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Black Mage

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Posts posted by Black Mage

    A CafePress-like service for art?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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.

    A CafePress-like service for art?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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.

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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.

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    buy all cables at monoprice.com - they're by far the cheapest site i've ever found for that stuff, and they sell pretty good quality stuff, too. don't mind their terrible website =)

    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.

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    stretching out, it could theoretically be an issue with the 9600 internal fx card, since they've had issues of every kind during their short lifespan.

    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?

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    shimmering generally points to an issue with the refresh rate, doesn't it? at least, if it's not the cable.

    wait, 21.5" monitor, and it's a 1920x1080 res? which one is that? i thought that you had to go past 22" to get a monitor with full hd resolution standard. if you're forcing it beyond standard res (probably 1680x1050, like my 22"), then the shimmering could be the monitor trying to update pixels that aren't there, or trying to keep up with a high refresh rate when it's not built for that res.

    phill, he's using a lappy with a secondary monitor attached, so there's only one cable.

    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.

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Most information seems to point towards a faulty cable:

    http://www.howtomendit.com/answers.php?id=74259

    http://www.ocforums.com/archive/index.php/t-237377.html

    Or video card

    http://ask-leo.com/the_images_on_my_screen_seem_to_shimmer_or_flicker_and_give_me_a_headache_is_there_anything_i_can_do.html

    Hope that was helpful. Always try the simplest and easy solutions before you move on to the harder, dirtier stuff!

    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.

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I use UltraMon for my two monitors [1360x768 and 1280x1024], works great. http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/

    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?

    Using dual monitors with different resolution / Shimmering issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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?

    Flash issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Oye, what a shitty day. Seems Flash was the least of my worries, today.

    I had hoped to spend they day doing many a thing enjoyable. Get caught up on watching Firefly, go shoot some photos at Layton Commons, maybe gain some ground playing Chrono Trigger. That all, however, went down the crapper.

    It started when I was trying to install what was supposedly a very good, and free, anti-virus software. I decompressed the .rar and proceeded to run the setup file. When it looked like it was bout done, I deactivated my old copy of McAfee...then all hell broke loose!

    Withing a matter of seconds my screen was filled with a plethora of registry error and deletion warnings, followed by malware alerts from both SpyBot and Windows anti-virus. Soon, my system was so bogged down that it essentially froze. Panicking, I I hit the power button and did a hard reboot in hopes that it would stop whatever was happening, and maybe even reverse some of it. No luck, upon trying to start Windows, my HDD seemed to enter what can only be described as some sort of techno-trance-like rhythm of beeps, grunts, and buzzes. After trying a number of times to reboot, I gave in and decided to use my system roll-back. I was, however, unable to access it because Windows wouldn't even start, and it seems that the roll-back program is not accessible from safe mode.

    "Okay," I thought to myself, "so I'll just do an OS restore and hope that fixes any registry errors."

    But, again, no dice. Every time I got to the end of the setup sequence, the system froze solid.

    At this point it's about 10am and I'm wondering if it's too early to pull out my bottle of Bowmore Legend scotch. The only thought that kept me sane was the new external hard drive my brother got me for Christmas, which I had immediately used to create me complete backup of all my music, photos, movies, and other program files. And luckily I had done another backup just yesterday!

    So, back to the carnage...

    Fearing the worst for my music collection (7,280 songs on 30.6GB, loosing this is not an option), I wanted to see if I could possibly do a second manual transfer of the files to my external HDD. I couldn't of course do it in windows, so I tried to start the system in the command prompt and hoped I could remember the proper commands to do anything in DOS, which I haven't used in years. Again, however, no go.

    So it finally came down to my final resort, a complete destructive restoration of my HDD, something I don't like to do because it takes forever to get my compy back to the way I like it. So I of course just went and did it.

    Nice though it is to have a squeaky clean system, again, and convenient though it was to have a backup on my external HDD, it still has taken me all day to get the Windows updates, SP2, and SP3 installed, plus having to reinstall all my necessary programs. Even now I am still working on getting updated drivers for my keyboard and still need to get Lightroom 2.2 up and running, and my Twitter apps, and tweak my Firefox skin, and rebuild my photo library, and then reinstall UltimateDefrag to run a thorough HDD reorganizing, then clean the registry and misc files with CCleaner and finally create a system restoration directory, just in case.

    Oh, and I've gone and installed the full version of AGV Anti-Virus...so no more issues there.

    I guess this is a good reminder of the possible dangers of using bit torrents.

    I think I'm ready for that scotch, now.

    Flash issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    For some reason, all of a sudden half (if not all) of the flash based elements on any given web page have stopped working and are replaced with the "Get Flash" icon. The thing is, I already have the latest Flash 10.0.12.36, but things like MySpace music players don't show up, half the slide shows I try and view don't show up, sometimes even flickr images don't show up in Firefox.

    I've tried deactivating adblock plus on the problem pages, but it does nothing to help, just lets the ads show up.

    This has happened before, but was fixed after I reformatted my HDD when I last cleaned my system to start fresh (I do this every 8 to 12 months).

    Any thoughts, suggestions, answers?

    OCR: Photographers

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    My parents gave me a Pentax K200D for Christmas.

    Dude, NICE! Pentax makes an excellent camera, and the K200D is one of their best. Did you shoot those with the 18-55 kit lens? Wonderfully shallow depth-of-field on those macros, especially if it is the f/3.5-5.6 lens.

    And yes, GE cameras are pure trash. Similar can be said for Kodak, Sanyo, Samsung, Polaroid, etc.

    OCR: Photographers

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Wow, I can't believe this thread got buried so deep! Time for some grave digging of a worthy thread...

    About a month ago I bought a new Canon SX10 IS, one of the best super-zooms out there, and I have been putting it to good use (with the help of my new 21.5" widescreen monitor I got for Christmas, super sexy)...

    I've been using Adobe Lightroom 2, lately. I like the "photography-centric Photoshop" nature of the program.

    Parkway_Snow_by_DerHexenmeister.jpg

    And yes, I've also been experimenting with Photomatix Pro 3 to do some HDR stuff. I think this is one of my better results. The thing I've noticed about HDR, is that it's hard to nail that exact moment when an image is at its peak, without going overboard with the HDR-ification.

    IMG_0247_8_9-1.jpg

    No real tweakage on this one...just cookie-y deliciousness!

    Mrs__Santa__s_Magical_Cookies_by_DerHexenmeister.jpg

    So, What did you Get/Give?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I gave my dad a bottle of Eagle Rare Bourbon, the two new Stargate movies, $25 iTunes card to augment my brother's gift of an 8GB Nano, among other gifts.

    Gave my brothers DS and PSP games, golf balls, a crock pot with cookbook, among other things.

    I got the entire Firefly DVD box set (sweet!), a few shirts (actually Firefly came wrapped in one of those shirts..efficiency FTW), a good and heavy tripod, a Bombay Sapphire gift set, 500 GB external HDD, raisnins (yes...a bag of raisins in my stocking), a coffee/espresso maker, Kohl's gift card, and a Samsung 21.5" widescreen compy monitor, hell yeah!

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