Author: Lunnainn

…for the kids, that is. So far, the morning has been pretty good, a small tantrum from the oldest lad, but that was easily dispersed. As far as I understood, the Lady were taking both boys to kindergarten, and had the oldest tagging along to keep the youngest company while she goes to drop off the older lad. Then they’re going to walk to school to drop off the eldest. As far as I understood, the Lady is going to come back home, I’ll take care of the youngest lad for a while, while she then goes down to the storage to find the old PC. I asked her to do that, because…well.. with my luck, I’m sure there’s going to be spiders all over that thing. And I’m not dealing with that.

I’m going to nick the power cable from the Lady’s PC while I work on it, easier than to search for the real one at first. She’s not going to use it anyway, and if I stop to try to find the cable first I’m probably going to end up not even starting. The first thing I’m going to do, is to scour the harddrives for any files I want to save, like old documents, pictures, moviefiles or anything of the likes. Then I’m going to completely wipe it. I’m going to lose the Win10 copy of it though, which sucks a bit, but I wasnt planning on using Windows on it. I’m semi-certain that that old PC is too rusty for something as fancy as that, so I’m going to install some Linux. I want to look around for some fun things, maybe Pop!_OS, Elementary OS, or Linux Mint. My go to usually is Ubuntu, but I want to try something else for a change. I love Ubuntu, but I’ve used that linux for a decade or so now, and I haven’t really looked into any of the others, so I might take that for a swing today.

Speaking of computers, I saw a custom made PC on twitter yesterday. It was gorgeous, specs pretty much greater than mine, included a wireless charging pad for both mice and smartphone, and there were some pretty neat aestetics on it. It had a walnut shell, custom made plates with engravings, a medieval looking metal enclosed torch lit up by red LEDs, as well as an integrated 12 inch statue of a medieval looking knight at the front. To access the insides, there was even a hook-lock on a hinged sidepanel, and to view the insides the other panel was tempered glass! It was SWEET! It was also in a giveaway, and entering gave you a change to win it. I’m unsure what timezone the giveaway ended, but it ended 1s before midnight to my birthday. It would be a REAL sweet birthday present if I won that thing. It’s only me and 25’687 others in that giveaway right now….

If I ever get enough time and money on hand, delving into the whole Custom PC making would be great fun. Imagine building a decked out PC, latest CPU, GPU, lots of RAM, large SSD, adding things like wireless charging pads, and other fun things, and then build it all straight into a computer case that is modelled after something awesome, like a game, toys, or something else entirely odd. I mean, you can build a computer straight into a desk – a legitimate desk. I once saw a computer case that looked like a wooden podium with a bust. The wooden podium held the power supply and motherboard, and the bust itself contained the water cooling and graphics card and SSD’s through extensions. It was just beautiful.

Although, to get started with something like that takes a lot more than I have. I dont have the tools – and they’re expensive – nor the material or skill to do it. I mean, not counting the expensive computer parts themselves, custom making the frame to mount it all, or getting the extension cables are also a lot of money involved. Not to mention the hardware to build the case itself. I think we can easily expect hundreds and hundreds of dollars – not to get started, but each case.

On the other hand… it would be so awesome to be able to make a custom PC for someone like that – someone might want to have an inconspicious PC mounted onto their monitor, someone might want it integrated into their desk, someone might want a piece of art like the one I talked about earlier with the medieval stuff, and someone might want a PC that looks like something else, like a large model car. I once saw a PC case that looked like the skull from Hellraiser! Oh, to have that as a line of work..

Update: It boots!

Granted, I had to go scour my storage for a graphics card since that was missing. I think that we used my old graphics card from my PC for the Lady’s PC, during the time we had to send back a graphics card that was damaged. Her original one broke, so we bought a new one, but that one didnt work, so in order for her PC to have a graphics card at all, we used mine from my PC. When the good one finally arrived, we just never put my old one back in place, but put it in the box the new one arrived in and just forgot about it completely. The newest files in this thing is from 2013. EARLY 2013. It’s THAT old. The fact that it boots at all is a wonder. Oh – it was also a Windows 7 Ultimate, not a Win10. I never updated it during the whole upgrade offer!

It also had an SSD for system drive, which is impressive in its own right, since it’s so old. It also had 2TB HDDs filled with stuff, so now I know where all my music went.. oh iTunes, you fickle little bitch. No joke, for some reason I never got clear on, once in a time I had an iTunes library filled with music, that, after like 2 years of not using it got completely wiped. Apple never told me why. Atleast I found the drives I saved the music to.

So.. now to the fun part. To wipe this thing and install some linux. I think I’m going to start with Ubuntu. It’s easier for me, since it’s more familiar, and I’ve got a bootdrive for it already.

Update:

Well, it’s up and running Ubuntu now. It seems pretty good for its age, most likely due to it running Ubuntu and not Windows. It doesnt overheat so far, despite it being so old and it being so hot in the apartment. So long as I find the actual powercable to it, all I need is to assemble the PC with the projector I have, plug in the wireless keyboard and mouse and we’ve got ourselves a working media center! Just goes to show how great old PC parts and a (very) little bit of know-how is! We’ve got us an actual home cinema – with dedicated parts – for the winter now.

It doesnt even need a LAN cable, since it do have a DVD-player as well, and with the two 2TB HDD’s, I can download stuff to a USB drive and move it over, or even connect something through one of the USB ports, like casting to the PC from a cellphone or such. Ofcourse I could use an ethernet cable to it, just to connect it to the rest of the home network, but I dont need to.

And while I’ve been enjoying the summer with them – I have, even thought they’ve been driving me bonkers at times – it’s going to be great to have them back in routines.

The oldest because she’s starting her new school tomorrow, and I’m actually looking forward to her making new friends and having kids to hang out with. And the 3 year old will start his kindergarten again, which means he’ll have kids to play with, activities that he’ll enjoy a whole lot more than the activities we’ve been able to provide here at home. We’re still in lockdown, basically, so in order to avoid getting sick we’ve been staying at home a lot, and the few times we have been out, we havent done much that means interaction with others. That’s been a huge bummer for the lad, so getting back in with other kindergarten kids will be fun for him. Especially the kids he was friends with before summer.

Then it’s only a few weeks before our youngest lad will start going to kindergarten too, the same as the older lad, only a different section. It’s going to be quite empty here at home, so it’ll be good for me to get out in any activity as well. Not sure how long I’ll have to wait though, but I’ll manage. If nothing else, I’ve got a couple of computer parts I can assemble to give the oldest an actual computer for school work. Or perhaps I’ll make it into a HTPC, not sure. All depending on how well that stuff has been holding up in the storage..

A while ago, we moved our furnitures around, and had the AC in the corner of the bedroom. It felt like it didnt do much there in the end, so I decided to do one last change – in the living room we had a small table, and I put that next to our bed and put the AC tower on that table. That way, we raised the exhaust fan well above the bed, so it didnt get blocked off. The Lady didnt mind it before, but then again – all the chill reached her, but noone else. The other thing I did was that I took a vacuum to it. For the entire year we’ve had it (it feels like we’ve had it for two years, but I just looked it up – it’s only one year and two weeks), not once have we cleaned it.

It was making weird noises and you could hear the fans were working hard to cool the air. I filled up almost the entire plastic can on the vacuum of dust from all over that AC, and I think I need to remove the dust screen to vacuum inside of it eventually. While I was at it, I also emptied the condensation tanks (where the AC stores the condensation that occurs when you actively chill and dehumidify the air, so it doesnt leak water everwhere), and while it wasn’t as much as I expected, I dont know the size of the tanks. Maybe they were full?

In any case, it’s comparatively silent now, the fans blow a lot more even now and you cant hear it reving up as hard as it did before. It’s more of white noise now, compared to the garage revving it sounded like before. And since it’s placed higher up, the bedroom is actually great now, compared to the rest of the apartment – while it’s a sweltering 85 degrees outside and not too far off in the rest of the apartment, it’s a cool 64 degrees in the bedroom now. AND, if I get to bed earlier than the Lady now, I can even direct the blow to go directly over the bed and blow on me, so if I get to bed early, I can fall asleep in the cold breeze!

And they were ENORMOUS! I’m used to strawberries that, from the tip to the stem, is about an inch in size, but these..?

So, we got a bunch of frozen berries the other day, my youngest sons birthday were coming up. In order to have berries for a berry-filling on a homemade birthday cake for the little guy, the Lady and I agreed on blueberries, strawberries grapes and raspberry. However, we bought more than for the cake, since I like to sometimes fill up a bowl of frozen berries with a bit of milk to eat as is, and in one of those bags I expected a lot of normal size strawberries, 20-25 or so of them, but what I got was a bag of.. I dont know, 10 supersized ones? They were basically 3*3*3 inches monsters, and when I poured the first one out of the bag I didnt know what to say. I’ve legit never seen a strawberry that size before.

It was the size of like, half my fist!

To top it off, I started to pour the blueberry bag, and those were like 3 times the size of normal blue berries as well. What the hell is going on?

Moving on.

I’ve looked over some of our..lets say, communication options. Phone and internet. September is coming up soon, and with it the cost of our internet will spike a bit. When we moved here, I signed up for a 500/500 internet for a specific price that would hold for a year, and then it would cost the same as the usual after that.

We’re also changing school for our oldest, so she’ll go to the school in the same area we live in now, instead of the same school she was in before we moved. That means she’ll live in the same area as her new classmates, and that in itself means that she’ll be able to visit her friends more often than before. She was in kindergarten with some kids, and had the same school as them for always, so we were kind of hesitant to change school for her when we moved. We let her commute to and from school instead, we bought the busfair for her to do so and learned her how to navigate the buses herself. It turned out pretty well, but it also had the side-effect that she rarely visited friends at all. Before we moved, she had a couple of friends she visited on regular basis, but that rarely ever happened after we moved. The thinking is, that after we change her school, she’ll make friends and will be able to visit them regularly now, meaning she wont be stuck at home as much.

That in turn, means we need to have a more reliable way to communicate with her as well, and vice versa. And as my paternity leave will end soon, I hope to go from stay-at-home dad to be able to actually do something. Anything. Which means that I also need to be reliably able to communicate with the rest of the family. So far, me and our oldest have been using pre-paids, but that’s not going to last. So, looking into the whole thing, I realized something very strange..

First, we needed to change the internet speed to a lower one to save some money. The same speed would have cost almost double what it costs now. I’ve grown used to a 500/500, as well as the rest of the family, but the new price would be pretty hefty. Going from $43 to $80 is.. well, I think it’s not too bad, but compared to what we pay now, it’s steep. And I looked around for cellphone plans and they were pretty steep too, ranging from $30-80, depending on what we chose. So coming from a 2 pre-paid/500 internet costing us ~$65/month, to something like $140-240/month depending on the cellphone plan… yeah.. And sure, we could probably make due with a smaller speed, 100/100, but the price change would still kick in, to $50/month. Add what we usually pay for pre-paids now, that’s still $75/month. And considering we’re going to need more reliability on our communications, since I will be away from home more often and our oldest will – hopefully – visit more friends more often (on top of her aunt coming up with the idea to let her visit them every other weekend), we’re probably going to see costs of upwards $116+/month.

And honestly, for a fifth of the same internet speed, as well as two pre-paids, that’s just too expensive. Since it’s pre-paids, we’re probably looking a bit more.. I had to work something through here.

Anyway, what I found out is that my current internet provider had an offer that if I had a cellphone plan with them as well as the internet, they could bump my speed one step without it costing any extra. The steps are going from 100, 250, 500 and 1’000. I also checked up with my current operator for the cellphone if we could work something out, since I’ve had the same number with them for 15+ years. There was, but; a cellphone plan alone apparently costs more than a cellphone coupled with a phone does, just looking at the plans, I mean. A single plan cost ~$30, but the cellphone plan coupled with a phone costs ~$10 (not counting the cost of the phone, ofcourse). And voila, this is probably the best deal I could’ve gotten away with;

Starting next month, when my internet deal would’ve been over anyway, our current cost of ~$65/month for internet and prepaids, will jump to $140/month. It’s a bit more than double the montly cost, but, our costs currently wont be the costs we have in September anyway. The minimum cost for just having the lowest internet speed as well as active prepaids will be at $75/month, and to be able to use our cellphones as we need come autumn, it’ll be more like ~$116+/month anyway. The difference is only $24/month, but it’s what we get out of those $24 that I like.

Officially, we get the lowest speed, 100, but coupled with one plan it’ll be 250. We only halve our internet speed, but in turn we get 2 cellphone plans as well as a brand new phone for me. My current one will be taken over, along with the plan coupled with the internet, by our oldest, so she can have a better phone (storage and spec-wise) and a cellphone plan to start hang out with her friends more. Her old phone will be used by our oldest son, so he have something to play with and watch in car-rides or if his tablet needs a battery charge. What that means for me, is that I suddenly have a phone and cellphone plan so that I can hopefully be more active on the jobmarket.

So, again, compared to current cost, $65/month, going to $140/month is a lot. The current cost will not be the cost come September anyway, the minimum cost of September and forward will be $75, just to have active prepaids. Come September, cost will therefore just be slightly less than twice than if I didnt take these deals. To actually use our phones the amount we will need to, on prepaids it’ll costs us a great deal more, close to $120/month. And compared to that, the $140-deal now will actually give us some pretty neat quality of life stuff; 100 internet, old phones and prepaids that runs out almost half a month already during Covid summer times, compared to 250 internet, brand new phone for me, upgraded phone for the oldest and a play-phone for my oldest son, as well as cellphone plans? That’s worth the extra $24 if you ask me.

Oh, and that’s still not counting the “extra package” that comes with the new phone for free, either a true-wireless headphones (Samsung Galaxy Buds+) in the music package, or a bluetooth Xbox controller for playing on the phone (as well as being able to be used with both PC and XBox), a wireless charging stand and 3 months of Xbox Game Pass. I’m leaning towards the music package, the wireless headphones, since I have a clock radio next to my bed with integrated wireless charging anyway, and truth be told, I dont need the controller.

..not that I would use it paired with the phone anyway. Only way I would use a cellphone xbox controller, is with Diablo Immortal anyway, and I’m not sure that game will support such a controller – if the game even was available.

I have had a few couple of rough nights, where I end up not being able to sleep much. Which have in turn made me sleep for an hour here, and an hour there.. It sucks.

I actually did end up getting a full refund on the Ripsaw, so I had that going for me. Unfortunately, I looked around for another capture card that would, guaranteed, work with the things I have on hand, and it seems I might be a bit out of luck. The only thing I saw that, for sure, would work costs a bit more than double of what the Ripsaw cost – and I’m not entirely sure it works the way I want it to work. I know I can set it up to record whatever I want recorded, with any source, without needing a streaming PC, but if I want to be able to stream it, I must have a second PC as the streaming PC to stream. And I’m not entirely sure the PC’s at home will work with that. I cannot really justify the price of the Elgato Game Capture 4K60S+, although I’m 90% sure it will work the way I want it to.

The issue I had with the Ripsaw – the sound issue – will probably not be there with the 4K60S+, since there’s apparently a small program from Elgato that deals with just that, the Elgato Sound Capture, and the encoding itself is done in the 4K60, and not on an actual computer. Which means that if I’m correct, I can use the 4K60 to hook it up solo to anything I want to play on, to atleast record stuff on it onto an SD card, and if I want to stream, the 4K60 itself takes care of everything regarding to the encoding itself, meaning that as long as I have something – anything – to hook an USB cable into, I can stream it without needing an computer powerful enough to handle the encoding. Such as my laptop. And the audio issue I had with the Ripsaw is taken care of by Elgato software itself. In theory it should be as simple as that, but then again, in theory, the Ripsaw was a plug-and-play device. I cannot justify ~$560 in the hopes that it works effortlessly.

Now, I probably can buy a small USB capture card, BlueAVS/Goodan I think it was called, which doesnt have a HDMI cable out, for ~$20-25. I can make it work if I use my HDMI-splitter I already own, since that gives the image from one source to two displays, one being the monitor I play on, one being the USB capture card. The issue there is that I need a second PC that is powerful enough for the encoding, which I do have. In the Ladys PC. Which means we’re back to the possible audio issue again. If the issue lies with the Ripsaw, we’re good, but if the issue was my PC’s? Yeah…

I would love to have a capture card that can stream on its own, just plug an HDMI cable into it to the monitor, and an HDMI cable into whatever you play on, and then let the capture card itself handle the rest, from encoding, to audio mixing, to streaming it. All I need is to stream the game video and audio, and perhaps my microphone as well. I dont need any overlays or so, so I can be completely fine with such a streaming device not being able to provide them. Unfortunately, I know of no such device. The “best” I’ve got, is probably a capture card that atleast do the encoding by itself, such as the 4K60S+, or AverMedia LGP2+, but both of them are kinda pricey..

But in all honesty, as long as I can get my hands on anything that allows me to capture whatever I play, then stream it in 1080p60 hassle free, I’m good. I dont even care how it’s done, as long as I dont have to keep upgrading PC-parts or buy a completely different PC to handle it.

I’ve dabbled a bit with Twitch’s Beta App for streaming though, and as far as PC-game streaming goes, it’s…actually not bad. The resolution and audio of PC games works great, it doesnt really stutter my games because of the CPU work load.. It does add a bit of a delay, but that I dont mind at all. Unfortunately it adds another issue, but “atleast” it’s not an issue on “my end”, and that is that if buffers. I stream in 1080p60fps, which means I stream at a resolution that basically means that it’s HD, as well as 60 frames per second. A great image quality. I dont have any option to downscale it after its been streamed, which means that you have to be able to view it in that resolution. Most of the time when you go to a big streamer, you notice that the image quality they stream on is almost impeccable – that’s HD, the 1080p60. But if anything happens, or your internet speed cant really keep up, or you do stuff on your PC/phone that causes slow downs, the stream cant keep up. It’ll buffer, stutter, freeze, jump, unless there’s an option to automatically downscale the quality of the stream, to a lower resolution.

Now, Twitch being Twitch, they dont do that for streams such as mine, a no-viewer/very low sporadic viewer count, because that takes processing power from their servers, which is limited. So unless I’m someone who can make them money, they’re not going to offer me that capability of down scaling like that. What I stream in, is what will be shown, which means that if my streaming resolution is more than you can handle as a viewer at the moment, it’ll stutter and buffer. Apparently, a 1080p60 stream “should” only need a 10 Mbps internet to work just fine, and unless your device you use to watch it is really old, it should work too. When I’ve streamed I’ve had a couple of devices to view my stream as I stream them, the Lady’s PC, my phone, a browser tab on the same PC I stream from and my laptop, and even though I use all those devices to watch the stream on the same time, on the same internet, I dont have that issue.

However, a friend of mine complained about the stuttering and buffering, so he recorded a bit of what he saw, and it was awful. He watched for a few seconds, it buffered, rewatched those seconds, it jumped forward a few seconds and showed the stream, then jumped back, etc. It was completely unwatchable. Now, had I been a bigger stream, Twitch might have enabled more resolutions so that he could watch in, say, 720p instead. But I’m basically SOL there. From what I gather on troubleshooting that issue, what he could’ve done was to do a complete clear of cache, and restart his entire browser, but those are steps that isnt necessarily guaranteed to work, and it’s also not like he should be forced to do more-work to watch my stuff. But again, there was nothing of those issues when I watched the stream – not even when I changed over to cellphone data to watch the stream. And watching old vods doesnt show those issues either.

The one good thing about this, is that even though I stream this, I dont do it for anything else but for my own enjoyment. I dont stream for income, so if it doesnt work on receiving end for everyone, that’s kind of fine as well. If everyone had those issues though, THEN we are talking. But so far, he’s the only one that brought it up, and I cannot replicate it on my end, even with everything going on the same internet – although I have 600 down, so I can literally watch 60 HD streams at the same time without internet speed being the issue. (Me unable to replicate the issue does in no way mean that I distrust him – as I said, he even recorded what he saw and showed me)

Also, I’m getting a bit hyped. It’s ~2 weeks left before the New World beta. Not that I’m going to be able to stream it, since I work with a one PC streaming setup right now, and my gaming PC most likely wont be powerful enough to play AND stream that game.

The Ripsaw, that is. Fortunately, I didn’t immediately have to pay for the shipping, so the shipping slip they emailed me covered that for me, for now atleast. I assume they will dock the shipping off from the price if they feel it’s needed, although from what I could see on the charts, shipping was only ~$6 if I had to pay it anyway, so hopefully it won’t sting too much. What I’m worried about now is the cost of fault search and/or the price dock for an opened box. That could still potentially be quite much.

It’s weird, but I had looked forward to being able to stream some of my games with the Ripsaw, from Dead Cells, Ghost of Tsushima, The Order 1886 and Chaosbane from the PS4, to Yonder, Jump King and Breath of the Wild on Switch, as well as Satisfactory, Diablo 3 and Tomb Raider trilogy on PC – amongst other games – that now that I realised that I cannot do that, I lost interest in playing games at all. I mean, I can still stream on the PS4 from the PS4, but it’s not the same thing, and sure, it wasnt like the Ripsaw was meant to stream from the consoles anyway, but I would’ve been able to, had it worked. It was a small cool additional feature that got me bummed out that it didnt work.

I talked to the store I bought it from, and they sent me some files to print out, so that I could ship it to them for a refund. Then they tell me I have to pay for shipping (reasonable, I guess) as well as that they probably will do a cut in the pay-back, since I have opened the package, which to me is a bit weird…. how else am I supposed to know that the Ripsaw is broken? But I guess they want to resell it, so that they can sell it as a bargain item, and for them not to make a loss, my money pays for the margin. But why resell a broken item as a bargain item? It’s also all there, the only thing that shows it’s been opened is the (cleanly) cut sealing on the box – I even saved the plastic wrapping and wrapped it as it was. I did a bit of calculating, and in modest numbers, if I pay for shipping the broken item back as well as having a price cut on the payback, I might end up having lost 25% of the items price. For nothing. Like, thanks.

I usually like this company as well, I buy all my stuff from them. But if it actually ends up being that I dont get a full refund and that they dont reimburse me for the shipping, I’m going to be one sad cat.

And oh boy did I get dissapointed.

Short version – it doesnt work.

Long version – It semi-works, but not quite. Either way, it’s annoying as heck.

So, the idea is that you have one computer that you stream from – which handles the programs that make sure that whatever you want internet to see, they see – and something that you play your games on, a PS4, Switch, XBox or another computer.

You do this by putting an HDMI cable from whatever you play on, to your capture card (in my case, the Ripsaw), and then a cable from your capture card to your monitor. Voila, you see an image of whatever your game shows. This works for me.

Then you put an USB cable from your capture card to the computer that you want to stream on. This will let your streaming software see what you see on your monitor. That means, that your game that you see on your monitor is what you let internet see when you start streaming. This works for me.

Now, the issue is that you dont just want people to see, you want them to hear as well. Normally, this should work just like plug-and-play, but sometimes there’s settings you need to fix. Once set, everything is done, you’re good to go and stream, as long as your streaming settings themselves are set. This doesnt work for me.

Normally, capture cards dont include 3.5mm jacks, but this one did. If I put audio output on my speakers, the gaming pc can let me listen to sound. If I put this as my headphones, I can hear sounds. My monitor has built-in speakers – I can listen to the sound through there as well, which means that the Ripsaw does output sound. I also tried using a monitor without built-in speakers, the results were the same, so it wasnt because of the built-in speakers. If I plug my headphones into the Ripsaw itself, I can also hear game-pc audio.

Now, the Ripsaw does not output audio to the stream. I’ve tried several types of streaming software, SLObs, OBS and Xsplit for instance, but none of them captures the audio from the Ripsaw, no matter how I put the settings. I’ve googled this issue on both the software sites as well as official Razer, but any and all solutions doesnt work. The best I can have is in OBS, where the audio meters does give a bit of reaction, but all they output is white noise. Very loud white noise. The “funny” thing is, if I start something like foobar on my streaming computer and start a song, it streams the song without issues.

So, my first thought was that there was a settings issue somewhere, where I had told the streaming softwares to pick up and stream out the streaming pc’s audio, and not the Ripsaw’s audio. But no, every setting there was told me that Ripsaw’s audio was picked up and streamed. In fact, when I put the setting that the streaming software should pick up the pc’s audio it immediately made the bars on the audio mixer flat out – since it didnt pick up the Ripsaw-audio anymore.

So, the image goes through fine, everywhere. The audio, however, only goes through “everywhere” locally, meaning anywhere I can sit in my own home and listen to it on speakers or headphones. But I cannot make the Ripsaw find and stream out the audio anywhere.

Now, you could think that this is easily solved by changing computer to stream from, that the streaming PC is too old or too bad or something. What if I told you that this was the third PC I had tried? Now, first I tried to hook up my Switch and PS4, through my gaming PC, which is a mastodont to say the least. i7-9700 CPU, 32GB RAM, RTX 2070, just under a year old. Same thing there. I could see an image everywhere, and hear the sounds everywhere as long as it wasnt through the stream. I thought to myself that “that sucked, but fine, the PS4 has its own streaming setup anyway and I’m not really interested in streaming Switch games anyway. It would’ve been nice if it worked, but hey, it’s not a BIG deal.

Then I tried my laptop as a streaming PC, just to have my gaming PC being what is captured. The laptop isnt an ideal solution either, but it’s what I had – Ryzen 5, Radeon Vega 8, 8GB RAM; I expected it to not be too good, but I had to make an attempt. While the laptop did get hot, it surprisingly worked. Video everywhere, audio everywhere “local” and nothing in OBS/SLObs/Xsplit/OBSlive/Player.me or the stream itself. So I sighed and decided to try out the “super computer” we bought like 7 or 8 years ago, which surprisingly for its age, but not surprisingly for how good it was supposed to be for the time, did have all the requirements necessary to use the Ripsaw; Windows 10 64-bit, 8GB RAM, i7-3820 (which isnt too far off the requirements), and a GTX 1060. The issue I have and described above is what I had on the PC-to-PC streaming setup. Which is when I realized there was something wrong with the Ripsaw itself.

I am now in the talks with the company I ordered it from, not even a day after I recieved it, to see if I can refund it and perhaps just exchange it for a better card if I just pay the difference between the two cards (roughly ~$20). I still havent heard back from them though, but since they claim to have a one year open policy for refunds and exchanges, I kind of expect them to take it back and, if nothing else, give me a new Ripsaw (so I can see if the next card have the same issues) or refund me the money. If they refund me the money, I’ll just send it back along with +$20, so I can have that better card. I say “better”, even though I dont know, mostly because it’s apparently much easier in setup. Whereas the Ripsaw is “basically” plug-and-play (+fix some settings), apparently the Elgato HD 60S+ really is plug-and-play. And I dont need fancy features right now – I want to plug-and-play and play in 1080p60, with audio and lagfree. That’s all I want.

..except for me. I made the mistake of getting a bit too much sleep when I was putting the boys to bed at around 19:00. I woke up at ~22:30, cooked in my clothes. It felt awesome to get a bit of rest, not going to lie, however that screws up my entire sleep schedule, because I’m probably not going to be able to get some sleep for a bit now.

The reason I’m this exhausted, is because I decided to refurnish the apartment this weekend. Yes, the entire apartment. The only thing I havent moved, is my daughter’s bed, her wardrobe, desk and two of her bookshelves. Oh, and a shoe-shelf in the hallway. That is, if you’re not counting the freezers/refridgerator/washing machine. Other than that – yes, everything. Over the course of 48h, I’ve – with a lot of help from the Lady, ofcourse, so I havent done this single handedly – moved every piece of furniture we have, as well as all the tech and cable management, and such. This has forced me to use muscles I’ve forgotten I had, and I ache all over and I’m just simply exhausted.

Since friday afternoon, I moved the kitchen table and chairs, so instead of the table standing next to the window and forcing two chairs on the long side of the table to be directly infront of the dishwasher and sink, and the little guys chair be infront of the refridgerator (thus enabling him to grab the door and open it..), I just turned it around 90 degrees. Now, the little guy is infront of the sink, but further away from the counter than the regular chairs were, and instead of sitting infront of the dishwasher, I now have my back towards the window. It feels more spacious as well.

In the bedroom, we just moved the beds around to give the Lady more easy access to “in-and-out” because of her ischias issues, so she doesnt have to walk as long to reach her side of the bed. Also, the boys’ beds have switched sides now to be more accessible as well. Only downside is that my side of the bed is now furthest away from the door, where it was only 2 meters before – which I think is an entirely acceptable “drawback”. The way we have the bed placed now, the headboard is blocking the window from being able to open, which is both a downside as well as an upside – the downside is that we cant open the window, the upside is that…well, neither can the kids.

Because of how the cable management were done, the only way my daughter could have internet on the computer that she borrowed from her mom (the aforementioned Lady), was to have an ethernet cable pulled from the router into her room through the door, forcing her to be unable to actually close the door. She also rarely uses the computer anymore, since she’s playing games on console on her TV instead. So in order to let her be able to close the door, we removed the PC and ethernet cable, and we also changed the console she borrows (she had my PS4, she’s borrowing the Lady’s Xbox now instead). Thus, I had to move her TV-bench close to the outlet because of cables and the fact that the Xbox was larger than the PS4 so it couldnt fit on the TV-bench itself, so I also had to move one of her dressers close to the TV-bench to let the Xbox stand there instead. Then I promptly told her to tidy her room, because it was a mess!

The livingroom is where most of the energy went. Earlier, I had the computer desk at the furthest side of the room, just next to the ethernet outlets, next to the windows that is connected to the balcony. Next to the desk, we had a small “crafts table”, the sofa, with a fairly large clothes chest that had the lenght of it alongside the sofa and short end towards the wall pinned between the crafts table and the sofa, then we had a “book case corner” (two small book cases that enclosured the corner of the room – leaving a 0.5m x 0.5m gap on the floor being used for absolutely nothing), and going out from that corner-case (?), we had the Lady’s recordplayer and then the door entrance. Going from the balcony door, we had a large cedar coloured cabinet that held most of the Lady’s liqour and a water fountain tank, and infront of it we had the clothes rack. Next to the cabinet we had a thinner glassmonter where I had some Collectors Editions of games, my collectibles and some other stuff, then we had the kids toy drawers and table, then the TV-bench and a small cupboard that mostly placed there to cover the wall outlets.

Now, the computer desk stands in the lefthand corner from the door, so I had to pull a long cable from the ethernet outlet across the room along the wall. I hope that the little guy never finds that cable and pulls it..
That means that I now have the window that was above the sofa before on my right hand side, and the Lady’s old PC stands on the floor (I know, I want to lift it up from the floor but I have no way to do that right now) next to my desk, and the crafts table on the other side of it with her speakers, monitor, mouse and keyboard on it. On the other side of the window to my right, is that cedar cabinet, and just next to it we put the sofa. So except for directly underneath the window, the ethernet cable is held in place and out of view by the liquor cabinet and sofa atleast. Just infront of the sofa we put the kids play-table to act as both livingroom coffee-table as well as an area to play on, with the toy-drawer under the “balcony-side windows”. In the corner besides the actual balcony door I now have my “Collectibles-glassmonitor”, and going out from that corner alongside the wall is the TV-bench, the Lady’s recordplayer, the small cupboard and the two thin black bookcases that were in that corner I mentioned earlier. The clothes chest now sits infront of the TV-bench to “block access” to the consoles and cables from the little guy, and the clothes rack now occupies the wall besides the two book cases. To block, atleast the view, of the wall outlets that the cupboard blocked earlier, I put a small cooling chest. If the little guy ever gets close to the outlet to play with it, he needs to move that cooling chest first, which means there will be a lot of noise, so I can stop him then if not sooner. Ofcourse I have those outlet plugs for child safety, but there’s still the extention cord being used to power the TV and consoles there, and I dont want him to pull the plug.

The room feels alot bigger now – well, all three rooms does, kitchen, bedroom and living room, and it’s easier to move about. Earlier we had our bed so close to the big guy’s bed that there was basically no room to walk there to the Lady’s side of the bed, and it felt too “clustered” with beds. Now there’s actual walking space between the three beds (ours, the big guy’s and the crib). Which means that our dog now occupies said floorspace to lie on instead… You win some, you lose some.

Oh, and you can now reach the balcony without having to cross navigate everything and push and pull the clothes rack to get by. Which is a big win for me!

Now, my next project is to see if I can get a hold of a tub cheaply. I’d love to have one again, and it would be so much easier to give the boys a good scrubbing and to let them play with water alot easier. I mean, I love that the showerspace is so generous, but man I miss laying in a bath. Well, that, and to get my streaming situation fixed, it’s stuttering and pixely and all, and I do believe it’s a hardware issue, since my fiber is supposed to be 500/500, I’m fairly sure it’s not because of that. I think it’s because my PC cant be the gaming computer and the streaming computer, the CPU cant handle both at the same time.
(Dont tell the Lady, but that’s partly the reason why I ended up putting her PC next to mine, so that I’m going to use her old PC as the streaming PC when she’s not using it, and I’ll probably resort to using my own PC to as the streaming machine whenever I stream PS4/Switch games..)