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Showing posts from 2010

Fixing Wacom Driver Problems in Windows 7

Just a quick post about my adventures/misadventures in Windows 7. There's been reports about problems with the Wacom drivers not working after restarting Windows 7, and I've ran into it as well. When going to the Wacom Tablet Properties it'll show a scary message saying, "THE TABLET DRIVER WAS NOT FOUND." This happened to me on my Cintiq 12WX. Reinstalling the driver made it work again, but once I restarted it stopped working. I researched a fix for the issue but it was either too complicated for me to bother trying or didn't work at all. This behavior began about a month after I installed Windows 7, and I think playing around with the tablet PC features in Windows 7 (which, by the way, has really good handwriting recognition), may have been what caused it, like Windows 7 was taking over the tablet driver or something. Anyway, suspecting that Windows 7's Tablet PC stuff was causing the problem I tried this and it fixed the problem: Reinstall the Wacom

The Difference a Preamp Makes

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Or to put it another way: Making a free internal sound card record like a $150 sound card. This blog post is about achieving good audio recording as cheaply as possible, so I'm going to kick it off with an audio file so you can actually hear the difference that I'm talking about. Here's the story. I don't use a headset to talk to people on the computer; those things are uncomfortable and the audio quality sucks. For the longest time I used a dynamic mic (which was the Shure PG58 ), attached to a tripod stand, and the mic plugs into my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, which has a 1/4 TRS jack socket and a built-in preamp which did a great job at recording my voice (compared to the headset). Over the many years I've used it to record video tutorials and recently I've been using that microphone constantly on Skype writing for Hackberry Hollow . A few weeks ago I bought a new computer. The computer that I've been using (the one that was bought

News Flash: Klok 2 released

Update: August 2020 I've stopped using Klok and I've switched over to ManicTime . After a few years of use, Klok started to take longer and longer to access certain views within the app. I suspect it was because of the size of the database that was making the app so unresponsive. I also ran into issues with Klok licensing. There's a fixed installation limit that is not advertised or mentioned on their website. I'll probably do a dedicated post on ManicTime at a later date, but I wanted to mention here that I'm recommending different time tracking software now. * * * * * Klok 2 just barely got released! Go download it at getklok.com . Previous articles about Klok: Massively Useful Software (follow up): Klok Massively Useful (Life Changing) Software: Klok

Dynamic Range Day 2010

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Just so you know, today is Dynamic Range Day . Music is getting louder - and sounding worse. Over the past 20 years, the recording and mastering of recorded music has been increasingly plagued by an industry-wide practice of making recordings as loud as possible, while crushing any dynamics contained in the original performance. The result is music that sounds flat, two-dimensional, distorted, and is exhausting to listen to. This self-defeating race to be "louder" than anyone else has become known as the Loudness Wars. You can read more about it at Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war - or see an example at YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ . Well... March 20th 2010 is Dynamic Range Day ! This is our chance to fight back and raise awareness.

Massively Useful Software (follow up): Klok

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Did you know that Klok has a beta program ? Neither did I until today. Sure you can download a beta version but it's not the current version of the software. Thank goodness because I've been using the public beta for a year and with no software updates I was worried that the project was dead. Luckily I found frequent and recent posts about Klok on their Twitter page and blog . You can be a part of the beta program my making a donation (anything greater than $0). I of course donated because as you might have read on my original post on Klok last year, Klok is totally worth using!

Quick update: Hackberry Hollow (and other stuff too)

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Just checking and reminding everyone that Hackberry Hollow is still in steady production. Here's some recent concept art, showing a sneak peak of Chapter 1. Be sure to check out the blog for more concept art and updates on the project. Yes, I haven't been posting on my personal blog very much, but we do post on the Hackberry Hollow blog every Tuesday without fail, and the content is far more interesting. So subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates on what I'm working on. We're all extremely excited about the project. We got the story nailed and the script is being written (we are almost done with the first volume out of five). The reactions to the script have been overwhelmingly positive, so we definitely feel that we have a winner and can't wait to get this project released. The Animation Academy About 5 months ago I enrolled into The Animation Academy down in Burbank for character design classes and wow, has it been a big help. Also today is The Animation Aca