KD^3C^3 - 20240428 Eighty dolls yelling "Small girl after all"
I hope you slept better than I did last night. Nothing was really wrong, I just didn't sleep well. I hate that because I don't even have a cool excuse, my body was just saying lolnope.
A Thing in my Possession: Really Janky Headphones
I was at the airport waiting for my flight back home and I wanted to listen to a podcast. I hadn’t brought my regular headphones, because they’re bulky and I was traveling light. So I stopped in the little market in the south terminal to see if I could find some cheap headphones I could use for the flight. I picked out a pair that looked like iPhone knockoffs, mostly because the lightning connector I would have to use was prominently displayed on the front of the box. When I checked out, the clerk checked with me to make sure I had an iphone, because they wouldn’t work with anything else. I confirmed I did, and left with fifteen fewer dollars, but one additional set of headphones. I found a seat in the terminal and plugged them in. Almost immediately, the popup on my screen for connecting apple bluetooth headphones popped up. It displayed a set of BeatsX wireless headphones and asked if I wanted to connect them. I figured someone nearby must have tried pairing a set right as I was looking at my phone. I declined, since I didn’t want someone else connecting their headphones to my phone. But when I went to listen to my podcast nothing was coming out of the earbuds, instead still playing through the phone speaker. I tried unplugging and replugging the. headphones in again, and the beatsX display popped up again. Well what the heck, I thought. I said connect, and then the audio started playing correctly. These were wired headphones, but they apparently worked by tricking the phone into thinking they were bluetooth somehow? I can’t imagine I bought actual bluetooth headphones for fifteen dollars at an airport (average markup 200%) so something else had to be going on. I opened up the bluetooth settings and sure enough there was a new device connected labeled only “Baets” (spelled the way) I chuckled to myself at the strangeness of it, but went on anyway. The strangest thing was when I got on the plane and put my phone in airplane mode again, they stopped working. So whatever was going one, turning off Bluetooth was going to be a problem. I manually restarted the bluetooth and left all the other wireless settings off, and listened to podcasts for the rest of the flight. I probably won’t be using them again.
Poorly Organized Thoughts on: Vertical Video
I’ve been around the internet long enough that I vividly remember the time before smartphones. And before smartphones, there were cameraphones. Cameraphones didn’t take great or even good video, but they did take video. And sometimes we uploaded those videos to the internet. In the early days of smart phones, most people watched those videos on their computers, even if they were taken on a phone. And this saw the rise of the Dreaded Vertical Video. Instead of taking up the whole 4:3 ratio screen, instead the video took a small sliver of it down the middle. It felt like we were losing so much to the giant black blocks on either side of the screen. There were campaigns trying to teach people to turn their phones to the side while taking videos, because even though they looked good on your phone, they would look terrible if you watched them anywhere else.
Anyway, tiktok is here now and we lost the vertical video war. By far the largest majority of videos taken on smart phones these days are on phones and viewed on phones and they’re done so in a vertical format. We’ve learned to watch and frame things in a new way. It has changed the language of video production. I don’t know if we’re too far away from a feature film presented in a vertical video format (possibly something in the Screen recording genre like Unfriended or Missing or Searching.) At one point I would have been madder about this than I think I am now. I’m not happy about it, and I probably won’t be watching anything longer than 5 minutes on my phone anyway (long videos are for the big screen, short videos are for the little screen) and 5 minutes is pushing it even then. Which is funny because tiktok is explicitly pushing for longer videos and won’t even monetize your account if your videos aren’t more than 60 seconds long. But people are out there making them and some is out there watching them. I hope they’re all happy.
Stuff I’m playing
I played a lot of games on my long weekend, but the one I keep telling people about was a warehouse-scale VR experience. There’s a few companies out there doing this, since all you need is a bunch of VR Helmets and some specialized controllers. Plus the software and a network powerful enough to run eight of them simultaneously. And a warehouse space. But’s it’s probably easier than starting an escape room. But like an escape room, this is a communal experience where you get to solve problems in real time, and the problems are things like “too many zombies.” We played two 30 minute sessions, one in a tropical island environment shooting pirates and another in a zombie infested city shooting zombies. The VR level design was really clever, putting you in situations where you were literally walking in circles around a big rectangular space, but it felt like you were traversing actual distance. There were some clever safeguards to prevent you from running into your fellow players, and you got to actually coordinate fighting hoards of zombies or pirates together. It was a little disorienting at first, but quickly you get immersed and by the end of the hour we were all sweating from the exertion and excitement. Highly recommended if you get the chance.
I also downloaded the version of Fallout 4 with updated graphics that just got released. I’ve been spending some time in New Vegas, so switching to the improved graphics in the sequel has been a really impressive jump in quality. I think it’s great that so many people are exploring or rediscovering how great these games are, since the player counts across all of them are though the roof since the tv series dropped on Amazon prime. The series is pretty good too.
This Week's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song of the week is Thought Bubbles
Here's a picture of a cat
A Thing in my Possession: Really Janky Headphones
I was at the airport waiting for my flight back home and I wanted to listen to a podcast. I hadn’t brought my regular headphones, because they’re bulky and I was traveling light. So I stopped in the little market in the south terminal to see if I could find some cheap headphones I could use for the flight. I picked out a pair that looked like iPhone knockoffs, mostly because the lightning connector I would have to use was prominently displayed on the front of the box. When I checked out, the clerk checked with me to make sure I had an iphone, because they wouldn’t work with anything else. I confirmed I did, and left with fifteen fewer dollars, but one additional set of headphones. I found a seat in the terminal and plugged them in. Almost immediately, the popup on my screen for connecting apple bluetooth headphones popped up. It displayed a set of BeatsX wireless headphones and asked if I wanted to connect them. I figured someone nearby must have tried pairing a set right as I was looking at my phone. I declined, since I didn’t want someone else connecting their headphones to my phone. But when I went to listen to my podcast nothing was coming out of the earbuds, instead still playing through the phone speaker. I tried unplugging and replugging the. headphones in again, and the beatsX display popped up again. Well what the heck, I thought. I said connect, and then the audio started playing correctly. These were wired headphones, but they apparently worked by tricking the phone into thinking they were bluetooth somehow? I can’t imagine I bought actual bluetooth headphones for fifteen dollars at an airport (average markup 200%) so something else had to be going on. I opened up the bluetooth settings and sure enough there was a new device connected labeled only “Baets” (spelled the way) I chuckled to myself at the strangeness of it, but went on anyway. The strangest thing was when I got on the plane and put my phone in airplane mode again, they stopped working. So whatever was going one, turning off Bluetooth was going to be a problem. I manually restarted the bluetooth and left all the other wireless settings off, and listened to podcasts for the rest of the flight. I probably won’t be using them again.
Poorly Organized Thoughts on: Vertical Video
I’ve been around the internet long enough that I vividly remember the time before smartphones. And before smartphones, there were cameraphones. Cameraphones didn’t take great or even good video, but they did take video. And sometimes we uploaded those videos to the internet. In the early days of smart phones, most people watched those videos on their computers, even if they were taken on a phone. And this saw the rise of the Dreaded Vertical Video. Instead of taking up the whole 4:3 ratio screen, instead the video took a small sliver of it down the middle. It felt like we were losing so much to the giant black blocks on either side of the screen. There were campaigns trying to teach people to turn their phones to the side while taking videos, because even though they looked good on your phone, they would look terrible if you watched them anywhere else.
Anyway, tiktok is here now and we lost the vertical video war. By far the largest majority of videos taken on smart phones these days are on phones and viewed on phones and they’re done so in a vertical format. We’ve learned to watch and frame things in a new way. It has changed the language of video production. I don’t know if we’re too far away from a feature film presented in a vertical video format (possibly something in the Screen recording genre like Unfriended or Missing or Searching.) At one point I would have been madder about this than I think I am now. I’m not happy about it, and I probably won’t be watching anything longer than 5 minutes on my phone anyway (long videos are for the big screen, short videos are for the little screen) and 5 minutes is pushing it even then. Which is funny because tiktok is explicitly pushing for longer videos and won’t even monetize your account if your videos aren’t more than 60 seconds long. But people are out there making them and some is out there watching them. I hope they’re all happy.
Stuff I’m playing
I played a lot of games on my long weekend, but the one I keep telling people about was a warehouse-scale VR experience. There’s a few companies out there doing this, since all you need is a bunch of VR Helmets and some specialized controllers. Plus the software and a network powerful enough to run eight of them simultaneously. And a warehouse space. But’s it’s probably easier than starting an escape room. But like an escape room, this is a communal experience where you get to solve problems in real time, and the problems are things like “too many zombies.” We played two 30 minute sessions, one in a tropical island environment shooting pirates and another in a zombie infested city shooting zombies. The VR level design was really clever, putting you in situations where you were literally walking in circles around a big rectangular space, but it felt like you were traversing actual distance. There were some clever safeguards to prevent you from running into your fellow players, and you got to actually coordinate fighting hoards of zombies or pirates together. It was a little disorienting at first, but quickly you get immersed and by the end of the hour we were all sweating from the exertion and excitement. Highly recommended if you get the chance.
I also downloaded the version of Fallout 4 with updated graphics that just got released. I’ve been spending some time in New Vegas, so switching to the improved graphics in the sequel has been a really impressive jump in quality. I think it’s great that so many people are exploring or rediscovering how great these games are, since the player counts across all of them are though the roof since the tv series dropped on Amazon prime. The series is pretty good too.
This Week's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song of the week is Thought Bubbles
Here's a picture of a cat