The Official "Help me!" Thread

[The Heretic Azazel]

Other than some romantic comedy or another, I've never seen a person confessing his/her love to another person going well. The handful of times I've heard my friends talk about it, they said it seemed kind of pathetic, or that the guy was all "sooooooo adorable xD, but...naw..." Adorable...that's about the best you can hope to come across as, unless she's batshit madly in love with you too.

Normally, I don't care whether a girl has a boyfriend or not. If I'm interested, I do the usual probes to see if she's interested, and ask her out or not based on that. If you can come across as playful and flirty, yet unassuming, then you minimize the risk of prolonged awkwardness between the two of you should you be met with rejection. There's still a risk of course, because whether or not you appear as I described, depends both on your performance and on her perception, the latter of which you don't have much control over. Since this is your job, AND you're madly in love with her, I'd seriously consider NOT trying this. If you do, you really, REALLY, need to be skilled at this. If you're not...she's not the one to practice on.

I wouldn't say "in love"... that comes off too strong. I don't know her well enough to say that and I have my own reservations about love without jumping into it again. She is just the first person I have met in a long time I have even had the urge to ask out, and I feel if she rejects me it will be a long time after that before I'm drawn to someone else. Most everything about people turns me off and makes it hard for me to even keep friends (though I most assuredly always pick the wrong ones), much less maintain a relationship with someone. That's why I don't want to "confess" per se... it's unnecessary and over the top, and exposes all my vulnerabilities. I would just like to take her out and see how things go, but if I try she's just going to say "I have a boyfriend, remember? Don't you listen?" Presumptions always keep me from taking action.

So I'm going to do what is most likely the best advice from you guys and wait, see how things develop. It is too much to pile on all at once before I see where things are going. A screw up now could ruin it for me down the line if she is available.

[Animeniax]

Does anyone know firsthand if you can install Lion from a USB key that came with the Mac Air onto a Mac Book Pro? I think Lion installs on any Mac running Snow Leopard or higher.

Today when I used a Lion USB key that was specifically labelled "for Mac Book Air" trying to install Lion on a Mac Book Pro running Snow Leopard, it returned an error that the computer couldn't be upgraded to Lion. Is it more likely that the Pro wasn't updated to 10.6.6, or that the USB key with Lion only for Mac Airs?

[Uchiha Barles]

I'm looking for software which will allow me to upload a map to it, say form google maps, plot points on it via coordinates I'd input into the software, and then allow me to do statistical analysis on the plots. Do computer algebra systems allow for that type of analysis? If so, is there something else out there that would do this particular task better?

edit: Found a piece of software, Microsoft Mappoint. Though I would appreciate any alternatives you guys know of.

[Buffalobiian]

I need some feedback from other people regarding this matter. It concerns those using a discrete sound card (though onboard may work) using Windows 7 or Vista.

In your sound card control software, if you change your sampling rate (44.1KHz, 48KHz etc), does the Windows setting change with it? (can be found under Control Panel > Sound > click device (speakers usually) > Speaker Properties > Advanced )

And in a similar fashion, does a change in bit depth (24 bit, 16 bit) reflect itself in Windows (for those who have this feature in their sound card control software)?

Or does your Windows setting stay on some default setting when you toggle the sample rate in your sound card control software? Responses from various makes will be appreciated (Asus Xonar, Creative X-Fi, On-board realteks?)

edit: oh, and before you make the changes, does the default settings in software vs windows match in the first place?

[Killa-Eyez]

I need some feedback from other people regarding this matter. It concerns those using a discrete sound card (though onboard may work) using Windows 7 or Vista.

In your sound card control software, if you change your sampling rate (44.1KHz, 48KHz etc), does the Windows setting change with it? (can be found under Control Panel > Sound > click device (speakers usually) > Speaker Properties > Advanced )

I have a onboard Realtek HD Audio card and yes, it changes with it.

And in a similar fashion, does a change in bit depth (24 bit, 16 bit) reflect itself in Windows (for those who have this feature in their sound card control software)?

Yes.

edit: oh, and before you make the changes, does the default settings in software vs windows match in the first place?

It does.

Why? What's up?

[Buffalobiian]

My sound card's software's setting didn't match up with the windows setting, that's all. And any changes to either one will not affect the other.

[Killa-Eyez]

Hwierd. Did you do the usual troubleshooting?

[Buffalobiian]

Hwierd. Did you do the usual troubleshooting?

Before I asked the question, I had read enough accounts about the Xonar cards to be confident that their software doesn't sync with Windows. I was curious to see if other brands operated in the same way. Since people tend not to report something if it's not broken/a possible issue, information on that was a bit hard to find.

Then I tried reading up about how the redesigned Windows Vista/7 audio stack architecture worked, and the parthways that the data takes. It was all to determine that if resampling was to take place, would it be done by the sound card/Xonar software, or Windows (which doesn't actually resample, but delegates that task back to the original program such as Winamp. It does resample a few legacy things since it wasn't an issue until Vista/7).

I've concluded that in Shared Mode the signal runs into the global Windows buffer first, which requests only sound in a particular sample rate. At the very end of the pathway, the card will then resample the signal as per your Xonar panel before sending it off to the DAC.

In Exclusive Mode (ASIO etc), the global windows buffer is not used, and windows-requested resampling doesn't take place. The signal gets sent straight to the sound card in a bit-transparent, low latency manner, but the audio chip will still change the sample rate before converting it to analogue if your Xonar control specifies it to do so.

Thanks for confirming.

[Killa-Eyez]

Never heard of Xonar soundcards, been out of the loop for quite some time.

The issue sounds easily fixable with an updated, Win7/Vista compatible, signed driver/software. Though if you acquired the card before those OS' release, I don't see them going through the trouble.

[Buffalobiian]

The driver was released a couple of months ago. It's very much Vista/7 Compatible. It's a series-wide quirk for all Xonar cards.

[Animeniax]

What color shoes go with tan colored jeans? How about grey jeans? Typically with a black or white or navy blue t-shirt.

[Buffalobiian]

I'd say dark brown for the tan jeans, but it kinda depends on how tan they are too. Grey goes well with most stuff. Darker grey with black shoes, or lighter grey with white. Other colours will prolly depend on what you've got on top as well.

[Archangel]

Help required

[Uchiha Barles]

Noob photoshop question for you guys: I have a bunch of selections saved as alpha channels that are associated with an image in Photoshop CS5. What I'm trying to do is pick one of the selections, load it, and then fill the selection with color. The problem is, when I do it, any color I pick is converted to gray scale. How do I fix this?

[Kraco]

Do you have the alpha channel selected/active when you colour the insides of the selection? Because alpha channels are 8-bit gray scale. Make sure you have selected the rpg layer, not the alpha (or mask or anything else like that). Of course the image itself can't be 8-bit gray scale for colours to show.

[Uchiha Barles]

You sir, are a god among men. I had the RGB channel selected, but then I scrolled down to find the selection channel was also selected. Thanks for the help man xD.

[Uchiha Barles]

I have another photoshop question. Is there a way to make a line segment selection? I suppose you can use the line tools to and then subtract from the selection it makes until you get your desired segment selection, but that only works for horizontal or vertical segments, and it's kind of a clunky method. Is there another way that would allow for selecting vertical segments of varying slopes?

edit: I guess what I'm asking is, is there a way to create an "open" selection, without closing it into a polygon or some other closed shape?

[Pandadice]

I need help identifying a video game I have only vague memories of. There's this PC game I played when I was really young that I would love to find the name of.

I don't remember much about it, but I'll do my best to provide as much details as I can.

'90s PC game. It was 1st person view.

I remember the first level took place on this futuristic looking building -- white walls, computerized doors etc. (I liken it to some of the sets in The Fifth Element. Or perhaps I'm just thinking of The Fifth Element and using it to fill in the blank in my memory).

It was about time travel or something. I just know that at some point (after beating the first level or something) you got in this room and it was a time machine and you could go back to prehistoric times with dinosaurs and junk. And that is about as far as I ever made it (I seriously played this when I was like 7). And I don't remember what exactly, but when you got to the prehistoric times there was like a T-Rex or meteor or something that always killed me.

I don't remember if you have a gun or shoot things or if there are enemies in the futurist building, but I do remember I found it difficult. So maybe there were enemies...

edit: I've been informed that I am probably thinking of Myst

[Uchiha Barles]

I took a look at this list of games containing time travel and went through some of the games that dated back to the 90s. There are youtube playthroughs and intros for most of them. Not that I've personally played any of these, but if it turns out that Myst is not the game you're thinking of, it might be either a game from "The Journeyman Project" series (probably the first one), or the "Time Commando" which while it didn't look like a first person game, the intro fit the description.

If it's not any of those games, that list is a good place to start looking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ng_time_travel

[Buffalobiian]

I have an mkv file with subtitles in it (vobsub?). I want to exact them, stick them into google-translate then remux them back into the original file.

I want to keep the timing and everything the same.

How should I go about it?