Words On Wednesday

Over-the-air television with an antenna may seem old fashioned, but it’s still a thing, it’s still free, and there’s a surprising amount of tech available with it. I recently set up an OTA antenna to feed into Plex, so I can watch local channels at home or anywhere, and I can DVR shows to watch later. It’s awesome. We had TVs with antennas back when I was a kid, but cable television was already more popular. Antennas were for the camper we kept down at Lake Murray, or the rooms that didn’t get as much use at home. Cable TV was the preferred source of entertainment, but cable providers like Charter only allowed so many boxes per subscription. Antennas gave you something to watch, but it was the inferior option. When we sold our house and moved into a camper for a while, OTA TV wasn’t even on my radar. This was in 2022, so cable TV was already on the way out and streaming services were the way most people consumed visual media. Problem is, we didn’t have great internet in the camper. We ...

The recent death of Google Play Music forced me to adopt a new music streaming platform. I decided on Plex. That migration has not been easy. Disclaimer: A word to the wise, fix your music folder before you ever bother with the Plex side of things. There are several tools and utilities I have discussed below, but everything is going to work much better if you get the music file structure right first. Everything should be divided into artist, and further divided into album. A free utility called foobar2000 can do that for you, if you take some time to tinker with it. AFTER the file structure of your music is right, THEN download and install the Plex server. If you need to set up a static IP and port forwarding, you can configure that all later. Be wary of my mistake, though, you want the music file structure to be pristine before you try to import it into Plex. Now, onto the ordeal I faced. I’ve been a power user of Google Play Music since almost the beginning. At least as far back as J...

I recently set out to get a secret weapon in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. The process convinced me to be much more critical of what information I consume, and to always listen carefully to all instructions. Zodiac Age, as I’ll call the game for brevity’s sake, has a number of powerful weapons not available in the original release of Final Fantasy XII. Fortunately, none of them are as ridiculous as the original way to get the  Zodiac Spear , which could be rendered unavailable if the player unknowingly opened any specific chests throughout the game, without any indication that they might play a part in obtaining what was the most powerful weapon available. The Zodiac Spear is still available in Zodiac Age, but they’ve generously removed that awful chest mechanic. Plus, there are actually several more powerful weapons available, so players might not even decide to procure the Zodiac Spear anyway. Many new weapons are upgrades to existing weapon classes, like the  Ku...

If you look at my GoPro playlist  on YouTube, you’ll notice that I haven’t added a new video since  23 June 2017 . Honestly, I find that a little depressing and frustrating. It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to add new videos, or even that I haven’t recorded footage to make new videos. It’s that I just haven’t had time to edit them together. Between work, school, raising kids, and writing articles for my side gig, I really don’t have time to sit down and create a video. Looking back, I sound like a broken record because I’ve mentioned not having enough time to make videos before . Still, as much as I love creating content, I have much bigger priorities at the moment. In addition to my lack of time to work with videos, I also don’t have time to learn a new editing software right now. Microsoft discontinued Windows Movie Maker , and if I’m going to learn a new editing software, I may as well go with what a lot of videographers use with DaVinci Resolve. The problem is that Da...

I finally did it. I finally got level 99 Magic. As I have discussed time , and time , and time , and time  again, this has been a long and ongoing process. Between the setbacks, the missed goals, and the distractions, I wasn’t actually sure I would ever hit 99. But through it all, I have persisted, and finally reached my goal. On 17 March 2018, I made the  final cast of High Level Alchemy that gave me enough experience to level up. After DXPW, I only had about 12,500 high alchs to go before I got 99 Magic. Even if I just did 1000 per day, I could get it in about 2 weeks. To avoid getting a third ban, I limited myself to 500 or 1000 casts at a time. Eventually I would get it, I just didn’t want to have another ban on my record. My pace may have been a crawl, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was 1 level away, and I had already come so far. While every skill that I have trained to level 99 has given me a sense of accomplishment from my pe...

After several weeks of grinding, I have achieved level 99 Runecrafting. When I got falsely banned for botting while training magic, I decided to take a break from my high level alchemy grind and do something else that doesn’t take much attention. The most afk training method I could think of was Runespan. It doesn’t yield any profit, but it only takes 1 or 2 clicks per minute, and it is considered by far the fastest Runecrafting experience. At first, I didn’t care about going for level 99. I wasn’t doing Runespan because I wanted to train my Runecrafting. I was doing Runespan because I didn’t want to get banned again. It was easy to do while working on other things because it didn’t take much attention. Even if I couldn’t pursue 99 magic, I could at least work on something without fear of getting banned. I started training at Runespan on December 5, at level 85 and around 3.5M xp, from when I started playing again in October. By December 6, I was up to 3.7M xp and got Rue, ...