10-27-2022 : Analogue experiments and PC building!

What's up, been a bit longer than I'd like since the last blog post, so here's an extra long one.
It's project season round these parts, so I've got a very full plate of school work. Despite this, I'm getting a lot of personal stuff done recently. I got a sick new CRT, built myself a killer PC, went to a toy fair, and a whole heck of a lot more. I'm trying to balance the fun and the work, becuase the fall semester always tends to burn me out. A couple years ago, my workload was so bad I felt I couldn't even go for walks anymore- yeesh. Take care of yourselves out there, S.A.D. is rearing it's ugly head. Anyways, I figure how can I make anything cool if I'm not doing cool things? I gotta find inspiration, and shit like playing with old tech and oggling at old toys is the perfect fit.

After going to the dentist Thursday, I picked up a beautiful new (very old) CRT set from the nearby thrift store, and lugged it all the way home with me on the bus. It's a seriously beautiful set, and its been really fun to tinker with. I have a stupidly elaborate setup which lets me create some great glitch effects on it, all while hooked up to an HDMI signal coming out of my computer. The picture on its own is really nice, but not ideal for games, so its going to make a perfect analogue video mixing monitor. I've already been experimenting with it a bit, here's a lil ~exclusive~ video. The character featured is not mine, he's a TV-headed character belonging to a friend.
The next step is to get a dirty video mixer up and running. I have all the components but haven't had the time to make one (that works). With that, I can combine video playback off my laptop via HDMI with my camcorder to make some crazy video feedback effects. The goal is to make some sort of video mixtape... thing. Maybe a music video? I feel like some sort of hyperpop song would work great for it.

I also built myself a PC for the first time last week. It took me pretty much the whole day, as I was particular about cable management and did everything very cautiously. Really though, most of the time was taken up by me backing-up all my files before moving all my old drives over from my old PC. It was ultimately pretty easy, though stressful thoughout, as so many things can go wrong if you're careless.
I did the whole thing following an incredible guide by LinusTechTips, which was comprehensive to a ridiculous extent.

The exciting part of this PC isn't even necessarily the new powerful specs, it's more that my old PC was getting really busted. It couldn't run some applications I needed for school such as Unity and Maya, and would randomly lose all video for a few seconds, and disconnect devices like my keyboard and headphones randomly. It... really showed its age. I feel far, far more productive now.

But! This is not to diminish the great lil computery bits in this bad boy. I got an RTX3060ti (under MSRP!!), and it's been amazing for VR games. I still can't play for too long without getting an upset stomach, but the performance itself if great. I've been playing through Boneworks, which I know they say is more for experienced VR users, but I'm commiting myself to it. I'd rather face the challenges of the game as I progress than force myself to warm-up with a bunch of piddly games like Job Simulator or Accounting+. Anyways, I've watched enough VR streams at this point that I think I get the gist.
I'm only about 2 hours in now but I'm having a really great time. VR games seriously are transformative, it feels so intuitive, and scarily immersive- it's a shame there isn't much movement in the space beyond (shudders) metaverse development. I get it though, I can only stomach an hour or so at the moment so I'm so mentally exhausted from school, and some people can't play it all, and it looks like a gimmick, same as how motion controls were treated when the Wii dropped, not to mention it's stupidly expensive. I'm happy there are big names still pushing it forwards, though. I thought for sure PlayStation weren't going to get back into it, but PSVR2 looks promising. And, as much as I hate Meta, they are making some good headsets. I use the Quest 2 and it's honestly great. The Oculus Link feature makes it so it works just like a normal PC headset, but with the additional option to run local apps wirelessly, which is perfect for games like BeatSaber where you want high/free mobility.

Anyways, that's all I've got to say for now. Goobaba.