what to do while rendering?

[jwm-art]

I've spent a few hours watching Mandelbulber render a 3800 frame animation at 640x480 resolution. I've spent half that time in an image viewer holding down the next-image key and then when I get to the last rendered frame... I press and hold the previous-image key  :

Uhh. I could read a book I suppose...

Or I could just go and check those frames again  

[jwm-art]

Oh god it's only on frame 1208 

[jwm-art]

It's now on frame 1405. I found the answer. The best thing to do is gardening. Clearing up the dying tomato plants, and the chilli plants that didn't make the grade for overwintering. Planted the supposed cat-deterrent plants. Now, back out to finish those tomatos

[kon16ov]

I hear you -- I'm on frame 3260 out of 5281...

It probably doesn't help the frame speed, but if I'm just killing time, I'll fire up on of the other fractal generating programs...  MDZ, UF5 of FX...good fun...but things go slooooooooowly.

Other than that...it's life as usual; good thing these apps can be minimized. 

There's always digging through the XKCD archives. Good stuff.

Oh, and there's always scouring the internet for answers as to why FX running through Wine refuses to export from the animations to AVI...that's time consuming in itself.   

What kind of chilis did you grow?

[jwm-art]

I've tried encoding the frames rendered so far with a variety of different audio tracks - and had to find various ffmpeg pages on the 'net to do so.

My partner sowed the chilli seeds near the beginning of the year - cayennes ('a nice warmth to them' but makes me sweat) and rokitas (disappointingly not hot in the slightest). I took an interest in them once they were a few inches tall and then slowly took over until they were as important to me as the computer

They're not hardcore hot, but seeing as until about six months ago I was always a bit scared of really hot food... It's quite interesting.

[Thunderwave]

It helps having a few computers.  I am rendering a deep zoom on my Windows 7 6 core pc.  It has been rendering for 2 days + so far and may take another.  I am designing a Java program on my Mac while I render.  Plus I try to keep busy with chores and work at the same time.  Multitasking is an art, just  DON'T COOK without a timer. 

[Sockratease]

I also use the multiple computer solution.

And I try to render while I sleep to maximize my productivity   

[kon16ov]

@Sockratease -- That's the fun part, too -- waking up the next morning and seeing how many frames are rendered.   It's funny, though, when my wife comes in and says, "Man, the computer was slow."  Oops.  I tend to put the programs doing renders on desktop 3...   

@Thunderwave -- the fractals ARE the timer. "It takes 5m to render each frames...hmmm...this pizza dough will take roughly 10 frames to rise."

@JMZ -- I love cayenne, and *fresh* makes all the difference.  We grew Hungarian Wax and they were surprisingly unpredictable.  There were some that were mild to a point of being like a slightly spicy bell pepper but then later in the season, there were some that side-by-side were discernibly hotter than Jalapeños...  One thing we DID learn was that, apparently, peppers growing in "harsher" conditions tend to be hotter.  We had a pretty solid drought and 9 days in a row over 100F...those were surly peppers.

Hmmm...I've been "auditioning" music, too...also have been assembling the anim 10s at a time.  KDEnLive barfs with more than 2048 stills and adding them to the timeline makes it...whine.  So, that's always fun.  So far, I'm up to 1m 24s of compiled video.  Only 2K frames to go! 

[Thunderwave]

@kon16ov  Yes, the render time is a good timer, if only it beeped.  I can't watch my renders, it makes me antsy.

[Millennium Nocturne]

Well, while rendering you could find another fractalist who is doing the same and enjoy the beauty of human relationships..
Even doing a full sweating, "one to one" fractal activity.*





* Zooming and panning..

[kon16ov]

@Millenium -- that has to be one of the most geekily pleasing euphamisms I've heard in a long time.  Unless it wasn't meant to be a euphamism, and then it's just proof that I shouldn't be up this early (0418)...

@Thunderwave -- yeah...unfortunately, the beep is usually an indication that something has gone horribly wrong, since the only time my system beeps is during the power on self test...

[Sockratease]

Even doing a full sweating, "one to one" fractal activity.*





* Zooming and panning..

Full sweating, "one to one" Zooming and panning?

Zpanking?

[klixon]

... when my wife comes in and says, "Man, the computer was slow."  Oops.  I tend to put the programs doing renders on desktop 3...   

Seeing you use of multiple desktops, i presume you're using linux?
Do a "renice +19 $(pidof [fractal-generator-name])" on a command prompt and she won't even notice it's rendering... Works wonders

[kon16ov]

@klixon -- now, where's the fun in that?!   Usually, I keep the thread counts and priority low during the day (or, at least, when I know someone other than me is going to need to use the system) and when I go to bed ramp it up so it hammers out more frames.  Sooo....it's normally not a problem unless insomnia hits...  (that said, I've copied and pasted into a bash script the command you have there...  )

[LhoghoNurbs]

jwm-art, I know the answer of your question. It is 42.