Cooledit 2000 issue

I have been using Cooledit 2000 happily for years.  Unfortunately this product is no longer available, and Adobe, who purchased the product rights declines to support it or offer it any longer.  So when I suddenly could not convert .wav files to mp3 I was concerned.  The message: "File is probably in use by another application."  Clearly spurious, as the file was not.  But with some help from a suggestion in a forum years ago, I realized the problem was caused when I accidently had two copies of the same file open, and modified one.  Cooledit then loses track of what is open and what is not.  So the solution (if anyone every has this problem again) is to delete the COOL.INI file in Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Syntrillium\Cooledit, and allow Cooledit to recreate this file.  You'll have to do a trivial bit of setup again when you next run Cooledit.  Phew.

Gamepad flying

When a certain (now ex-) ACES team member mentioned he enjoyed using a gamepad for flying there were the expected exclamations of dismay from purists.  But I’ve been trying it, and it’s way more fun to fly.  A little challenge with the rudder with no twist, but for non-heli flying it was fun taking an Aerosoft A-10 from CYYJ, south to CYWH, then back north across CYVR, CYHC and then up Howe Sound to CYSE.  Then I swung over to the Fraser Valley, down to CYHE and back home.  Great weather, except rather poor visibility in the Fraser Valley (using ASv6) and nice framerates.  Still my favourite area to fly.

I set up FSAutoStart today to minimize stutters. Great little program.

Now here’s a scary upgrade procedure!

EDIT: after reading this scary bit on the LG website, I found an update program on the distribution disk that provided the same upgrade automatically with no scary warnings.  After doing this, and setting my region code for the drive, I successfully burned a DVD. 

Here's a good reason to be leery of LG DVD drives, although maybe other manufacturers have procedures just as scary to update the driver.  I looked at this because my DVD drive is failing to write disks that are readable in a standard DVD player. Instead of a driver update, one gets to update the firmware, like this:

Note: Not following the subsequent update instructions explicitly will result in
permanent damage to your drive, for which LG will not be responsible.

Critical Instructions: (to be followed carefully)

1. Connect the drive as "master" by it self, on the secondary IDE controller
   with no other device on the same IDE cable, making note to set the jumper
   on the back of the drive to the "master" position.

2. Download the file GSA-H10A_JL03(EW).ZIP to a folder of your choice.
   This download includes this "Read me(ew)" text file, as well as the GSAH10A_JL03.EXE
   program, which will auto-update your drive's firmware.

3. Close all other programs including: screen saver, antivirus and/or power-down programs.
   (If these programs are not closed, they will try to engage the PC, during the update process,
   thus interrupting the update and damaging the drive).

4. Check the drive to ensure that there is no disk in the tray
   before you start the update procedure.

5. Go into the folder with the update file and double click the GSAH10A_JL03.EXE program
   and click the "Update" button. Once the update is complete,
   you will see "Update was Complete" and advise you to reboot the system.

WARNING:
   Do not open any programs or start any system functions during the update,
   as they will interfere with data transfer and damage the drive.
   Do not cancel the operation once it has been started or the drive will
   become permanently damaged, as a result.

Those darn sloped airfields

Well, whether MS at some point decides to have sloping runways or not in Flight Simulator, there are still a lot of headaches just in the surrounding scenery. As I work on Butler Field (which has no AFCAD so the runway follows something like the real slope), I find it very tricky to get the hangers to sit flat while keeping the runway slope. Either the buildings have to embedded in the slope (which looks just plain wrong) or I have to put them on individual flattens. Even at TMVL of 21 the 19m resolution is very crude for such fine placement and I’ve yet to find a compromise that works. As a free bonus, for some reason my objects are sitting on the ground, but often hovering at all four corners. Oops. I’ll plug away some more.

PVR-150 update and other computer sundries

I forgot to report that my PVR-150 video tuner/input card was quite cranky when I got it, lots of problems: it would freeze when changing channels, and often lose audio. But Hauppauge support was prompt, friendly and thorough, and with a new driver emailed to me all was well. Nice to have Jon Stewart back.

After a HUGE delay, the computer retailer found that Samsung would not accept back the LCD monitor with 2 bad pixels. I can't imagine how a monitor with 2 bright red dots on any dark image is usable, but the retailer (without me asking) simply ordered a new monitor, which was supposed to be here today. So hopefully it'll be ok. I appreciate him doing that as any bad pixels to me indicate a defective product, but I realize that this has become acceptable for most manufacturers. In future I will ensure that I don't buy any monitor that I can't preview to determine that it has zero defects. If enough folks do that, policies will change. And prices will likely be higher as well. Caveat emptor.

The old computer is in the shop (a different store this time!) being rebuilt. It was quite decayed after 4 years since the last clean install, with hundreds of apps coming and going in the meantime. And I appreciated the integrity of this shop, although it caused me a headache. The computer box has the original Windows Me Certificate of Authenticity (COA) on it (yes, I was abused with this disastrous excuse of an OS for a few weeks just before XP came out!). But I didn't keep my Windows XP upgrade disk cover that had the XP COA. I had the activation code, but without the COA they wouldn't install it. So they are installing Me, and I get to do the XP upgrade. I wonder then why they bother with the shiny hologram disks if they ignore that verification of orginality anyway?

Empress at night

Legislature night texture

Here’s night and dusk shots of the famous night lighting of the BC Legislature.  I’ve also added in a couple of Toronto and Douglas St. highrises.

 

Screenshot acknowledgements

Folks, in those last few screenshots I used:

- ActiveSky V6 real-world weather
- BEV textures (including the water texture, which I really like!)
- Flight environment cloud textures

I have since found an issue with BEV autogen: autogen is very sparse and does not create buildings of the type I would expect for the landclass I am specifying. This applies to the replacement autogen only.

The Legislature

Here’s a couple of shots of the “Ledge”. The interesting part of this model will be representing all the lights for the night texture . . .

 

… and now with a more distinct seawall

I’ve replaced the mushy inner harbour shoreline now with a gmax model…

 And click here for a higher resolution image with West Coast Air, Harbour Air and an AI boat all departing.

… and the Empress in the sim

Unretouched or resized screenshot:

Texture fodder

Daryl was a big help today: we used his 16x optical zoom and 5mpixel resolution to get some good shots of the Empress. I completed the first pass at the gmax model today, so now I can begin to texture. Here’s a reduced resolution shot. Thanks, Daryl!

Johnson Street Bridge screenshots

I’ve almost completed the Johnson Street Bridge, which now looks much better than the crude rail bridge I had in there before.

P.S. on Botanical Beach

What's this little guy?

My daughter reminds me that we saw a large black bear, a sea otter frolicking on the rocks, llamas, horses and smallish brown furry thing (ferret-sized) that skittered too quickly across the path in front of us to be identified.

Vancouver+ Easter Egg

Well, indeedy there is an Easter Egg in V+ that is not yet reported as found. After some goading (and effective bribery) from Viva members, here’s a couple of hints:

- fly REALLY low and slow. The trick is knowing where, and getting ready to clean your windshield.
- this area is named after an individual whose last name is an ironic homonym

That’s all for now. Good luck!

A visit to Botanical Beach

We took advantage of an unusual mid-afternoon low tide at Botanical Beach, Port Renfrew to search for mysteries in the tidal pools. And I took a few pics. You can find a few more pics at my Botanical Beach Pics page

Oh, yes, that Adventure . . .

I last reported I was off to the New Warrior Training Adventure on March 29. As always, the weekend was a success, and I got to cook to my heart's content. It was exhausting, but now we have many more New Warriors here on the Island. A bunch of them have signed up for the 8-week Primary Integration Training programs we are running here.

Almost up

So I got my computer back at the end of Tuesday, although I had to finish off the XP critical updates myself. And indeedy the RAID array is far faster now, and I have the full storage of 800Gb as well. Whew. So I spent most of the last day and a half installing software and peripherals. Everything is working ok now. The Hauppauge PVR-150 software wasn't working properly, but their tech support was good and I managed to get a software patch. It still may be a bit flaky, but it's much better.

I'm still missing my second monitor (returned for bad pixels), and I wonder if I'm pushing some kind of record: it's been a month now since this computer was ordered and it's still not complete.

Some good things:

• most software reinstalled easily without quibbles. The notable exception was Finale PrintMusic!2004. It requires an internet activation which checks to see if you've got it installed on another computer, which of course I had, on my old computer. If so activation is rejected and a call to 1-800-we-annoy-legitimate-users is required. Some companies, like this one (MakeMusic), still don't get that putting honest users through hoops costs credibility and future sales. I wonder if there is any coincidence they are in the music industry. That industry is of course legitimately concerned with the rampant theft that goes on, but their draconian response (like the Sony/BMG rootkit debacle) compounds the problem and erases their credibility.
• it runs fast! An entire design cycle in FS9 of viewing scenery in FS9, closing the program, making modifications in SBuilder, compiling the mods, restarting FS9, loading the scenery and verifying the changes is 60 seconds. Wow. I would have saved a huge amount of time if I'd done this earlier! But I'm glad I did it now.
• I bought the PVR card for it's S-Video input, but it makes TV recording so easy that I'm again enjoying Jon Stewart's midnight show.  That's the one news show I'm willing to watch.

Vicenh06 - a bit more detail

For this version of the Victoria scenery, here’s what we’re adding:

- some Victoria features that folks have asked for: Legislature, Empress and Johnson St. Bridge.

- improved landclass

- reduced the complexity of the Ogden Point Cafe to improve performance (will look identical)

- better Ultimate Terrain Canada/Alaska compatibility

- new unlisted airfields, no AFCADs for real adventure:

• Butler Field, Saanich
• Whiskey Point (North of Mill Bay)
• John Gaine’s strip on Saturna Island (which doesn’t work well with the narrow shore area, we may have to fudge that)
• Earl Hastings’ strip on N. Pender
• Dave Thomas’ strip on Saltspring
• Village Bay on Mayne Island

- listed airfield: CML2 Quamichan Lake (Raven Field) near Duncan. It’s on a slope (5.5%) so it doesn’t have much of an AFCAD runway (1′ long!), so it’ll show up on your maps, but won’t work for AI

- Seaplane bases:

• CAX6 - Ganges Harbour, Saltspring Island
• CAB3 - Bedwell Harbour, South Pender Island
• CAP8 - Port Washington, North Pender Island
• CAW7 - Mayne Island
• CMAP - Maple Bay, near Duncan (used by Harbour Air)

- Heliports, most AI capable:

• CAL7 (Ganges Hospital)
• CBF5 (Mayne Island Medical)
• CBK8 (Jubilee Hospital, Victoria)
• CBW7 (Victoria General Hospital)
• CBZ7 (Shoal Point, adjacent to Ogden Point)
• CMBH, a private pad on Mount Belcher, Saltspring

… and there may be some other minor bits and pieces added as well.

Take a deep breath!

Tomorrow my hard drive gets nuked and reconfigured for RAID 0. All is backed up on my external USB drive.  I also decided to use Michael Greenblatts services again so the system will be configured properly for FS.

I did get a bunch of work done Friday-Saturday-Sunday on vicenh06, creating AI seaplane base AFCADs, a bunch of heliports and a bunch of quaint little airfields scattered around the area.  Most are in the Gulf Islands.

Once I'm up and running again, I'll add buildings and fences to the airfields, get the Empress, Legistlature and Johnson St. Bridge done.  I've already done some fixup for the landclass around Victoria, esp. around CFB Esquimalt.