The best laid plans or why I had been neglecting the Nexus

 Happy Easter. I have unfortunately neglected the Nexus of late because I have been focusing on trying to record Youtube videos. That effort hasn't gone that well to be honest because vlogging or the creation of Youtube content with a specific narrow focus is more complicated and labor intensive than blogging.

Who knew?

An example: I successfully uploaded a simple video to Youtube last week created with just the webcam which came with my laptop computer and Windows 10. I had intended to give it a fancy title and add a "super" style caption in the same way I used to for a couple of class projects in college using nothing but the imovie app which comes with the Power books, but after installing and trying two different video editors, I had to scrap the entire edited version and upload the raw video footage because the video editors all come with free trials but will stick a stupid watermark on the outputted video if you don't pay for the program.

So I am cheap and refuse to pay for a fancy video editing program when all I need is something like imovie which comes free with mac, or at least it did back in the day when I was making those video projects for school. 

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time creating a simple but streamlined presentation of some of the D&D 3.5 classes we were using during our zoom campaign which now appears to be on hiatus since we can't get the players all together in one digital room for a few hours once a week...but I digress...the power point presentation was supposed to be the visual component to a Youtube video I was making using OBS Studio to put that little square you see in gamer vids where the youtuber speaks through a livestream or game session and you record both the youtuber and the game going on concurrently. Everything was going great but then for some unexplained reason which I have yet to figure out, the sound on the recording was gone! It was so frustrating, working fine one minute and then completely gone the next for no reason. I never did figure out the fix so I scrapped the whole thing and called it a day.

If any of you stumble on this post and can suggest a simple free video editor, nothing fancy, kind of the equivalent of imovie for Windows, drop me a line or leave a comment, I would rather not have to shell out any money for projects that require very little technical prowess or equipment such as my humble and simple Youtube gaming videos.

MMO projects this week

This week has all been about trying to level up some toons in Classic Wow from both factions and trying out all the nine classes in the games, if not to max level then at least to level 20. I am having fun doing this and even though when Classic dropped in summer of 2019 I vowed I would not use any add ons, I changed my mind and am using Questie and it has made all the difference. I had this strange notion that it would somehow be cheating on the vanilla experience to use an add on, but then I realized that it does not detract from the leveling experience and just hones in to the areas where I need to get stuff done. But why do I feel compelled to do this? I guess because I have always enjoyed the game's lore and would like to try out all the classes and experience the subtleties and game mechanics of each class at least once.

D&D projects I am currently tinkering with

Even though this isn't a blog about Dungeons and Dragons or table-top gaming, I am currently involved in both mmos and D&D and there is crossover from the two hobbies considering I play DDO. Even though I won't get a VIP sub for DDO, the game does offer a Starter Bundle that opens up some great benefits at an affordable price, I think it is $10 U.S. which isn't bad at all for what you get: Special Offers | Dungeons and Dragons Online (standingstonegames.com) 

I am currently considering working on writing my own game module which I think would be a great creative outlet for me so I need to spend sometime in Eberron to gain some inspiration. I plan to do so when I need a break from leveling my Classic wow toons. 

Hordehulk the Orc Hunter standing in a busy Orgrimmar. Me thinks Wow Classic is a big success 

The max toons are dueling outside of Orgrimmar on a Saturday evening! It is a good thing to see a community of involved players on the Classic servers.