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Month: November 2023

How to get amazing camera shots

How to get amazing camera shots

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Luke Edwin shares this video collection of cool and often very simple tricks to get some interesting effect shots. Motion controlled greenscreen, shots that zoom in and out through objects, slow-motion effects, product shots and lots of little effects used in many modern videos. It’s pretty incredible these techniques and equipment are achievable by just about anyone for a very limited budget.

Equipment demonstrated:

Undervolting your SteamOS Steam Deck

Undervolting your SteamOS Steam Deck

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SteamdeckHQ reports that the recent 3.5.1 SteamOS update also came with a new BIOS firmware ver 118. Located in the SteamOS preview branch, this new version’s only change appears to be adding undervolting to the BIOS menu. Undervolting was possible before, but it could brick your device if you were too aggressive. To help prevent this, Valve appears to have put in a safety net in the BIOS that should save a lot of Steam Decks. Now, performing a CMOS reset (hold down the Volume Down button, 3 dot button, and power button at the same time) will also reset the undervolt settings to defaults.

Why undervolt your console? If your system is stable, your Steam Deck will typically run cooler, keep the fan quieter, possibly maintain higher speeds longer, and most importantly – improve the battery life.

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Resources for Black Friday

Resources for Black Friday

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Shopping on Black Friday is not as simple as “Buy it because it’s the cheapest price all year!” You have to actually do your homework to figure out which items are actually a good buy.

Here’s some great resources to help you figure it out.

Check out the Black Friday ads to make your plan:

The first thing you should do is be prepared for Black Friday before it comes. You’ll do this by starting a few weeks in advance by reading through the ‘leaked’ Black Friday ad scans and seeing if there is any deals you’re interested in.

Check the reviews:

Sadly, it’s all too common for review sites to be purchased and largely just paid advertising. Anything endorsed by Twitch streamers, celebrities, or any online personality through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc – are almost 100% guaranteed to be paid advertising. Websites that are reliable and accurate one year turn into paid promotion sites with shocking regularity. You need to check who owns the sites and see if the founders are still standing behind their reviews.

  • Hardware Unboxed – Good rating site that’s probably best for its gaming monitor reviews
    • Monitors Unboxed – A dedicated subchannel of Hardware Unboxed that is just monitors.
  • RTings – good for TV’s and monitors

Tools for reviews:

Retro game market collapses

Retro game market collapses

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Retro game prices have shot up to crazy levels in the last few years. As prices continued to go up far beyond what most individuals could afford, sites quickly picked up on the astronomical rises by offering fractional ownership of retro games. Sites like Otis and Rally.

In 2022, I shared a video from Karl Jobst that reported how the retro game market was actively manipulated by WATA rating agency and Heritage auctions. He showed how they were colluding to create those astronomical retro game values. Many news agencies picked up on his investigation, and a bit of a scandal broke out.

Here we are in late 2023, and it appears the crash has arrived. Karl has watched the prices plummet – and in a great many cases – by 90%.

The real question is if that money was ever real at all. In his original video, he indicated the astronomical sale prices likely didn’t actually involve those huge sums of money actually changing hands because WATA and Heritage were basically selling the games to themselves and the money and games never really changed hands.

One should question if the money ever even existed. So, we might take delight that a game that was falsely sold for $50,000 in a manipulated auction just sold for $5,000, but that’s still a good bit of dosh for games they likely bought off ebay for $500 or less years earlier.

FLUX at 2023 Signal Festival

FLUX at 2023 Signal Festival

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Signal Festival is a festival of artworks from light design, visual and digital art, artificial intelligence, as well as conceptual art. It occurs in several locations in Prague and has reached it’s 20th year.

FLUX was one of most cool looking entries for 2023. It’s a fascinating interactive light installation from Ksawery Komputery. The installation is 6 meters tall, 13-meter diameter on the ground, 4 high-speed cameras, 8-speaker sound system, 4 800 meters of LEDs strips, 144,000 pixels running at 100 frames per second, with custom software and hardware. As people approached the installation, it would display them on the strands of led lights.

It also made an earlier debut at Miami Art Week Dec 2022:

It reminds me a bit of the old Master Control Program from Tron…

Check out some of their other really cool works here: https://ksawerykomputery.com/works/ or https://vimeo.com/ksawerykomputery

Flux
concept/code: Ksawery Kirklewski
sound design: Arkadiusz Krupiński @random_orb
tech management: Jakub Kirklewski @elektrojakub

Update:

Here’s a video that covers a number of entries at the Signal Festival in 2022:

Rent your own private island

Rent your own private island

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Oh – you think you’re cool because you stayed at a luxury hotel in Dubai or comped to a suite in Vegas?

For the ultra rich, there are experiences that are far beyond the pale like David Copperfield’s Musha Cay. Renting for $50,000/night, you get the whole island. Multiple luxury residential buildings for up to 12 with high end catered food, their own mystery game to play, movies on the beach, and even custom fireworks show.

Or maybe try out Richard Branson’s Necker Island for a little over $107,500 a night (up to 40 guests), or $128,000/night for up to 48 guests. The buildings and island was almost completely destroyed in 2017 by hurricane Irma, but seems to have re-opened in 2022.

I find it interesting that even billionaires need to AirBnB their properties.

If renting a billionaire’s island is too pedestrian, perhaps just buy your own island.

Come and see

Come and see

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If you want to start a life in Christ, do just one thing that Jesus taught in an area of your life he spoke about. Faith starts with a single act of trust. Test his wisdom and see if it is not a better way than yours.

These might be a good starting point: the parables of Jesus

Higher interest rates now biting credit dependent famous local Portland restaraunts

Higher interest rates now biting credit dependent famous local Portland restaraunts

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Not only is the commercial real estate market facing a historic downturn in Portland, now hospitality businesses are having trouble too. Especially those owned by holdings companies behind many famous names.

Sortis Holdings bought up a number of famous top-flight Portland hospitality businesses and restaurants on a diet of low margins and low interest rates as they faltered during the pandemic. However, all is not well. They have been the target of at least 4 lawsuits by unpaid creditors, employees, contractors and partners since September. They recently failed at an attempt to acquire Ace Group International hotels and are currently facing many suits on unpaid bills.

Which Portland ‘local’ businesses do they own? Bamboo Sushi, Blue Star Donuts, Ava Gene’s, Tusk, Sizzle Pie pizza, the Ace Hotel, Rudy’s Barbershops, and Water Avenue Coffee to name just a few.

Sources: