Frustrations and WiPpet Wednesday

You know that render of RQ I had cooking last week?  Well, after almost a week solid of rendering time... it turned out to be useless.  Oh sure, the background looked nice, but RQ himself?

Not so much.

The figure I use for RQ has many, many problems in Poser anyway, and I guess taking it into the external renderer somehow zeroed the shape and pose...  More than a little frustrating.  I've made some changes so it'll render faster (at the expense of those pretty rose stems; might have to revert those without RQ in shot) and it's now cooking, but it's taking its time again so the best I've got is a part-done screenshot I've added some postwork too, to compensate for my awful lighting.  One day I'll actually have a sensibly-calibrated monitor set up somewhere.

I think my poor laptop, Sixteen, is on his last leg.  Due to a particularly intrusive and memory-hogging program my employers made me install, his already shaky fan ended up having to work in overdrive a lot more and even though I've now successfully dug the program out again the fan now runs (and rattles) non-stop.  I really need to get into the casing and see if it's off-balance or full of dust or something, but being a laptop it's not easy so... bleugh.  Not happy.  I love my crabby semi-sentient laptop and now he's on his last legs.  And honestly, I've gotten so used to the rattling noise that I'm just as worried when I can't hear it these days,

By the way, when I say 'dug out', I mean that closing instances in Task Manager didn't work (they came back) and trying to uninstall made it demand I contact my administrator for remote approval!  I should point out here I'm a freelancer, not an actual employee, and my laptop is supplied by myself at my own expense so not only was I unimpressed at this, I've now had to buy another (much cheaper) laptop to use solely for work.  I finally got the damn program out -- without administrator approval damnit, it's my laptop -- by disabling its eight different systems to let me uninstall it properly.

Aaaaaand then it turned out it had, by itself, uninstalled anything that looked remotely like an antivirus so that was fun to fix too.

I've had such a good week.

WiPpet Wednesday

WiPpet Wednesday is a weekly blog-hop where participants share snippets of their Works in Progress on a Wednesday, and each snippet should somehow relate to the date, whether through simple means or complicated WiPpet maths.  It's hosted by the lovely K. L. Schwengel and you can read all the blogs and sign up yourself here.

They're all lovely people who hopefully I will actually be able to spend more time with this week! *growls at last week*

Against all odds I managed to write a little on The Rose Queen and a bit more of J for Jonathan, and I think I've worked out where G for Gabrys is going (i.e. longer than I expected...), so while it's not been a massively productive week it's had its moments.

Today is the 13th May 2015, so it's 13 + 5 = 18, 18 + 1 (from the year) for 19 sentences which follow straight on from last week's, where Fayth has finally managed to get himself and his passenger/prisoner/willing follower back to his ship.  There is also some profanity involved.

He’d expected the Rose Queen to be in one of the ship’s two quarters, since Fayth had pointedly left both doors open, but instead found him sat in the unused co-pilot’s seat, already securely buckled in. “Is it okay?” He asked in the face of Fayth’s blank stare. “I wanted to see.” 

Fayth shrugged. “Suit yourself.” As he busied himself with some very hurried launch procedures, the Rose Queen nodded in his peripheral vision. Damn it, damn it, damnit, why did he have to be so distractingly fucking pretty, right at a time when flicking the wrong switch at the wrong time could end up incinerating the man the Rose Queen had been so adamant about protecting. 

Well, that was a little exaggeration, but still. 

Only a little. 

It wasn’t like he was sat there to be sociable anyway: he was simply ensuring that Fayth kept his word, even though Fayth would have done so without needing to be watched. Without looking at his passenger, he thumped his middle finger into a button, “ship, open access door.” 

“Warning, Handsome Prince,” the ship’s lovely voice filled the cabin at the same time heat filled Fayth’s cheeks under the Rose Queen’s startled stare. He’d kill Matthew. “Bay is still occupied.” 

“Override,” Fayth said, adding under his breath where the ship was unlikely to pick it up, “if he doesn’t leave then call it natural selection.” 

A screen displaying the rear camera showed the naked man diving through the doorway into the waiting arms of several conspicuously-armed guards before Fayth gunned the engines, the ship’s monumental dock door began to open and the automatic failsafes sent the access door plunging down again. He turned a broad grin to the Rose Queen and flicked down the switch marked ‘lock’. 

The one-time Handsome Prince blasted from the bay in a roar of engines. 

Collecting Shinies

Today, the awesome Danni blogged about the things she collects, and it got me thinking.  I know I collect stationery, that much is obvious (and usually either her's or Clairabel's fault, I firmly maintain), and what started out as a fondness for gel pens is starting to grow into something a little worrying now.

I collect books too—but that's kind of obvious too.  I've got a to-read stack that's reaching alarming proportions, and it's not counting all the Kindle books.  I can't help that either, because books just look and smell right.  They're a comforting weight in your hand, and a less comforting weight on your shoulder when you're trekking back to the bus station.

I'd love to collect models, but they're usually eye-bleedingly expensive.  I stick to the Togainu no Chi Shiki and Akira figures I got a few years back, even if Akira is a pain to dust; they're both gorgeous and so far most people overlook the fact Akira's flashing his underwear.

So I thought about it some more, and then I realised with a faintly sinking sensation that what I actually collect is computers.

Not in the "new one every year, cutting-edge technology" sense—not that I wouldn't love to—or the "obsessive Apple fan" way (I don't own anything Apple), but in a more haphazard "I need something and then I get grossly attached to it" or (more often) in the "I don't need it but I don't care" way.

So... uh...

I should introduce a new member of my family now, shouldn't I?

This is the latest part of my collection and part of the first category of 'needs': a new desktop PC bought for the intention of actually being able to render images in less than five hours without crashing at the thought of it being 2500px tall.  Here I'll qualify that this isn't actually something Sixteen's can help: he's a laptop and they're not really designed for things that make them overheat quickly, such as colossal images that only Amazon want at that size.  (The image on the screen is at 2500px tall, for reference; that's a 17" monitor and the image reaches to Kirill's hips.)

The dusty desktop in the background isn't mine, by the way.  It's my mother's, and she never got round to naming it.

So far it's working well.  We've had some issues with my 3D content that are nothing to do with the PC and everything to do with the issue of absolute pathways in save files and changes in OS—I'm only familiar with Windows 8 in terms of 8RT on the Surface so it's taking some getting used to—and maybe a few computer games have sneaked onto there (but they work so nicely I couldn't possibly ask them to leave again...).

There has, in fact, been only one real issue.

The "Name your PC" screen cropped up and I had a complete brain freeze.  It's like naming characters in games: it's something that requires great thought, lest you give it a strange or inappropriate name that completely skews either its personality or your perception of it (depending on which camp you're in in that regard).  And what with my newest project being on my mind a lot lately, I may have called it "Echo".

Still, it could be worse, right?  I could have named it after a man who went mad and coded himself into a computer system.

Hell, one day I'll end up naming a computer Durandal and then I'll be really screwed.

So... please say hi to the newest member of my technological family and most recent part of my favourite (and most expensive) collection!

Meet My Desk: Sixteen

In an effort to try to blog to a regular(ish) schedule, I decided the other day that Tuesdays are going to be “Meet My Desk” days.  Mostly because a bunch of things on my desk have had names and/or personalities assigned to them (you can’t not name technology) and partially because no one objected when I mentioned it on Twitter.

Really, Twitter people, you only have yourself to blame.

I tidied my desk the other day, I even have evidence of this! (Yes, this is tidy.)  There’s no ‘before’ shot because it was just buried under a vast stack of magazines, sketchbooks and assorted crap, but it’s all better now.  (Note: the paperwork in the background isn’t mine.  Mine’s all over a desk upstairs.)

Today, we’re meeting my trusty two-year-old laptop, Sixteen.

Well, I say trusty.  Sulky might be more accurate (sorry Sixteen).  It has been suggested that naming him after a paranoid, possibly insane character from a video game was a bad idea but aside from him having a strange personality and responding well to being stroked (this has been externally verified, sadly by my writing group who are easily as odd as me) he’s been pretty well behaved.

He has his own taste in music that doesn’t always match mine and he’s been known to insist on playing certain songs far more than is reasonable.  He went through a big Florence + The Machine obsession a few months ago and he’s quite keen on BT too.  Since my playlist is always set to random, he’s very talented at picking the right song for whatever I’m writing and has been known to guilt-trip me by bunching together songs that remind me of one certain character or another so I end up writing.

People have complained in the past that the cycling of his fan makes it sound like he’s breathing.  It is apparently, and I quote, “creepy”.

I have been known to talk to him, and there are people out there who are fairly sure that you can get a sensible answer from him by asking questions and seeing what song comes on next.  I’m not so sure, myself.  Also, it should be said I talk to everything, not just him.  I’m one of those irritating people who just mutters to themselves...

Mood swings aside, he’s been surprisingly reliable since I got him, he’s put up with being dragged everywhere (although he weighs enough that he’s stopped coming to Nottingham with me) and so far--touch wood--he’s behaved far more reasonably than my old laptop ever did.  I’ve become very fond of him!

It may have something to do with the fact that between work and hobbies I spend most of my day in front of him, of course...

Next time: another random personified thing! No, I haven't decided which yet. Consider it a surprise.