MWGemini

Steve died a year ago today. Let's keep him in our thoughts and not let his memory die too. BSBD bro. We miss you. Mike

I've got two images. I want to overlap a section of those two images, and then blend the overlapped portion together in a gradient fashion, so that it gradually fades from one image to the next. I was hoping there was some way of doing it relatively automatically, but ended up having to do it manually by painting alpha channels onto the masks with the airbrush tool. IT looks ok, but not as good as I wanted. Thanks, Mike

Hello again, I need some help blending two images in paint shop pro (I have version 8). I've been playing around with masks, gradients, etc for the past two hours or so, and have tried several tutorials from off the net, but with no luck. If anyone knows how to do this in a relatively easy manner, please let me know. I'm tired of beating my head against the wall. Thanks, Mike

So is this a thread where we can discuss the recent events within the ABP, or is it just for discussing whether we really want BASE to be legal? If the former, I'm a little concerned not only with the fact that the majority of the BOD, all respected names within the BASE community, has been summarily dismissed, but also with how this recent "restructuring" will appear to people outside the BASE community. I am not a BASE jumper, but I am a silver member of the ABP. I paid for that membership because I'd like to legally jump certain objects which are now illegal. I don't know Robin's past (and this is not a personal attack or a request for more information- I know enough about him to form an opinion), but it seems to me that having a totalitarian organization will be less beneficial than a diversified leadership composed of respected names from within the community, and perhaps some professional lobbyists or something from outside the community. In the Army, I was taught that the most dangerous thing a leader could do was say "I don't know". Those three little words not only implied incompetence, but would serve to demoralize the troops and eliminate any respect for the leader that they had. In my eyes, the ABP has just done that, by showing that the egos within the organization were greater than the ultimate goal, and by allowing a power struggle to become more important than legalizing jumping. Short version: I'm a little upset with the recent turn of events, and I think it shows that the ABP is not as strong as it should be. That being said, I still support it, and I still want to see the goals of the ABP become reality. Mike

Thanks for the advice, Adobe Audition did the trick. It has automated beat finding tools for finding loops, but I ended up doing it manually anyway, since the beats it found were not where I wanted to loop. Definitely much better than the tools in ULead's Media Studio Pro 7. Thanks! Mike

Thanks, I'll look into that. Mike

Is that a Mac only program? I run Win2kPro. Thanks, Mike

I'm working on editing a video for a friend at the DZ, and trying to cut pieces of a song out, and basically recycle the chorus. Currently, I'm using ULead's MediaStudio Pro v7 to edit the audio track (mp3 format), but I 'm wondering if there is a program out that can more easily loop audio segments, if I set markers, and have it search for matching waveform patterns. The process I am using is working, but it's very time consuming and not as perfectly seamless as I would like. Thanks, Mike

Yeah, MPlayer plays it fine. Nice work, Eric! I'll see if I can figure out a way to decode that tomorrow and re-encode it in a DivX format so that Windows users (the superior OS, with the exception of linux) can more easily view it. Thanks Matt & Eric, Mike

DOS is fine with me. Hell, you could give me linux directions and that'd work. Failing that, if Eric can't get it fixed, I'll encode it in DivX format and have it up Friday evening. Mike

Speaking of the boogie video, if anyone has any digital still photos they would like to submit for inclusion on the 2005 Carolina Sky Sports Fourth of July Boogie Video slideshow, please contact myself or Eric Miller (eUrNiCc on these forums). Thanks, Mike

Ok, sorry for the long wait time. I was hoping to have internet access at the DZ this weekend, but did not. The winners of the free Jump are Randy_H and nate_1979. I'll be contacting you after I write this to arrange payment. Thanks for the help! What I ended up doing once i bought the new hardware (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1339287&CatId=0 and an Athlon 64 3200+) was just using Windows Update to get all teh service packs back in, then applied the BigDisk registry patch, and all was well. Randy linked me to the patch, and Nate provided a lot of other help in real time late one night after my posts. Originally, Dave was the leading contender for the free jump with his suggestion to look to the manufacturer, but that utility wanted me to destroy the current partition and recreate it, and that is not something I wanted to do. I saved that as a last resort, that I never had to resort to. I'm very happy with the new hardware, by the way. The board I purchased also has onboard RAID 0, 0+1, 1, as well as 8 channel sound and firewire. It can be upgraded a lot (4gb ram limit, 4 slots, and I'm not sure what the max processor it can handle is- still looking for that info). THe only thing I would have liked to have is a PCIX board, but that would mean buying a new video card and PSU as well, which I can't afford right now. Thanks to everyone who helped, Mike

Ok, so the combination of updating the new boot partition on the 80gb drive, along with installing the seagate program, has allowed the 80gb boot to see the 300gb, without having to mess with the 300gb at all. Now I just need to decide on the hardware for tomorrow. In the emachines box, I think the PSU is 250, but in my other box (Linux server that is currently unused), I have either a 300 or 350, can't remember. As far as I can remember, that will be enough for Athlon 64s, since my graphics card is very low end, and does not take the high level of power that the new cards do (geforce 2 mx400 w/64mb ram). Any further help or insight is GREATLY appreciated. Thanks, Mike

Ok, I've been doing some reading since my last posts, while waiting for files to copy. Looks like 939 is definitely the way to go, as 754 is deprecated now. Also looks like Venice has a slight edge over Winchester, with the only difference being that Venice has support for SSE, which apparently very few programs make use of right now. For identical costs, though, might as well get it, unless there is some compatibility issue there, which I can't find any information on yet, so I assume that to not be an issue. Also, of the three boards I linked to earlier, I'm leaning towards http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1339287&CatId=0 because the NF3 Ultra chipset has been shown in a few benchmarks to have a slight edge over the K8T800 Pro chipset. However, the Asus with the K8T also has onboard firewire, which the Gigabyte looks like it will require a connector cable for (no big deal, cables are easy to get, and I've got a PCI firewire card anyways), and the Asus also has integrated RAID 0, 0+1, 1 support. That could come in very handy, especially since I have three identical 40gb drives. Mirroring them as my boot drive would be nice, leaving my 300 as the data drive. Any tie breakers or input? I'll be purchasing them tomorrow morning on my way out to the dropzone, which will be in less than 8 hours. Thanks, Mike

Yeah that's what I figured, so the question is how do I get my 80gb drive to recognize the 300gb drive? Chances are, I'll be reformatting it again tomorrow if I end up purchasing the new mobo/proc, but it will be good to know how to fix this problem quickly again. What I'm thinking of doing is copying the most important files onto the 80gb drive (not everything will fit now that the OS is on there), and trying the partition thing, and hoping for the best. I can't think of anything else right now. If there is anyone who is able to discuss this (and my hardware choices especially) who can talk in real time, please contact me. My IM info is in my profile. Thanks, Mike

Ok, well I've managed to get the drive partitioned, and the 80gb drive is now a bootable drive with an operating system, but I can't get it to recognize the 300gb drive. Trying to install the manufacturer's software is not working as well as I hoped it would, it wants me to destroy the existing partition (which it is listing incorrectly) to create a new one. I'm afraid if I do that, the data will be inaccessible. Right now I am running dual boot, so my old (primary boot) is still fully functional and can see all the data on the 300gb drive. I've pretty much decided to go ahead and buy a new motherboard and CPU while I'm at it, and it's been a while since I've kept up with the latest, so I have another question: Of the Venice and Winchester models of the AMD Athlon 64 3200 chip, which is better, and why? Also, what socket is better, 754 or 939, and why? I'm looking at getting either a 3000 or 3200 chip, but will want to upgrade that one day down the road. Also, I'm looking at these: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1337301&CatId=0 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1024725&CatId=0 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1339287&CatId=0 as a possible choice for the motherboard. Any comments or suggestions? The ones linked are all socket 939, so if it turns out that 754 is better, there are a few with very similar specs that I can switch to, at about the same price. Normally I buy all my hardware from www.zipzoomfly.com, but due to time constraints, I'm going to have to buy locally in this case, so my selection is somewhat limited. Thanks, Mike

No, the 300gb won't be the boot drive, one of the others will be. The way I had it set up before was a 40gb as the boot, and 80gb as the storage. Because this case sucks, I am limited to two drives, unless I want to duct tape one to the side of the case. So, I'm removing the 40gb, and making the 80gb the boot drive. What I'm not sure of is what will happen once I do that, since the new boot drive (the 80gb) will not yet have the program that tricks the computer into recognizing the 300gb. I'm about to format it and find out... I haven't been keeping up with the latest hardware, but this is not a problem encountered on new motherboards, is it? I was looking around at prices late last night, considering purchasing a new MB/CPU, and saw a few that listed 250gb in their specifications (AMD Athlon 64 boards of various makes and models), so that made me wonder. Thanks, Mike

Currently this one is in the lead for the free jump fixit special . Seagate does in fact have a utility for large disks. I looked there earlier, but somehow overlooked it. HOWEVER, it required a change in the registry settings. I'm fine with that, and even fine with having a program running in the background and tricking the system so that I can have the 300gb. What concerns me is that I'll be reformatting my other drives once I consolidate them to the new (largest) drive, and then making a new boot drive, so I'm worried that the change may be lost, and my 300gb partition gone (along with all the freshly copied data). I've got the data copying now, and will format the drives in the morning. I'll let you all know how that goes. Thanks, Mike Edit: When I first posted this, I was thinking that AggieDave would be the first one to post, and link me to the super secret flash bios file EMachines doesn't want me to know exists. It doesn't surprise me that he responded within 2 minutes. Do you EVER sleep, Dave?

Ok, so I just purchased a brand new 300gb drive to hold all the video for this weekend's July 4th boogie video I'll be editing. Went to install the drive, and was having some problems getting fdisk to run (seems to have disappeared off my Win2kPro system somehow). I was finally able to get it partitioned (using both the Win2kPro install CD and Partition Magic 6), only to find out that my BIOS is limiting my hard drive capacity to 128gb. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, I would just make a few partitions out of the single drive and be on my merry way. The problem is that anything over that 128gb doesn't exist, as far as my BIOS is concerned. I've been looking on the net for updates, but haven't found anything yet. Everything I have found is actually older than my current version (according to the data provided by http://www.unicore.com/biosagent/), and the version that I supposedly have I can't find anywhere. Perhaps the version info I have is incorrect. The motherboard is in a EMachines (yes, I know they suck, but it was cheap, and I was poor, and still am) W2247 box. EMachines tech support says the motherboard manufacturer is FIC, and the model number is an AM37L (which is not listed on their site, but AM37 and AM37S are). Ideally, I would like to have a single, 300gb partition (yes, I know that can cause slowdowns in the system, but I have my reasons), but I will be willing to deal with the 128gb limit per partition, as long as I can utilize the full 300gb. First person to fix my problem gets a free jump

About a year ago, I toyed with the idea of writing a canopy control simulator for a popular game engine. This would mean that I wouldn't have to develop the renderer, physics engine, network support, or anything else. I wrote enough code to perform some simple tests, and then abandoned the project for lack of time and skill. It is definitely within the range of possibility, however. If anyone has experience with Java/C++ type languages and would be interested in collaborating on a project like this, let me know. I definitely can't do it alone, but I'd also love to see something like this. Mike

I may do that. What I'm looking to be able to do is design a simple pattern for a gear bag. I just finished my first sewing project (an altimeter mount for my mud flap), and apparently did not think the original design through enough. That is why I'm wanting to be able to design it and see it in 3d before I actually start sewing it. As designs get larger, that feature will become more and more useful for me, since I'm sure I will overlook things. Thanks, Mike

I've been looking around at a few different software packages for designing sewing patterns, and was wondering if anyone has ever used them before, and what your experience with it was. All the programs I have seen so far are geared towards clothing, and seem to only allow for modifications of current patterns. While that is nice, I'd also like to have the ability to design my own patterns from scratch, and not just for clothing. Does anyone know of a program that can do that? Also, have you ever used (or seen) a program that can display the finished pattern in 3d (none of the ones I have looked at so far can)? Thanks, Mike

Well, since you're nowhere near close enough to show me in person (unless you are planning on taking a road trip ), do I need any special equipment to install it? Also, will any zipper stock work with any slider? I think I've found the stuff I want, but I'm not sure that it will work together, especially since I want to put two sliders on back to back. Thanks, Mike

They were one of the places I was looking at, but I'm never worked with zippers before (as far as actually putting them together), so I don't know if that is all that I need. Thanks, Mike

I'm learning to sew, and one of my next projects will be a gear bag for my rig. I've found all the pieces that I need, with the exception of a good heavy duty zipper. All the places I have looked seem to carry only lower quality zippers, or the sizes they carry are not what I need. I'm looking for a black, coil, double slider zipper, that is relatively large (I'm thinking size 10, but I'm not sure- suggestions welcome), and in relatively large lengths (I have not made the pattern yet, but I'm thinking 36" should be enough for the long zippers). If I can find a roll of the zipper material and then buy the required number of sliders separately, and create my own lengths, that would be ideal, but I'm not sure if that would make sewing it much more difficult. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Mike