Other What's ruining your life right now?

Currys have just emailed to say that they have cancelled my order and a refund will be with me shortly (is 14 days 'shortly'?).
Unfortunately for them, they sent and email feedback request 8 mins before the cancellation letter.
Had fun filling it in, piling on the grief and giving them zero on everything other than the politeness of the poor CS staff in the SA call centre.

They did have the 128GB model in stock allegedly at £100, more. Not going to grace them with my moneys.
John Lewis now showing the 128GB variant in stock, so order with them and their 2 year warranty at the same cost.
Order confirmation received, should be ready to collect after 2pm on Monday.

That should do the trick and money gone to abetter organisation. Hope the £20 goodwill refund is also still in the running...

 

Preparations for the charity stream I'm doing next month...

So. This HDMI capture card I bought...



I very specifically ran AVerMedia's compatibility test before I purchased it, and it told me my USB3 chipset was compatible - if it hadn't then I wouldn't have bought it. The compatibility test is a lie because it refuses to cooperate: "Code 10: Insufficient resources to complete this API" or something like that in Device Manager. As best I can tell, this means it is not compatible with my USB3 chipset because AVerMedia expects you to use an Intel chipset and I have an ASMedia chipset.

Fine, it was always the plan to stream from a second PC; the second PC has an Intel USB3 chipset and that works fine. Except the video and audio stutters quite a lot, and it's nothing to do with the PC not having the power to encode on the fly.

I fix the stutter by using an older driver (it seems I'm not the only one to experience this), but that makes the audio captured over HDMI totally garbled...

I was never going to capture from the HDMI audio, I am using a mixing desk so I'll be using an optical SPDIF DAC (or a USB sound device) to capture the audio from the PS4 - the mixing desk works brilliantly, of course. But during a test capture I do still see the occasional stutter in the video, so maybe I haven't solved that problem altogether...

Of course I didn't realise that the headset microphone I was planning to use will not work with the mixing desk - I can't use my "normal" headset since that's a wireless USB affair, and try as I might I don't think I can plug a USB dongle into a balanced 1/8" or XLR socket. The headset I was planning to use is a regular PC/console headset mic, and that won't work with the mixing desk because of.... reasons to do with bias voltages and impedance mismatches... or something like that...

So now I have a USB capture device which is a bit naff, and the mixing desk I got to make my life easier during 48hrs of streaming now looks like it'll actually make things much more difficult! Two steps forward, one giant ****in leap backwards...

Why am I torturing myself by trying to use an external capture device in the first place? Well 48hrs is plenty of time to make my way through some of my untouched PS4 back catalog, and it'd be nice to be able to hook up the Switch. But the main reason is that I wanted to play COD Warzone during the stream; my PC is a bit weak (in fact it's weak af - see sig) and I'm not sure I have the horsepower to play Warzone and encode on the fly at the same time. I'm trying to test this assumption, but of course Warzone is a 130GB download and this is a new Windows install so I don't already have it cached. I left it downloading when I went to cook dinner but, of course, the damn thing went into standby and barely got 50% downloaded...

At least my motorbike coughed back into life. Thank god it's not more serious than a flat battery, that bike is literally only about 3 weeks from retirement (aka going back to the dealer as part of a PCP scheme). Still needz moar charge, but it's forecast to rain soon and I don't have a garage.

 

Appears damp is getting into the garage via the wall, or rather where the wall and floor meet, fixable just a pig to do.

 

F' it, wasted a day on this thing and I'm not wasting any more time with it. It's going back to CeX and I'm going to replace it with an Elgato PCIe capture card like I should have damn well done in the first place.

 

I take it back about being happy to have cats again.

One threw up in the bedroom, the other pissed on the sofa, happy days!

 

ROFL

sorry.

Oh, man. When you posted about how good it was having them in the house, I was going to reply with "come back and say that when they decide to mark your bed as their territory", but I thought I'd be nice.

Don't get me wrong - I love cats. Save for the last three years, we've always had a cat, but I remember what it's like having them in the house for the first time.

 

One of my cats used to piss on the sofa every night. If I could have ever figured out which one it was I could have done something. Problem is they keep returning, so I had to cover the sodding sofa with tinfoil every night.

When I moved and the cats were separated I finally found the culprit, because it was the one I took with me ffs. She started peeing all over the house. Door mat, letters etc. She never did it when she was alone. Never known a female cat to do that, but that said she was the wildest of all of the cats I've had.

 

*Vibrato slide whistle*

 

Numerous calls every day, from the Robot Lady, telling me my ISP tried to call because they're going to cut off my internet unless I update my payment details. Seems legit.

This REALLY pisses me off, and not just because Robot Lady has replaced the usual clueless tw@t working from a script - there's some value in ****ing those guys around for a few minutes - no, it's because twice since Friday she has called while I was on the porcelain throne!

 

They're the only landline calls we get, i'm actually happy now when we get a call from a human from 'OpenReach' or wherever - kills a few minutes winding them up.

I just let the answer machine get it if i'm busy, they'll leave a message if it's urgent/not a scam/an actual human

 

I don't know how they get numbers. I had vodafone broadband and phone installed when I first moved into a new place, opted for ex-directory (whatever that means nowadays) and any privacy option I could tick. I gave the new landline number to nobody and two weeks later was getting daily calls from "NatWest" saying someone was struggling to pay money into my account.

OfCom could do something but they don't. All that time and effort put in at GCHQ so they can find out what I'm emailing to my travel agent but we're still plagued by these little ****s.

 

What's a "landline"?

 

I believe its pilot jargon for the stripes on the runway on approach. Nothing to do with phones, don't understand why it's being used in this context.

 

It's what we use in countries with a useless, right-wing government, that doesn't understand the benefits of investing in better telecommunications and broadband.

 

Small strip of hai..... oh.

 

That sounds like half the world at least.

To put things into perspective: I had my last landline phone connected (I still technically have a connected landline, just never had a phone connected to it) back in 2008. When I moved to England, later to Austria, and even later back to Germany I never needed a landline. Guess I'm lucky.

 

I agree they seem superfluous for many but I can't get mobile signal where I am in north wales now so they still have their uses. The electricity has gone 3 times in six months too so we keep a corded one for emergencies.

 

Mobile signal is unreliable here and as for FTTP, that's something mystical we are no longer even on the Connecting Devon and Somerset roadmap for. Likely stuck with landline for many years ahead.