Athena's Journal

Friday, May 4, 2018

Site Revamp

Site is being rebuilt here:
https://athenaartiste.wordpress.com/

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Quick status update for those who've been wondering what's up. First up, my display issues with my MSI laptop continued to the point I had to take it into the shop. (This was a while ago!) Cutting the "woes" section down, finally got word back over this weekend (April 14th) that the needed parts are due in shortly. Repair shops swears they will get it shipped back to me before the end of this week. As I'm "making due" with my old Acer laptop (6 years old now), producing videos on that is impossible.
To keep myself busy I've decided to give my blog some love at a new location. New location can be found here. For a semi-retired professional web developer, Blogger's software has been quite frustrating to use and limiting. Not that WordPress is that great either, but I will be able to organize things in a better fashion. So, thanks for everyone's patience and understand! Crossing fingers things should be getting back on track soon!

Friday, March 2, 2018

Display Issues March 2018

Not sure if anyone else has been running into these strange display issues I've been seeing, but here is what *I've* been seeing. As briefly as I can describe it, numerous display issues have been noted on my MSI Apache Pro Gaming laptop (2 GPU's onboard, Nvidia GTX970M and Intel HD 530). When the screen is refreshed such as when returning from Win 10's "sleep" state or program screens that had been minimized, very often the colors will look odd or parts of what should be seen (such as sections of the program's interface) will be missing. Particularly vulnerable is the program used to edit productions (Techsmith's Camtasia).

Another issue - I think related - is that saved data files (whenever this has occurred) are often corrupted (if the save was made after the weirdness). These are from normal programs in use within Win 10 such as any of my graphics design software and even Microsoft's Office products. Game programs, which use the Nvidia GTX970M chip, have never had either of these issues.

A few days ago I finally did get an update installed for the Intel HD 530. Crossing fingers this will fix things. An ongoing annoyance is that Intel's Support Utility, which is supposed to provide notifications when updates are available, had stopped working sometime ago. (Intel provides quite a few of the internal hardware on this machine.)

'Nuff said on this for now!

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Status Report - Shipwrecked Banished Series

In brief, there are some major mod conflicts between some of those I've been using for a long time and the latest version of Black Liquid's Journey released just before Christmas 2017. Even worse is the fact the worst of the crashing issues do not become obvious until your city reaches the 20 to 30 year timeline. The only one I know of for sure is the Cold Realism mod confirmed by my viewer Wicca Robin (see comments under Chapter 01 for the series.)

What I'm going to do is a reboot of the series using the same map and so forth, but minus the Cold Realism mod. If that can be played thru to the 30 year mark without running into crashing issues, then I'll start breaking the recording of that play thru up into several chapters for posting on my channel. (Minus that first Chapter which should be very similar to the one finished.) If crashing issues continue, more mods will have to go and then try another reboot. Hopefully it won't be too hard to sort this out! When I do get that sorted I'll make another post here on the blog with a revised mod list.

As always, thanks everyone for your comments and support!

Footnote!!!! See updated mod list for reboot!
(Scroll down thru intro section. Sorry, Blogger's software doesn't let me create internal Anchor type links within one.)

Saturday, December 16, 2017

We Happy Few - Technicolor Update

I have decided against doing another series on We Happy Few until its full release in April 2018. The Technicolor Update (last major for the early release version), as it is known, does contain a LOT of new material; but is rather buggy too. In fact, after numerous tries, I have yet to manage a complete play-thru where something did not fail. For the benefit of the developers and others, here is a brief run-down on the most commonly occurring bugs and fixes, if sorted out:

Metal Shutters on Old Soldier's homes - On every play-thru the metal shutters would come down at some point, usually an end of day, and never re-open. Depending on where I was, the only re-course was to use the developers console to "ghost" in or out to finish things.
Vanishing Skill Books - Before leaving Eel Holm Pie, all skill books found will be lost at some point. At first I thought this was associated with picking up the health skill book found in the rafters of the puppet theater (where you rescue Peachy). Further testing demonstrated this would ALWAYS occur after picking up the 8th, 9th, or 10th book; not clear on the exact number. Only way to avoid this is to avoid picking up books in the Eel Holm area until after traveling to Lud's Holms and then back. This was only test a very few times to see if this would avoid the loss of any skill books, so I'm not sure if it is a good fix. It is the only way found to avoid it.
Failures Involving Jubulator - Once you become tired while in the underground area, it seems wherever you are in that quest line will start to fail with no ability to recover. There is no place to rest once down there, after all. For example, if you haven't crashed the Jubulator you'll become stuck in and endless loop of that happening, your death, and crash again. "Ghosting" out and returning does not get you out of that loop. If you are to the combat point when you become over tired, either Peter or the "bad" Jubulator will vanish (or - in the case of the Jubulator - double itself) making completion of the quest impossible. Again, attempts to "ghost out" and return later did not change anything.
Tranquilizer Darts Not Working - Not really a bug, but a major flaw in that they don't work as before. Yes, those hit will become tired but option to knock them out is no longer available.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Health Challenges - August 2017

Most of my viewers know that I'm dealing with a fair number of health issues. The tremor, in particular, has gotten quite bad over this past year. After reviewing all my meds, the plan is to change some of those out for others in hopes of improvement. These all being drugs that effect my brain & nerves, sudden changes cannot occur or it could make things even worse (seizures, stroke, etc.).

After 2 weeks I'm off the 1st one and about ready to start phasing out the next. However, this has made the tremor even worse. I have not given up on doing videos, but I'm not going to post ones that are really horrible either! So bear with me folks, there will be new videos coming eventually!

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Journal's Table of Contents

Blogger's software doesn't support menu systems of any sort, so this post will act as a Table of Contents. Posts will be categorized under Headings by Subject so as to make it easier to find what you are looking for.