Tag: graphics

New Computer

After the incident with the cat peeing on my Surface, and wrestling with a used replacement Surface, I wanted a new computer for my work on books (writing, editing, formatting, creating covers, creating advertisements, etc). The computers I was working on were over three years old, and I could see their end-of-life coming soon.

So, confronted with a $500 off sale on out-of-box Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, we bought it. After a day of playing with it, I have a few observations:

  • Out of the box, it’s heavy. The specs said 4 lbs, but they forgot to mention the weight of the power brick, which is a metal power adaptor that, if thrown, could kill someone. It is apparently lighter than its direct competitors (mid-level suitable for most graphics tasks).
  • It has one TB storage and an i7 processor. And a graphics card. So it’s set up for the graphics I do (designing book covers and advertisements). I might push my knowledge base further and see what else these graphics are good for (within my meager ability).
  • The screen has visually stunning clarity. The book covers my niece designed for me positively glow on it. I’m hoping this clarity reduces eyestrain.
  • It’s fast. See also i7 processor. (I suppose I could have gotten the i9 model, but it’s too expensive and I don’t know if my skill level deserves that power).
  • It doesn’t have a touchscreen. Why would it? It’s not a tablet like my Microsoft Surface was. To be honest, I never used my Surface as a tablet. But I used the touchscreen when the Surface got one of its occasional glitches.

So far, so good. No weird glitches (as I have suffered with a few times on the Surface.) Working smoothly. Looks great.

Time for me to go play with it some more.

Waiting for my new computer

I have a computer — a five-year-old MacBook which has served me well, as long as I didn’t care about having more than 230 MB of storage, a separate video card, and an OS that occasionally forgets to perform the “click” part of “point and click” six times a day and has to be restarted. Obviously I mind, so I’m getting a new computer.

I’m getting a new computer with some interesting specs:

  • 7th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Quad Core 
  • Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
  • 16GB, 2400MHz, DDR4
  • 128GB Solid State Drive (Boot) + 1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive (Storage)
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5
I don’t really know what any of this means, except that the hard drive has a separate boot disk and the main drive is over 4x bigger than what I have, and that it’s a gaming computer.
I’m a writer. Why do I need a gaming computer?
The simple explanation is that I’m using a program called Sketchup, available free in its most basic form on the web, to render maps for places I write about. For example, three of my books take place on the ecocollective (a collective, but not communal, living arrangement) called Barn Swallows’ Dance (It doesn’t really exist, but if I did, I’d probably live there). I wanted a map of the place because I have at best shaky visual memory, which I believe I’ve said before. So I put together a layout of a map of Barn Swallows’ Dance on Sketchup using already created components, not realizing they were three-dimensional. They were!
That gave me lots of potential, but lots of frusrtration, because my computer was much too slow to act on the objects in my map. I thought they were at ground level, but in three dimensions, they were floating in the air! And I would adjust them according to what I saw on the screen, but there was a delay, so the objects went from floating in the air to buried in the ground, and my computer wouldn’t let me find the down-to-earth mode. It was like a very slow-motion game of whack-a-mole.
That was two years ago, and I’ve long gone past writing those books, although I am sending Mythos (the first) to my beta-readers soon. (Note: Do you want to be a beta-reader? Please email me at: lleach  (it’s a link) if so.)  I still would like to fix that project, because what’s there is intensely cool.
I also have a new project that goes along with the book-in-waiting Whose Hearts are Mountains, which is currently last in the writing queue. It also takes place at an ecocollective, one built largely underground in the desert. The housing is based on a conceptual idea (and I will have to find and credit the architect involved.). The tube habitats he drew up have not been created in 3-dimensions, so I would have to do that myself, probably in pieces. No, I’ve never created my own piece before, but it’s another skill to learn just for myself.
I wish all the things I learned were useful to others — teaching, of course, is. Writing — the journey is still out. Disaster mental health — very useful to me and to my college for accreditation, but I would also have to take a master’s in counseling or social work to become certified in disaster mental health. (No, I am not doing that) I might be useful in consulting with the city or county, but I’ve had a history of not being taken seriously by the guys with trucks that do the planning. If I could get the Ministerial Alliance to quit quibbling over butts in pews long enough to see that they need to mobilize so we could certify disaster case managers (which I am qualified to do)… sorry for the divergence. It’s a sore point. 
Anyway — odd little hobbies like my gardens (and trying to get rare seeds to grow), fishing, and the Sketchup design are things I do for myself. I push myself to get more competent (I don’t seem to be able to do things without that drive to improve unless I’m super-depressed) Hobbies are flow activities; they’re things I lose myself in and it’s like meditation, only with a satisfying level of challenge. I’m hoping Sketchup rendering becomes another flow activity for me.

And I hope that computer will help.