I fancied trying do some game content creation, I'm currently playing Hearthstone and Player Unknown's Batllegrounds, so I thought I'd start with those.
I found a broadcast system in Open Broadcaster Software and found it really easy to use.
I had created a card deck in Hearthstone to play arena (a game mode). I'd already played two games because I was messing around with the Nvidia in-game experience, but didn't have any success with it.
So I got my webcam set up and found a template overlay so it looked reasonable.
Basically, you start with a blank "page". You drop a picture over lay which as you will see, is just a background with a few black boxes.
There is a larger one, which you overlay the game screen and two smaller ones for webcam and the chat log, if you are live streaming.
As expected, I was terrible. I lost both games, but whilst I was disappointed, it wasn't about that.
After a quick google, I found a few sites which reviewed open source video editing software. The general consensus was that Blender was a really good choice. It wasn't.
The interface looked so complicated and cluttered. I managed to import a video, but couldn't work out how to do anything else. Uninstalled. I then Tried Avidemux as it looked quite simple. It was crap. The interface itself was simple and easy to use, but was severely let down by its output. It's like it removed the audio entirely as well as every other frame.
In my disappointment, I uploaded as is and posted.
Here they are, if you're interested:
Hearthstone: Arena Run Game 3
Hearthstone: Arena Run Game 4
During post-processing, I realised I hadn't set it to record game audio, so its just my voice and the sound of my mouse clicking right now, but the overlay looks cool, even if its not quite wide screen and there is a blank space where the chat live-stream should be.
I would appreciate any comments you might have on suggestions on game play, but I'm really looking for a simple video editor, just so I can crop the beginning and end, I don't really need to do fancy transitions or dumixing at the moment.
As an experiment, I believe it went well and I have learnt a few things. Hopefully the next ones will be better. I'm planning on doing a Player Unknown's Battlegrounds next, it will likely be a little longer, but hopefully a little more interesting.
Sunday 20 August 2017
Friday 18 August 2017
First week down
It's Friday, we're live and I'm on the way home...
So that's the first week done.
There's a lot that is still up in the air, but I'm slowly gaining visibility of the problems at least.
There are still a lot of problems, some of which I'm sure I'm still unaware of, but here's a few
I've been hearing that phrase banded around a lot this week and I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that it means people have no idea what's happening with it.
I now have proof of concepts running in parallel on my own machine for network monitoring applications, one of which is actually gathering data. I have a laptop and monitor set up on the end of the team pod which shows a dashboard of the data, which at least gives more visibility in my team. This has been noticed in the office and I've noticed some people looking at it. :-)
It has become apparent that my "team" is made up of two teams, IT and fraud. A group of eight of us, becoming nine. With this in mind I have suggested a desk move in order to better seat the two subdepartments so they can communicate easier. I haven't discussed this with my boss, but the teams seem keen.
In addition, there is a large pile of tech "crap" accumulating adjacent to our teams desks, which seems to be stuff people have dumped when no longer required, after four days of looking at it I got a tidy on. UPS' are now stacked together, along with monitors, towers and monitor stands. I also tidied a few cables into a box and threw some boxes out. It made me feel a little happier about our shared workspace.
I've also started talking to people about the idea of getting it off the shop floor altogether. So this is also going to happen on Monday, again, I'm yet to discuss this with my boss.
During regular conversations with my boss (when he's around) he seems fine with me doing stuff generally, so a lot of the stuff mentioned above I'm just doing until someone tells me to stop.
Everyone seems to be dreading Monday for one reason. The project manager for the department Is due back. From what I can tell, no one really likes him. He sounds ranty and micromanaging. I'm told that he is likely to get me to do stuff, so I'm sure that will be an interesting conversation.
I have endeavoured to explain my outwardness to the rest of the team and they seem to be ok with it, but they have said that myself and the other new infrastructure engineer will likely be seen as additional lackey resource to be moved around. This won't be the case.
I have a shit load of reading and information gathering to do at this point and I am under no delusion that next weeks actions will only increase this.
Having said all of this, I'm still looking forward to getting started on Monday morning and see what we can do.
So that's the first week done.
There's a lot that is still up in the air, but I'm slowly gaining visibility of the problems at least.
There are still a lot of problems, some of which I'm sure I'm still unaware of, but here's a few
- Progress seems to have ceased with regards to getting the fibre trunks in.
- Business process seems to be all over the place
- Developers are doing support
- Documenting of projects isn't happening
- Lots of important information is sat in different people's heads
- Lack of visibility of projects and progress across business units.
I've been hearing that phrase banded around a lot this week and I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that it means people have no idea what's happening with it.
I now have proof of concepts running in parallel on my own machine for network monitoring applications, one of which is actually gathering data. I have a laptop and monitor set up on the end of the team pod which shows a dashboard of the data, which at least gives more visibility in my team. This has been noticed in the office and I've noticed some people looking at it. :-)
It has become apparent that my "team" is made up of two teams, IT and fraud. A group of eight of us, becoming nine. With this in mind I have suggested a desk move in order to better seat the two subdepartments so they can communicate easier. I haven't discussed this with my boss, but the teams seem keen.
In addition, there is a large pile of tech "crap" accumulating adjacent to our teams desks, which seems to be stuff people have dumped when no longer required, after four days of looking at it I got a tidy on. UPS' are now stacked together, along with monitors, towers and monitor stands. I also tidied a few cables into a box and threw some boxes out. It made me feel a little happier about our shared workspace.
I've also started talking to people about the idea of getting it off the shop floor altogether. So this is also going to happen on Monday, again, I'm yet to discuss this with my boss.
During regular conversations with my boss (when he's around) he seems fine with me doing stuff generally, so a lot of the stuff mentioned above I'm just doing until someone tells me to stop.
Everyone seems to be dreading Monday for one reason. The project manager for the department Is due back. From what I can tell, no one really likes him. He sounds ranty and micromanaging. I'm told that he is likely to get me to do stuff, so I'm sure that will be an interesting conversation.
I have endeavoured to explain my outwardness to the rest of the team and they seem to be ok with it, but they have said that myself and the other new infrastructure engineer will likely be seen as additional lackey resource to be moved around. This won't be the case.
I have a shit load of reading and information gathering to do at this point and I am under no delusion that next weeks actions will only increase this.
Having said all of this, I'm still looking forward to getting started on Monday morning and see what we can do.
Tuesday 15 August 2017
End of Day 2 as a Infrastructure Engineer
On Monday, I started a new job.
I had been preparing for the new job by researching DevOps, ITIL and the like.
From the conversations I'd had with my boss, he was very keen on the whole agile methodology and that's where I made an assumption.
I assumed that that would be the method in place. I was wrong.
After two days, I have realised that this is a broken team. Like, properly broken.
The Infrastructure is a mess. It's mis-matched, there is very little resiliency, many single points of failure, there is little-to-no-backup and what little documentation that exists is 5 years old and incomplete.
I have realised there is a lot of work to do. I am starting with network monitoring because there is none. I'm also going to be advocating a who new backup system.
On the plus side, budget doesn't seem to be tightly regulated, or indeed particularly planned.
My boss copied and pasted a PO that a colleague had made in order to fashion me with a workstation. It turns out that order was test rig for a designer.
Its has :
I installed the hyper-V role on the windows 10 pro build that was handed to me on a flash drive (build 1603, so it took most of the date to get updated) and proceeded to get the virtual switch working.
Normally this is a trivial task, but this time around it would not play ball.
After I realised that the virtual adapter disables IPv4 on the NIC, windows 10 once again got an IP leased, but the virtual switch would not allow the guests access to to the external network.I'll tinker with it more tomorrow.
I know, it's been literally ages.
I had been preparing for the new job by researching DevOps, ITIL and the like.
From the conversations I'd had with my boss, he was very keen on the whole agile methodology and that's where I made an assumption.
I assumed that that would be the method in place. I was wrong.
After two days, I have realised that this is a broken team. Like, properly broken.
The Infrastructure is a mess. It's mis-matched, there is very little resiliency, many single points of failure, there is little-to-no-backup and what little documentation that exists is 5 years old and incomplete.
I have realised there is a lot of work to do. I am starting with network monitoring because there is none. I'm also going to be advocating a who new backup system.
On the plus side, budget doesn't seem to be tightly regulated, or indeed particularly planned.
My boss copied and pasted a PO that a colleague had made in order to fashion me with a workstation. It turns out that order was test rig for a designer.
Its has :
- 8 core Xeon processor
- 32GB of RAM
- 2 120GB SSDs (one M2 straight on the board and a kingston from stores)
- 1TB WD blue
- 2 27" HP monitors
I installed the hyper-V role on the windows 10 pro build that was handed to me on a flash drive (build 1603, so it took most of the date to get updated) and proceeded to get the virtual switch working.
Normally this is a trivial task, but this time around it would not play ball.
After I realised that the virtual adapter disables IPv4 on the NIC, windows 10 once again got an IP leased, but the virtual switch would not allow the guests access to to the external network.I'll tinker with it more tomorrow.
I know, it's been literally ages.
Monday 29 May 2017
Entropy being what it is...
I got back from my home town yesterday evening.
The purpose of my visit was primarily for the funeral of my grandmother.
Jean was in her 90's, so "she had a good life" as so many people said while I was there.
The service was pretty much what you'd expect for a small affair, not that I'd know much about attending funerals. This is only the second funeral that I've attended.
I have been to other funerals in the past, but I was a pallbearer, which I don't believe really counts.
One of the things I still don't understand about death is that it has a tendency to bring out the worst in people, especially when there is money involved.
I had heard from other family members, who had told me about certain on-goings in the lead up to the funeral and frankly it sickened me. I'm not going in to specifics here, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Moreover, my visit was an opportunity to catch up with other family members, as I get back so infrequently. Further to my refereeing both before and after the funeral, I attempted to mend a few other rifts within the family unit.
I successfully managed to build a bridge between my other grandparents and my sister.
Again, much silliness abounds - after my parents split up, people took sides, it got messy and then years seem to go by without a word spoken.
This seemed to go well, we sat; drank tea and idly chatted. I deemed this to be a success. I'm hopeful, this will lead on to reuniting my sister and father, but I'm pretty sure this will be a much harder nut to crack. So, next time maybe.
The one thing that will stick with me, besides seeing my mother reading aloud something she'd written for the occasion and trying desperately to keep her composure, is the dull thud of roses landing on a coffin once placed in a hole in the ground.
Edit: With thanks to Sally Paulson for proofreading and generally being awesome.
The purpose of my visit was primarily for the funeral of my grandmother.
Jean was in her 90's, so "she had a good life" as so many people said while I was there.
The service was pretty much what you'd expect for a small affair, not that I'd know much about attending funerals. This is only the second funeral that I've attended.
I have been to other funerals in the past, but I was a pallbearer, which I don't believe really counts.
One of the things I still don't understand about death is that it has a tendency to bring out the worst in people, especially when there is money involved.
I had heard from other family members, who had told me about certain on-goings in the lead up to the funeral and frankly it sickened me. I'm not going in to specifics here, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Moreover, my visit was an opportunity to catch up with other family members, as I get back so infrequently. Further to my refereeing both before and after the funeral, I attempted to mend a few other rifts within the family unit.
I successfully managed to build a bridge between my other grandparents and my sister.
Again, much silliness abounds - after my parents split up, people took sides, it got messy and then years seem to go by without a word spoken.
This seemed to go well, we sat; drank tea and idly chatted. I deemed this to be a success. I'm hopeful, this will lead on to reuniting my sister and father, but I'm pretty sure this will be a much harder nut to crack. So, next time maybe.
The one thing that will stick with me, besides seeing my mother reading aloud something she'd written for the occasion and trying desperately to keep her composure, is the dull thud of roses landing on a coffin once placed in a hole in the ground.
 |
| The Obituary. |
Thursday 25 May 2017
The beginning
Last weekend I kicked the bad habit that was Facebook.
Without mention of poor user experience and the constant battle between chronological and so called “top feeds”.
These top feeds are basically targeted adverts and promoted posts.
I realised it just wasn't me, despite the friends I had. Many of these friends were also active on other sites.
I read this article a few weeks back:
Whilst unsurprising that this sort of data can so easily be accumulated and indeed used for political purpose, it still scared me somewhat.
Further I read,
And I started to think about all the cloud systems I used every day without thinking.
I have bought into the Google ecosystem in a relatively big way.
I've had a Gmail account since i-dont-know-when, a Google+ account since shortly after it started and I was an early adopter if the niantic game Ingress.
So I deactivated my Facebook account.
I couldn't delete it, so the content is still there should I wish to go back.
I thought about the alternatives. I already use Google+ and Twitter.
Then I started thinking further about what was lacking from my social media experience.
It was then that I started looking up blogs.
A quick Google found that a reasonable Solution would be blogger.
A couple of days later, I was having a conversation with a friend who had also used blogger.
We discussed URL forwarding and google hosting. So that's what did.
The next day I created a couple of cNames on my domain and pointed blogger to them, hey presto I had a blog subdomain.
I then spent an hour or so familiarising myself with the interface and getting to grips with the theme engine. I then had something that vaguely looked blog-shaped.
I figured I could tweak the design as I went.
It seems to have taken me ages so finish this first piece and I'm disappointed at myself at how quickly I lose energy to finish a project.
Still i am persevering and eventually things will get done.
I anticipate writing further articles surrounding different topics, mostly gravitating toward the tech side of things and my ongoing effort to “off-cloud”.
I'm not sure we're this will go, but I'll be interested to see where it ends up.
If you're reading this two years in the future and there isn't anything more, I'm truly sorry
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