6/25    Has anyone attended Academy of Arts in SF? I would like to
        know if this is a good school to go to in order to study
        computer animation and modelling.
        \_ my gf worked and took classes there for years.  She decided
           that it was NOT a good way to learn 3D and ended up taking
           classes independently for a certificate with companies such
           as "Mesmer".  Note that AoA classes are NOT transferable to
           other schools, nor do they teach you what you need to land
           a real job or do your own sizeable project.  Email me if you'd
           like more details.                -brain
           \_ Magic cursed words: unaccredited school. As noted, you'd be
              better off with one of the local comp. animation schools.
           \_ Mesmer's offering a bunch of 1-5 day classes in the fall.
              If I were to go with one, which package should I look into?
              (alias, 3dsmax, softimage, maya)
              \_ Maya is the program of choice in film. Max is still
                 leading in games, but Maya is a major contender. So
                 it depends on what you want to do with the knowledge.
                 The artists I know that have used both prefer Max.
                 Then again, most of the artists I know are in the game biz.
                 Ultimately, once you learn one, picking up another
                 isn't too big of a deal. -bz
        \_ i think you should email wolberg@csua
           \_ I love you Carrie!

6/26    Does anybody remember ExciteBike?  That game was so rad.
        \_ I play it in Animal Crossing in on GameCube.
        \_ those small ramps that shot you straight into the air were the best!
           \_ especially when you could land on the downward ramp and just
              coast along at super speed.
        \_ I've played it pretty frequently in the last few weeks, once I found
           that it was among my 4GB of mame roms (under 'vs. ExciteBike').  I
           loved that game in the arcade, but wasn't very good at it.
        \_ I dunno man, it was fun to play for a bit, but I never really
           got too into actually trying to win the races or whatever. and
           what was the deal with the fact that there were always bikers
           ahead of you to pass, even if you were in the lead and hadn't
           made one lap yet? so lame. Now, Kung Fu... there was game.
           \_ Building your own tracks was the best.  50 laps, cooldown zones
              everywhere, and then you'd just ride the bike and knock over
              other racers.  And of course the cool jumps.
        \_ there was recently a dirt bike game that had the old excitebike
           music as something to unlock.. anyone know the name?

6/25    Oh man, open office completely blows.  It is way worse than any
        M$ product.  It won't let me open my tab seperated file into calc.
        It assumes it is a word document and opens it thusly.  I can't
        even cut and paste into calc.  Surely there must be a solution
        other than having to substitute commas for my tabs in all my files.
        Please help.
        \_ perl -p -i .bak -e 's/\t/,/g' *
        \_ err... how about Word Perfect series?
        \_ It is pretty bad.  Check out Crossover office from Codeweavers--
           it's pretty nice (no FreeBSD yet tho.)  -John
        \_ Ah yes.  Program A doesn't have a feature I like.  So A sucks.
           OOo has a number of features I like that are supierior to MS. YMMV
                \_ No.  OpenOffice and StarOffice both have some very very
                   annoying tendencies, such as munging formatting of a lot
                   of different doc types.  Like it or not, a lot (most)
                   business documentation is done either in .pdf or .doc, even
                   though a lot of us would prefer more people use ascii or
                   html.  And of all the office-type apps out there, MSOffice
                   is currently the least worst.  StarOffice/Openoffice/
                   koffice are a good start, but they have a long way to go
                   before people will start accepting them and tolerating all
                   the annoyances of using them.  -John

6/25    Due to a weird video card or monitor, XFree86 doesn't always
        choose the right (or even a consistent) DPI setting when it starts
        up (under kdm).  The recommend solution is to explicitly set the
        dpi setting, but it didn't talk about *where* to put this
        knob.  I manned XFree86Config but it didn't have any dpi-related
        info.  Where's the best place to put this option?
        \_ Linux on the desktop rules!  MS, watchout!
        \_ Are you talking about the DPI (eg: 72dpi  or 100dpi), or the
           video mode (eg: 1024x768)?
           \_ dpi (it ranges from 75x75 to 101x100).
                \_ dpi has no meaning in the context of video cards and
                   monitors.  pixels per inch is a function of the resolution.
                   \_ that's fine, but xfree86 keeps changing whatever it
                      thinks dpi is, which makes it hard to choose an
                      appropriate font.

6/26    Is having sex with a full bladder bad for prostate?  Any other harm?
        \_ No.  Only other harm would be if your partner landed on your
           suprapublic area with so much force that the pressure strained
           your urinary sphincter muscles.  A lifetime of such strain can
           lead to stress incontinence later on.  -csua alum in med school
           \_ let's not forget the danger of burst bladders.  they do happen
              in MVA's to victims with full bladders.
        \_ I'm a guy, and orgasm doesn't feel as good when my bladder is full.

6/26    How can I extract certain pages of a pdf document and put them
        into their own document? Thanks.
        \_ man psselect, then do pdf2ps <file> | psselect -<your options>

6/26    What's a "constant function" in C?  I ran across this term in the gcc
        man page.  Thanks.
        \_ look at the info page. const functions are a gcc extension. gcc
           assumes the function has no side effects and subjects it to
           common subexpression elimination, for example when you call it
           in a loop. -ali