Quote from mrodgers :

...

Thanks. As I said above it's an S7000 so I'm not sure if your tips would translate, but the manual focus certainly does. Tried it a few times but never managed to set it the way I wanted. It's especially hard when all you've got for reference is the teeny tiny screen. The auto-focus works well enough though, so I'm not sure I care.

But still, any tips and comments you may have are very much appreciated. I'll be sure to ask if I'm stumped with anything.

Quote from SamH :

Very nice photo, btw The S5700 isn't that old.. it's only a couple of years. I have an S5600 which I'm very fond of. It's a very versatile camera

Thanks. It's actually an S7000, which is I believe is a few years older, but yeah, doesn't really matter. Still takes a fine picture (according to my standards anyway.) What I was mostly after was a camera with all the basic settings to learn on before I blow my savings on a good 'un.

So, I'm rather new to this whole photography malarkey but I got my hands on a "proper" (though old) camera today and had a lot of fun playing around with manually setting shutter speeds, aperture and all these other features which are completely new to me. Got at least one shot I thought turned out rather nice, so I figured I might as well post it here for your kind ridicule.

Really addictive, this stuff. I think I may take the camera for a walk through a forest near here tomorrow night and play around with it some more. I'm still stunned by the details you can get out of the pitch black night if you just leave the shutter open long enough.

Quote from Intrepid :

btw yes Top Gear is good but thats because it provides quite a lot of funding to the BBC through it COMMERCIAL arm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CCCAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSSS LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK

Cognitive dissonance is such a beautiful thing sometimes.

"The BBC is evil and produces nothing of value. Commercial channels are better in every way because the market forces them to produce content people like.

...but wait, I kind of like Top Gear, and that's on the BBC. Uh, oh. This conflicts with my world view and I may have to reconsider my position. Ah, but Top Gear has a commercial arm that produces magazines and other peripheral content largely unrelated to the TV-show itself. This adds the beautiful power of the market to the mix, and is obviously why Top Gear is good even though it's on the BBC.

Phew, existential crisis resolved. Close one."

Quote from Intrepid :

That is UTTER nonsense. Seriously dude that is utter rubbish!

Okay then.

Being Norwegian I obviously don't watch or listen to everything the BBC does, and as such a lot of my opinions on the BBC are probably coloured by my opinion of our equivalent NRK.

But, I don't have to watch, or even like, everything they make in order to appreciate that their business model results in a lot of programming no commercial channel would take the risk to produce. Planet Earth for instance. I don't believe for a second you'd see a huge production like that if it wasn't for the BBC, and my god what a beautiful thing.

At the other end of the scale, NRK a few years back produced a series on the Norwegian language. Hugely boring topic, and certainly not something that draws people to the screen, but if you actually tuned in you'd discover one of the most witty and interesting programmes I've ever watched on Norwegian television.

Furthermore, I believe that the fact that the BBC doesn't have to answer to advertisers is one of the main reasons programs like Top Gear can be given such free reigns when reviewing cars. A commercial channel depending on ad income cannot afford pissing off advertisers to that degree on a weekly basis.

Quote from Wenom :

Ignore lists are for the

They are indeed. You put the babies in your ignore list so you don't have to listen to them. Along with a Greasemonkey script to hide the "an ignored user just posted" notification, it works a treat I've recently discovered.

Quote from Intrepid :

How do you know that we might be missing out on some FANTASTIC and INNOVATIVE programming because of the massive restrictions on being a commercial channel?

Because if you look at the USA, which has no equivalent of the BBC and where the market rules, it produces some of the most obnoxious shite television there is. The few gems of real quality you see on American television quickly get cancelled or morph into complete shit because they want to appeal to a wider audience (See Mythbusters). Gotta make those dollars!

Quote from Intrepid :

Even more HUMOROUS about you is you play a simulator that TOTALLY CONTRADICTS the point you are trying to make. not everyone goes to the lowest common denominator otherwise this SIM WOULDN'T EXIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I AM SO ANGRY!!! WATCH MY GRATUOTOUS USE OF CAPS LOCK AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fact is, the internet is a very different medium from television, and it's exactly these differences that allow narrow focus projects like LFS to exist and thrive. How would the devs set up shop if the internet was a broadcast medium? The up front cost of starting up a broadcast TV-channel that can reach the audience the internet can, automatically excludes 3-man operations like LFS. It's not even remotely possible, so your comparison misses the mark completely.

I cannot wait for broadcast television to die a horrible, horrible death so the internet can take over (and competition and choice return), but until that time comes the BBC and NRK produce much more quality TV than anything the commercial channels do.

Quote from Intrepid :

They can, and do regularly put out any old tosh because they don't have to be accountable to investors.

Except, the programming put out by the BBC (and their Norwegian equivalent NRK) is consistently better than anything I've ever seen a commercial channel do. At least according to my taste at the moment. (I'm sure you'll violently disagree)

Once you add the "must make money" requirement you need broad, lowest common denominator programming that can appeal to the most people for the least amount of money. That line of though has never resulted in anything I want to watch, but has repeatedly killed off TV shows I enjoyed thoroughly. There is just no room for stuff with a more narrow appeal (like even Top Gear was in the early days) in that kind of an environment, which is why I happily pay my TV-license.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Oh noes, a discussion about religion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K_LZDXp0I

Can you please keep your gob shut for once? It's like you have this ridiculous obsession to always put your 2 cents in no matter how out of your depth you are. If you can't add anything of value, stay out of the thread.

Quote from DaveWS :

So I looked at the formula you derived, and I'm pretty certain there is an error in there, TBH I'm not sure how you derived it, but thanks for trying to help me out.

Hrm, yeah. Something's wrong there. Sorry about that. (Never do math while drunk ) I have no idea where the 4 came from, but that's wrong. I also got the aspect ratio the wrong way around. The correct formulas are:

V = vertical FOV
H = horizontal FOV
A = aspect ratio (16/10 for 16:10)

H = 2 * arctan(A * tan(V / 2))
V = 2 * arctan(tan(H / 2) / A)

Quote from DaveWS :

Using the above formula with a horizontal FOV of 90 degrees, and an aspect ratio of 16:10, it gives me 64.01076642 vertical degrees.

Yep, that's the same result I'm getting (now). I couldn't get your formula to work, but I get the same numbers you do so I'm probably just not reading it right.

Meh, I couldn't leave it alone and derived the math from my projection matrix code. (I'm sure it could be simplified even more, but it's late) Most apps will probably do something similar to this but it's hard to know exactly.

V = vertical FOV
H = horizontal FOV
A = aspect ratio (10/16 for 16:10)

H = 4 * arctan(A * tan(V / 2))
V = 2 * arctan(tan(H / 4) / A)

It's been a long time since I've done any math worth mentioning, so I could be doin' it rong, but it seems to be correct AFAICT. 90 degrees horizontal FOV gives me 67.06819283404867 degrees vertical FOV using this formula.

Last edited by wien, Sun, 17 May 2009 00:08.

Quote from DaveWS :

I'm pretty sure it's more than just 90 degrees horizontal FOV = (90/16)x10=56.25 , for a 16:10 monitor.

I don't have the energy to derive the math just now, but it isn't that simple, no.

By extracting the view frustum planes from a projection matrix inside my 3D framework and then calculating the angle between the top and bottom planes I get ~67.1 degrees from a 90 degree horizontal FOV, which matches up pretty well with the number you found. Every game can do all kinds of tricks with their projection matrix though, so it's not certain the angles will match in each one.

I'll see about working out the formula I'm using some time it isn't saturday night and I'm not drunk.

Quote from r_b_l :

NOTE: I am running the game in Linux using Wine

I doubt Scawen can (or wants to) do anything about problems in Wine. Wine is just one giant hack and it's a wonder it works at all. If you're having problems with it you're probably better off taking it up with the Wine devs.

Quote from Scawen :

I don't know if that will help with LFS...

This may be of interest: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646360(VS.85).aspx

Quote from MSDN :

Microsoft Windows Vista and later: If password protection is enabled by policy, the screen saver is started regardless of what an application does with the SC_SCREENSAVE notification—even if fails to pass it to DefWindowProc.

If you're using SC_SCREENSAVE to prevent the screensaver from turning on, that is most likely the culprit. Also (wild stab in the dark), if you don't process the SC_MONITORPOWER WM_SYSCOMMAND in your window procedure, that may be why nesrulz has the screen go into powersave mode.

Last edited by wien, Mon, 4 May 2009 22:34.

Quote from Tomba(FIN) :

But LFS is really going to die if it continues like this.

No it isn't. (And that's about as polite a reply I can formulate without spontaneously combusting.)

Quote from danthebangerboy :

Get a PC, delete all the firewall and antivirus products off it, connect it to the internet, then see how long it takes before it is totally f--ked.

Okay, done that. Now what?

Quote from mrodgers :

Thus, I've downgraded my expectations to a HD3650 which states a recommended 300W. Any comments on that selection?

Well, to answer your actual question, a 3650 is about half of a 4650 in terms of theoretical performance (eyeballed from the specs), so it's a definite step down, but if you're worried about power consumption the 3650 is probably the better choice. I'm not too sure about the figures in my link above now that I've looked at the specs. Seems weird that they're the same with that big a difference in shader/texture units, regardless of clock speed. The architectural differences between the HD3xxx and HD4xxx are minimal.

Yeah, that looks like the memory's gone. I had similar corruption on mine when that went. The fact that it's there in the boot process rules out driver error.

As for the the 3650, if you look at the link I provided above it pulls the same amount of power as the 4650 in real world testing, so either one would probably work. I ran a 3850, a quad code and 3 disks off my 350 watt PSU (barely), so I think you'll be fine.

Quote from DarkTimes :

Incidentally, how do you all pronounce SQL?

I'm a firm believer in "call it whatever the hell you like". I hate these creative pronunciations the geek community always insists on using. "guh-nome", "postgres-cue-ell", "sequel"... gimme a frikkin' break. If they want me to pronounce it that way they can spell it accordingly. (Which means I pronounce it ess-cue-ell, since... that what it says.)

Quote from eRaptor :

I think the devs should take this late hacking a little more serious.

I think people should stop throwing the word "hacking" around whenever some fool gets his computer compromised through his own stupidity (without reference to the OP). This is social engineering, not hacking, and there is nothing the devs can do about that.

Well, if it's any consolation here's proof that even people used to snow and ice can have the occasional slip-up on the stuff.

(It's been through Google translate, so it reads a bit like Petter Solberg wrote it, but the pictures pretty much sum it up.)

Quote from mrodgers :

what is the difference between 64 and 128 bit?

The "bitness" refers to the width of the memory bus of the card. Basically the more bits, the more memory bandwidth the card has (though memory speed is obviously also a factor).

Lots of bandwidth is important if you play games in high resolution and with high detail textures. 64 bit may be a little cramped depending on your usage. If you can afford a 4650 with a 128 bit memory bus, that is definitely the better choice, assuming your PSU can handle it (here's a handy graph plotting out power draw of complete systems with some of these cards)

PCI-E 2.0 is just a revision of the PCI-E spec basically doubling the speed of the interface. Like mentioned above cards should be backwards compatible with the older standard like was the case with AGP (4x and 8X). I haven't tried it myself though.

Don't by something that is several generations old already. They will perform worse and use more power than the lowest end of the latest generation of cards. Something like a HD4350 or something is probably a better bet for a cheap, low-power card. I'm still not sure your PSU can handle it though.

Quote from danowat :

There are countries that have snow 100 times worse than we do, and they carry on, it's frankly disgusting.

And they still struggle when the once-a-year snowfall, 110 times worse than what you're currently dealing with, hits. There's just no point in kitting your country up with equipment to handle that one day out of the year. It would be a pointless waste of resources, and calling that kind of common sense "disgusting" is just silly.