While I finish writing up a couple longer form entries, let’s talk about what I am doing recently. I am attempting to step into a newish realm. Solo-streaming. I’ve had some fits and starts, but I think I have everything in place to make it happen this time.
In that effort, I’ve started all the subsequent channels and whatnot. I’ve done two(!) streams thus far with minimal technical issues (there will always be technical problems).
I’m working on coming up with a schedule for streams that focus on three pillars that cover the parts of gaming I’m interested in. A day for newish games. This covers anything that’s been released in the past decade or so, but mostly newer stuff. A day to play fighting games. This past year or so I’ve delved deeper into the FGC and I just really enjoy playing them and highlighting cool stuff from the community. And finally my first love, retro games. My stream setup is basically devoted to making these look amazing on modern displays and captures. This will cover basically any old console, or PC (this might actually be the first retro play). Honestly, this could probably be the whole channel, but I rarely sit down and play through old titles. This is my chance.
So, with that tenative outline, check my social media stuff for when I am going to stream as I hammer out a more definite schedule. Tim and Matt Play is still going to be going on, so join us for that, too!
Firstly, and foremostly, I’ve wanted to write on this thing in forever. I’ve been putting it off for a while because, truthfully the web stuff I manage was getting too out of date and I didn’t have the time or energy to update it. Writing on the site just reminded me of all the potential security holes it had.
Honestly, it probably wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. It was only about a year out of date, but the way I set it up didn’t lend itself to change easily, even if this was originally the goal of the whole thing.
WELL, IT’S 2021 AND WE ARE LEAVING THAT IN THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY.
This site you are now on is now properly containerized. I spent a bunch of time banging my head against the wall to get all my configuration files correct and now I can spin up a WordPress site with proper certs in a single script. All my other sites that I manage I’ve moved back to a more managed host. They will load slower, will run on older versions of software, my total control over all the aspects of the back end is gone, but with that, I don’t have to worry about them. They will just hum along without much of my input. It’s a huge mental relief because some of those sites were just completely offline for too long.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Sorry, first thing, that popped into my head when I tried to type “So we…”
I plan on trying to split up some post ideas I have into many smaller posts because I tend to blow these things way too far out of proportion and they never end up posted.
In that, let’s do some quick re-caps and get the hell out of here 15 minutes early.
Like, many, I’m sure, I’ve been on more Zoom calls than I can count this past year, but I did manage to do some good things within them and in spite of them.
Dimescon happened again, albeit online this time. This has been a yearly tradition where we do small presentations on just about anything. The numbering of events has skipped a year as Dimescon 2020 never happened because 2020 doesn’t deserve a moniker. This year mine was about one of my favorite things, posting. It has been lovingly edited and posted below. I’m all blurry because the source media file is taken from a Zoom recording and my picture was all teeny tiny in the corner.
TECH SIDEBAR: I recently have been trying to figure out ways to augment my main computer as I have many that could provide use. In that I figured out a way to get remote rendering with Adobe Premiere. That means I can have my little server box work away at a final render of a video and not be locked out of my main computer while it cranks through all my insane effects in three and four dimensions. I did this by installing Adobe Media Encoder on the server box and setting a watch folder. This watch folder is network shared. That way when I transfer the Adobe Premiere project file over in the folder, it sees it and starts rendering sequences in the root folder in Premiere (not in a bin). The one hiccup is I have to make sure I transfer my media files over BEFORE the project file, otherwise Adobe Media Encoder tried to start rendering without the source files and messes up. Otherwise, it is very cool. More on the shared computing stuff later.
Remote rendering on my server box viewed from my main PC
My improv group did a holiday show, that I quite liked, we did a riff on a Hallmark movie that I thought went very well. Here is that show:
OK, this has been a solid first post of 2021. I’m going to call it here and continue on later. In conclusion, 2021 is a land of contrasts.
