The Long Silence

I've been busy and distracted for a while. I put more time into playing Warframe, getting A+ Certified, and working on side projects.

As I said in my previous post, Warframe is getting really grindy for new players now. Since I've been playing for a while, I've already completed a majority of the game before scaling difficulty, lower drop rates, and additional "BUY PLATINUM" neon signs. I'm a bit upset at how I'm not nearly as efficient at leveling gear as I was before the scaling difficulty change and how this also messed up item farming (lower drop rates+ harder to solo areas = more risk, less reward). Then again, I have more "but this was how it used to be" comparisons now.

In other news, I am now A+ Certified and have 3 years to either take a newer version of the test, completed a higher level cert, or enroll in Continuing Education to keep my status from expiring. All those options cost money and I'm still unemployed. Bah. And yet, I still have access to a computer with a decent net connection through which I can play games. What? Needless to say, I'd be screwed on my own in my current state.

On the Warframe forums, there was a fan sketch of a Prime Warframe's helmet, so I did the sensible thing and made it in 3ds Max. I've since submitted it to the sketch's author and am waiting to see what kind of organic details he places on it. I should probably inquire as to its progress...

Some friends and I are planning a game about a year out and our artist drew a couple sketches of armor. As above, I've been making it in 3ds Max and trying to fill in the details where the sketches are just gradients or solid color. It's also front view only, so I'm improvising on the back. No images to show here until the game gets further along.

EDIT:
This is apparently my 100th post. I guess I'll have to make some media (read: Continue Sentinel Armor) for the next one.

The little things

Well, games work on that laptop from my previous post. A fresh install from a Windows 7 SP1 disk did the trick.

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I had a small crash course in OSX this morning. I was trying to disable Bonjour, Apple's zeroconf implementation. Past experience has only been on Windows machines and each time resulted in flooding my network with enough traffic to cripple it. Now, OSX wasn't doing that, but I wanted to make the OS a little quieter on the network and I don't really need Bonjour trying to discover devices that I don't want to connect to (it really fills up the sidebar in Finder).

So, I followed this tutorial on how to disable Bonjour's function on mDNSResponder. Well, mostly. I wound up using Xcode to edit the plist and had to change permissions in order to have write access. After making the changes, I rebooted the machine and found that it couldn't resolve any hostnames.

In short, taking ownership of the plist completely erased the system permissions instead of preserving them like "Get Info" displayed. Without that permission, the OS failed to load mDNSResponder resulting in the inability to resolve hostnames. Now, I did make a backup, but that backup, because it was made by me using the GUI instead of Terminal, also removed the system permissions. I fixed the permissions by running Disk Utility and repairing permissions. One reboot later and the system was resolving hostnames again. Awesome.

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A local store was having issues with its email yesterday. One account to their mail server was working perfectly fine, but another wasn't. No matter what machine it was on, the email programs used (Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail, XP and 7, respectively) failed to send emails with a 0x800CCC0B error.

Every search result I had kept giving me the same "solution" which didn't work due to the settings I was supposed to change already being what the solution said they should be. I compared both email accounts and, surprise, they were the same except for account name, password, and whether or not to leave a copy of messages on the server. So, after 45minutes of fiddling with settings, I decided to use Wireshark to look at what happened when the error occurred.

Fortunately, some of the packets were plaintext. From those I could read, authentication worked, but verification failed. Why did verification fail? The mailbox was full, quota exceeded. That was it. There was a checkbox for deleting emails on the server when deleted from the client, but, by default, it was not checked. I checked the option, emptied the Deleted Items folder and the email account started sending emails again.

Therefore, if you want to leave a copy of messages on an email server make sure you check "delete from server when deleted from client" or whatever equivalent setting your email client has. That, or make sure you have no quota on the server.

The annoying part about this was how the email clients did not say the mailbox was full. They just kept spouting "Unknown error!" They also sent deleted Outgoing emails...so some guy got duplicate messages.

Fresh Windows install

I decided to put Windows 7 on my laptop. I had an RTM key and iso left, so I thought I'd just install SP1 afterwards. The OS installation completed without a hiccup, installed Steam and Guild Wars 2, got the mess of updates prior to SP1 and did a quick test to see how well Guild Wars 2 would run (it ran alright on low/med). Curiosity satisfied, I installed Service Pack 1 and things went downhill.

After SP1 installed, Guild Wars 2 and every game I installed on the machine instantly crashed with either StackHash, d3d9.dll, or nvd3dum.dll (something like that) as the culprit. The first seemed to have to do with DEP, but everytime I selected a program to exclude I got a "You can't do that" message. The second led me to running Microsoft's DirectX web installer, no dice. The third resulted in trying 2 legacy video drivers, still crashed. I managed to get the Guild Wars 2 launcher running after deleting it's .dat file, but I reloaded a fully downloaded copy and that broke it all over again.

I poked around a bit and found that installing Service Pack 1 can cause this and that there was a hotfix for it. A couple links later, I found the hotfix only to be hit with a "You need to validate" message. Fine. No problem. I'm running legitimate copies of Windows 7, so this should only take a second. Uh...no.

Because I was using Firefox, Microsoft's site started a download for the Genuine Advantage Validation tool. Quick download, but upon executing it, it said it was no longer supported and I should check my system clock. After confirming my clock time across multiple devices, I decided to give Internet Explorer 64bit a run. This resulted in an ActiveX popup to install the validation tool that, after allowing the download, failed to download without any error messages. It just didn't work. Fine. IE 32bit then. That worked, but the website said I already had the update installed.

This left me with a couple options: Use a Windows SP1 disk and reformat or continue fiddling. I went with the former. So, now I've formatted the partition and fully updated the new installation. I've spammed restore points and I am now getting ready to install a game on it. Here goes nothing.

A+ Certification Study Cards and Practice Tests

I've found a couple online practice tests and flash cards to help study for A+ Certification, but I'm not too confident with them. Why? Take a look at some of the questions and answers:

Apparently DVD-/+RW (1997/1999), DVD-RAM (1998), and BD-RE (2006) do not exist. This is for the 2009 test I believe. However, the dates were grabbed from the first 5 results of a Google search, so take them with a grain of salt.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screwdriver#Blade_types

According to this practice test, the correct answer is the second one. Is a printer with only a USB A or B connector not considered a USB device then? Some portable USB devices used mini-B. I haven't seen a mini-B connection on a PC, laptop maybe, but not a desktop. I also haven't seen a USB B on a PC.

Seeing how I measure up to A+ Certification

I'm looking into A+ Certification. I'm already familiar with assembling/disassembling PCs, installing an OS, and troubleshooting, so I might as well put another bulletpoint on the resume. There's just one problem: The practice tests I've found have quite a wide range of topics, with a few that are oddly specific.

So far, I have failed every practice test I've taken. Why? I didn't know the following:

• Minimum and Recommended System Requirements of Windows 2000, XP, Vista Basic, and Vista Home Premium/Business/Ultimate.
• What "1x" speed is for CD, DVD, and BluRay.
• How long SATA and PATA cables can be. (1mr and 45cm, respectively)
• The history of ATA, revisions, and when features were added as well as what they do.
• The most common form factors of usb flash drives (ex: 1.8in, 2.5in)
• The form factors of CompactFlash devices ("Type I (3.3 mm) and Type II (5.0 mm)")
• Region codes of BluRay (A, B, and C, not 0-8)
• That CPUID is a code that determines the capabilities of the CPU being run. Not the program of the same name I have used in the past that reads that information and has some system monitoring capabilities. *This question was an A, B, C, or D with both the definition of CPUID and the features of CPUID as possible answers.*
• All cpu sockets, their names, functions, pin counts, and what CPUs used them. (Did you know Socket 7 could accept processors from multiple manufacturers?)
• The default addresses used by the primary and secondary IDE controllers.
• How a laser printer works.

Other problems I've had:

• Reading a question about optical drives speed ratings of  48x 32x 52x as having commas and thus getting the Write, Rewrite, and Read speeds question wrong.
• Associating "Master/Slave" and "Standalone" modes for PATA as the same thing. Why? Because I did that all the time in my Computer Diagnostics class. I'd plug a drive in, set as CS or Master and that was "Standalone".
• Vocabulary. I.e. What is a "Stepper motor" used in? "What is a stepper motor!?" (It is, in a sense, what I've been using consistently in my Portal 2 maps: MOMENTARY_ROT_BUTTON. Well, the SetPosition input at least.)
• Forgetting Decimal to Hexadecimal conversion (25 is 19, not 1a)
• Forgetting the pin counts of floppy and IDE ribbon cables. (34 and 40. However, you can also have 80pins for IDE. And the number 1 pin is not always denoted by a red stripe along the side like it says in the tests. Sometimes it is black or blue, depending on color scheme and aesthetics.)
• Why am I being asked how to change the desktop background in Windows? Granted, I've met someone who didn't know how to do that. But given the multiple ways you can do it (MS Paint, PhotoViewer, Desktop properties) and only being able to select one way as being correct, there's something wrong here.
• "How many devices can a SCSI controller support?" They don't ask which version (1, 2, or 3) and all their numbers are off by 1 which, I'm assuming, means they are zero-indexed.

I guess I'm still on the consumer side of things and reliant on web searches and, to a lesser extent (way less), books, to find relevant information. However, I don't believe memorizing every ISO standard and every connector pinout is a good measure of a PC Technician.

I need to overcome my mental roadblock of "I don't like the game, so I won't play. It shouldn't be this way. Should it?"

The Leather Duster Returns

Well, Guild Wars 2 is fun. Sadly, I haven't been playing it for a couple days because 1) I was trying to get video capture cards working on Windows Server 2008 R2 and 2) I can't log in because of, well, I don't know. My friends are able to log in, but I'm practically locked out of my account because authentication emails never arrive. I'd make a post on the forums or a support ticket but, ding ding ding, no authentication email. Awesome.

Sure, I could disable it, but I'm still hanging onto the idea of being able to see when my account is accessed and allowing/denying it. And I still get this odd feeling I'd have to authenticate the opting out of authentication.

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While I was trying to log in to GW2 for the past 2..wait...3 days, I was also getting frustrated with capture cards.

I've had this Pinnacle Dazzle DVC100 in my closet for maybe a year and haven't done anything with it. So, I dusted it off and installed it only to get constant "No valid input signals" for a day. Sometimes VLC, VirtualDub, or Media Player Classic would pickup audio, but I wouldn't have video. The rest of the time, nothing.

I spent a day reading 2-4 year old forum threads all dealing with the same problem. The bigger issue was all of the "solutions" consisted of making sure I selected the right capture card, unplugging the card, downloading drivers, and restarting the computer. Something I'd already done half a dozen times before turning to the net. Most of those threads were left unsolved as well. Great.

Solution? Use an internal capture card I removed from a machine to make room for a graphics card. And...the opposite of the problem happened. Video, no audio. Followed by flip flopping between one or the other with the occasional neither. So, I put the DVC100 back in and thought I'd try using both cards at once...then decided I really wanted only one to work since, well, they SHOULD work without resorting to this.

Now, I was running a server OS so, after getting frustrated with "solutions" online, I decided to see if I could dual boot the machine. Bad idea. I only have a copy of Vista Business I never got around to using and I'd probably wind up in the same "You're missing APIs and stuff" problem. So, I finally took a look at http://www.win2008r2workstation.com/, the site I used to Workstation-ize the OS. Lo and behold, there was an installer that added the missing components. I was rather dubious given how old the thread was, but the installer worked. Now, instead of only having audio and no video, I had video and no audio.

Several bluescreens, restarts, and settings windows later, I managed to get Pinnacle's software and VirtualDub to detect both audio and video AND record it. However, only Pinnacle's software would play both video and audio in realtime, but the video was halfsize because it was only a "preview". Virtualdub would show the video fullsize, detect the audio and show the volume level, but refused to play the audio in its Preview window. Seeing as how I wanted to be able to watch tapes in real time as well as record them, I was a bit upset. Sure, I could have a realtime stream with audio and video, but that was only if I wanted to a) put my face against the screen or b) use the Magnifier at 500% zoom and watch pixels talking.

Apparently, the Dazzle system doesn't like to work with anything but the software that came with it, *surprise surprise*. And, despite following a dozens "how to fix" tutorials, nothing worked. A bit of a letdown, but I had my fullsize transfers and decided to call it a day.

What really irked me about the tutorials was that the makers in all but one video already had their setup working and went "if you do this, it should work". No proof, just "Well this worked for me, see?" The one that didn't was solving some "no color" problem that I wasn't having. All of them were recounting the same or similar steps that I had already come up with on my own or followed. Ugh.

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So, I got back to work on my leather dusters for Skyrim. There isn't much to say about this. I followed the same Garment Maker tutorial series to form the duster on a male_0 body, weighted it, remade the texture since the UV maps weren't exactly the same as the female duster's, and spent a day trying to make a male_1 version. The physique change (not the modifier) is quite drastic from male_0 to male_1. You pretty much go from a twig to a walking mountain of meat.

In the end, I resorted to using the SoMuchMorpher plugin to get the duster to fit. Then I used a Skin Wrap on the male_0 duster to get the weights right. After that, some testing of each duster to make sure they worked and another test with the weight slider enabled before uploading to Steam.

I don't have a 1st person model for the dusters, yet. I tried plugging in the 3rd person model and that didn't work at all. So, I think I need to look at an existing 1st person model's nif structure. I also have Nightasy's tutorials to go through.

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Verb tenses are everywhere!

Trends of the people

I released the Vigilance Greatsword on the Skyrim Workshop because I didn't think keeping it to myself was right. Not exactly in those terms, though. It was more like something I felt I should do because, well, why not? If I kept it to myself, it'd be something I'd hold onto for a bit and no one would be the wiser. While that has a certain appeal, I released the sword anyways.

Upon release, I had several requests to do other swords and figured it would be a good idea since I had tried for so long to get into 3d Modeling and forgetting all I had learned would be both frustrating and a waste. So, off I went to create more weapons. Sure, I haven't grabbed a huge audience, but I smile every time someone thanks me.

Every subsequent release garnered more requests to do weapons. Sometimes I'd do them (either because I was going to do them anyway/already doing them or I liked the weapon), other times, I wouldn't. Now, though, I've been watching the comments shift to "make armor X". Everywhere I turn it's an armor request.

I just have an aversion to making armor. If you've read or even used my leather duster mod for Skyrim, you'd know what I'm talking about. Random vertices not showing, polys "wobbling" when bones move (makes it hard to gauge where problem spots are ingame), the mesh not showing at all, etc. It's some setting I didn't check/uncheck upon export, a default setting that screws everything up, some obscure work around I'd have never guessed, or I haven't done the same thing a dozen times for it to magically work yet (mostly this).

Before Moving Bones

 

After Moving Bones. Note the size difference, both legs have the same weights.

Setting the skin weights is easy, if tedious. I just hate all the little things that go wrong whose only solution has been to try the same exact thing over and over until it works and, well, that's almost always been the case. Meshes just magically work for no apparent reason. The only thing that's changed is my frustration level (is that some sort of requirement for making armor?).

Now, the solution should be simple then, make the mesh and have someone else rig it! Eehhhh, I really like to do stuff on my own. I also figure that the more I know how to do, the more likely I'll a) do it and b) be able to legitimately claim it in a job interview. As Jim Rivers, the Hiring Manager at Obsidian Entertainment, said, (some paraphrasing here) "Don't put anything on your resume that you aren't comfortable with because it is my job to put your skills to the test and make you break. And I'm good at my job."

Youtube Monetization

A while ago, I decided to try monetizing my videos to see what kind of money I'd make. Conclusion: Enough to possibly buy a hotdog and soda after 14 years. Why am I writing about this now? Well, I got an email saying my Cube Freezing tutorial for Portal 2 needed more information in order to be monetized.

When I started monetizing my videos, YouTube had a text box you'd have to fill in to explain why they should monetize your video. A few months ago, they removed that box. While I was glad not to have to keep typing out the same spiel over and over again, the looseness concerned me. And now, I've set off their alarms or was randomly chosen to prove myself worthy.

In either case, I looked at how much money I "made" since I started and came to the conclusion of "Not worth it." So, I logged into YouTube to uncheck the monetization checkbox and was greeted by a "Changes cannot be saved" error. This also prevented me from changing anything else about the video even when I rechecked the box. I had to go to the viewing page of the video and click on the description to change anything.

So, in an attempt to remove the uncheck the monetization checkbox, I filled out the form YouTube sent me for "Proving I have ownership" and basically said "It was a fun experiment, but as you can clearly see, not worth it." This probably means my account has a strike against it now, so, joy.

For whomever it was that blew up when I started monetizing and said "You're getting greedy man! I'm not going to pay for this! What's next? Paying to read the titles of your maps?! What is wrong with you!?" Look, no money gain. Just like I said would most likely be the case.