31 October 2014

27 inch Imac



It’s been no secret my 2009 tower is getting long in the tooth and it was time to update my main computer. The new mac Pro towers are very fast and cool looking but also expensive and a little beyond what I can reasonably use in my home studio so I decided on a new iMac. For a lot less money, I got all the upgrades I needed (the best graphics card, 32 gigs of RAM etc) and didn’t need to go Thunderbolt drives for storage. Someday maybe.

The machine itself is really nice and I mean REALLY nice. The screen, though not the new retina, is well above many monitors I see on other computer and sold separately. The thin design is striking and having an all in one is appealing for limited desk space, especially since I use my older LED monitor as a second for my work. 

It is fairly quiet, but not silent. I do a lot of 3D rendering these days and the fans certainly come on often enough. It’s not annoying though. The only hiccups are with the new OS.. Yosemite so far. Wacom tablets were not compatible, something that is now fixed, my key chains were a mess and quite a few files didn’t get transferred over from the old computer with the migration tool and had to be done manually.  Having to sign in to every account and many websites that automatically knew my login before and the damn FaceTime would like your password for « …. »  is a huge annoyance when you just want to get going on your new machine. Another problem were the Seagate drives I bought as a place for my files and as back-up. They really don’t like Macs for some reason and needed to be reformatted several times before finally giving in to the fact they were never going to touch a windows machine in their lifetime. 

The speed with rendering is fast than my lower but not as fast as I would have liked. The overall user experience is amazing, the he amount a RAM does a lot more than a fast processor in many cases to make things go quicker. The screen real estate is fantastic and working in Cinema 4D went from being  a little difficult when matching animations to video backgrounds to something a lot more precise and agreeable. 


I knew there would some compromise going from a tower to an all in one workstation but I didn’t realize how minor they would be in the end. 

26 October 2014

Why I HATE FedEx

Despite their self proclaimed reputation for getting things to you fast and on time, my experiences with FedEs have, for the most been terrible.

Case in point is my current iMac shipment... still currently in transit despite an arrival date of 2 days ago before noon. (Which I took a day off work for). As you can see from my crude graphics, it is zig-zagging all over two countries to get to my house. For several days it was said to be on time and fact said so until 45 minutes after it was supposed to arrive when it was suddenly in Calgary, the other side of the country. Thing is, they knew it was going to be late the night before and didn't say so.

Customer service is horrible, they blame customs of course, leaving out the fact that if it was in customs that morning in Memphis and then going to Calgary and not Montreal for some reason right afterwards, there is no way in hell it was arriving on time. What can they possibly do? they always ask. They are FEDEX, they could over night it directly to my door.. that is, after all, one of their best know services!  Don't worry it will be there Monday is the next statement... like I can trust them with anything at this point but even so... I am supposed to take another day off work in the vain hope they will accomplish task from 3 days before? You can ask a friend or family member to be there... to what..  also miss a day of work and spend the day sitting in my house waiting for my delivery? Do they think the entire world population has nothing better to do than wait for FedEx deliveries to arrive... whenever?

FedEx also has what can be called nothing but a scam set up between some merchants. They will charge you extra fees, usually ½ the cost of your order, to cross the border. They insist that it is the border charging this fee and they don't get any of it. For some reason no other carrier seems to have this issue with my deliveries.

To add insult to injury if you can't devote your every waking hour to waiting for a package you overpaid to have shipped to your house, it will go to some storage centre a "short" metro, bus, then another bus, then a walk away.... if you think 2 hours one way is short.

The kicker is.. I don't use FedEX. Ever. I will take Canada post over them any day. Apple computer however will only ship through them and some places I have ordered from using the regular post option have decided, without telling me, to use FedEx... and then charge me the extra fees. The ratio to getting my order on time and at the price stated is something like 8-10, not in FedEx's favour.

19 October 2014

Still trying to get this done



I took a long (4 month) contract to work on children's show doing quite a few 3d animations and it leaves no time for anything else. I did get a few minutes to put my almost done character into my street scene for my Lovecraft project and it encourages me that I might be able to pull it off.

Hopefully I will be able to get some time to myself and my work before the year ends... but I doubt it.