Tadd Mencer

Posts Tagged ‘Lot’

I need to get out of this rut and do something that I’ve not done for a while … or something new and inventive that I’ve never done. Or heck, do something that I’ve wanted to do for a while.

There are projects I’ve been trying slowly to get into but I’ve been distracted with way to many other things. For instance, writing. I’ve been trying to write more and more lately, but I’ve not gotten anything done. I really  need to get Deadland Chronicles written out and prepared for this fall for when we do photography. I need to write out the entire story (or at least get the next several chapters done) for Tony Laen and get that back on it’s feet. I need to do a lot of things just on my personal projects. The church website has been in need of a redesign and they’re waiting patiently.

I need to get moving. Stop dilly dallying and just … well, do it.

*sigh*

Maybe I’ll just go watch  more television instead.

I used to listen to nothing but metal when I was a teen. I don’t mean bands like Megadeth and Metallica who are considered "pop metal" (radio friendly ‘metal’) but music like Abyss, Morbid Angel, Corpse, Slayer .. bands that make your mother faint at just the sight of the gooey cover art of the deep growling vocals.

Of course, once I became a Christian some of the bands (well, all of the ones I mentioned) kind of went on the side line. Not exactly music that is edifying of the spirit!

But I found other bands that I could listen to: Living Sacrifice, Zao, Training for Utopia (now Demon Hunter), Extol .. and other extreme metal bands. I was happy.

I’m getting older now (well, I’m 30) and I have to say my music style has changed as I got older. I definitely still enjoy the metal (listening to Zao-Funeral of God right now), but I listen to a lot more mellow music than I used to. Soundscores, ambient electronica even the dreaded pop.

It’s amazing what your mind decides to listen to after a while. It changes what it enjoys. Really, it’s kind of interesting.

Have you noticed any changes to your music tastes as you age a bit?

Ok, I’ve been working on this project off and on, and I think I’m starting to get somewhere. Not all that impressive yet, I know – but it’s coming along!

This is all in Silo and rendered in Kerkythea. Took a whole :45 seconds to render.

I’ll be adding a heck of a lot more detail as I go … probably splitting the guy in the middle so that it looks like he’s wearing pants. Maybe even adding some texture to it to look more cloth like. We’ll see.

Deadland Chronicles .. one more step ahead to the end of the world.

I have a Seagate 160gb external hard drive that I keep at work. It has a lot of files on it, software, music, graphics, photos … you name it. Yesterday I decided to take it home to transfer stuff off of that and onto my system at home and visa versa. Figured I could always use a bit more music selection.

So, took it home and grabbed a power supply. Take note: It was different than the original PSU but I figured I’d go for the same wattage/voltage and we’d be good.

Well, apparently it wasn’t the same and I heard a ‘pop’ and smelled a rank smell. Needless to say, the hard drive is now dead.

I tell you this as a two-fold warning.

1) Don’t get in such a hurry that you don’t want to unhook the right power supply for your external drives. Not worth the saved two minutes.

2) Remember to backup your backups. Yes, this was my backup drive I was using regularly. I’m pretty miffed about it. I’ve lost a lot of information.

What really stinks if I can’t even open the casing to try and get the hard drive out. Seagate uses some wacked out screws to hold things together. So I’m out of luck.

And that’s my sob story for the day.

“ZipGenius is the absolutely free software for Windows® that lets you compress files to almost any kind of archive. ZipGenius supports more than 20 compressed archive formats, including CD/DVD-ROM image files in ISO9660 standard. This is the file compression suite you were searching for: it is free and easy to use, plus it supports more than 20 formats of compressed archives, including RAR, ARJ, ACE, CAB, SQX, OpenOffice.org documents and the excellent 7-zip. ZipGenius now can precompress executable files going to be added to a ZIP archive through the UPX compressor.”

I started using this program in November when I needed a free yet robust program for unzipping a lot of different file types at work. Not ONLY does this program do what I wanted it to – it far surpassed my expectations. You have the standard abilities to export files where you want and in seperate folders. You have the ability to recompress groups of files. There is just so much this FREE program offers that it’s pointless to waste time on the “big names” of compression like WinRAR or WinZip (do they even still exist!?).

Do yourself a favor … go and download. After all – it’s free!

http://www.zipgenius.it/