 4.
That is all.
by Matt | Jan 29, 2003 | Imported Entry
Wow, that title is a mouthful. Anyway, I was bored and decided to find out what my graphics card could handle. First off I needed to find out exactly what it was running at in terms of clock speed and memory speed. To do this I installed Gainward’s eXperTool, a utility that came with my card but that I had neglected until now. After updating it to the most current version and updating the bios of the board I checked the clock speed. My card was set at the factory default 300 Mhz core and 650 Mhz memory. From here I decided I needed to benchmark the card before attempting to overclock it. I ran 3DMark by MadOnion and got a respectable score of 8933. It should be mentioned at this point that I’m using Nvidia’s Detonator 41.09 drivers for this. I know that the 42.xx drivers are out there somewhere but I didn’t want to try this on beta driver for fear of something going wrong. So, after the first round of testing I decided to crank the card up to “Enhanced Mode” which is an actual setting in eXperTools especially designed for overclocking. This bumped the clock speed to 310 Mhz and the Memory to 680 Mhz. A successful completion of 3DMark again and I received quite a serious bump in results. The card tested at 9648 (up from 8933). I was quite pleases with this since I had significantly improved my cards proformance while not seriously overclocking it. I decided to chance it and go for the glory. I pushed the card past the recommended “enhanced mode” limits and jumped the clock speed up to 320 Mhz and the memory to 700 Mhz. To my amazement the card remained stable through another round of testing. It produced a score of 9982 from 3DMark. Quite pleased with myself at this point I returned the card settings to “enhanced mode” and that’s where I’ve decided it shall stay. There’s no reason to push it any further when I don’t have to. Anyway, to wrap up my hap-hazard results, here’s a little list:
Safe Mode (300Mhz clock speed) – 3DMark Score: 8933
Enhanced Mode (310Mhz clock speed) – 3DMark Score: 9648
Overclocked (320Mhz clock speed) – 3DMark Score: 9982
Now, I need to point out that this is without anti-aliasing turned on. This is purely hardware here. I’m planning on running seperate 2xAA and 4xAA benchmarks tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Matt out.
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