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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • there’s a handful of general directions you could go with both camera and mic then.

    you could get a mic that plugs directly into the camera, but then you’ll be tethered. to it. you can get a mic that plugs into a little recorder, but you’ll need to sync your audio. you can get a wireless mic with a receiver that plugs into the camera, but that starts to get expensive. or a number of different options that can run things however you want. the most affordable option to start and remain convenient in my mind is a mic and a cheap recorder.

    something like a used one of these with a cheap lav mic could be a good option.

    as for camera, there’s two main paths. you could go mirrorless and get something more like the canon you already had, or you could get an actual camcorder.

    a mirrorless camera will give you the option of different lenses and will have a larger sensor. it will also allow you to shoot nice stills and give you room to grow. it will generally have a higher potential for better quality video in the long run, but will be harder to learn and use. I think you’d be well served by a micro 4/3rds camera. a used Panasonic gh4 can be had for around $300. that would be able to provide some fantastic quality for the price. it’ll also be able to use any m4/3 lenses out there. they have a standard mount used by all such cameras. Panasonic is generally the more video focused brand in the space. a larger sensor with give you shallower depth of field, but that’s not as necessary as many like to think you the kinds of content you’re looking to produce.

    the camcorder will be a much more streamlined out of the box solution. if you want something that will just work and be versatile without needing to spend money on additional hardware and learn all the ins and outs this will be a better option. it will likely have a highly versatile zoom lens and should still shoot plenty high enough quality for some simple explainer videos. it’s the less popular option these days, but I will think it has its place. I’m less familiar with these but I’m sure you can find a reasonable one with a little shopping around.

    what kind of budget are you thinking?


  • the lens is likely incompatible with newer hardware.

    I would recommend looking used. you can get a few generations old micro 4/3rds camera for very cheap. let me look through options tonight when i get home and I’ll probably be able to find you something for under $200 that will shoot modern looking decent quality video.

    a mic to go with it would be very important. there’s so many ways to go about that.

    -you can get a cheap on cameras shotgun that will sound decent, but pick up a good amount of room noise. this will be the easiest to use option.

    -you could get a lavaliere of some kind, but that takes a second to set up and will require additional tools unless you want to tether yourself to the actual camera. there’s also options that plug in to a phone, but that would require a phone with a headphone jack…

    -you could get a usb stick mic to record voiceover after the fact. this would give the highest fidelity Audio bang for the buck, but is the most cumbersome to use.

    additionally, a light will go very far for making things look nicer. most homes are not set to to have good video lighting at all. you can totally get away with a cheap lamp that you bounce off the wall or something. as long as you don’t have a lightbulb directly shining on you creating hard shadows.






  • there’s also the fact that dji released its first large form factor commercial lifting drones just a couple of years back. those things are big and bright and fast and typically used in areas where you wouldn’t expect to see drones otherwise. they’ve quickly been getting more and more popular for so many uses. from painting roofs and tall buildings to clearing snow from power lines. they’re starting to show up everywhere.

    i bet these alien conspiracy theorists would shit themselves if they saw one of those hauling a crate in the distance. or God forbid, spraying “mysterious” chemicals on our food supply (fertilizer).


  • because she’s self medicating for trauma and it’s making her paranoid. this is clearly not a very stable person. in fact, believing the first thing you read on Google about how to use guns is another pretty good sign that that aren’t going to use it safely.

    there’s better and worse ways to use drugs. self medicating to escape something is generally the worst way to use them. like, i get it. I’ve been there. it’s how i went from casual user with company to unstable addict. I eventually recognized that and have gotten clean. the reason we need a doctor to help us with dosages to relieve symptoms without losing ourselves is because drugs make us feel good in general. it’s basically impossible to look at yourself and know when it’s too much or inappropriate usage.

    all that said, i get it. when you can’t afford a doctor to do that for you sometimes you just need to kill whatever feeling is inside of you. sometimes you need to run away to survive. just don’t buy a firearm while you do that…




  • well hold on now, they might have kind of a fucked up point if the metric for quality of customer service is strictly defined by customer retention.

    most of the isp customer service I’ve dealt with explicitly tries to make it hard to cancel and swap services. if that has stopped enough people from switching then the goal is met. it may not be our definition of what good customer service is, but they didn’t define that. strictly speaking, they’re not technically wrong to say that some customers are still there because of their customer service.

    not trying to defend them, just trying to guess what they might use to support their argument. it’s disgusting and shitty either way.


  • sometimes i put in on my knees, but I’m almost never in a situation where i want to game, but don’t have a table.

    like, sure, i could spend $1000+ dollars on a mobile solution to compliment my desktop. or i can take my existing hardware and have a pretty good time with it while traveling or waiting for someone or something. it feels like people are trying to come up with silly reasons for this to not work. why would you think i would try to hold the phone in my hands too?

    how does needing to put the phone down defeat the purpose on not bringing an entire extra $1000+ dollar gaming machine with me? i mean sure, i could play 2 generations old games on a laptop for a lot less than that, but i haven’t spent a single penny on my mobile setup. it’s not about being the ideal setup, it was about realizing i could use my existing tools to do interesting things like play my favorite childhood Gameboy games whenever and wherever.

    you don’t even need a special case for it. i just use a pop socket to stand it up or hang it off something. again, something I already had.





  • what do you mean pairing? what kind of os do you plan to put on the mini pc? the biggest hurdle is going to be hdcp compliance with any legal streaming service. something like kodi on the other hand, just works like any other pc? a mini pc is just that. a mini pc. there’s nearly infinite method to connect streaming services to a pc. I have a Plex server, but it doesn’t play nice with all content, so honestly, i usually just use my network storage and pull things straight from the file browser. load them into media player classic with madvr.

    I know there’s newer systems that do fancier things, but I’m content. I need to upgrade my nas to be better able to transcode x265 video streams. that’s s big drawback on Plex for me. my biggest use case is watching things virtually with friends. it’s how i watch movies with people. my server can current encode a single x265 video stream pretty well, but the second it has more than one client it chugs. forget it if 4 people want a 4k movie. I would need a crazy beefy rig to run that. it also won’t convert hdr without paying. most of my friends aren’t trying to watch on an hdr screen.

    so, we’re back to me streaming via discord screenshare. it’s not the best, but at least i don’t need to keep a separate 4k hdr copy of movie for myself and a 1080p x264 copy for Plex that way. mad vr will even handle the hdr conversion for me when I stream.

    it works well enough, though I’m open to suggestions as well. it needs to be easy for the clients to use. it can be hard for me, that’s fine, but jellyfin is too much for most of my friends and family. Plex is already pushing it.


  • i currently have one of the few municipal Internet plans in the United States.

    best Internet I’ve ever had. gigabit symmetric fiber for a flat $60/mo. no fees, no outages, no data caps.

    during the one outage i experienced in the three years I’ve had them i was quickly able to find multiple places to see status updates about the hardware issue they had and it was fixed in under an hour.

    they also have a 2.5 gig and a 10 gig option for reasonable prices. I don’t think many other companies even offer anything above 1 gig outside of business packages.

    it will be difficult for me to move anywhere else. with the work that i do this has been life-changing. come to Longmont Colorado, we have good Internet, amazing mountain sunsets, and lots of tacos.

    i love my government Internet. it’s one of the biggest things keeping me here.




  • obviously a news show isn’t going to feel the same rewatching it. that’s not the point lol.

    that would be like saying it’s dumb to preserve newspapers in libraries because it’s not going to feel as good rereading the “Hitler is dead” headline. people don’t look at old news to have a good time.

    boy was it silly of us to preserve that kind of thing and it totally never comes in handy/s

    that’s not even what people are upset about anyway. comedy Central mostly makes entertainment programming that isn’t news based and can still be enjoyed whenever. believe it or not, comedy Central has a lot of content that will stand the test of time. especially when looking at their stand-up catalogue.

    this is the destruction of a library. a digital one, but a library none the less. that’s what people are mad about.

    but you’re right. we should just dump all of our old movies and shows. they’re worthless moldy junk anyway… 🙄