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herrcaptain

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herrcaptain ,

Classic Lemmy user, bringing not one but two laptops to a live show.

Need tips, when is a non-campaign game considered 'completed'?

I like to keep track of my games that I have completed, with most of the games it is pretty easy. When the credits roll, I consider them beat, there are a few exceptions of course like Nier, Resident Evil 2 etc. What I struggle with are fighting, racing games and 4x games. I enjoy these genres, but I don’t know what is...

herrcaptain ,

Given that I mostly play heavily-modded games, a run is usually “complete” when it is abandoned due to its inevitable TPS death.

herrcaptain ,

Right? At this point I’m just sticking with WordPress because I can’t be bothered to migrate a bunch of sites off of it. Every year for the past decade it’s felt jankier. Tumblr’s backend has to be a dumpster fire for this to seem like a good idea.

My criticism aside, WP still has the convenience factor of being the open source web platform that has a plugin for just about any need. Whether those plugins are gonna break for site or introduce interesting new vulnerabilities is a different discussion.

herrcaptain ,

I love this, but also found it hilarious - especially the towel as a helicopter blade trick and your description of it being “very undesirable for the fly.” I’m picturing your partner or housemate sighing and being like, “there they go again, herding flies.” I can definitely see it working though.

herrcaptain ,

What we’re begging for: A Linux client for Proton Drive

What we get: A fucking Bitcoin wallet

herrcaptain ,

I’ve actually meant to try that but haven’t yet gotten around to it. I’d still love an official app though, as sometimes 3rd party solutions don’t work great with cloud storage (at least in my experience).

herrcaptain ,
  1. Go straight to jail.

Edit: No idea what’s up with the formatting. In my app this shows as step 5 but it seems to render as step 1. Is the Lemmy DB done in CSS?

herrcaptain ,

Weird! Thanks for letting me know. I guess that’s what I get for using an app (Sync) that the developer abandons for months at a time.

herrcaptain ,

Avoid hoarding? Let’s just say I bring a real “gotta catch em all” energy to the trackers.

herrcaptain ,

I’ve never gotten around to actually reading up on this, but I’ve always suspected it has to do with the frequency of gratification. In real life you could study for 8 hours and, while you’ll learn a lot, you don’t get that dopamine (or whatever) hit until you complete the test, succeed at the project, etc. Games, however, are constructed so that you get little rewards at regular intervals to keep you hooked, like levels, new gear, etc. Some, particularly a lot of mobile games, obviously prey on susceptible people with that loop, but even “regular” games can get pretty addictive with that sort of progression.

(I’m far from anti-gaming. It’s my main hobby. This is just my guess at how the psychology behind it works.)

herrcaptain ,

That Costco employee knew exactly what they were doing when they placed that sign there, and I commend them for it.

herrcaptain ,

This would be a pretty interesting way of finding out.

herrcaptain ,

Super cute, though the music sounded weirdly ominous to me. It sounded less baby otter playing with toys and more baby Cthulhu playing with humans as toys.

herrcaptain ,

I think this might fall under “cruel and unusual punishment” for his cellmate. Imagine having to live in a tiny room with this blowhard.

herrcaptain ,

I was under the impression that if someone is playing a game from your library you can’t access it unless you boot them out (or you put steam in offline mode, meaning no updates or multiplayer for the duration). Is that no longer true?

herrcaptain ,

Ooooooh. I was under the mistaken impression that your whole library was locked down, not just the one game. Good to know!

herrcaptain ,

I replied the same thing to another comment, but I had thought it locked down the whole library rather than just the one game being played. I could have sworn I ran into that issue but it’s been a long time since I tried it do I suppose I misremembered.

herrcaptain ,

I have no idea how to properly link to a community in my app, but here you go:

https://lemmy.world/c/lemmybewholesome

herrcaptain ,

Oooo - you posted this in the same minute I did, but you actually managed to link it properly. Well played.

herrcaptain ,

It’s not quite the same, but … I swear, literally this morning while doing my business one of my bathroom spiders snuck under my slightly raised heel just to chill. If I’d put my foot down that’d be the end of that creature, but by luck I moved my foot instead to find a quarter-sized spider just hanging out where my bare foot had just been.

Side-note: This particular spider is called Hex because it’s missing two legs. I believe I found those legs right by the toilet a few weeks before I met my new pooping pal. I’ve always wondered how it lost them.

herrcaptain ,

Better yet, how do we get this person screened for psychopathy?

herrcaptain ,

Yup! We live in a basement and have this deal with the spiders that they’ll be left alone as long as they stay off the furniture. For some reason we basically only see them in the bathroom but the occasional time they’ve been bad, they get exiled to the laundry room.Usually there are 3-5 out that we can see at any given time. Most are very tiny ones that chill in webs, but a few are hunters that are much more mobile. Those that stick around or do something notable get named after a while. Other than Hex there’s been …

Peeping Tom who lived in a web in front of the toilet and just watched you. Sometimes, usually after someone showered and there was condensation in the room, he’d take a little jaunt around his “porch”. He disappeared one day under mysterious circumstances. While hoping for his safe return I took the opportunity to clean around his home and accidentally sucked it up with a hand vacuum.

Marina, who was originally named Mario as I rescued her from the sink - the name was changed when I suspected her to be a girl due to her looking like a bigger version of a species we sometimes see. She was my fave as she was always up to something and was very active. We think she was huffing caulking as after we redid it she loved to sit on the new caulk, leading us to childishly say she was “addicted to caulk.” We were genuinely concerned about her addiction though as it seemed unhealthy. I once saw her awkwardly chase down a pill millipede. You wouldn’t think it possible for something a few mm across to look embarrassed, but I swear she did after she bit it in the ass and it ran off unphased. I think she was too tiny to pierce its exoskeleton. She’s recently disappeared and I’m legit sad and hoping she’s just off on one of her adventures.

I then recycled the name Mario for one who I had to quickly scoop out of the sink when I was running the water and hadn’t noticed because he was so tiny. I was proud of myself as, despite what you may think I’m slightly arachnophobic. (I was very arachnophobic before we started keeping them as free-range pets / housemates.)

Big Bertha, who lived in parts unknown but would often show up in the bathroom at night. She had a habit of temporarily stealing the webs of the resident spiders for a few hours before departing. Usually the other spider would fuck off and watch from a distance, but once I saw her in there just staring down the owner. To my knowledge, she never hurt them though.

It’s possible that Hex is actually Big Bertha, as he/she/it (I’m sure I’m misgendering the hell out of them all) has a similar personality.

Can you possibly tell that we cannot currently get pets due to our living situation? We’re making do with what the basement provides for companionship.

herrcaptain ,

ICQ was my first foray into meeting girls online, back when that was a really weird thing to do.

Post a/s/l to pay respects.

herrcaptain ,

Now I’m no American, but something smells FBIish about that address.

herrcaptain ,

We need to revise that for Lemmy.

“Lemmy: Where men are men, and men are women, and women are men, and I think we’ve got a few women who were born women, and also there’s a whole bunch of new genders as well, and no genders at all, and that’s all cool with most of us.”

It’s a mouthful and might not read well on a t-shirt, but we can workshop it.

herrcaptain ,

I’m pressing X to doubt.

herrcaptain ,

What was this from? I know the reference but can’t place it. I could obviously search for it but, hey, I’m trying to be social here.

herrcaptain ,

I assume she’s using a separate keyboard/mouse, right? Though I’m enjoying the mental picture of someone trying to touch type on a vertical keyboard.

herrcaptain ,

That’s the way to do it. I used a broken laptop like that as my daily driver for a few years after losing my desktop and being unable to replace it.

herrcaptain ,

They should name that shop Potpourri.

herrcaptain ,

Really puts the term “bust a nut” into perspective.

herrcaptain ,

Imagine how different the world was for people with super niche interests before the internet. Back then, this would have been seen as the weird (or at best eccentric) guy in your town who collects fire alarms and won’t stop talking about them. Now he’s presumably got a fulfilling social life via his unusual hobby, and an outlet to share his thoughts to a willing audience.

For all its many faults over the last decades, this is the pure internet at its best.

herrcaptain ,

That’s a fair point but I suspect this has always been the case. I bet if we could go back to the prehistoric period we’d find someone saying, “Cronk found himself another dick-shaped leaf to add to his collection.” I’d almost think with less available to amuse them, people would be finding joy in all sorts of weird hobbies or collections.

herrcaptain ,

Very good point! I imagine meeting someone in person and finding out they have the same unusual hobby would have been quite the thrill. I’m old enough to distinctly remember a world before the ubiquitous internet, but never had a super niche hobby to have given me that sort of experience.

herrcaptain ,

I see where you’re coming from but that feels dangerously close to a certain other word I’d rather not use. I’m also not sure of the etemology of that word, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find out it has something in common with the other one.

herrcaptain ,

I like this but I can see them leaning into it and taking it as a badge of honor.

herrcaptain ,

I’m truly glad I was able to help you have a nicer day. We all need to look out for each other and prop our friends (current or future) up in this system rigged against us.

I’m with you in that most of the population are comparatively poor. The problem is that the oligarchs know exactly how to keep us down, by playing our minor differences off against each other. We need a whole lot of love and understanding to counter that power.

I mean, I’m so goddamn fortunate compared to like 95% of the earth’s population. I grew up fairly poor to working-class parents who had to really struggle to provide for us and keep a roof over our heads. But poor in Canada is a whole world’s difference from poor (or even doing okay) in most other places, and I include the USA in that latter category.

I’m now nearing 40 and for the first time in my life I don’t have to outright directly stress about money. My wife and I are lower-middle-class, and along with the rest of my family were able to buy the business we all worked for. It’s still a struggle - now I have to worry about keeping the business afloat for everyone who depends on it, and we had to make a lot of sacrifices to make this happen. (It’s still up in the air whether my mom, the president of our company, will be able to retire in time to enjoy it.) That said, part of the reason we could make this happen was because we had my wife’s family to fall back on and have “temporarily” been living rent-free in their basement for 9 years now. This is something else that so many other people lack. I can’t remember the technical term for it, but having a family or other social network to lift you up is so crucial to keeping people out of poverty or otherwise helping them better their lives.

This is getting stupidity long-winded, but the point I’m getting at is that for the first time in my life I have the potential to become very wealthy over the next few decades. However, myself and my family are in full agreement that we don’t want that. As our business becomes less of a struggle we certainly want to pay ourselves a little better (with our skills and experience we could make far more anywhere else than we can currently afford to pay ourselves), but we want to raise the wages of our staff right along with our own - never making much more than the average person we employ. To us, that’s the real mark of business success - creating a thriving organization that lifts up everyone involved.

We’ve all seen what egregious wealth can do to a person and want no part in it. If our business does well enough to potentially make us rich, I want us to be taxed punitively- to properly incentivize us to reinvest our profits into creating more jobs and paying them increasingly well. To get rich would be the death of who we are as people.

With this all being said, all of us who want to make the world better in spite of the egregious power of the rich need to stick together. Leftism is so prone to infighting over minute technical details when we ultimately all want the same core things. I’m certainly critical of certain strains of leftism, but at the end of the day I have way more in common with ya’ll than I do with the rich. (In fairness, my family technically owns some of the means of production, but the tiny sliver we own is worth less than a typical house in our low cost-of-living area and we don’t own houses because of it. As such, I think the worst we could be accused of is being petite bourgeoisie.)

The rich, on the other hand, possess a remarkable class consciousness. A white warehouse worker has far more in common with a black supermarket worker than a Saudi Sheik has with an American or Russian oligarch, but you’d never know it. They’ve gotten so good at playing us against each other while cooperating to keep us all down. It’s a tale as old as time.

herrcaptain ,

I definitely recognize that video! I’m sure I saw it on Ebaums World or something way back before YouTube.

As to your comment itself - don’t worry about being “too much” with me, especially after that info dump I fired at you. Many of us at my work struggle with mental illness and joke about how blatantly we trauma-dump on each other all the time. Sooooo, I’m used to it, and regularly perpetrate it myself. I’ve also been through two full-on mental breakdowns myself so not a lot can shock me.

It’s late and I need some sleep but if you ever need a friendly ear to vent to, add me on Mastodon ( @herrcaptain ) or straight up shoot me an email ( [email protected] ). I skimmed some of your comment history and you seem like a good egg and we have a lot of common ground for a friendship.

herrcaptain ,

You as well, my dude! And for the record, you seem very likable to me. Please do feel more than welcome to reach out if you ever need a friendly ear. I often feel powerless in the world, but one thing I am capable of is acting as a sounding board for someone who needs to vent. As I said in another comment earlier today, I’m pretty pessimistic about the state of the world, so these days I focus on just helping people where I can.

herrcaptain ,

Well, I’ve favorited you here on Lemmy and will make sure to keep in touch. I wasn’t sure there was a DM feature, but looking in my app it appears there is, so I’ll do that in the coming days to check in.

No glowing trees in my dreams, but a good sleep nonetheless so thanks for that!

herrcaptain ,

I guess the technical difference would be that one had ancestors who took their power by force and managed to cement it into hereditary rule, while the other acquired it as a “captain of industry” and then largely did the same thing through lobbying or other forms of cronyism.

Mostly the same end result, but for some reason we put one on our coins and hold celebrations in their honor.

I do prefer your champagne analogy though.

herrcaptain ,

Very fair point. And just to clarify, I loathe them all about equally regardless of how they obtained their wealth/power or what country they’re from.

herrcaptain ,

So it really is the same everywhere.

herrcaptain ,

No worries! I just shot you a DM being that this thread is already so long. It’s the first I’ve sent on this platform, so let me know if you don’t end up receiving it.

herrcaptain ,

Well now I’m bummed out to find out that people are trying to patent math.

I’m with you on all of those though.

herrcaptain ,

That one surprises me less, based on the limited stuff I already know about GMO companies like Monsanto. Still madness, of course.

herrcaptain ,

I used to actually know a ton about this stuff but haven’t touched a musical instrument or audio device in over 12 years. Sooooo, bear with me.

All of this will depend entirely where your interests lay in terms of audio production/engineering. One of the core skills would be the ability to pick out different sounds from a soundscape. I suspect you already have a knack for that given how much you seem to think about audio quality. Tied in with that would be an understanding of how digital audio works in terms of bitrate, dynamic range, what clipping sounds (and looks) like, etc. I’m sure there’s tons of info on all that online. Analog audio has a whole other set of skills associated with it, but I doubt it’s super accessible these days for a beginner. That’s outside of cassettes, at least. I’m sure old 4-track cassette recorders are super cheap. As much as I loved analog recording, you’re probably better off just going digitally and using processing to get an approximation of the “traditional” analog sound, though, if that’s your jsn. Or if you’re going for a black metal sound or something else intentionally grungy, go to town on a cassette deck.

From there I’d say the biggest skills would be understanding basic mic technique, the general physics of sound, and how to properly set your levels (basically the ratio of preamp vs amp). Next up would be figuring out basic processing - namely the different types of EQ and compression. Effects play into that too - especially reverb and delay - but EQ and compression (plus proper micing and levels) are generally going to be the foundation of a good mix.

That being said - this all entirely depends on what you’re going for. If you don’t do anything musical yourself and aren’t inclined to record other musicians, you can have tons of fun remixing other people’s work. I’m pretty sure there are sites out there where you can download raw audio tracks to mix yourself. Another viable option if you’re into electronic forms of music is to get a sequencer and experiment that way.

I got my start when I was maybe 13 or 14 with a cracked copy of Fruity Loops (I think it’s called FL Studio now). I used that to write dumb electronic songs despite having no theoretical musical or audio knowledge (besides having previously used the built in Windows sound recording software to layer weird shit I recorded with a crappy mic). That software also came with demo tracks that I experimented with. About a year later I got a bass guitar and started a punk band, and that led to all sorts of weird experimentation with recording mediums. From there I bought a shitty reel to reel tape deck and began recording punk bands out of their jam spaces, eventually went to school for audio engineering, had a bunch of jobs related to the art (while freelancing doing recording work and live sound), and finally burned out and never touched a guitar or mic again.

None of that is necessary or even something I’d recommend. It’s a perfectly legitimate hobby if you want to keep it small-scale. You can start it with almost no money, but that’s where I’d caution you if you have anything approaching an addictive personality - the gear can get super addictive as you begin a quest for the perfect tone. For a few years there I worked at a musical instrument store and most of my paycheck went right back to my work (the staff discount sure helped though). Likewise, most of what I’d make freelancing would go back to gear as well. That’s one of the big reasons I quit cold turkey one day. I still miss it as a hobby, but I know the second I start it back up I’ll be right back to dreaming of expensive tube preamps. Your own mileage may vary if you have better self-control.

herrcaptain ,

If you really truly are interested in it as a career don’t hold back, but know that it’s a looooooong road for very little money and absolutely no guarantees. Like anything fairly creative, only the top percentile make actual good money (or even sustainable money), and even then you usually have to freelance and build your own reputation to get there. That said, there are viable adjacent jobs that use that skillset. I worked in corporate AV for a few years, which involves running sound, lighting, and video for events. It’s far from glamorous though, and mostly involves manual labor in setups and teardowns. You’re basically a roadie who also runs the gear, but instead of mixing cool rock shows you’re mixing a few mics and a PowerPoint presentation for a pharmaceutical convention. The hours can also suuuuuuuck. My longest shift was 20 hours. I got home at 3 AM after that and then had to be back at the shop for 7. You live on free coffee and cookies that the banquet staff give you (you get to be on a first-name basis with every hotel banquet server in your city). It can be weirdly fun as a youngster but I have no idea how the older techs survived. I regularly worked 40 hour weeks when I was part time and 60-80 when full-time. I burned out by like 22.

The music store gig was really fun though. I ran the rentals desk and spent a lot of time teaching my customers how to use the pro audio gear. That’s also the most ridiculous place I’ve ever worked in terms of memorable stories.

You can also run sound in a dive bar, but that’s mostly about who you know and involves more networking than you’d expect to work in a dive bar for very little money.

As far as actually being a professional audio engineer or producer who makes a living making records - that’s the real tough part. I suppose it’s possible to land a staff job in a studio, but that’s not really how it worked in my small city. I freelanced with my own gear and home studio for years until I met a (relatively - this is Canada) big-name producer who I’d built rapport with from my job in the music store. He offered to let me work out of his proper studio for a very reasonable rate. Note that this wasn’t a job - it was an offer to pay him to use his facility. Still, it was the closest thing I had to a break and for a few glorious months I was (barely) scraping by as a full-time recording engineer. The clientele I had built up over the previous decade were almost exclusively local punk and garage rock bands, meaning none of them had money, and now they had to pay real studio fees on top of my own, so I was charging way too little. I was technically doing it though, but then I finally fully burned out - due in part to some looming personal issues - and that was that.

As to all your other comments - alllll of that can be learned through study and experimentation. I went to an overpriced school to learn the fundamentals, but a diploma like that means shit and you can learn it just as well on your own. With stuff like EQ you don’t need to be able to instantly pick out a good/bad frequency fully by ear - there are little tricks for zoning in on what you’re looking for (crank the gain on the EQ and scan the frequency range until you find the tone you’re trying to get rid of, then turn it down. Hint: it’s almost always the lower-mids making stuff sound muddy.)

This all being said, if you’re interested in this stuff I suggest dipping your toes in as a hobbyist first. If it becomes your obsession maybe consider a career, but only if you’ll be content working adjacent jobs rather than recording bands full time. Also, in case I didn’t make it quite clear, there’s a ton of networking involved. It’s easier if you actually play in a band, as I did (you don’t have to be good - just out there meeting people). I suppose it’d still be possible otherwise if you spend most of your free time at local shows and really get to know the musicians. Also, by the time I was getting in, home recording was a vibrant industry so wasn’t just competing with other engineers for jobs - I was also competing with bands just doing it themselves. I’m sure that’s only gotten tougher these days with cheap gear being so accessible.

I hope this doesn’t come across as demoralizing. I just want to make sure you know what you’re potentially getting yourself into. If you’re hating your current industry, though, and this all sounds overwhelming, another approach is to find something tolerable but maybe not what you envisioned, and make the best of it. In creative fields work typically becomes your life as it’s a constant grind to make ends meet and something that was once pleasurable inevitably becomes tainted by association. Some people have the emotional fortitude to survive under those conditions but I suspect they’re few and far between. I’ve worked probably a dozen jobs in my life before landing in my current role. Depending on how you count it, I’ve been here about 11 years and I fully expect this will be the company I work at for the rest of my working life (in part because my family bought the business a few years ago after several of us had worked there for years). The job has nothing to do with anything I went to school for and is in an industry I have no personal interest in. But, the work itself is interesting and sometimes creative,. Most importantly, the people are good, so I’m about as happy as a person can be in a job. Keep yourself open to opportunities like that, if you can find them. Buying the business helped, but even before that I had pretty much accepted that I was a lifer because this was the first grown-up job I felt content in.

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