Latest Video

StickyAnnouncements

Through some magic I found here, the box above pulls in my latest video from YouTube. You can find many other videos either on my dedicated Watch Page.

Live Stream Schedule

Since the beginning of 2019 I’m doing regular live streams on Twitch. They’re either fun and games, or working sessions that I share. It’s less about what I’m doing, and more about how I’m doing it. Could be a working 3D session, could be a game, or it could be “housekeeping” of some description. Some web interface always needs attention. Drop by and hang out, ask questions or just watch and have fun. I have two main formats:

My 3D Shenanigans stream focuses on 3D projects like building scenes and animations, using software like Blender and DAZ Studio. These are working sessions rather than tutorials. They stay on my main channel for a few weeks, after which them over to my 3D Shenanigans Archive Channel.

Every once in a while I play a video game on Jay Plays. I like checking out 3D creations in story driven adventures or retro type platform games. I take a look at anything that inspires me, no matter what genre. I archive those on my gaming channel.

When is it happening?

I work the live streams around my work and IRL schedule. Days vary, but when I do stream, it’ll be around 5pm EST / 10pm UK / 11pm Europe. Watch my Twitter Feed and/or stream services for notifications. You can also take a look at our global public stream calendar. I share it with other creative minds so we know who’s on when.

Tune in on YouTube, Twitch or Mixer 😎

Avoiding weird characters on Twitch Exports

Reviews

Twitch allows for very convenient exports of past broadcasts and highlights to your connected YouTube channel: In the Video Producer, click on the little three-dot icon next to a video, the select Export. Moments later the video, including its title and description should be on YouTube. It’s rad!

Sadly though, doing this will introduce rather strange characters caused by Twitch’s use of Markdown. Links for example are converted into Markdown, and extraneous hashes and such things are littered around the description as a result. The same goes for apostrophes and other special characters, they’re all destroyed with ampersands and semicolons. YouTube at its end sees this as plain text and leaves things as they are – much to my dismay.

The good news is, I’ve found a way to avoid this issue:

Instead of using this export dialogue, choose to Edit your video instead. This will bring up a different context dialogue, letting you change the thumbnail, description and title. As you would expect, you can edit the description without Markdown conversion, so no schlnoz characters will show up. That’s nice!

Now select the Export option from there, and your video will show up on YouTube WITHOUT those characters. Catastrophe averted 🙂

Prevent Steam on Mac from starting automatically

Gaming, macOS

I’ve recently installed Steam on my Mac for the first time. I made sure to disable the auto startup option from the menu as I hardly use it on this underpowered machine (under Steam – Preferences – Interface). There’s no tick box there!

Imagine my surprise when I restarted my Mac a couple of days later, only to be greeted by the familiar window showing “Updating Steam”. Bad software design at its best: do the opposite of what the user has selected. Good job, Steam!

This being a Mac issue, there’s about 0 threads on the web on how to tackle this issue. It took me a moment to remember that there’s built-in Mac option under Preferences – Users – Login Items. That’s where Steam was hiding, and as such, it is started no matter what. Untick that box, and Steam will no longer start on your Mac when you boot the system.

How to add allow ZIP files as uploads in WordPress

WordPress

Years ago I added an additional MIME type to one of my websites so that I could allow a strange proprietary file type to upload directly. Back in those days, only a handful were allowed, and it included the ZIP format. I never had issues uploading those.

As the world gradually becomes a shitter place, security is tightened and I guess sometime recently ZIP files were no longer allowed in WordPress by default. Thankfully I remember how I did it, and I thought I’ll share it with you.

Add the following snippet to your functions.php file. I have it as part of my theme:

This will add both ZIP and GZIP type archives to your upload allowances.

Fixed: macOS reports incorrect disk space usage

macOS

I had a weird issue on y MacBook today: after being low on space for what felt like months, I bit the bullet and deleted 50% of stuff from hard disk. I freed up about 250GB of files, emptied the trash, and checked under About this Mac – Storage. Sure enough, I finally had space again.

But when I tried to install something, which instantly told me I only had 14GB available, and that’s just not enough. I thought, “pardon?” 🤔

I double-checked on the command line with df -h, and the output corroborated the statement of the application I wanted to install: 98% disk space used. I thought perhaps Disk Utility would bring clarification, perhaps via a First Aid run. But sadly it only confirmed what the df command saw: my disk was nearly full, and whatever 250GB I had deleted were somehow still lurking around. How? Why? What was going on here?

Thankfully I found this StackExchange thread discussing the same issue. Apparently this weirdness is caused by local Time Machine backups that have not been relayed to an external disk. I do recall that my MacBook has been telling me that no backups could be made for some time. Either way, the magic command looks like this:

No administrator privileges are necessary. It takes a moment to run, but apparently this radically clears up local backups. I had this problem with macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra. Maybe this helps anyone with similar issues.

Thanks to Tetsujin for making this excellent suggestion.

How to add custom emotes on Twitch

Streaming

So I’ve made affiliate on Twitch last month (YEY!!!), and one of the perks is that I can upload my own custom emote. Which is super exciting! It takes a while for those little icons to get approved, but once they’re online they add a very personal touch to a stream.

My first iteration wasn’t great, so I took another crack at it and wanted to upload the new design – having forgotten where in the deep and dark Twitch interface that setting was. I thought I’d make a not for next time, and anyone struggling with the same thing.

We head over to our Twitch Dashboard (https://dashboard.twitch.tv), which is accessible from the front page from our icon at the top right, under Creator Dashboard.

At the top left corner there’s a menu, click that and navigate to Preferences – Affiliate.

Under the Subscriptions section, there’s an item called Emotes. That’s where we need to be.

You need to upload three sizes of your emote to make the little icon look handsome on all kinds of screen resolutions and circumstances:

  • 28×28
  • 56×56
  • 112×112

You also need to give it a unique name, made up of your channel name and a postfix of your choice. It’ll take some time for it get approved, and/or made live. Twitch will send you an email when you can use it.

Swapping emotes is possible, but it requires deleting and re-submitting them. Each subscription tier has one emote when you get started, but the more subscribers you get, the more “emote slots” you unlock. This handy article has all the juicy details:

Routing and monitoring Audio Sources in OBS

Streaming,

I’ve been struggling to route and monitor some of my audio sources in OBS. Thankfully I’ve found two essential tools that make this possible, and I thought I’d jot down some notes in case I forget.

I’ll also touch on how to monitor audio properly without causing an endless loop by recording what you’re monitoring.

The tools we need for ultimate success are:

In principle, we use the latter to route a source into the VB-Cable (a virtual destination), then we pick up the VB-Cable output as a separate input in OBS. We can then adjust its levels independently from other sources or apply filters if necessary. This all sounds more complex than it really is, so let me illustrate this with an example.

Installation Notes

VB-Cable installs like a regular app on Windows, and does not need to be started. It’s like a permanent audio device driver on your system. There are three versions in total: the free VB-Cable, as well as two donation ware items called VB-Cable A/B and C/D. We don’t need those, but if you ever require more than one routable audio destination, give them a try. Either one will get you two more destinations.

I took this screen grab so illustrate which download button to click for the regular VB-Cable:

Continue reading Routing and monitoring Audio Sources in OBS →

How to add your Twitch URL to Reddit

How To,

I’ve been meaning to join Reddit about 20 years ago and never got round to it. Sadly my last name and site name are gone by now, but I finally managed to sign up – new for 2020 and all that. While I was there, I accidentally stumbled upon the option that lets you add your Twitch URL next to your user name. I had read how to do it recently, but it didn’t mean anything until I saw it.

Here’s how it works.

The option is not set on your user profile, but on the community, i.e. the Twitch Subreddit. You must join it first, head to its main page, then click the little pencil icon next to the option “Use Flair Preview”.

This will give you the option to edit your flair and show it on this community.

Hit apply and that’s it! Anytime you make a post or comment in the Twitch Subreddit, your link will be shown.

How to start a Rerun on Twitch (2020)

Streaming

I’ve heard good things about Twitch Reruns, but had no idea how to get the going. I found the upload option, but I thought it would be ridiculous to download my own stream, then re-upload it for a Premiere. Turns out Reruns are a new panel you have to add to the re-designed Broadcast Dashboard.

Let me show you where to find it and how it works step by step (with screenshots, because I’ll probably forget a week from now).

Continue reading How to start a Rerun on Twitch (2020) →

Flaky with a Capitol F: My Elgato HD 60 Pro review

Gaming, Reviews, Streaming

I wanted a top quality capture solution for my PS3 and PS4 consoles, something that would last a few years and that I could use for high-quality HDMI capture of other devices too. I’ve had a cheap USB solution before and as you can imagine, the quality just wasn’t great. I finally bit the bullet and purchased an ELGATO HD60 Pro. This is a PCI-e card with a dedicated video encoder, HDMI in and out, and from what the sales brochure tells you, it’s the proverbial Dog’s Bollocks. I’ve had it for several months now and can give you some impressions.

Continue reading Flaky with a Capitol F: My Elgato HD 60 Pro review →

How the Playstation 4 dynamically regulates its streaming bitrate

Streaming

I’ve been having some trouble with my internet connection lately. Up until two weeks ago I had an upload speed of about 20-25 Mbps, but since then it tanked down to an unstable and unpredictable 1-4 Mbps. I have my best technicians working on it (i.e. my internet provider). Needless to say, this put a damper on streaming at a constant bitrate of 5 Mbps like I usually do. I couldn’t even get OBS to deliver a stable 1Mbps connection.

My wife however was quite happily streaming FORTNITE directly from her PS4, and aside from a bit of blockiness every once in a while, the connection was stable for hours. I on the other hand couldn’t make anything work with OBS, no matter how hard I tried.

So what gives? There has to be some kind of magic in the way the Playstation consoles deal with streaming, on top of everything else. How come it works when OBS does not? I took a look at the data rate while I was test streaming, and found some interesting results.

Continue reading How the Playstation 4 dynamically regulates its streaming bitrate →