I've been meaning to post an update here for a while, but writing tends to take time, getting the thoughts down, editing, rearranging, editing some more, correcting etc... I havnt been able to bring myself to do it until now. The good news is that while I havnt been posting here, I have been making progress on some of the infrastructure that I mentioned before - the underlying base on which everything else sits.
I've cleared away a lot of the clutter - various little things which were being ignored and were nagging at me. I reorganised my blogs and migrated them to the new version of Blogger. It helped that they released the new version recently - it meant I could finally migrate a couple of blogs that needed some features that werent supported in beta until just before the release. Theres links to my other blogs in the sidebar in case you're interested, but I havnt updated them in a while either - I'll get to that soon. Some are still works in progress, so dont expect too much just yet.
I updated my web server and created 8 new web sites (4 sites and 4 development versions of them) which I am still working on - including a Redfern Workshopz site. I moved all of my web-based utilities and internal applications over to the new sites and continue to set them up. At the moment they're not accessible until I get the layout and themes right, but at least they are there, and I have been migrating content over from the old sites (which are also not currently online).
I did some maintenance on the servers, fixing a few hardware problems along the way. At least 2 of them have died in the past few months and needed parts replaced or the operating systems rebuilt (or both). One of them has been upgraded, and Im still setting up the RAID array for the new disks on that one. Ive also built two new computers - one is a Home Theatre PC (Personal Video Recorder), and the other is built specifically for 3D modelling. Im still working on the HTPC - I had to canibalise some parts from it to fix a few hardware problems, and I borrowed its power supply for the 3D Modelling machine.
I have only just finished building the new machine for 3D modelling. Its nice. It runs an AMD X2 Dual Core 4600+ CPU (basically two 2.4Ghz CPU chips in one) on an Nvidia NForce4 chipset, and has TWO Nvidia 7600GS based graphics cards. The dual graphics cards are linked together via Nvidia's SLI interface and work as one, giving around twice the graphics power of a single card. If I can remember how to display the frame rate in Trainz, I'll post it here, but Ive seen it running at 40fps while switched back to the desktop. Trainz runs really smooth with all the performance parameters set to the max, but still (even in SP1) has some flickering and the audio problems that we all put up with.
I've loaded up Gmax, and an old copy of 3DS Max, and have copied all my models over to the new machine. Last night I installed the Normals Map plugin for Gimp, and set up the Trainz Content Creation Studio, with the Max 4.2 plugins, to enable bump mapping in Gmax. Im still setting up a few other supporting utilities, but its all working and looking good so far. I've probably forgotten a bunch of other things that I've been doing recently, but suffice to say, I havnt made any further progress on the Tangara or the 86 Class since the earlier posts - Im hoping to remedy that situation very soon.
Appologies for not responding to the comments, but I have been reading (and publishing) them. I also appologise to the people that emailed me and didnt get a reply. Sometimes I just need to get away from things, especially if I've been working on them for a long period or if Im concentrating on other things. Its just how it works with me, and is pretty normal. Don't let that stop you from sending them though - I need someone to bug me every now and then to keep me focused on things. I appreciated recieving them, and each one reminded me to get back to working on the models as soon as I could.
Well, thats about enough text for now. Its late (early actually). I'll add links and things later.
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