Spunky_Girl's site

Windows 7 not able to edit audio files?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:35:46 +0000

So I was organizing some new music I had "acquired" and got to some audio files that Windows 7 refused to modify the properties of. It kept giving me the following error code.

Error 8x8007000D: The data is invalid

So I google'd this and found nothing but one page regarding the error where someone was using Linux and Windows 7 on one system and had modified the properties of some audio files through Linux and then tried to do so using Windows 7 and received the same error.

I assume this is basically what happened to my audio files, only I don't have Linux. So the files must've been tampered with on a Linux system before I "acquired" them.

Now for my question. Is there any way to fix it? :)

My desktop computer

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:00:11 +0000

It's been a while since I posted anything regarding my computer. It's almost totally different than what it was in my last post. I just thought I would post an update. I'm too lazy to do any linking. You can just look it all up on Newegg or wherever.

Case: HAF 932 Advanced Blue Edition
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth 990FX
CPU: AMD FX-8150
CPU Cooler: Corsair H50
RAM: 8GB Corsair Dominator (4 x 2GB) DDR3 1333
Video Card 1: Sapphire Vapor-X 6870 1GB/256bit
Video Card 2: Sapphire 6870 1GB/256bit
PSU: Kingwin Lazer LZ-1000 Modular
NIC: D-Link DWA-556
Optical: Plextor PX-880SA-26
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium
Main Drive: Patriot PS-100 64GB SSD
Secondary Drive 1: WD Caviar Black 640GB SATA II 7200RPM
Secondary Drive 2: (an old laptop HDD) 320GB 5400RPM
External Storage: WD MyBook 3.0 1TB

I benchmarked this on 3DMark '11 and got just over a 7100. The second 6870 bumped this score up from about 5300 if I remember right.

The FX-8150 only excels at multitasking and games which use more than one core. My next update to the system will most likely be a bunch of 120mm fans to replace the side and top 230mm fans (4 120s on the side and 2 on the top) for better air flow (gonna replace with multiples of the SilenX 74cfm/15dBA fan :D). Right now the sound card blocks half of the cooling fan on the second video card and my network adapter blocks a quarter of the fan on the primary video card. Bad :\ Asus didn't do a very good layout with the PCI/PCIe slots on the Sabertooth.

Cheap $400 server? I could use some help/advice

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 06:30:46 +0000

I was looking into building a "server" that is extremely light on the power bill (adding no more than like $5 a month), where my beast adds around $20 a month if I leave it on 24/7. I just plan on using it to host a game or two on BYOND, and maybe something else like a Minecraft server, and most likely a bunch of other data.

I want to put Linux on it, of course, except I will need some help getting that done from the ground up, as well as getting BYOND set up on it.

It needs to be very-low-energy-cost and energy-efficient

As for the setup, I figured I would hardwire it to my router at home so I could access any data on it through my desktop and laptop wirelessly. Is there a way to run commands on it using my desktop/laptop so I can tell it to shut down a game, bring a game up, etc?

And as for the actual hardware, I compiled a list of the parts I would order. I already have a case I can put them in, along with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116399
Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138332
RAM - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226095
HDD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145299 (x2 for RAID-1)
Video Card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127591 (to free up CPU usage)
PSU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/ Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182066 (low wattage, high efficiency)
It all comes to $407.93 (not including shipping). Any suggestions for better/cheaper parts? Anyone else notice how Hard Drive prices are completely ridiculous right now? I originally was just gonna buy a couple cheap 80GB HDDs for, I was hoping, around $30 or less, but even those are ~$80! Holy crap!

I'm new to Linux and the whole server thing, and I probably shouldn't be doing this without someone who does know what they are doing, but I figured I'd give it a try if it all looks promising.

If you have any questions to help you to help me, please ask. Obviously it would probably be cheaper to buy an old used server from somewhere like TigerDirect, Craig's List, or even EBay, but I'd like to build it from scratch myself. I want the whole experience. I'm using this build as sort of an "entry level" step I guess. Hey, I might even offer to host other peoples' games for them here on BYOND :D

SSD vs HDD write/read speeds

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:06:28 +0000

With the HDD technology continuously pushing the capacity of hard drives (I saw a 3TB HDD on Newegg for almost $500 x.x), have they even improved their write/read speeds? And what ARE their write/read speeds specifically anyways? Latency doesn't tell me much, unless you can do some math with it to figure out the actual write/read speeds of the drive. Could someone give me the write/read speeds of 5400RPM, 7200RPM, and 10000RPM HDDs on the market right now?

With SSDs nowadays pushing past 500MB/s read speed (this drive in particular peaked my interest), is there anything better at a similar or cheaper price in the HDD or SSD market?

Laptop tech VS Desktop tech

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 06:27:52 +0000

This is building off of here.

Laptops have their circumstantial uses over desktops...
- Portable
- Battery-powered
That's just about it...

Desktops are better in every other way...

This guy thinks an NVidia 525M is better than a 6970. This guy thinks that all desktop PSUs suck because he got a couple duds that crapped out on him and laptop batteries are superior. This guy's never heard of a UPS/Surge Protector before. This guy WISHES laptop batteries were $20. This guy thinks you need more than 2 plugs to power a standard rig (1 for the tower; 1 for the monitor). This guy thinks you need more than stock cooling for a standard rig. This guy thinks Crysis (a 3 year old game) is still a good benchmarking standard.

This guy... lol... Shit happens, but this guys is just a lot of shit (and shitty info).

So my laptop kicked the bucket...

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:22:55 +0000

My HP Touchsmart tm2t laptop decided to kick the bucket - the graphics controller crapped out on me. Would there be any way to fix that other than sending it to HP for them to fix?

If not, would anyone be able to recommend a cheap, reliable (as in it won't crap out on me in a year...), and decently powerful laptop? I wanna be able to at least run games like the soon to come Diablo 3 and Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 and such on it.

Net Beans bug?

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 23:35:40 +0000

Lately I have been messing with the Java language and Net Beans. However, I encountered a strange happening that makes no sense to me...

If I am not mistaken, the following operation should yield 10.

public class whatever
{
    int max = 1000;
    int current = 100;
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        int percentage = current/max*100;
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(rootPane,percentage);
    }
}

Why does it yield 0? 100/1000 = 0.1 and then 0.1 * 100 = 10.

NPC "dynamic clothing" question

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 01:31:15 +0000

Right now I am working on putting clothing my NPCs during runtime. More specifically, during world/New(). Is there any way to make sure that an object is fully created before the mob/New() calls on my NPCs? Right now I create a shirt for my NPCs during world/New() like so...

var/obj/item/shirt/npc_shirt
world/New()
    ..()
    npc_shirt = new /obj/item/shirt(null)
    var/icon/i = npc_shirt.icon
    i += rgb(175,0,0)
    npc_shirt.icon = i

...and then in my mob/npc/New() I have...

mob/npc/New()
    ..()
    src.overlays += npc_shirt

However, this only works if I put a spawn() delay before adding the shirt overlay because the problem is that the NPC is getting the overlay BEFORE the npc_shirt object is created. What I want to do is make sure the shirt object is fully created before my NPC object is created :\

Need Pixel Artist(s)

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:16:19 +0000

I am in search of a pixel artist or two to do some... pixel art (o.O) for me. I have redone the person base a bit found in the NWotS source to my very cheap liking and now I would like some clothes and other stuff to go with it. Below is a list of what I would like and if you think that you can oblige me with even just one out of the list, then please contact me.

bases

Clothes
- shirt
- pants
- etc

Hair
- male style hair
- female style hair

Weapons
- swords
- etc

For the most part, I am not too picky. Please no ripped icons. :\

If your pixel art skills lay elsewhere than doing people-style things, I could also use a pixel artist or two to do walls, flooring, terrain, etc.

Contact Me:
AIM: MeluvdaKitteh
Email: kitty.kennedy@hotmail.com
If you send me a page, I may not respond right away.

Windows Updater error >.<

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:22:21 +0000

"Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer."

I have restarted my computer twice at least. Action center gives me the option to change the setting to "Install updates automatically (recommended)", however it continues to say that Windows Updater's setting isn't set to that.

I have google'd the error and people have come up with two reasons as why this is happening: 1) Virus/Hijackware or 2) Registry error. I ran Malware Bytes, Spybot, and even Microsoft Security Essentials and neither of them found anything that fixed the problem. Then I ran AVG and Avast! and again, neither of them found anything that fixed the problem. So now I'm thinking it's a registry error. If it is, then it was caused by one of the registry cleaning tools that someone in this community recommended: AML Free Registry Cleaner, Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, and CCleaner.

I did not have this problem before I downloaded and used those utility programs. If someone could please help me fix this error, I would be really grateful. Thank you.