I love building blocks and I purchased a discount (50%) set from Kinokuniya in New Jersey, Estados Unidos de América earlier this year. This was a four-character set from the space invaders video game. Space Invaders is a 1978 arcade video game developed in Japan and was quite popular in les États-Unis d’Amérique. This is such an old game that it is older than me and is a game I’ve never played, until one hour before writing this blog post. I did play a similar game, Galaxian, also developed in Japan and developed by Namco. I assumed that Galaxian and Space Invaders were the same game but I was clearly wrong.

The set is fairly basic and produces four characters, one each in purple, blue, yellow and green. The four have legs and stand vertically and are flat so can also be laid horizontally. Assembly is fairly simple but the blocks are small and build up from a base layer whose blocks are not joined in any way. I would not recommend following the first step of assembly. Instead, gather the blocks and refer to the next step showing the layer above. Use those blocks to hold the base layer in place. I suspect the designers considered this aspect but there isn’t a neat workaround. The instructions are clear enough and a six year old could complete this set. The blocks are small hence there is a significant choking hazard. Would recommend at the price I paid.

In the video I recorded, you will notice that the quality starts off great and then rapidly deteriorates. I used my Nexus 5 phone to record this video and used the OBS Ninja website. Unfortunately, streaming video to OBS on your computer is a significant task for a ten year old Android device. The battery is old enough that it drains despite being plugged in. I had the phone connected to my laptop during the entire session. I changed the OBS Ninja setting to balance processor power draw and did not see a difference on the phone screen. OBS, though, saw something very different. The video resolution dropped and the end product is so bad it is almost useless. Next time, I will try the maximum resolution setting and see how long my phone lasts.

Another source of confusion for me is framerate. I set up OBS to capture 10 fps – ten frames per second. I’m creating a timelapse video and I don’t need the full 60 or 30 fps in the raw footage. I usually speed up the video by 4x – 6x so 10 fps is good enough. I had no idea what framerate OBS Ninja produces but it appears to be 30 fps, which is a good choice. I learned the hard way that the source framrate and the project framerate in your video editor are not the same. I now use kdenlive as my video editor after our helpful friends at Micro$oft removed the video editor from Window$ 10. Not only did the bean counters at Micro$oft remove the video editor, the replacement is tied behind a windows account login and you cannot use it without a Microsoft account, which I do not have and will not create. If someone at micro$oft is reading this, I hope the bean counters and MBA-types who drove this decision die and are subjected to eternal hellfire in the bowels of whatever the opposite of heaven is in their chosen religious affiliation. I hate windows and I detest this user-hostile design. Not only did I waste time trying to find the windows video editor but I then spent even more time trying to find an alternative that is simple enough. DaVinci Resolve does not work with the intel graphics card on my nine year old laptop and plenty of other recommendations via reddit either had ads or were too complex. On top of all this, I now had to figure out how to use kdenlive, how to edit my videos and how to export. I hate the MBA-types at micro$oft. You will never see another dollar or rupee from me or my family.

Now, on to video. My LG webcam is good enough for this job and I used it to record previous videos. Video quality is quite grainy hence why I used a smartphone camera. With my combination of hardware, there isn’t a neat solution to turn my iPhone into a webcam. I use a 2013 macbook pro and this is too old for Apple’s webcam solution. One day, I will be forced to upgrade my laptop and I will then be able to produce better quality video. In the meantime, I will decide on whether or not I want to continue with this hobby.

Cheers.