Finally A Place for That Stuff

Last week as I sat down to write this post, I had all this stuff that I was going to share about technology and getting the right stuff and getting rid of the old stuff and things that work nicely together. I was two or three pages into it and realized it sounded like a really boring lecture. Yeah. So here I am trying this again.

What started it was me trying to setup one of my previous desktop computers for someone to use to test out something. I, fortunately, wasn’t very far into the process when it just quit on me. Shut off. I spent enough time trying to figure out what the problem might be, as it looked like a problem I had experienced a couple of years ago, before I finally gave up. It was done working and I didn’t have the patience for going through all the possible swap out of things that I could with an even older desktop computer. So, I delivered the news to the intended recipient and then had to figure out what to do with the computer.

This was not the only piece of electronics equipment that I had that I needed to do something with. As noted, I had an even older desktop computer and a few other items that were well past their use by date. I’d been collecting them because I was going to try to do something responsible with them, like donate them to a makers group or a charity or something. I have never gotten in touch with the makers group and I am guessing, like many of the charities, they either aren’t open or aren’t taking in donations at the moment because they don’t have someone available to process them. What to do.

As it turns out my local big box electronics store does take in electronics for recycling. They have guidelines on their website for how much they take in general, but each store has their own rules. I decided to put all the electronics stuff I was ready to part with in the car and see what they would take. As it turns out, the store I went to doesn’t have a limit on the number of items per household per day. They took it all. And I was over-joyed. Most of what I dropped off had been sitting in the floor of my coat closet for well over a year and in most cases several years. I can’t even tell you how good it felt to have that taken care of. It was huge weight off my shoulders because I no longer had to find the ‘responsible’ thing to do with it all. And, of course, as soon as I got home, I found a couple of other items that I could have taken. I guess I’ll be making another trip. I don’t think I will let it stack up for as long this time.

Another cool bit of computer technology stuff has to do with software. I think I shared that I finally figured out the advantages of cloud saving for things like the Adobe products, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fresco and so on. It was really cool to be able to go from my iPad to my desktop with a piece of digital art I was working on. Well, turns out there is some Microsoft stuff that does that sort of thing too and it’s just as cool. That’s the Office 365 subscription. I might have mentioned it in a previous post.

I was a bit reluctant to subscribe to the Office 365 for quite a while. For a number of reasons. Some practical and some just blind stubbornness. Ok, and how many other places, besides your hard drive do you want your files to be. Or maybe this is just old thinking. Anyway. I was not quick to embrace the whole concept. With my newest computer, which is now running Windows 10 like everything else, when I was setting it up I needed to choose between an open-source office suite and MS Office. I opted for the MS Office product. But, instead of purchasing the ‘box’ copy I went with the subscription. Partly because I could have it on everyone of my Windows 10 computers, and even on my iPad. It happens to come with some cloud storage and synching as well. Which I admit, I didn’t use at first.

One of the things in the Office 365 suite is something called One Note. I have always rolled my eyes at this piece of software. My first experience with it was some new hire at the day job, who I think was straight out of college, wanting it on his pc and we had to find a copy of it. Yes, you did just here my eyes roll. I have a friend who is an enthusiastic user of One Note, or I’m pretty sure he is. Anyway, I’ve heard about it, but I hadn’t really embraced it, or looked at it for that matter. Until my manager suggested we might use it for keeping some notes on a project we/I am working on. And then I came across some information in a course I was taking that I wanted to make some notes of, but I didn’t really want to write it down and Notepad just seemed messy. So, I opened up One Note. Hey, I need to figure out how to use it for work, so I’ll start here. I started finding it helpful, but I didn’t grasp its true usefulness until this last week when I wanted to make notes for things for my day. I had made my bed and had all these thoughts of what I wanted to do, things I should check, stuff I needed to keep in mind for work, and I wanted to write them down so I wouldn’t forget them when I got sidetracked by whatever. I grabbed my Surface, opened up One Note, started a new section and a new page and made my notes. I went on about getting ready for the day and when I got to my office, turned on my personal computer, as well as my work computer, there were my notes, on my personal computer, ready for me for the day. Now, finally, this stuff is getting useful. Really useful.

Yes. I maybe a little late to the party on some of this. There are reasons. I’m working on it.

Just because I am a little slow in embracing our cloud computing overlords doesn’t mean I don’t find some of the cutting-edge stuff really cool and exciting. I do. I went to school to study VR long before it was ready for prime time.

A few years ago, I was playing more video games than I really have time for now. And I was looking for something interesting. I was at the game store, working with a salesperson and asked about a game called ‘No Man’s Sky’. He didn’t really think I would like it. So, I didn’t get it. Now at the time, one of the things I had read about it was that it had a bunch of planets to explore and that they were ‘procedurally generated’. The short, not entirely accurate explanation for that is that there is some basic code that the program is given and from that it creates the planets and everything on them on its own. A programmer doesn’t have to design and code every single planet and everything on it.

Fast forward to the recent holidays and my reading holiday vacation. I picked up a book that looked interesting called ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’. In the book they happen to mention the game ‘No Man’s Sky’ and the procedurally generated worlds. And this made me want to revisit playing the game. After some dithering about the cost and would I play it, I found a solution and got the game. I like it.

It is not a fast-paced game, and unlike a lot of games, it doesn’t have a combat focus. It focuses on exploration and crafting for trading or to improve your base and ship. It is easy to get caught up in trying to gather all the resources you need to make the next thing you need. And it is really easy to get lost in exploring a planet and fill up your backpack to capacity before you can get back to your base or ship to make use of the resources you’ve gathered. There is definitely some engineering and planning that goes on as you decide what you need and how to get it built. And then there is the space exploration. Which I haven’t done much of yet. At least not on my own. It seems I still need to upgrade a few things before I’ll want to do that. I’m not far into playing. I think over three weeks I’ve spent about eight hours. Which while it sounds like a lot of time, I know people that play other games for that long in two days easily. I’m looking forward to getting to spend more time exploring the game. I have learned to be a bit more discerning when someone is telling me I won’t like something.

Lest you think all my time has been taken up lately in the computer realm, I have an update on the sanded gesso on paper trial. I first decided to try it on watercolor paper and that was not a really good choice. I didn’t like the dips that the watercolor paper has. It made it difficult to get a smooth layer of color. So, I decided to try it on some Bristol. It’s a smooth paper to begin with so no dips. The only caveat is that I don’t have a small pad of the Bristol. I thought I did. My solution was to take a sheet from the large pad I have and cut it down to size. Then, I made sure to tape the entire perimeter of the paper down before I started the gesso process. I still had a little buckling initially, but it took very little to flatten it back out.

Now as far as testing it out. I haven’t gotten back to that. I wasn’t enjoying my original test piece. For a few reasons I suspect. I have what I think will be a better subject in mind so, I hope to get something going on that soon to see how I like it. Now that I’m not fighting the watercolor dips.

There have been some really big changes to Blender recently. All of them sound like they are good things. And they may not be impactful to the stuff I do in Blender yet. However, listening to the reports of them, I feel like I have completely fallen behind again. As a result, though I have a few things to work on in Blender, I haven’t gotten back to them. Of course, with all the other studies, and exploring ‘No Man’s Sky’ I’m struggling for time right now. Hopefully soon.

I think that is all for the moment. Your coffee is probably cold or needs a refill at this point. I do have more to share. I’ll save it for the next post. And maybe I won’t take so long in between posts this time. I’m staying busy, though, I’m not sure how important that busy is. But as my grandfather used to say, ‘it keeps me out of mean-ness’ so at least there is that.