tsamb.

I'm currently running Windows 7 Pro x64. I have the standard Win7 backup running weekly backing up my system drive to my RAID5 in the same system. I would like to continue to perform this backup weekly, but I would also like to set up an automatic weekly backup to an external HDD (or perhaps a backup to another computer on the network). Is there any way to do this under Windows 7? And if not, can anyone suggest some good software to do such a task? Or should I just write a batch file to incrementally copy the important files I want to backup and set it to run once a week?

If nothing else, make sure you catch the 17th, 18th and 19th of March. That's when the City Winners and Peter Jackson Wildcard films are played. And since there were 650 entries this year, they should have been culled out to such a degree that those ones will be the best of the best. There's more info at http://www.v48hours.co.nz/2010/48tv/ or on the C4 website. (Oh and if you missed the first few that screened on TV, I think they are on the C4 website, too.)

Heh, thanks. A fellow kiwi? Are you watching the best of genre films this week on C4 at 10:30pm? I watched last night's episode but missed Monday's. I think they're going for a couple of weeks. There were some pretty damned good films made this year...

While we were writing we had thought about right at the end of it, pulling away from a TV in a class full of kids, all with their jaws dropped, as if they had all just watched it. We ended up deciding that since that was a) a bit cliche and b) hard to pull off without a classroom or kids, that we would just leave it as it was. We were also trying to aim for a bit of a novel approach on the "$ex Ed" theme. The classic $ex ed movies that the organisers were expecting were the politically correct "birds and the bees" movies that play in middle school. We thought about going that route, but decided that we should try something fresh and away from what was expected. Thanks for your comments!

Howsit going y'all? A couple weekends ago we took part in a film competition where you have 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a short film. You get given a genre, a character, a character trait, a prop, a line of dialogue and a camera shot that you must incorporate into your film. You get given all of this stuff on Friday at 7pm and must hand in your film not a second later than 7pm on the Sunday. We got second place as an audience favourite in our heat (out of 19 heats) but we didn't make the city finals. The required elements were: Genre "$ex Educational Movie", Character and trait "Sydney Manson, a fabricator", Prop "a broken toy", Line of dialogue "when you look at it that way", Camera shot "dolly zoom, aka 'Vertigo' zoom". This is what we came up with: http://www.v48hours.co.nz/screening-room/2...the-missionary/ BE FOREWARNED IT IS RATED AT LEAST M FOR MATURE. Please comment on what you think of it here and/or there. As for the techy side of stuff which I know is what you're all here for: We shot exclusively on a Canon 5D Mark II. We had a shotgun mic mounted on the Canon. We used a Sony Z1P or similar for getting separate sound (from a boom mic via XLR into the Sony) and we synched that sound up in post. We only ended up synching about half of the sound because we ran out of time. If anyone's interested I'm happy to share any other techy-details anyone wants to know about the shoot itself or workflow in post etc. Note that the copy that is online now is just an SD copy (because we had to hand it in in SD), but eventually we'll export it to 1080p and upload that. But primarily, I'd love it if you guys watched the film and gave us some feedback/comments/critiques etc!

Hi all, I'm wondering what a good benchmark of computing power is roughly equivalent on both desktop systems and mobile systems. When I say mobile systems, I actually mean smart phones rather than laptops/netbooks. Can anyone think of a benchmark, statistic or specification which would translate equally to both devices? I realise there are other bottlenecks like RAM, software etc, but is there any good standard for CPU power which would work across both platforms? MIPS tells somewhat of a story, but I doubt this is the best standard. On that note, what desktop computer system/desktop CPU from the past would be closest to today's iPhone 3GS or the new Nexus One?

My favourite part of my current build is how tidy the cable routing is in my Antec P180!

Am I too late for 2009 Post Your Ride? I guess I snuck in with a couple of weeks to spare! Here's my baby. Bought it mid-2008. Upgrade from an e34 540i. 2000 BMW 530i Motorsport. Facelift E39. I love it.

I'm not worried about my OS on RAID0. I back up regularly and I'm not worried about losing data on that array. Why would you get rid of the RAID0? I am also not worried about CPU usage on the ICH10R. I have found performance fine, even under demanding combined CPU/HDD usage. Nothing to demand spending a couple of hundred bucks on a dedicated RAID controller. All I am worried about are more hard crashes which will result in a 2-day reinitialization. I did the same on my last build (games on RAID5) and I went two years without having to reinitialize.

Hi all, I had my first dirty shutdown that required reinitialization of my 4 x 1TB RAID5 array last night. I've left it initializing all night and it's only at 23%. Urgh. I was playing The Witcher and I had a hard freeze and had to hard reset. I have my OS on a RAID0 array, and most media on my RAID5, including all of my games, currently. Question is: Should I move all of my games to the OS drive to prevent this happening again if there's another hard freeze? I could play games from the OS drive and back them up to the RAID5. What do you think?

Decrypting DA:O games files on Steam as I write! Too bad I have to be at work in 20 minutes. And the damned RAID array is initializing after a dirty shutdown.

Actually it's not that old. I picked it up mid-2008. And that is after one DOA RMA (well actually just a return and replace). I have had a huge amount of issues with Creative stuff in the past as well (hasn't everyone?). Like incompatibility of drivers on Vista, OpenAL support, and Creative software/hardware being one of several causes of Bioshock not working. The one Creative card I have been happy with, and am still happy with is my Audigy 2 Platinum Pro. I have used that for several sampling recordings and have been impressed with its build quality. These new X-Fi cards, on the other hand, don't seem to be built as well as the old gear at all.

The control unit is pretty necessary in this set up. It does a few things. It acts as a preamplifier, allowing you to change the master volume, and individual channel volumes. (And it also has an IR input for remote control.) It also acts as a decoder for digital inputs over optical and coax. (Decodes Dolby Digital and DTS bitsreams.) As was said above, both the control unit and the cable which connects it to the sub (and integrated power amp in the sub) are proprietary. If you had a wiring diagram, there might possibly be a way to circumvent the use of the preamp, and feed the power amp directly with preamplified signals from your soundcard. This would be a pretty ambitious hack, though. If you cannot find a control unit, you could potentially use the speakers as satellites in a small home theatre environment. The sub would be harder to integrate.

I had had some el cheapo X-Fi in a PCI-E slot for quite a while and was running six channels analogue out to my Z-5500s. I had started to hear (or maybe it was always there) a bit of noise when certain frequencies were played. This was noticeable in certain parts of music and in certain game sound effects. (Most noticeably, I loaded up good ol' Diablo II and played through it, and the potion sound effect always had a sort of crackle in it.) It was always the left channel. I thought, ah drat, the speaker is stuffed. But I swapped the left and right channel speakers and it wasn't the speaker. Then I disabled the X-Fi and plugged back into my mobo sound, and lo and behold, the crackle is completely gone. Perhaps it was noise coming through on the PCI-E bus? Or else it's just another piece of Creative junk hardware. I do prefer the multitude of options in the Creative software, but then again said software is still bloated. I'd rather have dumbed down software/drivers and have crystal clear sound though. So that's where I am.

One reason the 4770 got my attention in the first place was the fact that it's the first ATI card on a 40nm process. Lower temps and better OCing perhaps? Along that same line, anyone know when the higher spec 40nm cards are due to come out?