grr/yay

[curgoth]

Grr.: Seem to have messed up my jaw significantly - it's painful enough that I've gone through the tylenol-3s I didn't need when I got snipped. I should probably go see the dentist about it being all mis-aligned and painful, but I feel guilty since I went to the doctor last week for my asthma. Also; wtf, body. Just work properly and stop whining/breaking. Also, pls deliver the washboard abs I requested last year.

Grr.: $100+ USB microphone I bought for the last NVF session seems to have completely died. I was great for the session it worked during. I no longer have the receipt.

Yay: Got enough mikes working in the room that we managed anyway. I am half wondering if I should start recording these to make campaign logs easier.

Yay: Sound effects - gaming is even more fun with The Drama Button, Sad Trombone and Instant Rimshot.

Yay: Awesome anniversary dinner with neeuqdrazil. Our first date was 13 freaking years ago. We OLD.

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that more mics help or not. Sometimes they just gave me 3-4 repeats of the same voice, and extra noise. And, anytime there is "chatter" I almost completely lose it.

I can generally follow what you say. Mostly get what mycrazyhair says. Most of the other people -- really iffy. Ok... Hasib's player also tends to be mostly audible.

But if two (or more) people talk, I'm lost.

Also, I feel like I'm working with a 1-2 second lag on everything. Like anything I say will be late, after what the point of whatever I'm commenting on.

How are things working for hearing me on your end? I know I often have to repeat things.

[mycrazyhair.livejournal.com]

I'd actually call it more than a 2 second delay, based on what we're hearing when we forget to mute the receiving end of the other computers in the room. You definitely need to speak in full sentences (rather than, say, "Yes", given the lag).

The reason you can hear me is that I lean in until I'm really close to the mic before I speak, I think. And even though I'm in the room, I'm having troubles tracking when multiple people are speaking at once; maybe we can find a way to stop that.

Other than that, from our side, it seems to be working pretty well.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Speaking in full sentences does make sense.

I also miss who is actually "in the room" -- as in, which players/characters are there. For example, when people were trying to have Wolf call Hasib -- I didn't have the context that Hasib's player was there, and we wanted to pull him back into the adventure.

[curgoth]

The delay was a lot worse yesterday than it was the first time we played - we also lost connection to the chat server several times, so I can only assume something was interfering with my net connection. The delay was actually closer to 5-10 seconds. Part of why you could hear me, beyond the fact that I had my own mike, was that I tended to wait until I could hear the echo of voices from your end stop before continuing. I'll have to try to get everyone to wait a bit after speaking so you have a chance to respond.

And possibly get a replacement room mike or something that we can get the (one!) speaker to hold, which might help to serve a "talking stick" role.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry the "good" mic you bought went south. If you bought it with a credit card, might you have, or have access to, the credit card report? Might that be enough to get the store to do an exchange, if not a return?

I don't like the dynamic change that a "talking stick" would impose. A lot of the fun is the witty banter and interplay -- especially for the people there. I don't want your group to lose that, even if I miss a bunch of it.

Sadly, the one good-quality room mic is, probably, the best option.

And, yeah, there did seem to be worse lag yesterday than last time. I think your end lost connection a couple times. And, I had an internet drop-out at my end one time, too, just to add to the pain.

I'm also wondering, though, if there is some way to spend more of the bandwidth on sound, less on video. One view of the room is nice, with a view of me for people there -- but more pictures may just eat bandwidth that might have been better spent on the sound, which I find more important for the actual interaction.

[curgoth]

I think it is possible to turn off the video for tokbox, so if the connection is bad again, we might try that.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

The reason I guessed at about 2s, was that if I heard my own voice with a 4-5s delay, I figured it was 2s me to you, then another 2s you to me. So one-way delay was only 2s.

But, yeah, for a conversation, that is a 4s lag, isn't it. Because if you say something, there is lag to me... then I say something... so that is lag to you. Yup, 4-5s lag.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Also, pls deliver the washboard abs I requested last year.

My order for abs has also gone astray somewhere in the post. Or possibly switched with someone else's order for an extra cup size, which I would like to return as soon as possible.

You should see about replacing your jaw for a shiny metal one. That would be fun.

[curgoth]

Ideally brass with lightning plugs or brushed steel with lasers. LASERTEETH!

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

LASERTEETH FTW!

[corwin77.livejournal.com]

Don't you mean:
Our first date was 13 freaking years ago. We OLD. Sad Trombone?

[rdi.livejournal.com]

Instant Rimshot!

[sabotabby]

Yay: Awesome anniversary dinner with [info]neeuqdrazil. Our first date was 13 freaking years ago. We OLD.

Yay!

P.S. Sorry I fuckered Sharon's page with overly big image. I see you fixed it though.

[curgoth]

Yup - if you dig through the dokuwiki documentation, there are a couple things you can do with image tags. If you add a spaces to {{ image }}, you control the flow; {{ image}} flow text to the left, {{image }} flow to thr right, and {{ image }} centres it. Adding ?250 forces the image to 250 pixels high (and the wiki resizes the image displayed instead of leaving the browser to load the full image and resize it). There's also syntax to control the width, but I haven't played with it in a while.