Let's make a homework help thread!

Sorry to be back asking about the same thing, but if anyone could point me out to any good resources about Saussure's dichotomies (synchrony - diachrony, signifier - signified, arbitrariness, all of)*

Apologies in advance if this question is faceplantingly stupid.

Never mind. Found a way around it.

edited 4th Jun '12 9:32:22 PM by SnowyFoxes

Anyone want to proofread a 770-word long French speech on gender? I'm pretty solid when it comes to grammar, but I'm not good at structuring these kinds of things so if anyone can give me input on that it would be fantastic. The conclusion's especially bad, I think.

OK, this isn't really homework, but I don't know where else could I ask this: anyone know how to make flashing police lights in GIMP?

Flashing? Like an animation, or just the "flash" effect? I'm not familiar with GIMP, but in Paint.NET there is a gradient tool that works for that kind of thing, and there's probably something similar in GIMP.

Is something like this what you mean (I just sketched it in Paint.NET)?

If I was doing a half-assed job, I'd probably just use a radial gradient, then erase out the angles that aren't applicable. If I wanted it to look good enough to submit for a New Media assignment, I'd taper the edges with a falloff eraser and bring in smudge and color saturation tools for glare and highlights.

One way to do a directional light is a double-gradient — one of them bilinear along the direction of the light as the light itself, then a radial falloff to transparency on top of it.

edited 12th Jun '12 3:21:37 PM by Pykrete

Ah, just the effect, not the animation. I think I found a way earlier, just use an airbrush with a large circular radius around the source of the light, then make the radius smaller while increasing the color intensity, then airbrush it again. Repeat until the color reaches maximum intensity. Is that what you mean by gradient, though?

Yes, although the Gradient tool in Paint.NET basically does that in one mouseclick. As Pykrete said, depending on how much realism you want there's some more steps you can take. And as I said, I have no experience with GIMP. Is it any good?

edited 13th Jun '12 9:51:11 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

Alright, I'm back...and to give an overdue answer , I find GIMP pretty useful, though I'm not a professional artist and don't have Photoshop, so I don't have standards of comparison.

Anyway, new question. How do you make AND, OR, NAND and NOR gates with two 2N2222 transistors and two resistors? 'cause there seems to be a real lack of available information about this online.

GIMP lacks a few of Photoshop's perspective tools that would be really nice, and its curve and layer hierarchy kinda blows goats, but it gets the job done well enough for a free thing.

The gradient tool in these editing programs basically just applies a color falloff based on distance to a point, to a line, or whatever gradient base you pick. It can transition from one color to another, or from one color to transparency (which is what you'd use for a light effect).

I want to say the paint.net one uses Manhattan distance instead of radial to save crunching time, which can cause some neat four-point glare if the perspective lines up, but looks hella weird if it doesn't.

You can also make a curve and stroke along it with a falloff brush, but that's best kept for small things like borders, bloom, or halo effects instead of light source shine.

edited 19th Jul '12 11:14:00 AM by Pykrete

@ czhang I'd read the speech. I'm technically on summer break, but I've just been sitting around bored anyway. Took 3 years of french plus a few odd classes. You can PM it to me.

edited 20th Jul '12 2:23:18 PM by Zanshei

Alright, time to use this thread again.

Doing an assignment on making logic gates out of transistors. Basically, there's something confusing me here, that Wikipedia describes Fixed point bias and Base bias to be the same thing, but these two videos show them to be different...what's the deal with that?

While this isn't exactly homework, it was a problem I couldn't find a solution to in a BIO class a little while back, and I still really haven't found an answer.

We were examining amoeba taken from some local water sources. We'd prep a simple wet mount; slide—>water drop from sterile pipette—>cover slide, and look at them under the scopes at various magnification levels. One thing I noticed was that invariably after 10-15 minutes the amoeba's cell walls would begin to burst, and they would die one by one.

Now, there may have been several things that could have caused it I think. Contamination of the slides may have affected the tonicity, heat from the illumination source, etc etc, but I still don't know for sure what may have been causing the problem . . .

edited 30th Jul '12 5:06:40 PM by carbon-mantis

I have some homework over the holidays that's required to get into my A level Maths course. But the answers are on the sheet. Should I just copy them or actually work it out?

Work it out, definitely. With Maths, that's a given. Use the answers to check against.

Integral calculus problem:

I gotta find the volume of a solid formed by the rotation of the region delimited by f(x)=x^2 + 1 and g(x)=2x+1, and I gotta use the "method of the tubes" to do it.

The integrer I found is: Pi*x * (2x-x^2) * dx. Does the integrer formula change based on the axis it rotate around?

So I have to do this acrostic poem about myself for Spanish, and I need some help. I have no idea what to do for W. Mostly because there is no word in the Spanish language that starts with W. Does anyone know of a word that I could use?

Tell your teacher I said she's a bitch...

some words:

Waterpolo

Whisky

Wolframita

Wolframio

Wulfenita

Watio

edited 4th Sep '12 1:06:22 PM by MrsRatched

Thanks. Went with waterpolo.

Hey, one of my friends is working on an essay, but she'd like to know if there's anything she's doing wrong.

Anyone mind looking over it?

What's it on?

edited 5th Sep '12 8:40:49 AM by LibrisDedita

Why people become friends. It's only a short essay.

She's worried about sounding repetive.

Sure, send it over.

Let me get to my computer after I finish lunch. iPhones are difficult to use for this purpose.

So, now, I need to look over my essay.

I tried to go to one of the writing centers, but the old lady there ended up giving me a whole damn new essay to do.

Since I don't want to do that, I'd like to try and salvage the one I have.

Anyone in a helpful mood?