Black Mage

What can I say, the corporate bank/credit union types have no taste in what makes a good debit card. Here they go approving horrible composed and shot pictures of kids and kittens, whereas they reject true examples of awesomeness. It is a sad world we live in. I count myself as lucky among the custom card-isseud. Mayhaps others would have luck creating an OCR-Tan card.

Wow, it really is like reality. as previously stated, well played.

My friend Ryan tried to make a Transformers one with the Autobot's insignia, but they rejected it. I had tried another picture some months ago, using Bean's OCR-Tan, but that one was rejected, too.

Because this, my friend, is the internet and things have a way of leaking through the cracks and pores. And how do you know how "ish" Ogden-ish truly is? lol

I decided to try my hand at doing one of those customized debit cards from my credit union. I uploaded one of my wallpapers and cropped it and submitted it. I really didn't hold any hope that they'd print it, because they're pretty strict about what you can and cannot have on your card. Really, this should not have passed, but, for some reason...it did. Either the person approving card designs wasn't paying attention and didn't realize what it was, or they knew what it was and agreed with the awesomeness!

Yes, always pleased to hear a new DKC mix! Actually, I think DKC was the first game to which I ever bought the soundtrack, and Kong in Concert is still probably my favorite project, to date. But I digress... When I started listening, I was expecting another Aerofunknamics, but Flying with the Funk is it's own beast. Lighter in tone than Aerofunknamics, Tweek has also done this song justice. I especially like the crunchy brips and brrrpppzzzz throughout.

By Jove, that's IT! Splendid show, chap!

I've been trying to learn to play Kate Rusby's on my Irish whistle, and I've been doing well with it. This morning, though, I was playing through it and out of nowhere, after playing the chorus, I just transitioned into this song. It sounds so familiar. I know it's from a game, and I know I have a remix of it somewhere in my iTunes library...but I just can't place it! I know I should know the song...the name is on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't name it!http://www.imeem.com/people/yot9y-C/music/-EDbFe-S/tom-hamilton-mystery-rpg-song/ (On a side note, I was rather impressed with the sound quality of my recording, considering I was using the mics on my Canon SX10. Not too shabby for a still camera.)

This is all good info...come to think of it, i;m not even sure what my lappy's battery is. Hm...methinks I gotta look into my usage habits.

Big Bang Mini OST, more specifically, Kamakura Boss.

I work at a ritz camera store, so I would be very easy to print my photos (on actual photo-sensitive paper or an Epson Ultra Chrome printer up to 24x36) at minimal cost. I was hoping to avoid shipping, mounting, and framing details, though. Doing it myself, however, may be the only real way to earn some cash.

Does anyone know a good, high quality, reliable service similar to CafePress, but that specializes in photography/art/prints? I'm looking to start selling my photographs from my blog, but am kind of at a loss as to where to begin. I was thinking that a cafepress-like service would be a start, so I wouldn't have to worry about shipping, or mounting, or framing, etc. Keep it simple to start, you know? I also see that CafePress does prints, but I'd like to lean towards something more professional.

Merry-Go-Round, or carousel.

I think one of my main problems is that I have numerous competing apps that are trying to manage my settings: nVidia, this WOW video thing that came packaged with my laptop, Adobe Gamma, UltraMon, and my monitor's physical setting buttons.

Now my next challenge is trying to figure out how best to manager my color settings between the two. My widescreen likes to be more yellow than my laptop screen, which is in turn more magenta than my widescreen, so it makes photo editing on the two a bit annoying. I can't say I'm certain which is the more correct! I'd like a Pantone Huey, but don't really want to spend $70+ on the thing. But just using the Adobe Gamma wizard is too subjective and the two still don't match. I think that while at work today I'll print off one of the photos I'm working on in Lightroom (I work both sales and lab at a Ritz Camera) and compare it with both monitors to see which of the two is closest, then go from there.

Seems their bandwidth limit has been reached for the night.

Here's a photo of my present setup. I'm quite pleased, thus far!

The HDMI to DVI cable did the trick. No more shimmering, and now I can use my widescreen monitor in all it's HD glory!

Wow, you weren't kidding about the prices. I'll keep them in mind for future wiring needs. It never ceases to sicken me how much retail stores jack up the prices of simple things like cables and adapters. My dad actually spent a good $30 on a Sony i-Link cable, once, for a mere 5 feet at RadioShack.

Good to know. I've already ordered the cable off amazon. I found one on there for a little over $10 w/ shipping, verses spending $60 at BestBuy. Damn, retail computer components are such a ripoff! If that doesn't fix the problem then I think we're down to considering the video card itself as the culprit.

Let's hope not. I'll try installing the updated drivers. I'm running 175.61, and nvidia released 179.28 in December. I'll see if that has any impact on the shimmering. Edit: I've just had another thought...my laptop has an HDMI port, and my monitor has a DVI port...perhaps an HDMI to DVI cable would be the better answer?

The think is that I was using the widescreen at 1920x1080 on my old HP (athlon 3200+, 1.25GB RAM, 64MB nVidia, etc) without a problem. It looked great and had no shimmering. Phill, I'll give it a try with another monitor, next, while I await my new cables to arrive. I suppose it would be the next step in the scientific method, so to speak.

I hope it's just the cable. I actually just ordered another VGA cable (one with a right-angle connector to make a more elegant at-home setup). I hope that's it. If not I'll take to my friend's store (who made my system) and see if they can make sure the video card is okay. It can't be that the card is not powerful enough, it is an nVIDIA 9600 with 512mb...so it's a good 6x more powerful than the video card in my old compy, which uses my widescreen with out a problem.

Good, good, my big monitor is nice a crisp again. Hm, it is an improvement. The shimmering is noticeably less, but is still noticeable. It is, however, still less noticeable when I have a light colored screen. It's not a solution, but it's a bit better than it was previously. Thanks OC! You wouldn't have much experience in dealing with LCD shimmering, would you?

I just bought a new laptop (2.2gHz core-duo, 4GB RAM, 512 MB nVidia 9600M GT, 350 GB HDD, 15.5" (1680 x 1050 res) screen, etc.) with the intention of, when at home, hooking it up to my 21.5" widescreen monitor (1920 x 1080 res) and using a dual monitor setup. It is essentially working, but I noticed when I was trying to adjust my big monitor, that it is experiences a lot of horizontal shimmering while at full res. Ive tried to adjust the in-monitor fine (clock) settings, but no dice. The only thing that seems to help is reducing the resolution to match my laptop screen, which of course results in a blurry display. Is there any way or any programs that will allow me to use my two monitors at different resolution?