Re: OT: Laptops?

John,
The slide shows were great -- nice work. And a wonderful tribute to
your dad. What was the software you used for that? Or was it your
own work, with no program to build from?
Either way, great job. I'm in search of a pkg that can help me sync
pics to music for a slide show, but I need to be able to edit and
blend music, and coordinate the pics very closely to specific hits
within the music. In the past I've simply run the show live from
PowerPoint, which has gotten pretty hairy (like actually wrote out
charts to be sure I make all the right hits where they were intended
to be). I need to find womething I can record and have on a DVD.
I'm going to check out Photodex ProShow. Ever hear of it?

Later,

PaulLundquist
FastLundy

On Aug 24, 11:18 pm, "John P."
<JohnP_Da_Evil_...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<fastlu...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
I just couldn't ever do all that with a laptop.
No? You couldn't? DUH! ;-)

Well, I suppose I could, but I'd need to have a significantly larger lap!
:-D

That does sound like a slammin' set-up though. I'm real curious
now... why all the hd space? What kinds of heavy graphics do you do
that require those six fans? What are the tasks you are running that
use up the three monitors? I'm very interested, honestly. I know a
few people that run three monitors (and I know Bill Gates does too) --
they generally keep Outlook open on the left screen as sort of a
running to-do list, do their primary work on the center, and keep the
right one for supporting docs/tasks that feed into the center. There
have certainly been times where that would serve me well. But tell me
more about the work you're doing with graphics -- are you a designer?
Just curious.

Nope. Not a designer. I just do things ... make up sale flyers, coupons,
raffle tickets, edit photos, putz around a little with 3D animation, do some
slideshows, a little video editing.... and, on rare occasions, I've messed
with making things for video games. For example, I made a car for GTA, and
tweaked some others. I was working on a map for America's Army... it's
nearly done, but I got busy with other things and have pretty much left it
unfinished.

I do a lot of different things, mostly because I want or need to get
something done. On work related stuff, I *could* probably go through a lot
of corporate BS and have it done for me, but I'd need to know what I needed
a year in advance. So, over the years, I've just figured out how to do
things for myself. I usually buy a book or two to get me started, then I
pick everything else up by either experimenting, or by reading forums or
newsgroups.

My first real effort on a video/slideshow was when my Dad died in '03. My
Mom really missed seeing and hearing him. At first I made her a CD using
clips from a pile of old reel-to-reel audio tapes he had made over the
years. Then I decided to put it to a picture slideshow. ... but then I
decided that since what he was saying didn't match the pictures, it looked
wrong, so I just did the pictures to music. Then I decided to do the same
thing using little video clips... and during that project decided to throw
in some animation, and then some 3D animation.

Here's the first picture slideshow videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc2PmyHzmjI

Here's the video clips/animation/3D animation videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZgn-cs3QFo

Here's my first effort at intentionally filming a specific scene, using two
different camerashttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEuYff5NEqM

Let's see... what where your other questions...

6 fans... lots of layers and filters in Photoshop some times, video
rendering can heat things up, rendering 3D anything... and, on the rare
occasion when I play a video game, plus overclocking the CPU, video cards
and memory (not all the time, just when the situation warrants). Also, have
4 HD's in your case helps heat things up pretty well too. I plan to make a
scratch built case where the MOBO and HD's are each in their own 'case.

3 Monitors... almost only all lit up when I'm doing video editing. I have
two 19's side by side on my desk, and a 17 up above. Generally, my video
editing app is spread across the two 19's, while the 17 handles incoming -
such as snagging clips from video tape. On occasion, I have 3 photo, video
or sound apps (or some combination of the three) open, one on each monitor,
and I can drag and drop stuff from one to the other.

If I want to monitor something on TV (which I rarely watch), I'll have a TV
display on the 17 while I'm working on the 19's.

HD space... because I can :-)

Actually, it's more that I keep different things on different drives or
partitions.

The main drive has the OS on one partition, with nothing else. The other
partition on that drive is for installed apps.

The second drive is just data files - my stuff - docs, spreadsheets, photos,
videos, music. This drive gets backed up to the external drive daily (or,
every time I use the system would be more accurate). Then, about once per
week, I also write that entire drive to DVD, and it gets automatically
cataloged so I can search through all my archived files to find something I
did years ago (usually).

The third drive, I guess you'd call it a scratch drive. It has the windows
paging file and scratch area for Photoshop, any app that wants a space for
temp files...

The fourth drive has 4 partitions with a clean install of XP on each, that I
use for Beta testing. I have an image file so I can trash them after
something has been installed and get them back to a clean OS.

Multiple DVD drives are mostly so I can leave a data CD/DVD in a drive (like
Street Atlas needs the data DVD to run, so I just leave it there), or, on
occasion, I can burn multiple CD's/DVD's at once.

It's all powered by an Ultra X-Connect 500 watt power supply. It's modular,
so I can pick which cables I want or need, plug them in (the PS has room to
plug in 6 cables, or something... maybe 5), to make it easier for me to get
power everywhere I need it, and improve airflow (I also switched all my IDE
ribbon cables to round cables for the same reason).

Next up... a custom, scratch built case, and water cooling.

It's just kind of a Frankenstein (I don't care much how it looks) that I've
pieced together over the years and it just keeps going. I don't think I'd
ever decide I needed a new system and go out and try to put something like
this together all at once.

I used to do this with cars. I guess I just decided I like hot rodding
computers better. No grease under your fingernails. :-D


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