Category: Geekery

Straight Into My Ears

I have, one might say, a bit of a problem.

Most of those are gaming headsets of one form or another, a couple are just-headphones, and a couple are designed primarily for videoconferencing use rather than for gaming. And then there’s the earbuds.

“I can quit any time,” I say, as I ponder shopping online for yet another set of headphones. I (probably) won’t buy anything right now, though, because between the Poly-formerly-Plantronics work headset and my excellent Sony listening headphones, I’m set. For the moment.

What brought on the urge to dig through the Box Of Discarded Headsets? Tuesday’s Satisfactory game stream project/idea/thing. The Poly headset is great but after a couple of hours my ears start to hurt. This isn’t a problem very often since usually I’m not in several-hours-long meetings… but the weekly game sessions with the kids can run to nearly three hours and by that point I’m definitely feeling some discomfort. Given that I’ll be streaming for more than three hours on Tuesday (if all goes well) I figured I should check my alternatives.

My current plan? I’m going to stick the Blue Snowball on a boom arm to be my microphone and use the most comfortable just-headphones I have available… which probably means the wired earbuds. But we’ll see.

5 September, 2024
Dream A Little Dreamwidth Me

I know, I’ve been quiet again this month. I think I’m still adjusting to being in the house and having the ability to completely relax in my own home. I have some plans, some tentative and one much less so, for things to do here. (If you think the less-tentative plan involves a particular video game… well, you’re 100% right.)

March 7 from Honkai Star Rail is unimpressed. I don’t really blame her.

But in the meantime I’m also doing things over at… Dreamwidth. I mean, not directly because I’m crafting this post in the WordPress editor. But I’m resuming cross-posting to DW because… well, why not? I still have a few friends on DW and they’re not following the not-a-blog. And it’s not like I post so often that I’m going to overwhelm either site with “content.”

So… let’s try this out (again) and see how it goes.

31 August, 2024
Satisfactory: Two Years of Co-Op

We started this as a regular (mostly) Tuesday night gaming meetup in late 2022. Time flies when you’re having fun and tearing up the landscape and turning critter guts into shop tickets and building huge quantities of many things!

Last Tuesday evening, the kids and I completed our Satisfactory (Early Access version) co-op save game session. We sent up the Phase 4 space elevator shipment, which was the final thing-to-do that the game has available. (Other than sinking items for tickets to buy geegaws in the shop, that is.)

Spud had the idea of making a time-lapse sequence out of the end-of-day saves loaded into Satisfactory Calculator, so… I did that:

And now for a real break from the game. 1.0 releases in early September and by then I’ll probably be refreshed and ready for it.

4 August, 2024
Ryoko, More Or Less

I went through some of my storage bins Saturday afternoon as part of my ongoing effort to actually, you know, move in to this new house properly. Put stuff on shelves, put stuff in storage, live a bit less “in boxes.” That sort of thing.

In the process I came across some of my old Tenchi Muyo merchandise purchases, such as some “super deformed” figurines and a 6 inch tall McFarlane Toys rendition of Ryoko (complete with small companion Ryo-ohki).

On the back panel you could see the entire “Animation from Japan” line from this run of McFarlane Toys: Two characters from the movie AKIRA, Vash from the show TRIGUN, and Ryoko here. That’s it.

Then I realized… I have shelf space now. And it’s not like I’m keeping this for resale value as a collector’s item. Why not just… get it out of that packaging after all these years? So I did:

Poor Edelgard. First Holo the Wise Wolf, now Ryoko the Space Pirate. It’s getting crowded on that shelf.

The quality’s actually fairly decent overall. The “flowing robe” is sort of a rubbery plastic and holds its shape pretty well. Getting the “beam saber” into her hand was tricky and I nearly broke the thing in the process. Having the entire figure kind of leaning forward in an action pose isn’t the worst choice they could have made. All things considered, though… something looks off about her. It’s like some other figurine is cosplaying as Ryoko, which is a weird-assed thought to have but that’s what I’ve got. My brain is the way it is.

Anyway. Another fandom represented on the display shelves, this time one of the oldest of all my anime fandoms over the years.

Oh, right, I also unboxed my Zentraedi Officer’s Pod. Did I forget to mention that?

Alas, the regular Zentraedi Battlepod is in really bad shape and cannot stand on its own two legs. In the box it remains. By the way: Bonus points if you recognize the foam pickaxe…

So that’s the absolute oldest anime fandom of my life (Robotech!) represented. I’m such a nerd.

15 July, 2024
State of Play – July 2024

I’m basically just working, playing, and occasionally doing home improvements along with the regular daily/weekly chores. The big work project isn’t at a point yet where I can really talk about it much (not a matter of secrecy, more a matter of being in a state of flux) and chores are boring, so let’s talk about games.
(more…)

13 July, 2024
Hello, Summertime

It’s been a slow posting month, probably not helped by the fact that I’m essentially on a Satisfactory hiatus. (I’m expecting 1.0 to drop early in autumn but we don’t know for sure yet. Whenever it does, it’ll break all existing saves, so… why bother?) Is it time to find another game to post about? Maybe. Or perhaps I should post about a variety of games, since that’s actually what I’m playing now. Honkai Star Rail, Gems of War, Titan Quest (yes, the precursor to Grim Dawn which I like far better), FFXIV (some day I’ll reach level 50)… I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

Oh right, Unicorn Overlord, which I keep trying to gel with and just can’t for whatever reason. That reason is probably something to do with the fact that most of the actual strategy is in setting up “unit” compositions because once you’re in a battle scenario the outcome of any given clash is predetermined. How exciting. How fun. Let’s play 12-directional rock-paper-scissors without even the fun of directly controlling the output of a combat clash.

Anyway. Living in the new house is still going great aside from the screeching dishwasher, and while it’s a bit annoying to need to don two layers every time the AC comes on… I’ll take that over the AC simply having almost no effect (and being too loud to hear yourself think, on top of that).

Work is progressing along. The odds are good that I won’t be getting any time off for the next few months as we have a big migration looming. Yay? We’ll see.

Anyway. I hope your summertime is cool and cozy.

26 June, 2024