Casual Computer Chat

aeon

aeon

Amoureux des Chatons
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This thread is for casual commentary about the project you are working on, your wished-for upgrade, your shiny new whatever, your frustrations, cool tools, and other random nerdiness.

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Cheers,
Ian
 
So I was doing a couple of pathfinder actions in Adobe Illustrator and it took my i9 MacBook Pro 4.5 hours to complete. This was likely because the artwork had just shy of 189,000 points in it.

And that’s when I saw I had an error in the artwork. :angry:

So I simplified the paths down to just shy of 48,000 points, and reran the process...1 hour so far.

Process removes all vectors overlapped and hidden by other vectors so final file is flattened, discrete, filled vector shapes.

Sigh,
Ian
 
Does anyone got any PC flex.

Currently running Ryzen 1600, 16gb, GTX 970. It's the only computer I've had that I've had over 3 years without upgrading. It's going on 5 years now and still plays every game I've tried on at least medium. I would like to upgrade for faster video encoding but it still does well.
 
Enso said:
Does anyone got any PC flex.

Currently running Ryzen 1600, 16gb, GTX 970. It's the only computer I've had that I've had over 3 years without upgrading. It's going on 5 years now and still plays every game I've tried on at least medium. I would like to upgrade for faster video encoding but it still does well.
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Maybe @sprinkles or @jkxx but I haven't seen them around lately.
 
aeon said:
So I was doing a couple of pathfinder actions in Adobe Illustrator and it took my i9 MacBook Pro 4.5 hours to complete. This was likely because the artwork had just shy of 189,000 points in it.

And that’s when I saw I had an error in the artwork. :angry:

So I simplified the paths down to just shy of 48,000 points, and reran the process...1 hour so far.

Process removes all vectors overlapped and hidden by other vectors so final file is flattened, discrete, filled vector shapes.

Sigh,
Ian
Click to expand...

Bleh!


There seems to be an argument among creatives about which is better, MacBook or iMac. I know a few photogs who ditched iMac for new Macbooks, either because they prefer to work smaller or because of memory issues. I switched from Macbook to iMac. I still have two slots for memory and my 2017 machine is doing fine. I store far too much of my work on it (I also have several external hard drives with duplicates.) I work big, too. I like to work bigger than I need for print.
Apple has changed so much since Jobs died, even though he wasn't exactly at the helm in later years. I was loyal to this system because Macs lasted forever and were more user-friendly for right-brained people. We had a custom-built G4 for twelve years before it became obsolete. Yes, you could custom-build Macs years ago, just like PC, but most people didn't bother. I finally tried a patch on the G4 that "killed" it. Mac experts told me it was toast. The screen was black. I set it on my floor and typed in code until the screen "woke up" and responded. I kept guess working the coding until I got the computer back to normal. I had to get a new computer anyway because the G4 would no longer run software updates, but I got it to work properly. Please keep in mind, I did not know any coding when I did this. I just worked intuitively. I later went back to school for coding.
Now, Macbooks are disposable, like their phones, and the desktop monster is the only one geared toward professionals. You really need to stay on your game with external HDs and memory to keep them working, though.
Though, with Procreate only available on iPad, I wonder WTH is going on with Apple's focus on creative professionals. (Adobe was originally designed specifically for Mac, just like Procreate is now.)

I dunno. If it is taking "thousands" of hours to render maybe you need to work smaller or get your other work onto external hard drives? Or just get a different machine?
 
@Asa

This MacBook Pro will be fine for a bit yet—the reason my process took so long is because it cannot be multithreaded, and must run on a single core. Each point needs to be compared to every other point.

I’ll just avoid getting too crazy with the mandalas, or start the process when I go to bed.

Cheers,
Ian
 
Just inherited an ancient but not crazy-ancient PC.

HP HPE-170f from 2010.

i7-920, 9GB RAM, GTX 260, 1TB spinner...

OK, it is ancient...but does it run Crysis? :P

Haha,
Ian
 
aeon said:
This thread is for casual commentary about the project you are working on, your wished-for upgrade, your shiny new whatever, your frustrations, cool tools, and other random nerdiness.

JaYy34Z.gif
amXHQpw.gif


Cheers,
Ian
Click to expand...

I keep it simple these days outside of my job. One of my Dell laptops, a Latitude E6440, got petroleum jelly wasted all over the keyboard. I had not replaced any electronics in this one yet, so the battery and power adapter may need replacing. I bought the dang thing for $35.00 on eBay. It had Windows 10 on it. I did my little special Windows mod on it, replaced most of the software with fsf/gnu/simpler tools. Installed the vm manager on it, setup firewall, removed as much Windows components as possible, modified windows account security and privacy features etc. It worked like a charm for awhile after my preferred dell latitude 2100 screen accidentally got cracked. The E6440 can dual boot with the sdhc memory card to whatever preferred*Nix OS. Set a full installation of 64-bit Mx-Linux in the removable memcard - which what I lazily used to do much of my personal stuff on, up until this day for the past 5 months or so, and am I mulling over getting another latitude 21xx for portable computing.

I do private projects mostly on cheap laptops in the multivt mode, or in a minimal graphical desktop env gui. All I really need these days is Linux, OpenSSH/SFTP, GCC, Vi editor, nettools, gpg/pgp, coreutils, a dedicated browser(Firefox), hypervisor+, emulator, and basic gui image software. I can do a whole lot of stuff, and still practicing more, with just that.

I'm still tweaking my private server farm and home network applications and functions. I'm writing code for a custom data archive library(not too different from line a library catalog system), that allows me to locate, organize, and search contents being archived and duplicated on optical archive disks.
 
Backed up personal project I've been wanting to try for a long time: Linux From Scratch

Although, right now I've chosen to spend more time really getting comfortable with the BSD OS environment and administration, I've always wanted to go through the LFS OS docs and practice getting better at the Linux OS by building it from "scratch" with source code. The documentation and packages allow the user to create their own customized kernel+package system and into a Linux OS of their own.

One idea I had was using this model+tools as a framework for building a "Lojban-based" customized OS. that can modify code and run jobs with a voice recognition input system that can parse spoken Lojban speech or text input into understandable statements and data processes. It's both for extreme privacy and human language integrated with machine communication
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Friday IRC Meeting
Join the Free Software Foundation (FSF) on Friday 12:00 to 15:00 EDT for the Free Software Directory IRC meetings, in the #fsf Libera.chat moderated by the FSF staff!

Our day and time is right now: Wednesday 20:01 EDT —— meeting is tomorrow
Run this terminal program in a GNU/Linux system terminal to see the meeting start time in your time zone:
$ date --date='TZ="America/New_York" 12:00 this Fri'

Regardless of the topic, administrators will verify and approve new software proposed by users, correct existing pages and provide technical assistance publicly in the channel. All users are welcome.
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The Free Software Directory
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page

Full package list https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Category/All
 
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That is an external 2TB TB3-on-USB-C NVME drive (by Sabrent). I use it as a Time Machine volume for my Mac.

It used to get so hot under load that I could burn myself by touching it.

I added a strip of thermal tape and two 40^2 mm heat sinks. That cost $10 USD.

Now it barely gets warm to the touch, and there is no longer any NVME controller throttling.

Cheers,
Ian
 
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