The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

Well... today I've received the parts to build a new desktop computer. Nothing wrong there yet. Tomorrow I'll unpack everything and build the computer. The problem is that I've been having a nasty bout of avarice.

I've ordered a GTX 1060 as a gaming card. This thing is as powerful as a GTX 980 (from the previous generation), at half the price. These cards run all current games at 1920x1080 @ Ultra/Max settings and 60 FPS, at least.

Still, I'm wondering: should I spend the extra money and go for a GTX 1070?

Then I'm thinking: well, these are the games I'm going to play in the near future, and it will take me a year or three:

(If you're interested)

Spoiler:

Neverwinter Nights (2002)
Neverwinter Nights II (2006)
Jade Empire (2007, currently playing on my laptop)
The Witcher 1 (2007)
War for Cybertron (2008)
Dragon Age (2009)
Fall of Cybertron (2010)
The Witcher 2 (2012)
Divinity: Original Sin (2014)
Pillars of Eternity (2015)
---
The Witcher 3 (2015)
Ashes of the Singularity (2016, single player part)
Divinity: Original Sin II (2017)
Torment: Tides of Numenera (2017)

And some replays of old 1998-2007 games before I shelve them, probably forever.

Every single one of the games I'm going to play would have run, settings maxed out, on my old GTX 560 Ti from 2011, except for the newest four. Even those could have been made to run, when using lower settings. Most of the games will even run on my laptop, for god's sake.

In short, the GTX 1060, which is three times as fast as the GTX 560 Ti, will crush those games at 1920x1080. Then why do I feel as if I still want a GTX 1070?

I'm sure it's pure greed, just because I can.

It'll take me a few months of playing those games and getting used to the fact that everything runs at a blazing speed already, which will make me forget the computer in the end. It was like that with the previous one as well, and I kept it for 8 years (except for swapping the graphics card for the GTX 560 Ti midway through). I have a feeling that this system will last me at least 5 years again; if I can swap the card in 3-4 years, it'll last 8, just like last time.

When I was still working full time I looked forward to weekends. Now that I've cut pact to part time I find weekends tedious. Yeah, Monday.

[wodin]

I got an email from Amazon yesterday saying:

Originally Posted by Amazon

Hello,

We apologize for the difficulties you may have experienced, when attempting to register a device or app to your Amazon account.

For security reasons, we may require a two-step authentication process when registering certain devices and software applications.

To complete the registration of your device or app, please enter the following One Time Password within the password field on the sign in screen:

XXXXXX

This One Time password is time sensitive, so you need to use it within 10 minutes of receiving our email. If your One Time Password expires, please reattempt to register your device with your Amazon account password to generate another One Time Password.

Your Amazon account password has not been modified.

If the sign-in was not initiated by you, please reset your Amazon account password. Information on changing your account settings is available on our help pages.

Damn it, do you have any idea how many devices are registered to that account, all of which will have to be re-registered?

[Katsunami]

The greed won.

Hopefully I don't need to touch the insides of this computer anymore for at least 5 years. (If PCI Express 4.0 cards are the norm then, I can't even upgrade, which is another reason why I decided to go with the GTX 1070 in the end.)

[Freeshadow]

Methinks I could take a dive in your throwaways and have upgrade hardware for the next years

[Hitch]

"Dear So-Called Font Designer:

I'm so-and-so, the buyer of various and sundry goody packages on places like TheHungryJpeg, or CreativeMarket, MightyDeal, and so on. I'd like to have a quiet word, about your font offerings.

Please understand, I offer this gentle critique, to aid you in growing in your brand-new area of specialty.

Avenir Next Pro, is a font(see note). Futura, is a font. Bembo Standard, Garamond and Janson, are fonts. As is Kepler. In the sans-serif category, Brandon Text, is a font. As is good ol' Helvetica, or Ocean Sans.

That scribbled mess, that you have hubristically labeled as a "font," that you slapped a price tag on, and worse, that ended up in this package/bundle, that I bought from Place X, thereby foisting that pig's breakfast one me, IS. NOT. A. FONT.

That is, in fact, some rough approximation of your own handwriting. Calling that a "script" font, or a handwriting font, or a brush font, does not change what it is.

JUST SAY NO to SCANAHAND. Spare the rest of us. PLEASE.

Scribble is not an optional glyph. Your idea, to join together two letters that don't come together in nature (really? You've created a "dh" ligature? You couldn't make an FF lig, or a th, or any of the others that actually DO exist, in English-speaking countries?) does nothing but make font fiends like myself dream of ways to make you pay.

Don't make me come find you."

Spoiler:

I am using the word "font" to mean typeface. Yes, they are, in this day and age, used interchangeably, even though they are NOT the same thing, and in ranting like this, I'm not helping to clarify that misnomer. Mea culpa, but I'm too annoyed to be correct in the moment.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Methinks I could take a dive in your throwaways and have upgrade hardware for the next years

You would be disappointed. I tend to buy *REALLY* high-end hardware, and then keep it for 8 years. At the time I sell it or give it away, it's worth nothing anymore.

The reason I do that is because I hate replacing my computer every two or three years. I'll have to research hardware, read reviews, buy the stuff, build the computer, re-install everything, configure everything, and then, if something doesn't run on the latest version of Windows, find out how to fix it.

I'd rather buy some extremely over the top hardware for the stuff I want to do, and then not touch it for 4 years or more, apart from replacing a graphics card or adding a hard disk.

The reason why I didn't go for an i7-6800K instead of the i7-6700K is because my old, almost vintage Q8400 was actually fast enough for most tasks, except games (and handling the graphics card needed for them). The 6800K would have required a much more expensive mainboard, would have been €100 more expensive on its own, and the 6700K was a black Friday deal at a store, with €79 off.

Obviously, I haven't discarded a GTX 1060 or anything; that one is going back to the store. I just hope, with my gaming pattern, this system will last me 8 years without even having to change anything.

As I still run Baldur's Gate (see next post) in 640x480 or 800x600, I think I can stomach having to run a really new game in 2024 in 1280x800 at "High" instead of "Very Ultra" on my 1920x1200 screen.

I suspect it will be a long, long time before that GTX 1070 becomes underpowered for what I want to do with it.

[Katsunami]

Rant @ DirectX / Graphics.

I want to finish the Baldur's Gate 1 playthrough I put on hold over a year ago, so I installed it on my laptop. It's an old game, and it needs some fixes on newer computers. Many fixes for many problems have been devised by the community (some by myself, actually).

In Windows 10, ran perfectly without ANY fixes, at least on my old desktop. On the laptop, it runs, but it has all the usual problems this game has on newer graphics cards. No more running without fixes. While many of the fixes worked, they introduced new problems; something they didn't on the desktop computer that ran Windows 10, and 7 before it.

After searching and testing for some time, it seems that there is only *one* glitch on Windows 10, at least right now: some of the tiles in the landscape are displayed the wrong way around. There is a fix for that, programmed by one of the guys who made one of the earlier graphics fixes.

After some jacking around with the config, it works, but it's yet another fix to add to the inventory... and it's not sure how long it will work, as drivers and Windows 10 are continually changing, something which was not the case in Windows 8.x and before.

Now I have Baldur's Gate 1 setup on my laptop, with its savegame folder in Dropbox. If I can get it to run on the desktop, I can finally finish it once more, and then shelve it.

The one thing I find perplexing is that it actually looks quite good in 640x480, on the laptop's 1920x1080 screen. No, this is not The Witcher 3, and it lost a bit of sharpness, but the game is playable without any of the resolution mods. (Those make everything sharper by increasing the resolution, but everything gets a lot smaller as well.)

The up-scaling algorithms in current displays seem to have become very, very good. I wonder how it's going to look on the desktop, which has 1920x1200. I have to have it on the same resolution on both systems, because the savegames depend on that.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

"Dear So-Called Font Designer:

I'm so-and-so, the buyer of various and sundry goody packages on places like TheHungryJpeg, or CreativeMarket, MightyDeal, and so on. I'd like to have a quiet word, about your font offerings.

Please understand, I offer this gentle critique, to aid you in growing in your brand-new area of specialty.

Avenir Next Pro, is a font(see note). Futura, is a font. Bembo Standard, Garamond and Janson, are fonts. As is Kepler. In the sans-serif category, Brandon Text, is a font. As is good ol' Helvetica, or Ocean Sans.

That scribbled mess, that you have hubristically labeled as a "font," that you slapped a price tag on, and worse, that ended up in this package/bundle, that I bought from Place X, thereby foisting that pig's breakfast one me, IS. NOT. A. FONT.

That is, in fact, some rough approximation of your own handwriting. Calling that a "script" font, or a handwriting font, or a brush font, does not change what it is.

JUST SAY NO to SCANAHAND. Spare the rest of us. PLEASE.

Scribble is not an optional glyph. Your idea, to join together two letters that don't come together in nature (really? You've created a "dh" ligature? You couldn't make an FF lig, or a th, or any of the others that actually DO exist, in English-speaking countries?) does nothing but make font fiends like myself dream of ways to make you pay.

Don't make me come find you."

Spoiler:

I am using the word "font" to mean typeface. Yes, they are, in this day and age, used interchangeably, even though they are NOT the same thing, and in ranting like this, I'm not helping to clarify that misnomer. Mea culpa, but I'm too annoyed to be correct in the moment.

They might read this rant better in Wingdings.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

They might read this rant better in Wingdings.

THAT was inspired, Cin!

(grumble...at least it would BE readable. You should see some of this crap that the creators call "fonts." Un-fracking-believable.)

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

THAT was inspired, Cin!

(grumble...at least it would BE readable. You should see some of this crap that the creators call "fonts." Un-fracking-believable.)

Once upon a time, I made my living as a designer and print production guy. I have, um, opinions about fonts.

I'm now at the point where the first question I ask when looking at a new font is "Would I set body copy in this font?" If the answer is "No!", the font is unlikely to be added.

I'm at least grateful that the fad for "grunge" fonts is no longer with us.

And while I don't have as many fonts as I once did, I still have an assortment I might use to set headlines, once.

An old friend is a DTP specialist at a trade publisher, and one of the folks who does the markup and typesetting based on the book designer's specifications. She wanted to be involved in the eBook side, and I spent some time explaining the differences, like whether the font the designer had specified would be available on the device the user would use to view the title. If the eBook was issued as PDF with embedded fonts, it wasn't an issue (assuming the device had a PDF viewer.) If it was ePub, Mobi or the like, all bets were off, and the device would likely use a programmed best guess about which font available in firmware was closest to what was specified. She understood.

My current eBook viewer device is an Android tablet, using the open source FBReader for Android viewer software. FBReader gets the nod because it handles ePub, Mobi, and FB2 "native", and things like PDF, DjVu, and CBR/CBZ via plugins, so I largely don't care what the format is. (It doesn't handle DRM, but I don't get books with DRM and don't care.)

FBReader will attempt to obey specifications in CSS as to margins and fonts. I had to turn it off. Too many volumes had specs that made them unreadable on my device if they were followed.
______
Dennis

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Hitch

"Dear So-Called Font Designer:

I'm so-and-so, the buyer of various and sundry goody packages on places like TheHungryJpeg, or CreativeMarket, MightyDeal, and so on. I'd like to have a quiet word, about your font offerings.

Please understand, I offer this gentle critique, to aid you in growing in your brand-new area of specialty.

Avenir Next Pro, is a font(see note). Futura, is a font. Bembo Standard, Garamond and Janson, are fonts. As is Kepler. In the sans-serif category, Brandon Text, is a font. As is good ol' Helvetica, or Ocean Sans.

That scribbled mess, that you have hubristically labeled as a "font," that you slapped a price tag on, and worse, that ended up in this package/bundle, that I bought from Place X, thereby foisting that pig's breakfast one me, IS. NOT. A. FONT.

That is, in fact, some rough approximation of your own handwriting. Calling that a "script" font, or a handwriting font, or a brush font, does not change what it is.

JUST SAY NO to SCANAHAND. Spare the rest of us. PLEASE.

Scribble is not an optional glyph. Your idea, to join together two letters that don't come together in nature (really? You've created a "dh" ligature? You couldn't make an FF lig, or a th, or any of the others that actually DO exist, in English-speaking countries?) does nothing but make font fiends like myself dream of ways to make you pay.

Don't make me come find you."

Spoiler:

I am using the word "font" to mean typeface. Yes, they are, in this day and age, used interchangeably, even though they are NOT the same thing, and in ranting like this, I'm not helping to clarify that misnomer. Mea culpa, but I'm too annoyed to be correct in the moment.

oh, bit Hitch. Where is a screen shot of this atrocity so we can all marvel at it??

(And yes, I DO know the difference between a typeface and a font, though no one seems to care any more. )

[badgoodDeb]

Yeah, I too was curious to see this "handwriting"!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by CRussel

oh, bit Hitch. Where is a screen shot of this atrocity so we can all marvel at it??

(And yes, I DO know the difference between a typeface and a font, though no one seems to care any more. )

For the record, Scanahand isn't a font. It's a font creator package. You draw the font and scan it, and Scanahand attempts to produce a Windows font file from your scan.

I go back to when font designers painstakingly worked at drawing boards with t-squares, rulers, and french curves to design letter forms, one by one, that could be used to produce first "hot type" lead characters that could be locked up on a form, and later images that could be used by photosetters to produce galleys from which plates could be made.

The tools to design fonts are electronic these days, but designing a new font is still a detail oriented character at a time process, with successive refinements to produce the desired end result. Scanahand does seem to have the ability to refine the characters in the fonts it creates, but I'm quite certain most folks who buy and use the tool won't even try. They'll settle for the default output.

I suspect I'm just as happy Hitch didn't provide a sample of what she was confronted with. It sounds like "gouge out eyes with spoon after viewing" material.
______
Dennis

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I suspect I'm just as happy Hitch didn't provide a sample of what she was confronted with. It sounds like "gouge out eyes with spoon after viewing" material.

Oh, but sometimes that's the best kind.

(and yes, I knew what ScanAHand was from her description. But it was the result I was curious about.)