tech

Grump and Tech

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

We had a somewhat shortened D&D session this afternoon, victim of both a series of tech issues on my side and various people feeling unwell. It left me feeling quite down and upset with myself. I was even, dare it be said, a bit grumpy, and it was the type of grumpy where no matter how helpful the incoming suggestions were, they were not received well.

One very reluctantly undertaken rebuild of my laptop installation later, the system seems to be cooperating and running a little smoother, but damned if I can see what difference there is. Maybe there was some corrupt driver or configuration that refused to be overwritten in app reinstalls or something. Whatever it was, the near-nuclear option seems to have helped for now – and we’ll see what difference it makes.

Alternatively it could just be that my bad mood and frustration was freaking out the local electronics, because that seems as good an explanation as any.

At least writing this is a good way to close out the day and test connections and migrated login details and all the minor aggravations that accompany such things. I can go and try to get some rest shortly, and maybe even wake in the morning with some degree of refreshed approach to the universe. Hopefully it can be a quiet day where I can get on with paperwork and wrap up loose ends before the next round of fun and chaos.

As an added bonus, here’s a random snowy and abandoned temple I made up to test that Dungeon Alchemy had reinstalled properly. I’m putting it under the general label of “miscellaneous battle maps” as I have no immediate plans for use. Looking at it, I can immediately see a couple of settings changes I need to make around the bordering blank space around it, but that’s just my preference.

Overhead view of a semi-3d perspective map of a rectangular set of ruins in the snow. Trees and bushes surround it, and there looks to be a tent set up in the middle of the ruins next to a couple of torches

The map is designed for a Roll20 VTT, so the usual zip file of original map, exported jpg and text file with dynamic lighting details is included – snowtemple.zip – have fun, and as usual if you make use of it, drop me a note and let me know what encounters you’ve used it for

Back to Work

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Ah Monday, and the inevitable panic after nearly two weeks of remembering passwords and hoping they haven’t expired. I did, and they hadn’t, so that was nice.

The first words one of my managers (and by this I mean managers working for me) said to me was: “have you lost weight?” – given the amount of time exploding from one end or the other I’d be very surprised if I hadn’t lost a few pounds. Always nice to see the sunny side of these things.

The theme of new tech continued too, with a new work phone – so in between emails and phonecalls I’ve begun the solemn duty of subverting the kit to my requirements. Should keep me busy in downtime for a bit.

I’ve also been digitally painting again, taking advantage of the touchscreen and tablet mode offered by my new laptop – I have no idea what it is, but I’m rather pleased with how it’s going

I think it needs more eyes

Nephew Wrangling

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We’ve got Lady M’s nephew staying over this weekend and he is, like many lads his age, absolutely obsessed with Tesla cars.

With that in mind, we arranged to take him to a nearby Tesla showroom where (following some calls) he was allowed to explore the vehicles and discuss all sorts of details about them with the slightly bemused staff.

Safe to say his mind was blown by the opportunity to literally get his hands on vehicles and tech he has been reading avidly about for so long.

So engrossed by all this was he that we had to bribe him with lunch to get him back away from the showroom..!

And then he and I spent a good portion of this afternoon playing games, including an epic session of N-Tropy which resulted in a terrifyingly large towering edifice of balanced pieces of wood straining the laws of physics.

It’s been lovely having him around and having some time to bond a bit. A quiet Sunday still awaits too.

You Know You’re A Geek When…

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So, rather unexpectedly after a chance refresh of a webpage, we have in quick succession got our hands on an XBox Series X and it’s predecessor the XBox One X. With how much like hen’s teeth the stock of either are it is rather bemusement to suddenly have an embarrassment of tech in the house as we usually run it into the ground before replacing anything.

It probably says rather more about us than is comfortable that we were geekily happy to just watch install and upgrade progress bars march across the screens while we sweltered in the heat. I suppose we’ll have to start thinking about a new TV at some point…

Sound Levels and Tech Revolts

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Well, that certainly happened… we had a lot of fun in the game, but our sound levels were plagued by gremlins at various points so the stream sounds were apparently very vague in places.

Ah well, we’re neither professional or charging so while it’s an annoyance it isn’t the end of the world.

As for what happened? Well there were investigations, hints of ancient atrocities, and waves of zombies pouring out of a crumbling rookery. All that, and Coal is still missing…

The video stream should be available through the YouTube channel link in the menu at the top of the page if you want to sample the chaos.

Housebuilding and Tabletop Shenanigans

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The D&D session on Sunday was a quiet one with two main goals – to allow the group to finish outfitting the house their adventures have now bought outright, and to ensure that everyone had transferred their character sheets to http://www.dndbeyond.com and installed the Beyond20 extension in their browsers.

Why? Well the character sheets and their management is more user friendly than Roll20 in our opinion. They’re especially more useful for newer players in terms of managing items, actions, and spells. I’d found them so much more intuitive while playing with my other group that I suggested a sidestep.

The browser extension makes for a seamless transfer of rolls to the virtual tabletop in Roll20 during the game, and has some nice configuration options that allow some tweaking along the way. I’ve had to shell out a bit of money to rebuy some source books and upgrade my monthly subscription, but in support of a regular group I really don’t mind that.

All the tests seem to be working, so now I’m fleshing out some encounters using the tools available on the site, and we’ll see where the group wanders next.

Supporting Endeavours

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I’ve been keeping busy doing some graphic work for myr s as they establish their Twitch gaming channel, and it has been a fun exercise in designing to order and continuing to work out how to do things I used to routinely do in older versions of the software available.

As a Twitch Affiliate, there are bonus graphics and emojis available to subscribers, so I’ve been helping design those to add a bit of flair. They’ve been playing a lot of Alien: Isolation, so a theme of chibi graphics referring to that has emerged, and I’m really pleased at how the transparencies work to simplify the graphics, even at smaller sizes.

Compared to the complex work I normally do, there’s a challenge to keep the simplicity so that the image is still clear.

I may even be feeling a bit pleased with the results

Gaming Occurred

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So yesterday I was able to escape the curse of the eternal DM and take part in a game of dungeons and dragons as a player for the first time in years. After some initial tech fiddling to run Teams privately on one of my laptops and my phone, and to link Roll20 and DnD Beyond on the other via a chromium browser it all went very smoothly in a five hour session from about 6.30

As a setting, it took place in a slightly tongue-in-cheek Pirates of the Caribbean style environment as I joined a group consisting of many people I’d never met before.

I’d been invited by the Ladies H, and had met our DM once at MCM London last year, but everyone else was an unknown; so my anxious disaster-brain fretted in the hours leading up to getting started. If you’ve ever played with a new group, you’ll know the feeling, and therefore also the relief of a friendly inclusion.

My usual name blindness means I’ve already forgotten most people’s real names, let alone their characters, but I did at least remember to take a few notes:

And I still forgot who everyone is

We shall resume the game sometime around the middle of next month.

This has been a positive thing, and I’ll thank my brain to remember it.

DDC Shenanigans

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Life continues to ebb and flow in its complexities, but the DDC continues to be a creative and entertaining source of comfort, support, and humour in all the oddness around us.

Our latest set of things has been creating quizzes and games to play through shared screens in Discord. Whoever is running the quiz sets up a PowerPoint document with questions and answers revealed in turn, while everyone works together to find the answers. Mre B created the template based on their running similar things with their friends, and myr s has taken up the baton to create rounds tailored to our various strengths and foibles.

Roughly once a week we gather of an evening to play. We start with general levity, and yet despite there not being any competition between players, there’s soon a very serious air as people try to identify TV theme tunes from sight reading music, interpret kinks by their formal clinical names, identify pop culture characters from pets dressed up as those characters, and puns based on shows where one character has been changed – and that was just for starters.

Lateral thinking, chat, and everyone trying to resist googling any answers – a fun combination that is proving as much a draw as the weekly Dungeons and Dragons session.

Oh, and then we used Roll20 to make a Trivial Pursuit board and grabbed four different sets to make a monstrous random hodgepodge of topics from Star Wars, Stranger Things, Harry Potter, and a general family edition. That got very silly, very fast. We’ll have to do that again…