What a complete A***hole. Having nearly been written off by some speed maniac on a number of occasions and being the car behind a head on collision recently, I have no sympathy for him and only wish he were arrested sooner than later (I do a lot of cross country driving). What I cant understand is why responsible media are giving this idiot so much ego fueling coverage.
I think a lot of the replies are missing the point in telling the author to attend a education course> heres a hint: his title is asking for a teach yourself method! ¦)
Although looked down on by serious modellers, I find that sketchup models are better recieved by clients. I spent years with 3D Studio and lightscape trying to make realistic models that never quite seemed believable and now use sketchup as a tool to give clients an impression rather than a finished "as bought item". I find that it is perfectly suited to my discipline as it is just a maquette rather than a "disneyfication" of reality that most modelling programs achieve. The surfaces, shadows and light refraction may look real, but in the end the building always looks too crisp against the background photos used for montage (so lets stop pretending!). Just my few cents worth as an Architect/ IT manager for a firm of Architects.
In my home I have a cobbled together system that cost me almost nothing and made up of:
x1 old salvaged mini atx case £0.00
(taken from the dumpster outside work).
x1 200W atx salvaged power supply £0.00
(having been stripped out of an old system years back and kept because it is totally silent when powered up).
x1 Cyrix K 300 MHz processor and motherboard £0.00
(stripped from a system found in a dumpster -an old Packard Bell I think- but kept because it has on board
video connector which I thought might be usefull someday and set to share 16 Mb of system Ram).
x3 64Mb PC100 Ram chips £0.00
(leftover from previous upgrades).
x1 Heatsink from a damaged/ unrepairable Athlon 1 GHz machine £0.00
(thrown out at work and reshaped/ cut to fit processor above so as to replace CPU heatsink and noisy fan on
above mentioned mobo with a passive replacement).
x2 10/100 Mbit network cards £0.00
(again salvaged from machines found in dumpsters)
x1 CompactFlash to IDE adapter £8.00 -including delivery
(ebay -make sure to bid on items ending midweek between 1 and 4am to get the best chance of getting a good
deal on ebay).
x1 512 Mb Compact Flash Card £0.00
(kept from an old digital camera I no longer use and used as the boot/ os drive for the RAID 5 system
-technically £28.63 including delivery if bought from from www.aria.co.uk -E51 512MB Kingston Elite Pro Card).
x2 IDE Ribbon Cables £0.00
(salvaged from various machines machines found in dumpsters).
x3 200GB Maxtor D/Max+10 133/7200 rpm 8Mbit cache £198.30
(the most expensive item at -£66.10 ea. including delivery from www.aria.co.uk- but could have been done for
nothing with salvaged drives if I wanted less capacity).
x1 OS £1.00
(download FreeNas BSD based OS which supports Raid 0,1,5 from www.freenas.org/download.html and burn to CD
hence £1.00 -cost of Cd media).
* temporary use of Floopy drive (to install firmware on Harddisks and Motherboard to allow the proper recognition
of the drives).
* temporary use of CD drive (to install OS onto CompactFlash Card).
Total cost of system: £207.30 (or £366.63 if you include the cost of the Compact Flash Card)- overall not bad when you consider that a commercial Nas system with similar capacity and redundancy will cost around £1200 as my system would still be considerably cheaper even if you added the cost of a raid 6 card and another redundant drive).
*Array capacity at RAID 5 -400 Gb
* Note that many will criticise a software based RAID 5 array due to the processing overheads -but this isn't really a problem with a NAS system as the primary bottleneck to performance is the bandwith of the network connection (100 Mbit connection is the limiting factor here).
* On the pluss side -this system is relatively easy for anyone to set up -even a FreeBSD newbie such as myself- and It has run smoothly for a good while now.
*I have now moved it to the hallway cupboard and rerouted an old hub in there to connect it to my household system and it appears very happy indeed).
What a complete A***hole. Having nearly been written off by some speed maniac on a number of occasions and being the car behind a head on collision recently, I have no sympathy for him and only wish he were arrested sooner than later (I do a lot of cross country driving). What I cant understand is why responsible media are giving this idiot so much ego fueling coverage.
I think a lot of the replies are missing the point in telling the author to attend a education course>
heres a hint: his title is asking for a teach yourself method! ¦)
Although looked down on by serious modellers, I find that sketchup models are better recieved by clients. I spent years with 3D Studio and lightscape trying to make realistic models that never quite seemed believable and now use sketchup as a tool to give clients an impression rather than a finished "as bought item". I find that it is perfectly suited to my discipline as it is just a maquette rather than a "disneyfication" of reality that most modelling programs achieve. The surfaces, shadows and light refraction may look real, but in the end the building always looks too crisp against the background photos used for montage (so lets stop pretending!). Just my few cents worth as an Architect/ IT manager for a firm of Architects.
In my home I have a cobbled together system that cost me almost nothing and made up of: x1 old salvaged mini atx case £0.00 (taken from the dumpster outside work). x1 200W atx salvaged power supply £0.00 (having been stripped out of an old system years back and kept because it is totally silent when powered up). x1 Cyrix K 300 MHz processor and motherboard £0.00 (stripped from a system found in a dumpster -an old Packard Bell I think- but kept because it has on board video connector which I thought might be usefull someday and set to share 16 Mb of system Ram). x3 64Mb PC100 Ram chips £0.00 (leftover from previous upgrades). x1 Heatsink from a damaged/ unrepairable Athlon 1 GHz machine £0.00 (thrown out at work and reshaped/ cut to fit processor above so as to replace CPU heatsink and noisy fan on above mentioned mobo with a passive replacement). x2 10/100 Mbit network cards £0.00 (again salvaged from machines found in dumpsters) x1 CompactFlash to IDE adapter £8.00 -including delivery (ebay -make sure to bid on items ending midweek between 1 and 4am to get the best chance of getting a good deal on ebay). x1 512 Mb Compact Flash Card £0.00 (kept from an old digital camera I no longer use and used as the boot/ os drive for the RAID 5 system -technically £28.63 including delivery if bought from from www.aria.co.uk -E51 512MB Kingston Elite Pro Card). x2 IDE Ribbon Cables £0.00 (salvaged from various machines machines found in dumpsters). x3 200GB Maxtor D/Max+10 133/7200 rpm 8Mbit cache £198.30 (the most expensive item at -£66.10 ea. including delivery from www.aria.co.uk- but could have been done for nothing with salvaged drives if I wanted less capacity). x1 OS £1.00 (download FreeNas BSD based OS which supports Raid 0,1,5 from www.freenas.org/download.html and burn to CD hence £1.00 -cost of Cd media). * temporary use of Floopy drive (to install firmware on Harddisks and Motherboard to allow the proper recognition of the drives). * temporary use of CD drive (to install OS onto CompactFlash Card). Total cost of system: £207.30 (or £366.63 if you include the cost of the Compact Flash Card)- overall not bad when you consider that a commercial Nas system with similar capacity and redundancy will cost around £1200 as my system would still be considerably cheaper even if you added the cost of a raid 6 card and another redundant drive). *Array capacity at RAID 5 -400 Gb * Note that many will criticise a software based RAID 5 array due to the processing overheads -but this isn't really a problem with a NAS system as the primary bottleneck to performance is the bandwith of the network connection (100 Mbit connection is the limiting factor here). * On the pluss side -this system is relatively easy for anyone to set up -even a FreeBSD newbie such as myself- and It has run smoothly for a good while now. *I have now moved it to the hallway cupboard and rerouted an old hub in there to connect it to my household system and it appears very happy indeed).