I upgraded my Toshiba laptop to 4GBytes of memory and a 500MByte drive. Then I installed Windows 7 - it detected the wireless network but not the graphics. I couldn't find a Windows 7 driver for 64 but the Vista one worked fine.
Ubuntu Karmic Koala running from the live CD worked fine but now it's installed it first had issues creating a FAT32 partition (kept failing) then the wireless doesn't work (worked on live CD).
Hmm...
Update: after rebooting Ubuntu, the wireless network worked fine. Also let me create a FAT32 drive, label it, format it and leave a file for Windows 7 to see. Windows 7 didn't offer me the option of using FAT32 to format...
Showing posts with label PC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PC. Show all posts
18 November 2009
22 September 2009
Delphi 2010
The last version of Delphi I bought was Delphi Professional 2006. I didn't rate at all. Buggy, slow, broken help... sigh... I felt the days of Delphi were over. That and Kylix (stagnating at V3.0) and the change of hands of "CodeGear".
Delphi 2007, 2009... finally 2010
After an initial false start (see earlier posts), I managed to get Delphi 2010 Architect trial to install. I wasn't expecting much but...
The biggest area of Delphi is not so much the IDE, the documentation or the language, but the VCL. Standard tree control in WinForms doesn't support multiple selection - in VCL it's an option.
The price of upgrading to Delphi 2010 Professional is about £340 - that's not cheap compared to previous versions. They're offering BOGO at the moment, so I took the plunge and bought Delphi 2010 Pro upgrade and BOGO'd a copy of C++ Builder 2010 Pro as well.
After my two year break from Delphi going back is a bit traumatic. C# has spoilt me with the depth of the language. Delphi feels... antiquated.
C++ Builder never impressed me much. Everything I threw at it had problems. Seems this time it has improved, so maybe there's hope yet!
Delphi 2007, 2009... finally 2010
After an initial false start (see earlier posts), I managed to get Delphi 2010 Architect trial to install. I wasn't expecting much but...
- Generics
- RTTI access methods
- Attributes
- Broken help (no news there, then)
- Still have to declare variables outside a function/procedure
- Still circular uses dependency restriction
The biggest area of Delphi is not so much the IDE, the documentation or the language, but the VCL. Standard tree control in WinForms doesn't support multiple selection - in VCL it's an option.
The price of upgrading to Delphi 2010 Professional is about £340 - that's not cheap compared to previous versions. They're offering BOGO at the moment, so I took the plunge and bought Delphi 2010 Pro upgrade and BOGO'd a copy of C++ Builder 2010 Pro as well.
After my two year break from Delphi going back is a bit traumatic. C# has spoilt me with the depth of the language. Delphi feels... antiquated.
C++ Builder never impressed me much. Everything I threw at it had problems. Seems this time it has improved, so maybe there's hope yet!
11 September 2009
Delphi 2010 is out!
So Codegear have released Delphi 2010...
Can't even download the architect trial. My user page shows an error but not what the actually error is!
Anyway... once I got past this error (I've no idea what I did to fix it), I finally got the license key to install Delphi 2010 Architect Trial.
Delphi hasn't changed much. Still need to declare variables outside of code (not block scoped) and still need declaration and implementation sections. C# looks much nicer in this respect.
C++ Builder seems to have improved so it might actually be usable...
Can't even download the architect trial. My user page shows an error but not what the actually error is!
Anyway... once I got past this error (I've no idea what I did to fix it), I finally got the license key to install Delphi 2010 Architect Trial.
Delphi hasn't changed much. Still need to declare variables outside of code (not block scoped) and still need declaration and implementation sections. C# looks much nicer in this respect.
C++ Builder seems to have improved so it might actually be usable...
24 January 2009
More Spore
I added the cute and creepy pack as my brother and wife bought it as a Christmas present. So far made use of the mouths and eyes. Can't say I like the arms and legs much - too boney for me.
Then I descover I can make my creatures pickup sticks and stones!
How did I miss that one? I can get my creatures to throw them... at others, even my own creatures. It usually wacks them and results in loads of stars... very amusing!
I just keep finding little tidbits in Spore. Now there are more packs to come, so my addiction will be satisfied... oh dear...
Then I descover I can make my creatures pickup sticks and stones!
How did I miss that one? I can get my creatures to throw them... at others, even my own creatures. It usually wacks them and results in loads of stars... very amusing!
I just keep finding little tidbits in Spore. Now there are more packs to come, so my addiction will be satisfied... oh dear...
18 November 2008
11 September 2008
Spore!
I read about Spore a while ago. I've played Sim City several times and liked it, so spore was interesting. I tried the Creature Creator trial and liked it, so I bought the full version of the creator. That led to buying a prerelease version of spore and downloading an encrypted version early.Spore was released last Friday (with a few server hiccups), I've been playing it ever since. It's addictive. So far I've found the cell stage the most fun.
Herbivore...
Carnivore...
Omnivore...
Carnivore...Omnivore...Omnivore is the most fun of the three types - you get to suck vegetables or other creatures. The expressions on them is very funny - the eyes bug out and all the frills etc. stretch out as if horrified. The sound effect is of you sucking noisily on a straw!
Once you evolve your creature starts to develop further - here's the omnivore at the creature stage:
Even in the cell stage you get an editor - here you can rearrange parts, pull off parts to replace them or add new bits and bobs to make your creature more adaptive to its environment. Here's the omnivore in its latest phase (in tribal):
As you play the game, more stages open up and you can jump in at those points (cell, creature, tribal, civilisation and space), or you can let your character evolve through each stage on the way.
After the cell stage, creature stage didn't strike me as that wonderful for a while - until I saw my own creatures I'd created in the creature editor appear as giant versions in game with 1000 points and terrorising the neighbourhood!
20 August 2008
15 August 2008
13 August 2008
New PC!
I ordered the parts for my new PC on Moday, they turned up Tuesday...
I started putting it all together, and found a few minor issues. I'd chosen to base my build on what Scan use for their 3XS range, figuring if that's what works for them would probably work for me. The case is a gamers box with transparent sides and large, quiet fans. The first minor issue: I didn't expect to find the power supply had to be at the bottom, and upside down. The second was the size of the CPU fan. I could see problems trying to fit the thing. I watched a flash movie on the Zalman site and it made sense but I felt trying to screw down a sprung loaded bar might not be that simple. In the end, it went in, with a few mutterings.
I powered it all up and was rewarded with the BIOS screen. Ran memtest for a couple of hours and it was fine. Temperature seemed much better than I've seen with my Athlon 2200+ where it regularly hit 70C. This one was running at 40C (CPU) and 35C (motherboard). The big fans are a bit noisy, but they are quieter than my aging Athlon (aging? It's not that old!).
Since I've switched on ASUS Q-Fan, the CPU fan is running much quieter - seems every other fan is low speed, big and quiet...
So what I've got is an Intel Duo with four cores, 4GBytes of RAM (not all of which is visible), 8800 GT graphics, 750GByte SATA drive... all in a colourful box with blue lights and a green glowing CPU fan. Be interesting to see it do some raytracing once I've got everything set up - with four cores that ought to be a sight to see.
I started putting it all together, and found a few minor issues. I'd chosen to base my build on what Scan use for their 3XS range, figuring if that's what works for them would probably work for me. The case is a gamers box with transparent sides and large, quiet fans. The first minor issue: I didn't expect to find the power supply had to be at the bottom, and upside down. The second was the size of the CPU fan. I could see problems trying to fit the thing. I watched a flash movie on the Zalman site and it made sense but I felt trying to screw down a sprung loaded bar might not be that simple. In the end, it went in, with a few mutterings.
I powered it all up and was rewarded with the BIOS screen. Ran memtest for a couple of hours and it was fine. Temperature seemed much better than I've seen with my Athlon 2200+ where it regularly hit 70C. This one was running at 40C (CPU) and 35C (motherboard). The big fans are a bit noisy, but they are quieter than my aging Athlon (aging? It's not that old!).
Since I've switched on ASUS Q-Fan, the CPU fan is running much quieter - seems every other fan is low speed, big and quiet...
So what I've got is an Intel Duo with four cores, 4GBytes of RAM (not all of which is visible), 8800 GT graphics, 750GByte SATA drive... all in a colourful box with blue lights and a green glowing CPU fan. Be interesting to see it do some raytracing once I've got everything set up - with four cores that ought to be a sight to see.
11 August 2008
Vista not for me
My laptop has Vista, and once I got past the crashing issues - fixed with a BIOS upgrade, everything has been fine. But Vista is nothing to write home about. The gadget bar is useful but everything else is... well, what's the point?
If I repeatedly do something that require's priv's, it repeatedly asks me again and again to accept it. Gee, Microsoft, where did you dig up your usability guide from? Using my Mac was a much more elegant affair and I'm not running the latest and greatest yet!
Finally, discovering my scanner is compatible with Vista is frankly, not amusing.
If I repeatedly do something that require's priv's, it repeatedly asks me again and again to accept it. Gee, Microsoft, where did you dig up your usability guide from? Using my Mac was a much more elegant affair and I'm not running the latest and greatest yet!
Finally, discovering my scanner is compatible with Vista is frankly, not amusing.
17 March 2008
Oh Vista, oh no!
I bought a new laptop for a couple of reasons... one, they're quite cheap right now; two they're running Windows Vista. The laptop is a Toshiba Equium (Athlon 64 X2) with an ATI graphics card. It took several reboots before it was ready to use (I thought one feature Microsoft tried to get right on XP was the number of required reboots - didn't succeed with XP, and so it would seem, not Vista either).
Once everything was up an running I dumped Symantec's virus software and tried AVG from Grisoft - at some point the system BSOD. Oh dear! Several updates and a few crashes later... I seem to have a stable system. I hope. Disappointing! Really Microsoft, is this the BEST you can do? "Oh it's Toshiba's fault", they might say.
My Apple MacBook was far easier to set up - with less reboots and no crashing!
Once everything was up an running I dumped Symantec's virus software and tried AVG from Grisoft - at some point the system BSOD. Oh dear! Several updates and a few crashes later... I seem to have a stable system. I hope. Disappointing! Really Microsoft, is this the BEST you can do? "Oh it's Toshiba's fault", they might say.
My Apple MacBook was far easier to set up - with less reboots and no crashing!
24 December 2007
Parallels and MSVCR80.DLL
I'm toying around with Parallels on my Mac. I'd like to try VMWare Fusion but no key (probably on my mail elsewhere). As an experiment, I tried my Windows version of Melody Mine and found it doesn't work!
Turns out it's a MSVCR80.DLL dependancy. And a bug in my manifest file supplied with Melody Mine - it refers to V9 of the runtime (as I've got VS 2008 Express). Remove the reference, it works fine.
Turns out it's a MSVCR80.DLL dependancy. And a bug in my manifest file supplied with Melody Mine - it refers to V9 of the runtime (as I've got VS 2008 Express). Remove the reference, it works fine.
VSTi and AU
Last time I tried to create a VST host, then bolt Melody Mine on the front of it... well, it didn't really work. That may have been due to using Delphi to create everything (Delphi doesn't do so well with floating point exceptions). Now that I'm using C++ with wxWidgets, maybe it's time to try again.
Meanwhile, playing around with Audio Units on my MacBook seems so much easier that VST + ASIO on Windows! I've modified my keys application to use the Apple Synthesiser, so I may try the same with Melody Mine (which uses Port MIDI - this requires an external synthesiser to make any sounds). That may mean I drop PortMIDI and use my own classes to talk directly to the MIDI API on Windows and AU on MAC.
Meanwhile, playing around with Audio Units on my MacBook seems so much easier that VST + ASIO on Windows! I've modified my keys application to use the Apple Synthesiser, so I may try the same with Melody Mine (which uses Port MIDI - this requires an external synthesiser to make any sounds). That may mean I drop PortMIDI and use my own classes to talk directly to the MIDI API on Windows and AU on MAC.
11 December 2007
Facelift
A facelift for Melody Mine - replaced the song grid with a custom grid of my own. Editing with it is much easier.
02 December 2007
Exporting MIDI
Ported the Windows only code that writes out MIDI to a cross platform version for the Mac. Seems to work on the PC.
Switched to PortMIDI
I switched my midi output to PortMIDI - got it working on the PC and fixed an annoying bug. Took a while to get past build issues on the Mac but got that working too, though the setup is not as simple as the PC.
19 November 2007
Melody Mine now has Lua scripting...
Here's a short Lua script that truncates notes in a pattern in my MIDI editor, Melody Mine.
function TruncateDuration(duration)
local i, index, note, dur
local pattern = GetCurrentPattern()
local count = GetNoteCount(pattern)
for i = 0, count - 1 do
note = GetNote(pattern, i)
dur = GetNoteDuration(note)
if dur > duration then
dur = duration
end
SetNoteDuration(note, dur)
end
end
TruncateDuration(24)
function TruncateDuration(duration)
local i, index, note, dur
local pattern = GetCurrentPattern()
local count = GetNoteCount(pattern)
for i = 0, count - 1 do
note = GetNote(pattern, i)
dur = GetNoteDuration(note)
if dur > duration then
dur = duration
end
SetNoteDuration(note, dur)
end
end
TruncateDuration(24)
03 November 2007
Melody Mine
It's getting there... the PC version can play music and export to MIDI files. The Mac version won't have that for a while.
31 October 2007
29 October 2007
Melody Mine V0.52
The new Melody Mine...
(all the images here are © 2007 Pete Goodwin)
Yet another version of my music sequencing tool - I'm still working on it.
I've gone back to MIDI output (file and device) as that's the easiest way to get it to work without diving into the murky world of VST hosting.
The pattern editor is like a piano roll but with only seven notes, instead of the usual twelve. Why seven and not twelve? Well, written music uses seven notes from a scale (quoted at the start), so why shouldn't a pianoroll?
(all the images here are © 2007 Pete Goodwin)
Yet another version of my music sequencing tool - I'm still working on it.
I've gone back to MIDI output (file and device) as that's the easiest way to get it to work without diving into the murky world of VST hosting.
The pattern editor is like a piano roll but with only seven notes, instead of the usual twelve. Why seven and not twelve? Well, written music uses seven notes from a scale (quoted at the start), so why shouldn't a pianoroll?
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