Types of pencils used to draw a map

[markem]

Have you thought about getting one of those Windows tablets like on TV? You can draw directly to that display also and they only cost around $1,000.00.

Restoration of my laptop: Last night I had restored (to an external disk drive) my "Documents and Settnigs". I did this because I have no idea what the hacker did to everything so I have to check everything before moving it to my actual "Documents and Settings" folder. So I had gotten through a lot of it but had come upon one of the really large folders with thousands of icons in it. I began the actual restore (to my new account) and it said it would take six hours to restore all of the files. So I went to bed (around 9:30pm). At 11:41pm my wife woke me up to tell me the power was off. At first I was like "NO!" because, as I think I've said before, I can't pay any of our bills until I get the system back up and running. I use RoboForm to store passwords and each website (electricity, gas, water, phone, etc...) has a 16 digit randomized password. So I really need to get the system back up so I can go pay our bills BEFORE they turn things off!. Anyway, it was the entire neighborhood was without power. Power comes back on - the restored files are corrupted. So now I get to re-delete them and restore them again. The initial restore (on the external hard drive) is also corrupted - and can not be deleted. Thanks power company! So now I'm having to run CHKDSK on the 2TB disk drive to get it to reset the files so I can delete them, restore them again, and begin the copying again. To do a full CHKDSK on a 2TB disk drive takes about a week. If you stop CHKDSK in the middle of the phases you can completely corrupt your hard drive. However, if you shut your system down in the middle of running CHKDSK - then CHKDSK properly shuts down and your hard drive is not corrupted. So when I get home tonight I'll be shutting down the system and crossing my fingers hoping it doesn't corrupt the hard drive. I really want my system back. :-/

[CaptainJohnHawk]

I have thought about those, the main reason I am obsessed with Wacom is because of their pen, and how many levels of pressure it has. I will admit I haven't look at the pens on the Windows tablets yet though, maybe the compare.

That sounds like a mess....sorry that happened, but glad you can still recover your data. I use a random key generator for passwords as well, but I also write them down just in case. Well, let the week long countdown commence. Also once you get it back up, consider some sort of online backup system, like Google Drive.
I had a 1TB external drive, that would copy 99% of files and forget about the last bit. So it essentially filled itself with corrupted data, and only after I added about 400gb's did I notice what was happening....Never buy off-brand electronics.

[Midgardsormr]

Wacom also makes a Windows version of the Cintiq tablet, but it doesn't have the ability to plug it into another computer as a second monitor. I've got a friend who has the Android version, and he likes it a lot.

[CaptainJohnHawk]

I just have to suck it up and buy the thing. I know I am going to love it once I own it.
At my old job we had a team of seven graphics guys who all had their own Cintiq Companion, with the largest screen they sell.
I would hang out in that room as much as I could lol.

[markem]

I'd do that also. At NASA sometimes I would hang around where the engineers had these 20ft long Epson printers. I dreamed of making maps and dungeon layouts and using it to print them out. (Drooling now..... :-P) I once bought an old HP pen plotter but I could never get it to talk to my lapop. I was using a USB to Serial Port cable. I one time got it to work and then one of my cats decided the cable was something to play with and yanked it out. Never worked after that so I sold it to an engineer who was going to take it completely apart and replace a lot of it. I always wanted to walk in to a game and put down an entire building (or maybe put the printout on cardstock and lay out the dungeon as they went through it. :-)

On backups - get the Seagate 2TB disk drives and then some backup software (I use 2 Bright Sparks' SyncBackSE). Set it so it backs things up to individual files (and not one large file). The software will automatically zip each file and then move it over to the backup disk drive. Once your drive is backed up change it so it only backs up files that change. This will cut down on how long it takes for the program to do the backup. The only problem is - individual files. Instead of it allowing you to backup folders - the individual files are good because you only need to unarchive what you need to restore. But it also means lots of small files. There is also the built-in Microsoft backup software. This comes with every system and it is just like WinZIP on how it backs things up. That is to say - a single archive file with the individual files inside of the archive. You are limited on restorations. Usually the entire thing has to be restored.

This is why I started doing backups by hand. I can then decide if I want to do a folder, a file, or the entire hard drive. Also, 7zip is faster than WinZIP and can produce smaller files.

[CaptainJohnHawk]

I could only imagine the quality of those printers. I would print human sized grid maps, that you could LARP play some D&D on.
The possibilities are endless!

[markem]

At NASA we used to be sent to SIGGRAPH every year. One year we went to SIGGRAPH and they were providing free usage of printers that created posters up to images put on billboards. The main artist of our group saw it, just about flew back to the hotel room, and got his jump drive and put pictures he was working on - onto his jump drive. He then ran back and printed five copies of his work. I asked him why so many? His response - "So I can sell them!". I felt that was kind of an abuse of why they were letting people print copies of their work. I never knew what happened to those pictures. I guess he sold them - but I never asked. Someone had done a whale & dolphin image. Very nice. Non-smudge inks too.

[CaptainJohnHawk]

I guess when you see the opportunity for profit. Yeah our school selected a few of us each year to go to Siggraph each year. That place is a ton of fun.
I don't have a lot of work I would blow up to be that large. I do have some photography that would like nice at that scale though.
That is super awesome though

[markem]

I know it begins to sound a bit far fetched - but I am/was an operatic singer. I did NOT sing at the opera. Just that my voice is/was good enough to do opera. At SIGGRAPH I sang twice. Once to an otopus creature that reacted to song. Second to some french men who had a keyboard that would begin playing whatever you sang. I was asked to stop with the frenchmen by security because no one else could talk in the same vicinity (I am that loud). I have to admit that ever since my mom passed away back on 12/5/2014 (last December) I just don't feel like singing or talking. Typing - yeah - still talking that way. But I don't even speak much anymore. I think I'm still very depressed over her passing and the flare-up of my Phlebitis recently hasn't helped at all. Still - your icon makes me smile when I look at it. The grinning skull is just funny. Oh well - time to go home. I'm leaving early today. Been coming to work and staying late the whole week (then home to work on my computer until midnight or 1:00am). Tonight I'm hoping to have a good night's sleep.

I have only sung in public at a convention called RevelCon (Relaxing, Enjoyable, Visually Appealing, Lively Convention). I actually got a standing ovation one year for singing Danny Boy. But usually I just sing in my car while I am driving or at home when I can. (My wife doesn't like me to sing because things vibrate when I do and she has ear problems so it hurts her when I do.) Anyway - have to leave. If I can get my computer up and going I'll post then. :-) Later!

[markem]

Well - finally got my system up and running and then I found the Dell Resource disk (drivers and Utilities). I installed the software that would install the drivers and stuff. The only reason I did this was because the sound card wasn't playing. Anyway, everthing seemed to go ok and I finished installing everything up to Microsoft Office and Visio. Then, when I rebooted the next time the system would not shut down. It just sat there. So I powered the system down, waited 20 seconds, and powered it back up. No taskbar! No icons! I tried several thing all to no avail. So I did the old Control-Alt-Delete combo and Task Manager came up. So I tried shutting down again. No go. Won't shut down. Power off - power on. Safe Mode reboot. Everything works great. This was not a good thing though because it meant the system had something installed that had corrupted how it displayed things. So - tried various things but nothing helped. However, I went into regedit and was looking around and came across the System Restore information. I went "Well - why not?" So you can't run System Restore from the Task Manager. But you CAN run the cmd.exe program (DOS window command line). THEN I could run the System Restore program. I tried going back one step (Visio install). Reboot - no good. Backed up to the MS Office install. Reboot - nope. Backup to the Dell Resource install. Reboot - YEAH! Killed the Dell Install program that popped up. Everything is ok again. So now I just need to delete the MS Office stuff, Visio Stuff, and Dell Stuff (System Restore leaves the folders laying around but the software is gone). Then re-install MS Office, Visio, and whatever else I had installed between the Dell Resource software and Visio. Then I have to install CC3, CC3+, Fantasy Grounds, D20, and my other programs, the thousands of icons and other images I backed up - and I am through.

Saturday I started at 7:30am and went untilo 3:30am Sunday. Something like twenty hours installing software and restoring things. But this morning was much more important. If the System Restore didn't work I would have had to start completely over again.

Probably another day or two before I can post some maps but at least I'm making progress. Heh. Once through I have to do another complete backup. So I installed SyncbackSE again. I can have it working on that in the background while I do other things. :-)