Being me, I had prepared my usual list of stuff to do. What I really meant was there was no specifically interesting activity planned. I did have a few things I thought it might be nice to try to achieve, including:
- Finish Claymore (did this);
- Watch the first few eps of The Big Bang Theory s4, which I'd managed to get all across with in terms of order, having not realised it had started (did this);
- Finish CoD: Black Ops, assuming I was already a good chunk of the way through (did this);
- Play Anno 1404 (did this... a bit too much, which resulted in me not doing the next thing) and
- Scanning stuff (didn't do this, but see below).
Otherwise, it was a flat-cleaning weekend and I went food shopping and caught up generally on recorded telly programmes, plus I went for my usual weekend walks (pleasingly, I'm keeping up with doing 10,000 steps at the weekend, so the fact the weekday walking has suffered due to daylight and the weather doesn't make me feel too guilty).
Anyway, about the scanning.
As I discussed last week, I've been building a new computer (I may actually have got it fixed and it definitely looking like it's the loose RAM module theory I had - I may even have identified the culprit, which leaves me the real problem of how I get the company to believe me and accept a return :). And that means that I have the problem of hand-down.
See, I've built the new computer exclusively for gaming. What I like to do is keep that computer clean and not install any crap on it, so that games will run smoothly and as quickly as possible. I even try to remove any un-necessary windows components and it gets completely reinstalled on a regular basis.
But that sort of regime is not helpful for more normal stuff. I don't know about you, but I have all sorts of crap on my machines - random programmes that where maybe useful at the time and documents saved in what seemed like sensible places at the time. All that sort of stuff. So I also have a machine for general use.
And that machine is where I do my scanning. Or I would if I wasn't a lazy bugger (just recently I have a myriad of proper reasons I haven't been doing scanning, but before that it was definitely a list of excuses).
Anyway, the point is that I've ended up in the tricky situation of having to re-purpose my machines. What was my old games rig can now become my new desktop, etc. The big problem is that I want to also end up with a machine I can put by my TV that I use to watch blu-rays on (well, and all sorts of other stuff too - but essentially I'll end up with a PC there, rather than a DVD and other players).
I'm getting way off the point, which is that I found my A3 scanner does not have a windows 7 driver. But I've also heard that later versions of Photoshop have a really good photo stitching algorithm. But Photoshop is incredibly expensive (£600!) so I was hoping to get a cracked version of it.
This will allow me to at least test out how good the photo stitching is. If it's good then I can look at buying a new scanner (a regular size one, rather than the A3 one) and possibly getting a legit copy of CS5 (ouch) and then that will allow me to completely upgrade to windows 7.
Except I've given myself another headache, because in my attempts to fix my games rig by throwing money at the problem I've kinda ended up with half another machine, and it's a really powerful one. So do I try to sell this stuff (I've no idea how well it will e-bay, especially as it's without original boxes)? Or do I go the whole hog and get the last few bits to build yet another machine? And what do I do with a fourth PC? I know my dad is frustrated by the age and slowness of the machine he has - perhaps I should donate it to him?
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