More CoC prep and Flag Football

It's been a busy week. I need to push myself to post more frequently.

The preparation for running "The Haunting" scenario for Call of Cthulhu 6th Ed. has been taking up most of my time. Apart from trying to learn how the game works I have also been learning how to use Roll20 for distance game play, re-acquaint myself with Cam Studio and Audacity for recording gaming sessions, and learning how to use VoiceMeeter and the Logitech G35 headset I bought yesterday to mix my mic and improve sound quality.

So, par for the course, I have spiraled into more and more complexity and stuff that is not directly needed to play the game. Ah well. What follows is something of a project list and some things to remind me, and possibly educate you should you be equally mad, how I set this stuff up.

***One Caveat. These are all freeware and may have some things in them that you don't want. My virus protection caught the bloatware in Cam Studio that is packaged in the installer, but not part of the program. Everything else was clean after a scan. Also beware of some of the "Download" buttons on these sites. Make sure the file being downloaded is what you wanted and not something else.***

Cam Studio:

This is a free screen video capture utility that I used way back when to make my Flag Ripple Tutorial Video, I still feel rage bubble to the surface at that douche bags comment. But I digress. It is a nifty little program that does what it says, but there are some caveats.

First off the installer tries to install a ton of bloatware(?), stuff you don't need that ha nothing to do with the program. I found that my virus protection just wouldn't let me install at first. You can either just say "I don't Agree" to each one until you get to the actual software, or you can do a custom install of only the program. I will say that having to "Agree" to each crap software is very tricky. I thought I was accepting Cam Studios terms the first time. Very sneaky.

Things I've learned so far. I needed to download the CamStudio Lossless Codec 1.5  to get it to record. It is also important to note that you have to record from the microphone and then change the input to the speakers if you want to record browser sounds or audio from you computer. You also need to set these thing every time you run the program. And finally, just record to AVI. The MP4 thing crashes the program, although it does seem to do the actual conversion. The developer himself even says to just use a conversion utility.

Headphones and Electronics review

All right. I remember at some point in the past I promised you all a review of some stuff and then somehow conveniently forgot to do it. So here it is.

Headphones

I had previously been using a cheap pair of noise cancelling headphones for flights but grew to use them daily for watching netflix on my Kindle Fire while my wife read or watched something else on tv. After a few years the elastic band that helped it fit on my head, broke. That coupled with the cracking of the ear pad covers led me to look into buying something new. What I latched onto was these Ableplanet headphones on amazon.

The reviews were not all stellar, but I have never been a true audiophile. Perhaps blowing out my ears for two years in a rock band was the culprit. But I have never been very sensitive in any of my senses, try as I might.

Anyhow they worked great for cancelling the engine noise of the plane. They are a little heavy and after four movies my ears physically hurt a tad from being sandwiched between the headphones and my glasses, but they worked great and I found them easy to pack up and cart around. So recommended.

This next bit is less a review of the products themselves as their peripherals and a sort of international travel tip.

I have not done a whole lot of international travel, but I have done some, and one thing that has always worried me is charging electronic devices. Initially I didn't have, nor was as reliant upon, cell phones and computers. My first trip to China I think I only had my cell phone. But what concerned me was a travel mate switching off the breakers on our floor at the hotel when he tried to charge his video camera battery. I want to say that was 2005.

Feast forward to today and things are so much easier. I had my phone, Surface Tablet and Nikon D5100 camera along for the trip to London and Paris. We had brought along a power converter, but after the first two days it stopped working. Now I had read, and seen printed on the charger units, that they were mutli voltage now. In short, many electronic devices now support a range of voltages that should cover you around the world, you only need an adapter for the plug. So I took the plunge and plugged in the power block for my tablet and used the USB port to charge my phone. Success. So if your device's power supply says it can handle 100 - 240 V, it can.

Probably old news for most, but for me it was a revelation.

And just to review the Microsoft Surface Tablet, I really like it. I use it as my main computer now, editing all my photos etc, and have totally replaced my Kindle. It is heavy compared to a Kindle, but sooo much lighter than my 15" laptop. I stuffed it in the pouch in my camera bag that is designed to fit an iPad. I went with the largest storage I could find, you could probably get one with less storage for about the price of an iPad and buy an external drive, or just save to the cloud if it was a problem. Anyway I really enjoy it.

New tablet on top of Laptop, a lot lighter

Well so that's it. I'm still waiting on the Mongols etc, but my Gokstad ship has arrived. Funny how the stuff I don't need always arrives before the stuff I do.

I've got to make enough 2" wide river, and a bridge to go across my 6' table. I'm thinking of using the 3mm craft foam. I suppose I could just use blue, but I did want to paint it. My thinking right now is to just cut it to 2" width and forego banks. It seems you really only need those if you are building up a water effect. I had also thought of printing some on card as a quick solution. I'll see how I feel. Any thoughts?