Mog and Chips

It doesn’t work ¬_¬

Asus’ POST is giving me beeeep-beep-beep-beep, which means the video card isn’t being detected. So I struggle with Asus’s goddamn stupid PCI-E clasp thingy to get the thing out, put it back in, making sure it’s in all the way etc, still nothing.

What’s more, the fan’s working. So it must be connected properly. The only thing I can think of is that;

Despite having a 500W PSU, it’s not getting the right ampage (amperage?), which I’ve heard a few people with the same problems with different cards getting.

Or it’s GDDR3, and my mobo doesn’t like it. Which would be annoying, because I thought you only needed to match the type of slot, and it says nowhere on MicroDirect that the mobo can’t use GDDR3graphics memory, unless it needs to be a GDDR3 mobo (RAM and whatnot) in general, in which case I’ve spent £90 for a card I can’t use.

Luckily I have onboard grap- DENIED! I’ve never seen a monitor connector thingy like that in my life, and so I don’t have the means to connect it to my monitor, and I can hear (POST bleeping again) that it’s switching to onboard when it can’t find the PCI-E slot. And my old card is AGP, which my new mobo doesn’t have.

Also I have chocolate. But only because I’m in a very bad mood, and if anyone denies me chocolate heads will roll, and whoever’s head it is will be responsible for cleaning the carpet afterwards.

In other news, I’ve just discovered that XSI has a rather convienient quick-skin subsurface scattering setup, which is so very handy, and slightly fun. (Human skin is slightly transparent, with several layers making its colour, and subsurface emulates this rather than having just the one opaque skin-coloured layer)

I had a massive demoralization halfway through the morning because of watching disney songs on youtube (shush, I wanted dramatics =P) and seeing everyone complaining about the “cheap shit empty CGI” because my CGI project is going rather badly. I used to want to strive for realistic people and stuff, but a certain director (coughZemekiscough) has apparently been saying “realistic CGI (and motion capture, incidentally) is the ONLY way forward!” which pisses me off enough to turn me away from it.

But cartoony CGI (Like the Incredibles, which I probably like most out of all the CGI films I’ve seen) isn’t my style. It’s nice, but I find it difficult to do because it doesn’t come naturally enough to me.

But then I stumbled across some game FMVs, and things like Shadow Hearts (except when the character’s faces mutate when they cry O.o) and Kingdom Hearts seem suffiently stylised to keep them out of the “Uncanny Valley”, yet aren’t ‘cartoony’ as such.

The Uncanny Valley is when something artificial (originally the term was for robots, but now it’s used for digital imagery too) is so close to being human we notice what’s wrong with it, and we’re put off. Often people describe them as ‘corpselike’ (and corpses, looking human but obviously not live humans, share this uncanny valley. Moreso if they move. Which is why zombie girls happen in hollywood horror movies more than big slimeball things)

Also, for some reason I can’t post on my other comp (when it wasn’t taken apart to be upgraded); it gives me “Do you want to edit this post?” then anything results in returning to a blank “Write Post” page. I have a feeling it’s NoScript I’ve got on that comp, but I’ve enabled wordpress and X111?

edit : Helixy’s blog just reminded me - what’s with underwear sites having bras as “small, medium, large”? What the hell? They’re called cup sizes, and they’re not comfortable/flattering when they’re wrong. So you’re stuck if you’re little and large at the same time. And it’s particularly annoying when you see something, go “OMG! It’s AMAZING!” and when you take a look, it’s only in s, m, l.

Oh, and the shop I work in doesn’t do my size either, which makes my staff discount practically worthless because most of the general clothes I don’t like or are too expensive after discount anyway. Or fall apart in 2 weeks.

Edit: Ok, scrap that. I found the 6-pin power connector and connected it. It’s now being detected (Ie not bleeping) but I’m not getting a signal, and I’m worried I wired it up wrong and it’ll blow my card up. =P

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