Time for an upgrade

     A few weeks back, my brother was given a dead graphics card by his friend, who had no use for it, as it had given up on him. It was an nVidia 8800GTX, which was leaps and bounds better than my crappy 8600GTS. It was also considerable bigger than my card.

     After that was out, we put it into my computer, though it didn’t work. It flashed a few messed up characters, then turned off. We took it back out, and it just sat around for a few weeks. I had read an article saying that you could fix a dead graphics card by putting it in the oven for a few minutes, the heat from the oven melting the solder, reconnecting separated contacts. I told my brother, but he dismissed the idea, not wanting to put a card in the oven. A few days later, however, he had gone through a change of heart, and figured, “why not.”

     So while the oven preheated, we took the heatsink and fan off of the card, and scraped away the thermal paste sitting on it. In it went for about six minutes. It was allowed to cool for a while, and we put some Arctic Silver (fancy thermal paste with pure silver in it). We then reattached the heatsink, and took it for its maiden voyage.

     Success! The card worked. I got into the Vista desktop and noticed the fan was barely spinning on the card. I touched the side of it, and it was incredibly hot. I panicked, not wanting to ruin the new card. I turned off the computer, and downloaded drivers for it on another computer. Once installed, the card was running at a much better temperature.

     It was time to put everything back into the computer, so that it could lay straight up. Here we ran into a bit of a snag, since the hard drive had a cage that it sat in. The cage was too large for the card to fit, so some impromptu surgery was in order. We took it out to the garage and cut the corner out with a massive pair of tin snips.

     After cutting, the removed area had a bit of an edge to it, so I covered it with a piece of electrical tape, so as not to scratch the card in any way. Finally, I reassembled the rest of the computer, reconnecting my hard drive, connecting inner cables. For now, I’ve decided to leave the side off of the case, so the card won’t overheat. I brought all of my computer stuff back into my room and began hooking it up. I took special care to hide the cables, and the end result was rather pleasing.

Last but not least was the final benchmarking test for my new 8800GTX. Crysis.

Lo and behold, my computer could run it. I tried to take a screenshot to show on here, but it pasted into photoshop black, not showing anything. It was bizarre, but I can’t do anything about it. I went and grabbed a picture off of google, so that it can be seen, just how crazy this game is graphically.

I hope this has been an read. If anybody has questions on the details of fixing the card in the oven, please feel free to email me at Rocknificent@gmail.com

Peace,
     Dave

It’s been a while.

My blog has not been updated in a great long while. There has been a lot going on lately, causing a great deal of stress and frustration. School is being a big damper on my free time, the end of the year fast approaching, the weather teasing us with its warmth, making focusing on work challenging. The one thing I have managed to do is hang out with my lady friend a little more lately. She’s quite the gal. I’ve also found that I have a keen enjoyment for writing. I’ve begun writing a novel, entitled Dragoon Springs, and thus far, I’ve written roughly seven thousand words on it. From what people have told me that have read it, I’m on the right track. If anyone that actually reads my blog wants to know more about it, just shoot me an IM on aim. My screen name is Rocknificent.

I think I’m going to also start writing some flash fiction and put it up on here. Flash fiction, for those of you that haven’t heard the term, are very short stories, usually less than one thousand words. Most will probably be Sci-Fi, or perhaps just nonsensical action stories. I’m not much of a touchy feely writer, about wistful summer days, and sparkling ponds, nor am I writing for a population of teenage girls like Stephanie Meyer. Stay tuned folks, hopefully this blog will get a lot better.

Another thing I want to do is get back into art stuff. I want to save up for is the new Wacom Intuos4 Drawing Tablet. They are very cool, albeit quite expensive. When I get one, I’ll write an in-depth review for everyone. This is all I have for right now. My apologies for the poor quality of this writing. It will get better, I promise.

-Dave

The American Brass Quintet

So there we were, listening to the American Brass Quintet. Right in the middle of the third movement of the first piece, Kevin Cobbs’ head exploded, exposing his inner mechanical workings. Before he could react, Michael Powell was grabbed by the foot and hurled across the stage, knocking over the speaker’s podium, and fell crashing into the front row. With the audience frozen with shock, Kevin’s robot head made a noise similar to that of a foghorn, obviously to call the mother ship. This mother ship had to be within earshot, because it came crashing through the auditorium ceiling, causing a piece of debris to fall and kill John Rojak. The mother ship squealed a terrible noise and opened up. Out marched legions of sentient robots, ready to take over our feeble planet. Before their attack could commence, they saw that Kevin had been taken hostage by David and Raymond. Rather than dealing with their crap, Kevin Cobbs pulled his fusion core out of his abdomen, causing it to violently explode, sending pieces of Raymond and David into the audience. Luckily, the people in the audience had just seen the Blue Man Group, so they were still wearing their ponchos, which aided in keeping body chunks off of them. Brandon Williams* pulled out his Glock 9mm and tried to defend humanity, but was quickly subdued by a laser to the face, causing his entire body to vaporize. All hope seemed lost, which it was. These machines would go on to destroy all life on Earth. The End.

Side note: Kevin Cobbs, Michael Powell, John Rojak, David, and Raymond are the members of the American Brass Quintet.

This man.

I hate him and his little yin-yang.

If you wanted a little back story, I have fallen for Street Fighter IV. That game was so expertly crafted. It’s so fun. I sucked at the old street fighter games, but this one is amazing. The character pictured is a like science-created being named Seth. He is fucking impossible. This is the one exception to the game being great. No matter how good you do the first round, after you beat him once, he becomes an unstoppable behemoth that you can do nothing to slow down as he beats you to a bloody pulp, countering everything you manage to throw at him between his hits. I went over to a friends house for the third day in a row and was playing Street Fighter IV, and decided to play the Arcade mode so that I could unlock some characters on his 360. So I hit it up, destroyed mostly everyone, and anyone that I lost to on the first try, I simply retried and beat them down into the ground. Until I reached Seth. He is impossible. Absolutely unstoppable. This will probably frustrate me for way longer than it should, and my ride home didn’t help my anger in any way, shape, or form.

The way home was hell. There is this stop light by my friends house, that goes onto the major road in our town. Everyone on the major road seems to feel the need to go through the intersection, even if there’s no room on the other side, as it often gets backed up. So these stupid fucks are in the middle of the intersection when our light turns green. Thus, we cannot get onto the main road. Then, there was finally an opening in the rightmost lane (we needed to go right) but the stupid fucking bitch in front of us seemed to want to be in the left lane, so she sat there. OUR LIGHT WAS GREEN AND THERE WAS SPACE. We had just sat through two lights, and this bitch was going to sit through another to get in the left lane. I reached over and honked the horn and yelled a little, and finally she went. Then she didn’t get in the left lane for like, a half a mile. I hate stupid people so much, it’s ridiculous. They make me want to beat my face against a brick wall until I am no longer capable of common sense, so that I would know what it’s like to live in their little dismal lives. Ugh. Writing this post isn’t helping my situation at all, quite the contrary, it’s making me angrier.

Everything before fighting Seth in Street Fighter IV was good though. We had an early day, so I got out and went to eat at a local pizza joint with a few of my friends. We had a good time. It was funny, one of my friends was in this lady’s way, so I told him to move, then apologized to her, saying “this is why we usually don’t take him places.”

I hope your Wednesdays are all going well. Mine was, but it took a hard left.

Maybe I can get my day back on course. Who knows.

Cheers,
Dave

Continuing my mech…

So it seems that after formatting my computer, my mech model works again. I added back hatches for ammunition, then I added ladders to access these. The next step will be to add more realistic legs that look like they would be functional. After that, I’m going to build in a cockpit, then I’ll just add a bunch of little details til I think it looks perfect. Right now, this model is a modest 55,004 polygons, haha.

Click the image to see it in its massive splendor

I did some major work on the cockpit, although there is still much to be done. Same as the last picture, click this one to see it much closer.

-Dave

Whoo yeah.

Turns out I can open my mech model with Maya now. Formatting does a lot of good for a computer. =D

Dave = Happy.

Continuing My Tolkien Tribute…

I began work on a dwarf to be holding that axe that I made. I have never modeled anything organic before, so we’ll see how this works. Hopefully it comes out alright.

While he may not be looking very dwarfy yet, I think that with some time and effort, I can make him look pretty sweet.

Will update this post as the time goes on.

A Tribute To Tolkien

I’ve begun modeling an Axe, in tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Eventually, once I learn to model organic things, I will end up making a dwarf or something weilding the axe.

Anyways, here’s a render of my model, with an ambient occlusion material on it.

Very early picture, many updates to follow.

Added a handle to it.

Had to Reinstall.

Vista was being a butt, so I had to backup various files, and format, and begin anew. So far so good, I’ve gotten Windows Live Writer, which can be used to publish posts to your blog, so we’ll see how this works. Thus far, it seems to be a good program, able to be downloaded from here if you want it. I cleared about 360 gigabytes of garbage off of my hard drive, saving only about 15 gigabytes of it. Pretty soon, my computer will be running at full power, and I’ll be able to blog at a complete capacity for your reading pleasure.

Until then, you can sit on the edge of your chair anxiously awaiting my return.

Regards,
Dave

My next model

My next model I’m going to build is going to be some sort of mech. I’ve almost finished the foot area, it looks rather nice if i do say so myself.

I will update this post as I progress through this model.

I added to the top of the foot, where it'll connect to the leg. I don't really like the top part of it, it'll be changed.

I fixed the top part of the leg, kinda like it like this.

Here I added the second leg, and a makeshift cockpit, although I'm not liking it. I think I'm going to make the mech quadripedal rather than bipedal, meaning four legs instead of two.

I've decided to stick with a bipedal design. Here I've changed the cockpit around, as well as added some rockets to it. Coming next will be a minigun or gatling gun type weapon. Right now, there's only half of the model, as it will make it easier to make the model entirely symmetrical when I am done.

Added minigun. More progress soon.

I've added an engine and exhaust pipes in the back. Will do more work on the pipes, and will continue progress later today.

My update today includes more work on the foot hydraulics, as well as creating creases on the front area, where hinges will be added to complete the cockpit. I have also begun to completely revamp the weapons, having the gatling gun nearly finished. It is complete with a cable to power its motor, and a belt of ammunition. More work to come on its systems. Next up will be its other weapons, followed by its exhaust/power systems. After that, I'm going to revamp the legs, making them look more realistic.

I lied. I worked on some lights. I am undecided on whether I like them or not. Most likely they will be changed.

I've added a lot since my last update. I've revamped the engine, the exhaust, the lights, and added a second weapon, which is a gauss/railgun type cannon. Click the image for a larger version of it.

Since the last update to this model, Maya no longer allows me to open and edit this model, so it will stay as it is for all of eternity.