Ultra Wide Wallpaper
The resolution I need for wallpapers for 3 screens is 5040*1050 and unsurprisingly there are not many around at this resolution. I thought this might be a good idea for a Cinema4D project. Once again I am not entirely happy with them but they did turn out pretty much as I wanted them with regards to the modelling. The colour and lighting needs more work. Also the model is not quite lined up right and I think next time I will take a bigger render in C4D and crop it down in Photoshop.
How to get a PCIe 16x Graphics card working in a PCIe 4x/8x slot
Recently I decided I wanted to connect a third screen to my Dell Dimension 9200. I already had a nVidia 8200GTX graphics card which has two DVI ports with two 22" Dell monitors connected. I wanted to add another card and I originally thought I could use a standard PCI graphics card but I actually found it quite hard to find one, especially one with a similar chipset. I did some research and found that due to the specification of the PCIe bus, all the power and control is done on the first few lanes of the PCIe slot and the rest of the slot is just extra bandwidth. So in effect a PCIe x16 slot is fundamentally a x4 slot but with extra bandwidth. As I only wanted an extra screen, the bandwidth didnt matter.
LatheNurbs and MoCloners
Had a couple of free hours this afternoon so decided to fire up C4D and have a play with some lathenurbs and splines. I managed to put this little clip together and I am pretty pleased with the result apart from the quality of the final render, I think I need to adjust the AA. Its a pretty simple little project but it has helped me get to grips with splines and how to create them effectively for the lathenurb tool. I originally tried using discs instead of spheres as I was trying to recreate one of those charity units that used to be outside shops, however I couldnt get the disc or coin to roll properly. I may go back to it again and see if I can get it to work better.
Welcome to the Third Dimension
I recently finished my second Open University course. It was about Server 2008 and although very useful, it was fairly technical and not all that exciting. After I finished it I decided I wanted to learn something a bit more fun. Enter Cinema4D. Cinema 4D is a pretty advanced 3D modelling and animation package. I have never really done any 3D modelling before apart from a tiny bit of Sketchup work so almost all of the concepts would be new to me.
SuperColin
SuperColin evolved from @Captain_Jarretts attempt at planking while visiting recently. It has become quite amusing as we posted various examples to twitter. I thought it would be a good idea to make a central location for them so we could keep track of them.
New Domain – DHCP
As part of the new domain project I have undertaken I wanted to use the new domain controller to provide DHCP services. Currently we use a CentOS server for DHCP and it works very well although none of use know how to set it up or support it when things go wrong. I have not ever used DHCP on Server 2008 R2 but I suspected it would be similar to DHCP on 2003 which I have used.
New Domain
Our current main Domain Controller is getting on a bit and is due to be replaced. Also our current domain is very messy where it has been added upon over the years. I decided it would be good idea to start the Domain again so that we could get rid of some of the crap and unknowns. I have never done any of this before so I may live to regret this good idea.
My plan was to purchase a new server to run Server 2008 R2 and create a small network independant from the current network so that I could configure it while I complete my normal day to day duties and once it is configured we could just rejoin the current equipment to the new domain without much disruption.
Bushcraft-Magazine Mayday Meet
Friday was Mayday and The Bushcraft-Magazine held a weekend meet to give people the chance to experience bushcraft workshops and demonstrations. The event actually started on Saturday at the Bushcraft-Magazine site, our favourite camping spot at Egerton near Ashford, Kent.
Amsterdam
On Friday 16th April I turned 28. To celebrate this occasion I decided to go to Amsterdam. I persuaded @scaira and @Captian_Jarrett to come as well. Actually they didnt need much persuading. @Captain_Jarrett left Brokley Towers and and headed to mine, we then collected @scaira and headed onwards to Dover to catch the Norfolkline ferry to Dunkerque.
XBMC – Aeon
@TheFincher came round yesterday so I could set up a few things on his Revo ( a supurb bit of kit for a HTPC) and while I was at it he asked me to install a skin for him. The skin in question is called Aeon. Now the skin itself is not being officially developed which is a shame but it seems like there is still some development being done unofficially. So I think the version I downloaded was Aeon but with some extra plugins and modifications. After installing it on @TheFinchers revo I decided it was quite nice so I installed it on my HTPC. I spent a couple of hours this morning configuring and tweaking it. It turns out that it has some really nice features that make using XBMC even better.