Day 200

I apologize ahead of time but this is going to be another technical post. So I've been using Mudbox 2010 and recently got 2011 to work but neither allow me to paint because my graphics card isn't good enough. My brother has a laptop with a dedicated graphics card but it's broken but should be fixable. It's a common problem with the laptop he bought. There's something wrong with the soldering inside and cracks form in it. A method to fix it is to overheat the components to melt the solder and reestablish a good connection. So I taped over all the vents, wrapped the laptop in blankets and turned it on to let the heat build up. Eventually the laptop shut itself down and after letting it cool, I turned it on everything seemed to be working.

I got ready to install programs when I realized this computer had the 32 bit version of Windows while I had 64. So I had to find and download 32 bit versions of all the programs first. Finally I installed Mudbox 2013 and it looked like it was working correctly and I could finally paint. Then I installed the drivers for the tablet and opened up Mudbox again and that's when the laptop froze. I restarted and Windows wasn't loading up correctly. At this point, I wasn't sure if it was drivers I just installed or the original problem with the laptop was just happening again. I spent awhile trying to fix it on my own but eventually my brother came home and told me that what was happening had happened before. So I put the tape and blankets back on and heated it again but I kept turning it on when it was shut itself off. After a cool down, the computer was working again. I think the second heating worked better but I just have to be careful about the laptop overheating again. Ironically heat both fixes and breaks the laptop. I opened up Mudbox but found my tablet wasn't working 100%. I had to double tap things when I should have just needed to tap once. This problem didn't seem to happen in other programs. So I installed Mudbox 2011, which is what my book is written for, and the tablet worked fine for that. Now I finally have a working computer with a working copy of Mudbox that works with a tablet. It just took a bit of time. Anyway, let's get back to the art stuff...