Back, tired and planning ....

Back at work yesterday !

Definitely appreciated having the break, I was more bouncy yesterday and definitely more with it. Before the break, I'd been struggling to keep up with everything that was going on. I don't like to be in that kind of condition because it means you're chasing what's going on instead of directing what's going on.

Not that I direct too much in my position ! Need to move to somewhere I can influence new things going on.

It's good getting out of the house again. I didn't feel the cabin fever too much last week (too busy with Internet Spaceships !) but I've been out and about both last night and tonight. Tired now though.

Last night - initial thought was to see Spiderman Homecoming but I abandoned that due to leaving work a little earlier than intended combined with the traffic being bad. Shopping instead followed by one of the worst movies I've seen (new Ghostbusters, it's horrid). Tonight was a run up to the Mall for a general wander and checking out whether I could get a couple of techie supplies.

The acquired - Lust For Life by Lana Del Rey and Once I Was An Eagle by Laura Marling. Should both be excellent albums.
The nearly acquired - LEGO !!! Smyths have a Technic digger for a silly discount (£90 instead of £130 for a kit with moving bits and motors.) I resisted. But I'm also very tempted by the Air Race Jet and the Ocean Explorer.
The can't find in Bristol - enough leads and adaptors to make my headset and mic work.

I have a HyperX Cloud 2 headset which, in theory, would make it very easy to switch between headset and normal speakers. The headset plugs into a USB widget, which plugs into the PC. Plugging in the USB widget switches it to headset, unplugging sends the noise back to the speakers. But .... there is a software clash somewhere (could be a bunch of sources) that is stopping the microphone level going above 0. The microphone works but is far too quiet.

Solution - don't use the USB widget and plug it into separate sockets. Scan will sell me an adaptor and cables to make that happen.

Why do this ? I wanna try my hand at making videos. I'd start with occasional Elite videos. The game is actually pretty boring to watch (cathartic and relaxing to play though) so I'd make a mix of : Talking into Take off, heavily compressed travel, talking into landing. It has very pretty visuals and those visuals work much better when they're actually moving around ....

I definitely want to have something ready by the time I get my little spaceship to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. Or to the Great Annihilator system which I plan to go to first. That's a pair of much smaller black holes, which are still scary because you drop out of the hyperspace much closer to one. I even have the music picked out - I reckon I can make Candyland fit right in with what I want to do for that first video. It's a happy tune that I first heard gracing the HeyChrissa streams as chair boppy warm up music.

Ooo - I mentioned spaceships again and I haven't posted any pictures yet ...

I haven't been back into the game since Sunday (no plans to tonight - tired) but that's where I left the JMS. It's Sacaqawea Space Port, just under halfway there to the core.

And that's the map for how far I've got so far. The perspective is a bit odd with that.

That's how it looks from the inside, skimming a sun to top up on fuel, basking in the rays, toasting marshmallows on the consoles.

The video making is a new skill I'd like to try out and learn. I'm rubbish at drawing, which frustrates that part of what seems to be a creative instinct hidden within me. I can do the picture editing and come up with what I hope is entertaining writing. Haven't tried speaking and video yet. There are a few blockers though :

Hardware and the mic - need to get that microphone working ... but that's easy.
Hardware and the PC - I'd want more hard disc space as a minimum but the i5-2500k with 8GB of memory that I'm currently on is almost certainly insufficient for video editing.
Software - I'm looking at Sony Vegas, the pros seem to like this.
Time - for every 15 minutes of gaming video you see on Youtube, it probably needed at least double that to film it plus at least double again to edit it and clean it up to a point where the creator is content that other people can be allowed to see it.

It's the time and energy thing that intervene most, as like tonight, I simply don't have the energy or interest in firing up a game for entertainment let alone what would be a second job.

There's another thing with doing the youtube videos, I might well be about a year too late. There had been an explosion of people making videos for youtube but that's changing to the youtube people gradually doing more and more with services like Twitch streaming as youtube's advertising model becomes less ... lucrative ? Lucrative is the wrong word because not many youtube people are particularly rich. Most are struggling to get by, with developments with advertising this year making it even tougher. Twitch gives a more reliable money stream but .... you can only watch one Twitch stream, it's live and you can't really hold the video back for when it's convenient for YOU to watch it.

Nope. Not gonna give up the day job to suddenly start making gaming videos. Although I think it would be fun.

And it would give me a chance to show with pictures and spoken word what gets me excited in the games. Written word doesn't really cut it there I believe.

And you can hear the edge in the voice with games like XCom2, which has an expansion coming out which looks like it could be amazing. But not yet because it's too rich for my blood at the moment. It'll get cheaper and I have Elite to be addicted to before then.

And real life stuff too ! I'm not going to go see our new aircraft carrier arrive in person. Maybe if it were Friday but it's been brought forward to tomorrow morning ... At 7.10am ! Does such a time exist ? :-D. If I'm alive early enough tomorrow morning I may watch a streaming video of it.

So that's another project to add to the book writing (not forgotten that, although writing it would dredge up too much familiarity with some of the horrible things happening in the world at the moment).

Oh - some really bad singing might happen with the videos ... like "We're all flying in a yellow rocket ship, a yellow rocket ship, a yellow rocket ship".

You have been warned :-D