Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with artifacts

Freeing my games of artifacts

flatluigi — Thu, 14 May 2009 08:20:49 -0800

Help! My games are being plagued with screen artifacts. In several of the games I've been playing (Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Hitman: Blood Money) after a few minutes of gameplay "glitches" appear on the screen. These glitches look like small patches of green and sometimes purple that appear on the world geometry and disappear after a few milliseconds. If I keep playing, the glitches appear more and more frequent until I can't stand to play any more.

Interestingly enough, Source games like TF2, L4D, HL2, and Portal don't seem to be affected at all.

My system:

Manufacturer: VIAK8T
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3800+, ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Hard Drive: 500 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7000) (7000.winmain_win7beta.081212-1400)

Need to fix or replace my scanner

shirobara — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:12:45 -0800

My current scanner is causing banding and discoloration, and I need recommendations on finding a new scanner that suits my needs or help getting my old one to work right again. I have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 50 that is a couple of years old, and I use it about once a day to scan drawings done on sketchbook paper with colored pencils. Lately, however, the quality of the scans have been very bad, with banding on areas of the scan and discoloration issues. I have a Mac with Leopard installed.

The banding doesn't go all over the outfit usually, just in the middle (see the bodice of this dress, which I tried and failed to fix in Photoshop, and the skirt of this one). Also, the color is getting worse: things are too light, a noticeably different shade from what's on the paper, or colored differently in different areas of the scan. (The original of the blue dress I linked to has the same color blue on the skirt and the bodice, but the bodice looks darker in the scan.)

I don't want to just walk into a store and pick out a new scanner, because I already did that and it didn't help much. I bought a Epson Perfection V200 Photo a few months ago, but whatever I scanned with it seemed faded and not true to the original color, and the background was always grey, not white. I couldn't find a way to consistently fix the scans with Photoshop or change any of the scanner settings to make it better, and I ended up returning to the old scanner. I already spend two to four hours a day drawing and writing a blog entry, so I don't want to add half an hour fiddling around with Photoshop to try to make it look like it's supposed to.

So is there anything I can do for my old scanner? And if not, which scanner would you recommend I buy that will scan accurately and not drive me crazy with the color being wrong? I'd like to keep it under $200 (although if that's unreasonable, I'm open to suggestions that are more expensive). Thank you!

Mac screen artifacts causing a headache

tanc — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:49:33 -0800

I'm getting some weird artifacts/corruptions appearing on my macbookpro screen. Any explanations? I've tried googling this, but as my description of what's happening is quite vague I haven't had any success...

It's been happening for a while. Here are two screenshots I took of different artifacts that are happening. 1 2

Generally the artifacting occurs within a specific window, although sometimes it occurs across windows.

I have an external monitor plugged in and it occurs on both my laptop screen and the external monitor.

I thought maybe it was due to how long I leave my computer on - it's often a week or two between reboots, but it's happening now and my uptime is less than 2 days...

It seems to start on video windows (quicktime) or tetris (Quinn) the most, but that may be due to those being my most common activities...

It doesn't happen constantly, but will come and go. At the moment it seems to be appearing for a few seconds and then going again, but sometimes it won't go unless I close a windows or somehow force a screen refresh. (I was typing this the screen became obscured by a large yellow block)

Any suggestions of how I can prevent it without the pain of a reboot/trip to an apple store?

How Things 'Become': The Infinity of Definition

0bvious — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:18:41 -0800

I am looking for writings on the infinity of definition. I am interested in the exponentially divergent curve that is definition.

We create writings and art to better define the world, yet true definition is infinite.

We mediate the universe by erecting borders of definition, i.e. all striped, four-legged, hooved mammals are probably zebras. We categorise the universe into hierarchies, but the more we examine the more pronounced and expansive these hierarchies become.

Language is our greatest defining tool. Yet, the metaphors we evolve to expand the potential of language can themselves only be made to refer back to the language which created them. An infinite loop emerges in most definition.

As new technology emerges we use it to 'add' meaning to artifacts which are already partly defined. By looking at the world with ever more refined microscopes we bring reality into greater clarity. This metaphor can be expanded to refer to texts, art, archaeology, culture etc.

Who has written on the problem of definition? What critical theory has been written on the emergence of infinity?

This question adds on to past questions I have asked at MeFi including (in reverse order):

- Art and artifacts experienced through technology
- The mimetic and narrative capacities of artefacts
- Examples of 'The Infinite' in Myth and Their Effect on Conditions of Truth

Here's hoping you have some ideas...

Art and artifacts experienced through technology

0bvious — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:00:33 -0800

How is the meaning of art and artefacts being altered by the methods we use to: Experience, Define and Preserve them... In other words, in what ways have technologies been used to experience, re-define and/or preserve art and artifacts? I came across news on a technique using terahertz radiation to 'see' under the surface of paintings and murals. I know that similar methods have been used before, most especially to see the sketches under (Leonardo da Vinci) paintings or to map the outline of archaeological sites by satellite etc. I am interested in amassing a collection of such techniques, not limited to paintings and certainly from a wide spectrum of scientific and technological applications (for instance: art includes literature or music, artefacts can refer to objects or cultures, a new technology may simply be a new theory of linguistics).

Any links and or examples, books, journals, people you know of would help me immensely. My past questions express quite neatly the kind of reading background I have, please give them a glance if you have time.

Thanks muchly...

Things to do in Kampala, Uganda

barrakuda — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 05:54:52 -0800

I'm in Kampala for two weeks. What are some things I could do here? I'm in Kampala (Uganda) for work for two weeks. What are some places/sights I could (must) see in the city and the environs? I will not have enough time to do more than a day trip on the weekends so anything that is far from Kampala wouldn't help me.

In the city: Are there any restaurants worth trying out (hopefully featuring local food, not pizza and fries)? How about shopping - I'd like to buy some carvings, some local dresses (should I get a tailor to have them done? - any recommendations?). What are some other local products besides coffee I should buy? Waybele Nyo.

Info needed on Egyptian statue

langedon — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:08:32 -0800

How can I find out more about this Egyptian(?) statue? The statue in question has been in our family for many years. It is clay and fragile. The head and feet are both detached. Here is a description that my late grandfather wrote:

“This figure is of Egyptian origin and came from the catacombs at Girgenti in southern Sicily. The figure is an image of the man who occupied the same Sarcophagus, and is known as the “Answerer”; it has to answer for this man at “Reveille” in “The next World”.
Similar figures are in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum and the age is said to be 1000-1500 B.C. about the time of Abraham.
Girgenti, formerly known as Agrigentum, was one of several places on the east and south coast of Sicily, first inhabitated (sic) by a race of people called The Sicani, (Iberians); later by the Phoenicians (1000 B.C.); then by Greek settlers, known as Sikoloits who, during the next 150 years formed extensive colonies on the east and south coast and founded the real civilization of Sicily.”

I'm looking for advice on how to get answers to these questions:

1. Is this thing legitimate?
2. Is my grandfather’s description accurate?
3. Does this have monetary or historical value? (If so, we'd like to sell it, or donate it to a museum.)

Tools for removing the notebook lines from scanned docs

Hildago — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:30:08 -0800

Has someone come up with a tool for removing notebook lines from scanned documents? Invariably, the only time I ever ~~sketch~~ doodle anything worth keeping is when it's on notebook paper, in class, when I'm supposed to be taking notes. If I want to keep it permanently, I have to scan it in, but then I end up with these blue and red (college-ruled!) lines through my picture of a dinosaur wearing a sombrero (or what have you) that I would like to get rid of.

Without having to go into photoshop and find the right color to replace each pixel with, is there anything I can do to clean up these images? Has somebody made a filter for this?