Christmas in Magnetewan

There is just nothing like spending Christmas with someone you haven't seen in years.  In my case it was my grandmother.  She lives some 4 hours away up in Magnetewan Township, specifically in Ahmic Harbour, and I haven't been able to go and see her in about 8 or 9 years.  It was such a lovely time, with more food than there really should have been, and since we were up north for almost 3 days we had LOTS of leftovers.  I wouldn't have traded it for anything, although I wish I had taken more pictures.

Well stay frosty, and Happy Christmas!

Job Search and House Hunting

It's beginning to dawn on me that computer repair isn't the business it used to be.  People are more informed now, and it's easier to get the information.  Which means more people are fixing their own computers.  And then add to that the number of computer technicians in this city and now you've got problems finding a job.  I  may have to find a new career.  Maybe something without so much customer interaction.  Maybe I need to go to college too.  Well I don't have a lease anymore so I suppose that means I could go to another city for college.  That being said I would like to pursue a career in video games.  So since my beta testing days are now over what with public beta tests happening all the time, and now alpha tests are done by the artists and programmers that make the game, I'm going to have to find out what I'm good at.  3D modelling, texturing, or programming.

New motherboard

It's come to that time again, where I take apart my gaming computer and put new things in it.  I've been having some trouble with my computer restarting and my hard drive shutting off for a while now, and I've been wanting a new CPU/Motherboard for even longer.  This would be the first brand new motherboard I've installed in my own computer for the past 10 years.  Every one has been second hand or found in the trash since I started going out with C.  Now that we are getting married in August I'm pretty sure I will not be able to afford a new computer anytime soon.  Actually the computer I found in the trash was years ahead of the one I had been using, and someone had just thrown it out.

So here's what I bought: AMD FX-8120 8-core @ 3.1GHz and an MSi 970-g46 motherboard.  Now I'm quite aware that this setup will never be a hackintosh, and I'm ok with that.  I just spent 3 months fiddling with a hackintosh triple boot, and that's time enough to know I'd rather have a real apple computer than keep fiddling with it.  Now that I think about it, this started happening when I installed my new video card, but that can't be what's causing the problems since this power supply was driving 2 video cards in another computer only 1 year ago.

Well I'm going to run some tests with eXtreme Power Supply Calculator to see if i'm still off with my power calculations, but as I see I should only need a 450W supply for the mobo, CPU, RAM, vid card, hdd, and dvd drive I'm using.

Star Wars

Now I know that this is still a pretty well trending topic, what with the new star wars movie pencilled in for 2015.  Now I'm not sure how many of you have read the extended universe books, but there's a huge resource of material out there, but Disney has decided to not use any of it.  That means no Mara Jade or Winter, or any of the Organa-Solo children.  This also means that the extended universe could become innaccurate now that there's even more Star Wars canon coming out.  So yet even more ret-conned stuff is bound to happen, and still more fuel for the extended universe authors.  Seems like bad news and good news, but don't be too alarmed....  It's not like we WON'T go see this film.  It hasn't even been written and there is already almost a billion people who want to see it.

Life Update Time!!

So for now I am at my parent's house.  They have been gracious enough to let me back in, and in return I only have to move out soon.  Looking for a place to live is hard!  I forgot how hard it is.  It's especially hard because I am still going through credit counselling, so many places will not let me rent form them because I have "BAD CREDIT".  Which isn't completely true, what I have is "BAD DEBT", and credit counselling shows that I am trying to fix it.  But for some reason big corporations don't like to see that I'm trying to fix my debt and so I am not able to get into any of these big apartment buildings here in town.  I'm still trying though, and since I've lost my job I could try going through Niagara Regional Housing, which is a place for people with low income to get cheap houses.  My fiancee doesn't like the idea.  She thinks I don't need it even though I'm only getting $1000 from ODSP again.  I might have been able to do $800 on rent when I had the job, but now I'm sure I can't.  That severely limits the type of place I can afford.  One bedroom apartments and bachelor apartments are around $600 here.  2 bedroom apartments are around $800-$1000 and 3 bedrooms are way out of my price range at over $1200. At NRH I might be able to get a 3 bedroom townhouse for $400.  I've also been considering moving to another city.  I hear Niagara Falls, Thorold and Welland all have lower rent than St. Catharines, heck even Hamilton has lower rent.  What makes St. Catharines rent so high? Niagara College and Brock University.  Landlords here can rent a single room unfurnished for $400 or more, so why rent to a single renter when you can get so much more money for college students?

MOVING AGAIN!

Ok, so I got this new landlord, then a new job, and now I have to find a new home.  I had almost forgotten just how much of a discount my sister gave me.  Sorry i don't have more right now, but it's midnight and i've been at work all day.

101 Posts

HOLY COW!!!!

Engaged!

I got engaged in the time between this message and my last one.  We haven't set a date quite yet, there's so many options.  We are thinking April or May in 2014, but who knows maybe we can get married earlier.  I've been looking forward to this for so long...

New Landlord

Today I get a new landlord.  um... I guess that's it, nothing else to report.

Skyrim Mod: Riften Crafting Closet

It's the mod I made for skyrim. Contains all your crafting needs in a small little room.  It's been a few weeks since I updated, but it's still a good mod all in all.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=15913

Photo post processing with Gimp 2.6

Now I'm using Gimp 2.6 for Windows, but this technique will work on any image editor, for just about any over exposed, slightly fuzzy photo you have.  First I want to show you the original photo, and then give you shots of each step.

As you can see the original is not a horrible photo, but could definitely need some tweaking.  I was using a cheap camera, in a very sunny locale (LEGOLAND California), with no sun shield.  Almost every one of my out door photos look something like this one, white and fuzzy with sun streaks.  Now I'm not going to show you how to get rid of sun streaks, just dealing with over exposure and colour offset.

First thing is open your photo.  Next step, duplicate the layer and change the new layer's blending to Multiply.  Your photo should now look like this:

Big difference already, but we aren't quite finished with this.   What this does is double up the visible information making everything clearer.  but as you can see we've still got some glow and streaks, and the brightest stuff is still washed out.  My next step is what gave me the wow factor.  Make sure your new layer is selected and Click colous->auto->equalize. It should look like this now:

Very nice.  Next we deal with the overall fuzziness of the image by going to Filters->Enhance->Unsharp Mask.  I like the default settings of 5.0 radius, 0.50 amount and 0 treshold, it's a good catch all setting.  Now click OK and you'll watch as you go from a slightly fuzzy photo to being able to see individual bricks!

Keep frosty!

Is it time to upgrade your computer?

Well this is a loaded question for some people.  Most every computer guy out there is going to tell you to upgrade your 5 year old machine, then tell you to buy the fastest thing with wires "so it lasts longer".  Well I think there are actually a few questions you need to ask yourself before you go pay $1000 or more on the latest tech.

1. Can I afford it?

This has got to be your top priority when talking about a computer.  Sure the $2000 top of the line computer is nice, but you know top of the line computers will ALWAYS cost that much (sometimes more if you like Apple).  Want proof?  I have some old magazines from 1989 here that advertise the Commodore Amiga, the most advanced computer on the market at that time, for only $2000.  Want to know how much it cost for a C64?  $500 (it was on the next page in an article).  New technology always costs more than old technology.  You want the latest greatest thing, good, but you better be willing to pay for it.  That being said you may be better off (at least until the new round of Operating Systems comes out) with a simple upgrade.

2. Does my current computer work well?

If you've been struggling for the past few months, or even if you had the same issue with the computer since you bought it, it really doesn't hurt to talk to you friendly neighbourhood computer store.  I'm not kidding about this.  Every single person reading this has had to put up with some glitch or backwards way of doing things because they never got around to fixing the problem.  Every time I sit at a friends computer there is always some thing wrong with it.  I'm not talking about ergonomics (which no one else cares about any way) I'm talking about error messages, browser pop ups, ghost windows, and worst of all it's slow!  You shouldn't have to put up with a 6 minute boot cycle.  No, you shouldn't have to go get a coffee after you turn on your computer.  Clicking on a menu shouldn't give you a 5 second pause.  There is almost no reason to have more than 10 things running next to your clock!!  Run some scans, get rid of spyware, trojans, viruses, anything that is currently running is slowing down your computer.  Don't know what's what or how to speed up your computer?  Once again try your friendly neighbourhood computer store (best buy and future shop do not count!)  Or even better yet, send me an email and see if I have time to fix it!

3, Can I fix my current computer?

Short answer: YES!!!!  I can guarantee you that if something is wrong with a computer, there is someone out there that can fix it.  It could be as simple as a RAM upgrade or as involved as a hard drive replacement.  I say that you can fix any problem, but there are some fixes you aren't going to like the answer to.  Broken motherboards, failed hard drives and burnt out CPUs are among the customer's worst fears because it's time to decide on either a new computer, or an upgrade, and all those options can be confusing.  There are a small number of us "Computer Guys" that will ask the right questions, give it to you straight, and tell you exactly what you need.  Some of us might even have it on hand, or will go to the store with you to get it.

4, Can I just upgrade my current computer?

Oddly enough this isn't a yes for everybody.  There are quite a few people out there with computers old enough to not want to upgrade them.  Computers have moving parts, and as we all know moving parts create wear, and wear creates damage.  If you want to upgrade a computer that still works but is over 10 years old, I would suggest that you donate that awesome computer to someone that needs it, and find your self something new.  Now if you just want to try to get the most out of a 2 or 3 year old computer, I'd say try a SSD hard drive, adding more RAM, and find out how much a faster CPU would be.  Sometimes you can get a bargain on a slightly older CPU.  Intel has changed their sockets so many times in the past 5 years that you might not even be able to find any faster CPUs for your Motherboard in your city (as is the case with this 6 year old computer).  You also have to worry about whether or not you computer is a big box brand name.  Dell, Gateway, HP, Apple, Lenovo, Acer, Alienware are all brand names, and with the exception of Acer and Alienware, all are VERY hard to upgrade.  I'm not going to go into the details of all the reasons why you SHOULDN'T upgrade these computers and give you one major reason why you CAN'T.  IT IS AGAINST YOUR WARRANTY TO OPEN THE COMPUTER.  That means if you have it under warranty, you can't touch it. And if you are wondering how "computer guys" feel about warranties and big box brand name computers, we actually LOVE them, we just don't use them at home cause we like to tinker.

5, Do I want to change to a new operating system?

Deep down you know the answer to this is no.  Remember Windows Vista? How about when XP came out and everything was in the wrong place, but not by much?  What about Windows 95 can you remember how crazy it made windows 3.11 users?  what about have to switch from DOS to Windows?  Every time you have switched Operating Systems and hence user interfaces you have complained about not knowing where stuff is.  Some of you have even bought books to find our where stuff is.  I say change is good, but when I'm on an unfamiliar User Interface (UI) everything just feels wrong.  Windows 8 is on it's way, and you know that the next version of Mac OS X isn't too far behind it.  There's going to be devices out there you have never seen before with Windows 8 on them.  Apple will be making smaller and smaller devices with larger and larger screens.  EVERYTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE! Except it isn't. In six months it's likely that you will still have the same sort of money flow, in either the same or similar job, and if you're smart you've been able to keep your same old computer going just that little bit longer by fixing it.  And if you are truly smart you would take that money you saved by not buying, save it up for when the new stuff does come out, and buy yourself a new computer.  Oh and look, now you have two working computers.  Give one to the kids, if you don't have kids there's plenty of charities (like Warehouse of Hope) that will accept your used but working electronics to give them to underprivileged families.

6, Should I buy a new computer right now?

I've been preaching "Fix now, buy later" all throughout this blog post.  I truly do believe that it's always better to fix your computer than to just buy a new one.  Especially if it's only software issues like slowness, pop ups, viruses and error messages.  There are actually a few instances where I would say "you have to buy a new computer"  things like age of the computer (the older the more you need a new one), age of the user (the younger the user the less you need a new one), and hardware issues are all factors in the decision making process.  So if you can afford it, the old one can't be fixed (without a serious upgrade), and you don't mind using Windows 7 for a year, then spending $100 for windows 8 next year, I'd say yes you should upgrade.

Ubuntu 12.04 Gaming

It comes down to money.  Ubuntu 12.04 does not support my aging ATI x1550 any more than Ubuntu 10.04 or 9.10 did.  So even though I have a Pixel Shader Model 3.0 card I can't use it to play Skyrim on Ubuntu or any derivatives.  Now you might say "Why not just use the older Ubuntu?" mainly it's because it's not supported or updated any more. Now that 12.04 is out 10.04 is not supported and that had 2 years of support on it.  The primary reason why the old Ubuntu works with the fglrx for my card is because both are out dated software.  The biggest issue I'm having is that it works perfectly fine in windows (any version), but just won't run on Ubuntu because of the stupid unsupported driver issue.  So now I've got to put more and more money away (not that I have any) just to get a supported card in order to not have to buy the next version of windows.  Well if you want to chip in for me to get a new video card, I put a new widget on the right .

Gaming with Ubuntu 12.04

That's right I installed ubuntu 12.04rc on my gaming machine. Why? because I needed something to do.  The job scene here is no good, I lost my subsidized housing forms, and I'm super bored!  Now then... where was I?  Oh yeah setting  up ubuntu to work with steam.  It works out of the box, and so did skyrim.     I got greedy though and wanted to eke out some better performance and stop the mouse from jumping around in skyrim, so I tried to install fglrx.  This was a very bad idea.  Now steam won't load, ubuntu internals keep crashing, and I've got to start over from scratch, making sure to upgrade immediately after install.  oh well, back to the grinder....

Heard it on the pipeline

It seems that an offer has been made on my house and he wants to keep me as a tennant.  This is good news, but I'm still worrying about the future.  I desperately need a job now, I'm not sure I can continue to pay my bills on what I have.  I've been trying all sorts of places to get a job, but I'm running up against the same walls: no recent experience, and no post-secondary education.  Maybe I'm just getting wrapped up in my own head here, but it seems right now that I will never get another job.

Swallowed my Shame

Turns out that teh landlord, my sister, was actually quite cool about me breaking the door.  She's not happy about it cause I wasted $30 on a new one, but it wasn't the grudge match I thought it'd be.  My dad pitched in too and we all made a huge effort to get my place ready for showings cause starting Monday this house is on the market.

Doors

I feel so bad right now because of this stupid door I broke. I didnt want any one else to know about it because it hurts so bad, and instead of being able to tell my landlord when I wanted to, in private on my own after they got back from there vacation, my room mate tells them for me using a text message or something. And so before I've told my sister about the door my parents are asking me about it. Talk about heart wrenching. This is killing me! I feel so bad about it, and my sister is just telling every body, and joking about it. Laughing at me when I'm struggling. I feel so bad about breaking the door that I am nauseous!

I don't know if I can face my landlord tomorrow afternoon. I can't really take any more of this type of stress. I dont know how to solve this problem. I'm such a wreck right now that I just want to sleep the night and as soon as day comes I am leaving, just getting out of here cause I just can't face them poking fun at me. Rubbing it in my face that they know how to deal with frustration and anger. I hate this. I really don't want to be here tomorrow. I just know they are going to be all snobby about it and just make me feel worse and there's just no way for me to tell my little sister how bad I feel that I can't even deal with a stupid little door won't stay still.

I really can't do it, cause I get this huge lump in my throat and I feel so sick and hurt. I just can't seem to get any words out theres so much shame and sadness. I see the path of destruction I've left after I've lost my temper and I just want to curl up or puke or run away or something. Any thing to get away from this reminder that I can't keep it together. I'm not sure any of you have any idea what I am talking about here. I'm pretty sure that you are all able to keep a cool head and not break whatever is closest to you when you are angry. Rage is probably not a problem in your life. Which probably made this whole thing seem funny to you. Well next time you get into a frustrating situation, but some how manage to hold onto your sanity and work through it just remember that there are people like me who honestly don't have any coping skills at all and just fall to pieces.

The most frustrating thing in my world is just anything in the way. Plastic bag on the floor? Frustrating. Bathroom door insists on being not Quite all the way open and so I run right into it as I leave my room. Frustrating. It doing that 3 times in a row after I've closed it every single time I ran into it but someone else has been in there since so I dont see or think that it's in the way so I fill my hands with dishes and walk out of my room right into the edge of the bathroom door causing me to drop the dishes. Extremely frustrating. So already frustrated I close the door too far and put a hole in it. Now I feel sick to my stomach because that door was just replaced and the only problem I ever had with it is the same problem I have with any door (it gets in the way).

It's happened again

Once more I've let my impulsiveness loose me a lot of money.  I've had 3 NSF fees this month that I never should have had to begin with.  The whole problem is the number of times I went to a restaurant this month.  Thought I could afford it I did, but really I couldn't.  So now I've got to find $120 somewhere before I can use my bank again.  Actually that's not completely true, if you can remember way back I had switched banks, and well I told every place that was taking money out of my bank account, but no one asked for the info, they just said, "Oh that's nice, thanks for calling bye bye" and hung up, wellllllllll they cost me about $150 in NSF etc. so I gotta find that too.  Also I'm down to 2 steaks, 4 sausages, 1/2 a head of lettuce, 1 head of broccoli, 1 bunch of green onions, a handful of cabbage, and condiments in the fridge.  How I'm supposed to stretch enough meat for a week until the end of the month I'll never know cause I'm out of peanuts, and I only have one tin of tuna in the cupboard.  It's probably time to go back to community care.

Help a body out?

Big fat nothing

I seriously need to find a job. I have no idea where to look for a design or tech job here in st. Catharines. All the jobs I've applied to in the past six months have given me no response and most places have not even seen my application. I am sick of this stupid job search, just give me a job already and stop jerking me around.

Modifying Final Fantasy VII (FF7)

I'm quite sure that if you're reading this you probably already know how awesome Final Fantasy 7 is.  Good.  Now you also probably don't need me explaining all the troubles people had with it when it came out.  First of all there was a falling out between Square and Nintendo because Square wanted to make a big huge game, bigger than anything yet on the SNES, but it had the word DAMN in it somewhere.  Nintendo didn't like the swear word, told Square to take it out or they weren't going to publish, and Square said "You're not the only game system around" and went straight to another Nintendo jilted company SONY.  This was a good move for Square because the Playstation was built on the SNES platform already, just with some extra nifty 3D technology and a brand spanking new CD technology, oh and 2 extra buttons on the controller.  So not much new had to be learned by Square's programmers.  When the game finally came out everybody was awed by the fully realized 3D graphics it had in all of the battle sequences, but were really put off by what looked like little lego children running around when you weren't fighting.  Well it's 14 years later, and guess what?  The lego kiddies are gone, the 640x480 only resolution is a thing of the past (rightly so it seemed small to me when it came out, I kept a 1024x768 resolution on my desktop in 1998), and the only thing that seems out of date now is that there's 4 CDs I have to play through.  That's right 4 actual physical discs that I have to manually jam into the drink holder on my tower.  No I'm not going to back them up and use them as ISO files, that would be wrong on some level, besides, I'm running out of room on my hard drive.

Anyway down to what mods and patches I'm using:

• FF7 1.02 patch http://ffsf.aaron-kelley.net/patch.html
  This is a must have no matter what you are going to do next, every single mod depends on the fact that you have this official patch installed.  The only reason this isn't linked to Square's own servers is because I couldn't find it there, and the game is 14 years old, how long do you expect support for it?
• FF7 Custom Graphics driver http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=8306.25
  I absolutely love this little download.  I can use any size I want, fullscreen or windowed, and change all sorts of options, and fix all sorts of glitches known to happen to ATI cards.  AFter downloading this and the patch above I could play what is essentially an unmodified FF7 and it looked almost modern.  Sure, there were still Lego chibi characters all over, but at least it looked decent and smooth instead of all pixelated and stretched out (my LCD monitor aut-stretches to 1440x900).
• FF7 Unified Model Installer http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=12522.0
  This is a big mod!  it takes every model created for FF7 ever (minus the ones from Team Avalanche, they've asked to continue to be a seperate project) such as all the ones from the Phoenix Rejuvenation Project (which is an update to the NPC RP), and all the models from all over the QHIMM forums (which if you have anything to do with FF7 modding, that the place to be, strange for a simple machine forum) and other places.  This is one exhaustive mod and it can actually get rid of the blocky field characters.

New mouse pad!

It smells like gasoline, gross!

Chip in ----->

I have just posted a new chipin over on the right, because I am reviewing iPhone apps on my pass/fail blog Passed Mustard.   Check it out, and chip in if you can. Also I have a facebook page where you can vote for new apps to review.

My first home computer

Now by now you must think that I grew up with computers in my house since I was little.  Well, I was a kid in the 80s, and there were quite a few good home computers in the 80s (commodore 64, Atari ST, etc.) but my first home computer was a 286 that my parents had rented.  That's right, rented. It had DOS 5 on it and barely any games, and it was my first home computer.  Shortly after that my dad found something better, a used 486.  In fact we didn't rent the 286 for very long at all, and after learning how much they paid, I'm not surprised they got rid of it as soon as they could.  Since that first bunch of 486s and then AMD pentium replacements to the iMac and MacBook they have now, my parents have owned all manner of computers.

The first computer I had in my room was an XT with MS/DOS, but that didn't last long before I got one of the old 486s upgraded to an AMD pentium replacement (socket 7 remember those?).  I had windows 98 on it for a while, but then I saw a news cast about linux, and some advertisements for TurboLinux distributions at Future Shop (talk about cheap, cost $30 and had a $40 mail in rebate).  So TurboLinux was my first linux distribution and it was also on what was essentially my first computer (XTs don't count do they?).  That crappy distro really taught me a lot about linux, bash, rpm, and how to manually install linux.

So there you have it, my first computers, and my first linux.

Where My Dream Began

I was very small and even shorter.  My parents had taken me out of public school and given me a chance to succeed in a private Montessori school halfway through grade 2.  Now this may seem counter productive to some, but let me tell you their reasoning.  I was a very bright child and could read not only quickly but at a very high level for my age.  I was also quick at most other subjects in school, but reading was my favourite.  In our reading group I would finish the assigned book the same day it was provided while every other student was still only on chapter 1.  The public school I was in did not allow me to go into a higher reading group, so my parents started searching for a different school.  I had 2 weeks off school while they were looking, and they brought me to a bunch of different places, but the only school in the city that would allow me to go at my own pace was this private montessori school.  Because I enrolled late in the year I was given a chair near the back of the class right in front of a computer.  It was the first computer I had ever seen, and after a week of sitting in front of it, and learning about the different games and programs on it already, I vowed to one day learn how to program a computer.

This was the start of my dream to become a computer programmer, and it's been one of the driving forces in my life.

iPhone 3GS, jailbroken, unlocked, and on Solo!

That's right, it's done.  Turns out I was right and the iPad baseband was the problem.  Either it was downloaded wrong, installed wrong or both.  So until my Pops sees this I've got an iPhone.

Broken phone

So the samsung link is done for.  Won't keep a charge, but worst of all it won't even turn on while plugged into the wall.  Now I'm working on unlocking an iPhone 3GS I acquired from my Pa, and it's not going smoothly.  Of course my girlfriend is all worried about if I'll ever get a phone working again, she tries to hide it from me, which is nice of her, but I can still tell it bugs her that I don't have a phone right now.  I ordered one of those i-SmartSIM SIM unlockers from dealextreme.com, but that could take months to get here.  In the meantime, I have to find an unlocked phone, or unlock one, which is why I'm messing around with this iPhone.  I've got everything installed properly (I think) but it still says no service and the carrier button is missing in settings.  When I remove the SIM card, nothing happens (which is weird), and when I put the SIM card back in nothing happens (which is weirder).  I'm not sure what's going on exactly but I'm going to re-try uploading the 6.15 baseband, and maybe that'll get the whole thing working smoothly again.

Big V Small Talk

Family newsletter is out, and once again it's awesome!