JonnyChapps Media

Hey guys and gals. I am in the process of building and installing a computer in my F-150 and wanted to document what I’m doing.

So far I have all the hardware and am putting together and getting it installed. I will update on the progress. Watch the following videos I have of the hardware and the Amp install and tell me what you think and ask any questions you may have:

Computer Hardware

Amp Install

Hardware Specs:

The computer is cased in a mITX PC Car Chassis Case Enclosure, the case is very small and only allows enough room for a Mini ITX motherboard and a notebook hard drive. There is no room for a disk reader or any other type of hard drive. The small size is perfect for car installation when room is taken into consideration.

I have the Intel Desktop Board D510MO with 2 sticks of DDR2 memory at 2Gbs each. As far as the hard drive, I purchased the Western Digital 250 GB Hard Drive. I also have an external DVD±RW Drive and a wireless USB keyboard with touch pad.

For the monitor I have the Mimo 720-F Touchscreen Monitor. With this being a USB monitor it can be used as the primary, and only, monitor but you will not see anything on the screen until windows has loaded and booted the drivers. No big deal, but if you have to set the BIOS or change those type of settings you will need to connect a VGA monitor. You will also need to do this to download and install the drivers for the touch screen. (NOTE: along with the VGA monitor, you will also need a standard CD/DVD reader and a PSP mouse and keyboard to get the initial setup and drivers loaded)

For powering the computer I have the M3-ATX Intelligent Automotive DC-DC Car PC Power Supply. For internet I have Intel 6200 IEEE 802.11n Network Adapter.

This is enough for a basic set-up.

I will list the extras I have below without going into much detail:

1. Bluetooth USB Adapter
2. SIRIUS SC-C1 Vehicle Tuner
3. SIRIUS Universal Interface
4. GlobalSat BU-353 Waterproof USB GPS Receiver

SIRIUS Satellite Radio

Popularity: 10% [?]

I am in the process of setting up a ‘Carputer’ in my vehicle. I don’t have the actual computer as of yet, but I did get a MIMO 7″ touch screen LCD and used my Laptop as the ‘brains’. The main point, for me, was to have a turn by turn navigation program and what I decided on was Garmin’s Mobile PC program. The only problem with this is that they no longer support this program and getting it to work right, with maps and such, was kinda a pain in the a**. So let me walk you through what I did, and maybe it can make it easier for you:

First off you need the program itself. I downloaded the trial version from the Garmin Website.  After downloading you will have a file named GarminMobilePC_50070.exe. If you open this file it will look for a  previously installed version to update it (This won’t work since you don’t have one) Instead of double-clicking to install, change the extension to .rar by right clicking on the file and renaming it to GarminMobilePC_50070.rar,You will need a program which can open .rar files, Win-Zip, ect.  After opening the archive, double click MAIN.msi and the program will be installed. The first time you launch it will ask if you have an installation code or if you want a 15 day free trial. Select the trial version and the software registers itself at Garmin.com and tells you when it will expire.

So now you have the program but there is no maps that come with it. The way I got around this was to do a google search for Garmin Mobile PC maps, you need “City Navigator North America”. I’m not going to tell you how I got it, or how you should get it, accept to say it might not be “legal” since Garmin doesn’t supply it or support this file any more. After you find this file you will have a file named ‘gmapsupp‘ this is the whole map and is around 1 Gig. Name this file ‘gmapprom‘ and place it in the folder located at the default Garmin install folder which is: C:\GarminMobilePC.

After doing this, start Garmin – click tools – Manage my data – Map Sets, and you should see it.

There you have it. You will also need a GPS receiver that works with Garmin, I use the GlobalSat BU-353 Waterproof USB GPS Receiver.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Hello and welcome to another of my tutorials. In this, we will be covering how to use the alpha layer in Photoshop. I will be using CS3, but this same principle can be applied to all the versions (you may have to adjust for different names and/or tool setups)

I will be using an image of fire on a black background. This works great when using images with very contrasting colors like lightning, fire, fireworks, ect. Load your image into Photoshop.

Open the Channels tab (next to the Layers tab) and find the layer that has the most contrast between the subject you want to keep and the background. Click once on the layer you choose to select it. After it is selected click once more on it, and without letting, go drag it down with the mouse over the ‘New Layer’ icon and release to create a new layer.

Notice the name of your new layer.

Click on the RGB layer to select all 4 again, and click on the eye of the new layer to hide it. Then go to Select –> Load Selection, and in the drop down box choose your new layer and hit OK. Now your image should have a moving dotted line around the selection.

Switch back to the Layers menu, make sure the correct layer is still selected and hit ‘Delete’

*if the wrong selection was deleted it is because you have a white background which, to Photoshop, is considered the solid color as opposed to the blacks transparency. Just hit Edit –> Undo to undo the deletion and the go to Select –> inverse and then hit delete.

Now it should look like this:

Add your background to the composition, make sure it is underneeth your original layer.

Doesn’t that look good. There is one last thing we can do to blend it in a little more. Go to Layer –> Matting –> Remove Black Matte. That removes anything else left over from your original background.

Now you should have something like this:

Now go and experiment and see what great images you can create.

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is a tutorial on how to customize the header in the ‘Epsilon’ Theme for WordPress. You can download this theme here.

This is what your header will look like after installing and activating the theme:  (your links may be different depending on what you have already created)

First open the header file in wp-content/themes/epsilon/header.php using a text editor or, which I will be using, Dreamweaver.

Locate the following code:

This DIV tag contains the Blog Title and Tagline.

If you wish to delete the tagline, which in this case is TEST BLOG, just select and delete the following line from the above code:

Now for that pesky Blog Image:

The easiest way to change it would be to create a picture of your choosing with the same dimensions  as the one provided, which for quick reference is 300w X 55h.  (If you do do this make sure you create a PNG file which the one provided is.) Then name your image ‘logo.png’ and save it in the folder wp-content/themes/epsilon/images overwriting the one provided and upload it to your server.

The second, and more difficult, way gives you more control over the overall appearance. To go this route, open the stlye sheet (wp-content/themes/epsilon/style.css in your text editor and scroll down and locate the following code, which is around line 74:

This is the “brains” of the blog title, and where you will do your damage!

I will explain what a few of these line of code are, then create a quick example for you and then let you go from there.

height:100px; - is the height of the entire header. You will need to adjust this accordingly to the size of your image so that the logo does not overlap the category links.

width:500px; - is the width of your image. Make this match the width of whatever you create.

font-size:45px; – is the size of your text if you didn’t have a picture. You need to also make this the same size as your image as this is the size of the clickable link around your image.

background:url(images/logo.png) no-repeat; – is the link to your image. Chage this to whereever your image is and to the name of your image.

The rest of it is fine left alone, if you do decide to play around with any of the code make sure you create a backup of the file encase you get carried away, mess something up, and can’t figure out how to correct it! This is always important when modifying any files.

Now for the example

I used photoshop to create the following image with dimensions 400w X100H, named it ‘sweetblog’ and saved it as a png.

I uploaded it to the same place as the original image and in my style.css file I change the following code. (compare it with the top to see the changes, I color coded them red for easy comparison)

This is what I have now

Well there you have it, now try it for yourself. If your have any questions just let me know and I will be glad to help you out.

Popularity: 2% [?]

In this Tutorial I will show you how to create multiple flashing lights in Cinema 4d version 10 using Xpresso.

Example of flashing lights

Download Scene File

Starting Off

• First, create a Null Object by clicking Objects -> Null Object. Name it anything you want, I used flashing lights.




• Right click on the Null Object and choose Cinema 4d Tags -> Expresso




• This is what it will look like:

• Click once on the Xpresso Tag to open the Attributes Window on the lower right hand column.




• Click on User Data -> Add User Data. Change the name to Speed, the Data Type to ‘Float’, the Interface to ‘Float’, the Unit to ‘Real’, the Min to ’1′ and the Max to ’100′ and leave the step at ’1′.




• Next create 3 Omni lights. Make them any color you want and under the ‘General’ tab, choose Visible Lights -> Visible and check “No Illumination”.  Leave everything else the same.




• Separate the lights and place them where you want them and rename them 3 different names like “light1, light2 and light3.

Xpresso

• Now for the fun part…..Double click on the Xpresso tag on your null Object to open the Xpresso window.

• Drag the Xpresso Tag onto the Xpresso Screen. Left click on the red box and choose User Data -> ‘Speed’.




• Right click on the screen and choose New Node -> Xpresso -> General -> Time.  Right click on the Time Port and choose ‘Delete Port’  then left click on the red box and choose ‘Frame’.

• Right click on the screen again and choose New Node -> Xpresso -> Calculate -> Math. With the Math Box selected, in the lower right hand column change the Data Type to Integer and the Function to Divide.

• Right click on the Xpresso screen and choose New Node -> Xpresso -> Calculate -> Math. With the Math Box selected, in the lower right hand column change the Data Type to Integer and the Function to Modulo.




• Right click on the Xpresso screen again and choose New Node -> Xpresso -> Logic -> Compare. Hold down the ‘Ctrl’ Key and then click and drag the Compare Node to make a copy. Make as many copies as there are lights to control, in our case 3.




• Now drag each on of your Light Objects onto the Xpresso screen. On each one, right click on the blue box and choose General -> Visible Light.




• Right now your Xpresso screen should look like this:

• Now to connect the Dots. Click the red dot under the Time node, and without letting go, drag the line out to the top blue input under the Math:Divide Node and release.




• Connect the rest as follows:

Xpresso/Speed -> Math:Divide/lower input
Math:Divide/Output -> Math:Modulo/top input
Math:Modulo/output -> each Compare/top input
each Compare/output -> the respective Light/visible light

• This is what you should have:

• Click the Math:Modulo Node and in the Attributes screen change the input to the number of lights your controlling. In our case, 3.




• Click the top Compare Node and make sure the input is at 0. Change the  second Compare Node’s input to 1, then the third’s input to 2. If you have more lights you would just keep adding up one on each node.




• Now close the Xpresso screen and click once on the Xpresso Tag on your Lights Null Object to open the Xpresso User data at the bottom of the screen. Click on the User data and change the speed to what you want. (The lower the number, the faster the lights flash)

Finished

Congratulations! You have just fininshed the tutorial and hopefully when you hit play the lights flash. If they do not, go back through this Tutorial again and make sure you did not leave anything out.

I have included the scene file which you can download here.

The file was created in Cinema 4d v 10 and may not work in earlier versions.

Popularity: 33% [?]