Splendid Computer Tips

It is I, your savory wonderful friend, Mr Lange, here to teach all you righteous dudes about making the most of your computer. Adhere to my tips and make your life as an animator a little brighter.

The Mouse
Your mouse is your best friend, along with your keyboard. Your keyboard is probably fine now, but your mousemanship can probably do for some heavy optimizing.
Tip 1: Mouse Type. Use a corded laser mouse. Ball mice are old and ghey and often jerky. Wireless mice constantly feed on your batteries and frequently drop connection, fucking up your work. So far I have not found any reliable wireless mice, especially for a good price. If cords annoy you, wireless mice will cause you more hassle for their cure. Get the lesser of two evils you panzy. Corded laser mice are very precise, inexpensive, and reliable. Use them, especially with my following tip.
Tip 2: Mouse Settings. Is your mouse speed mediocre? Crank that bitch up. Set your pointer speed very fast. A fast mouse may be scary.. at first. But if you practice with a fast mouse, you'll find yourself working much faster in no time. Give it a try.
Tip 3: Pointer Trails. These are more than a cheap aesthetic effect. If you're using a plasma/lcd monitor, your pointer will vanish when it moves quickly. Turn on pointer trails to their lowest setting and it'll be WAY easier to follow. Another bonus is its easier to see when your computer is lagging or frozen.

Windows UI
If you are using Windows XP or above, set your whole UI to classic. Yes, I mean the ugly Windows 98. Those edges may be sharp and pointy, but your computer will thank you for it.
Turn off visual nuances such as drop shadows and fading menus. In fact, turn off animations for minimizing/maximizing, and the scroll effect on menus. You will find yourself working much faster and waiting less for stupid shit. However, leave on "show window contents while dragging" and set your colors to 32 bit (this is important for graphic artists and animators). Just think function over form. That's how computers should be. Extra fancy cosmetics are for noobs/fags and do nothing but bog performance and workflow efficiency. I also suggest turning off most or all computer sounds. You'd be amazed how much these slow computers.
Do you have a lot of icons on your desktop? These will slow you down. Organize that shit into folders. Icons load/refresh very slowly on Windows, so having a lot of those on your desktop will slow down your comp when you log in, or when you do a lot of other stuff for a while then go back to the desktop. By having just a few folders on your desktop, you will notice things speed up a great deal for you.

Media Players
This is a debate older than time itself. Save yourself toil and rest upon my advice.
VLC Media Player. Use this for watching videos. It plays everything under the sun, quickly and seldom with problems. It even plays those pesky flv video files from Youtube. 100% free, fast, possesses a wealth of useful features that most media players dream of.
Winamp OR XMPlay. These are the best audio players in existence, the end. Winamp is powerful, supports a zillion formats, and can play even more formats via plugins. Free, although there's a paid version that has extra unimportant features. XMPlay is my player of choice. Its smaller than Winamp, consumes less memory, supports nearly if not all formats that Winamp does, its compatible with Winamps format plugins, and needs no installation. Skinnable, like Winamp, and 100% free. Its also better for tracker audio formats like mod, xm, it, and s3m.

Very Useful Apps
Bulk Rename Utility. This thing is a life saver. If you have lots of content to manage (like me), you are likely finding yourself spending forever renaming individual files. Save yourself from carpal tunnel syndrome with this program. It can rename any amount of files at the same time, using many different methods. Cut sections of the file name, replace characters, trim extra spaces, initial/all/no caps, and my favorite, add numbers in order (this is great for image sequences or identifying similar media, ie image 1, image 2, image 3, etc). Totally free.
CCleaner. This program keeps your computer clean and happy. Removes unwanted junk and fixes common errors, as well as forcefully uninstalling programs that lack uninstallers, and other nice things. Never pay money for computer optimization, this is all you will ever need. It is free.
Unlocker. Targets processes that trap files and kills them. The website speaks for itself. Take a look.
Format Factory. Ever struggle trying to convert that one unusual file? Maybe you wanted to extract audio from a video? Look no further. This magical software converts everything to everything. This solves lots of potential painful problems easily. Free of course. (Please note, it mentions swf as one of the formats. This does not convert swf to video, rather it stores a video in an swf file. Sorry if that disappointed some of you.)

Extra Tips:
Firefox wins over IE. Do not let any stupid rube tell you otherwise.
I repeat: Function over form, when it comes to computer operation. Do your best to practice things that are normally difficult for you, if they improve your activity. Your goal is to improve, not to idle. You will find yourself gaining new motivation when you tackle new challenges.


I hope this latest tldr tutorial of mine has helped you in some way. Its still a little under construction so expect more. You should read it all for best results!
- Mr Lange, the ancient guru of awesome

I knew some things of this.

I just didn't know that Bulk Rename Utility, that's gonna be pretty useful. Thanks for your tips again Lange.

[On] Off Topic: This was very useful information. I'm glad you supplied information not only on helping us become better animator but also help us save our computers from pushing its self.
On [Off] Topic: So this is the new tutorial Eric was talking about

Renny wrote:[On] Off Topic: This was very useful information. I'm glad you supplied information not only on helping us become better animator but also help us save our computers from pushing its self.
On [Off] Topic: So this is the new tutorial Eric was talking about

You didn't have to type all that stuff in the brackets, it confused the hell out of me. It's not a bad thing to get off topic just a little bit as long as you don't over do it to the point where it's an irrelevant side conversation.

Well thanks for the programs I guess <3

what if you have a laptop D: i have a mouse but its not like it'll work everywhere (couch, rug), or at least good. and i put the pointer trails to the max :3 gotta check out those other effects soon. thanx for the tl;drness

Feels like you didn't put all the information you did the first time when it decided to screw you over and not put everything down. But its still quite detailed but doesn't seem like you did all that would have on the first version. But I guess that's how things go, I'd hate when I lose all the text and the second time I don't put as much detail. But still, good job.

I have some of these programs but I don't like, Bulk Rename Utility, Unlocker, and Format Factory. I'm downloading those right now though, so thanks for telling us about them. Oh, and I had no idea the icons on the desktop background could slow down your computer...I have almost 33 icons on that and its a no wonder my computer tends to lag. Thanks for the awesome tut.

.I have almost 33 icons on that and its a no wonder my computer tends to lag. Thanks for the awesome tut.

33!? wtf do you even use all of them? i have like half of yours and only use a couple

Granadico wrote:

.I have almost 33 icons on that and its a no wonder my computer tends to lag. Thanks for the awesome tut.

33!? wtf do you even use all of them? i have like half of yours and only use a couple

Well... 6 are for animating purposes...5 of them are folders, 1 for writing essays, 4 music things, 3 movie things, and a virus handlers, and 2 games.

Pattiasina24 wrote:Feels like you didn't put all the information you did the first time when it decided to screw you over and not put everything down. But its still quite detailed but doesn't seem like you did all that would have on the first version. But I guess that's how things go, I'd hate when I lose all the text and the second time I don't put as much detail. But still, good job.

Actually I wrote more than the first time, more concisely and detailed too.

Good tips as always, ShortFactor. Keep 'em coming. Especially if you have any advice on sound editing and ripping softwares. That'd help me out a lot. Thanks, though!

Great tips man, my PC runs about 1/3 faster now And that FormatFactory is a life saver! I had a bunch of retarded m4a's and didn't know how to convert them, and now I can usem!

Mr Lange wrote:

Pattiasina24 wrote:Feels like you didn't put all the information you did the first time when it decided to screw you over and not put everything down. But its still quite detailed but doesn't seem like you did all that would have on the first version. But I guess that's how things go, I'd hate when I lose all the text and the second time I don't put as much detail. But still, good job.

Actually I wrote more than the first time, more concisely and detailed too.

Wow, sweet. So it was a bad thing that lead to a good thing. :3

I actually took the time to read this, nice tips, alas, I'm too lazy to do anything with my computer. But my desktop has a couple of folders so that goes with one of your tips

SoarKrieg wrote:Good tips as always, ShortFactor. Keep 'em coming. Especially if you have any advice on sound editing and ripping softwares. That'd help me out a lot. Thanks, though!

I thought that was covered in "Splendid Flash Tips".

For convenience:
Wavosaur Easier, cleaner, faster.
Audacity Heavy duty, lots of features.

Mr Lange wrote:

SoarKrieg wrote:Good tips as always, ShortFactor. Keep 'em coming. Especially if you have any advice on sound editing and ripping softwares. That'd help me out a lot. Thanks, though!

I thought that was covered in "Splendid Flash Tips".

For convenience:
Wavosaur Easier, cleaner, faster.
Audacity Heavy duty, lots of features.

Tut on removing back ground music?

Pattiasina24 wrote:

Mr Lange wrote:

SoarKrieg wrote:Good tips as always, ShortFactor. Keep 'em coming. Especially if you have any advice on sound editing and ripping softwares. That'd help me out a lot. Thanks, though!

I thought that was covered in "Splendid Flash Tips".

For convenience:
Wavosaur Easier, cleaner, faster.
Audacity Heavy duty, lots of features.

Tut on removing back ground music?

i would love you even more S-F if you did that :Q

Granadico wrote:

Pattiasina24 wrote:
Tut on removing back ground music?

i would love you even more S-F if you did that :Q

That doesn't even make sense.
Try making sure you've formed a rational thought before relaying your question.

Mr Lange wrote:

Granadico wrote:

Pattiasina24 wrote:
Tut on removing back ground music?

i would love you even more S-F if you did that :Q

That doesn't even make sense.
Try making sure you've formed a rational thought before relaying your question.

its irrational to like someone more for making a tutorial they want? and it was a joke statement not a question, patt asked the question.

Granadico wrote:

Mr Lange wrote:

Granadico wrote:

Pattiasina24 wrote:
Tut on removing back ground music?

i would love you even more S-F if you did that :Q

That doesn't even make sense.
Try making sure you've formed a rational thought before relaying your question.

its irrational to like someone more for making a tutorial they want? and it was a joke statement not a question, patt asked the question.

No dude that question is completely fucktarded. It does not make sense.

Pattiasina24 wrote:Tut on removing back ground music?

How the heck someone could do that. How. Even if you manage to find a program which does that, it will always leave some little tidbits of music in there.

leocartoon1 wrote:

Pattiasina24 wrote:Tut on removing back ground music?

How the heck someone could do that. How. Even if you manage to find a program which does that, it will always leave some little tidbits of music in there.

I'm sorry I would like to learn how to do it even it its simplest form.

Pattiasina24 wrote:

leocartoon1 wrote:

Pattiasina24 wrote:Tut on removing back ground music?

How the heck someone could do that. How. Even if you manage to find a program which does that, it will always leave some little tidbits of music in there.

I'm sorry I would like to learn how to do it even it its simplest form.

Agreed. Often times, it bg music won't be removed, but extremely toned down. I'd also like to know how to do that efficiently.

So, those are some splendid computer tips guys

Isnt this getting a little off topic