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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • some additional relevant statistics

    united states barely saw 1% growth year over year and are projecting that growth to continue to slow.

    India has nearly 3x the users of the United States. the u.s. is still second because it’s the country it started in, but it’s not far ahead of the 3rd and 4th place countries. India is an extreme outlier.

    unfortunately they don’t break down the age demographic by region, but I’d bet that if we specifically look at daily active users in the United States the age demo would skew much older.

    so, it seems like it’s similar to what many fast food restaurants have been experiencing lately. the growth opportunities in the United States dried up so the decided to push like hell everywhere else. i bet the growth they saw in India over the last decade was explosive. probably bigger than anything they had ever seen before. bigger than when it was still growing in the u.s… meanwhile they project that over the next decade in the u.s. they’ll see maybe 8% user growth and that’s pretty optimistic.

    so we probably won’t actually see much Facebook marketing in the u.s… the only way they can capture more u.s users is by buying more apps, like when they bought Instagram.

    this does seem to imply that the part of the world where Facebook has become a fact of life is very specifically India. I’m sorry to hear that for them.








  • anyone who has read the books was likely surprised that ciri wasn’t the main character of any of the games when they first started coming out :::especially since geralt dies at the end of the books :::

    ciri was more the mc than geralt for most of the books. she’s the child of destiny. she’s the young character that grows up as we follow their journey. she’s the one that finds herself and shows major character development throughout the books. the only character development geralt goes through is accepting his bond with ciri.

    the first two games never mentioning ciri was outright bizarre tbh. only even remotely possibly because geralt lost his memory. like, with where geralt as at by the end of the books the only thing you could possibly expect him to do on regaining his memory is frantically search for signs of his adopted daughter

    to a longtime book reader my reaction to ciri being the protag of the next game was “FINALLY”

    my only curiosity at this point is how much she’ll be like book ciri. does she know magic? in the books ciri goes to sorceress school and then gets trained in primal magic by unicorns and immortal space elves. can you fuck a horse? that was one of the more… questionable scenes in the book.

    tangent: sapkowski’s politics occasionally bleed through in weird ways in the books. like three’s a scene where a woman finds out she’s pregnant mid way through a literal war that our band wades through on their journey to save the world. the party basically needs the woman to proceed. she does not want the child. i believe it was the product of rape. yet for some reason geralt and a literal fucking vampire convince her that abortion is wrong and she should keep it instead of drinking a potion about it. it was so randomly out of character for everyone involved. but hey, that’s catholics for you i guess… /tangent

    i think they generally said that ciri lost her elder blood powers after the king of the hunt was killed right? otherwise I’m gonna be really curious how handle that as well. she should be sort of the world’s greatest sorceress otherwise. ooh, i wonder if she’ll make quips about cyberpunk and/or other worlds she’s traveled to. like, she spent Decent bit of time in Arthurian legend. she shows up briefly in Victorian London.

    also, what will the world at large look like? they can’t do it like the last time where your previous save could alter the new game based on your decisions. you were simply able to do too much. they’d need to make like 3 entirely separate stories at the very least. like, who rules the north? are you the empress of nilfguard? is the church burning all the nonhumans at record pace? you can basically decide the entire fate of the northern realms and all of its people in multiple ways… unless it just takes place elsewhere. maybe we’ll be in zerrikania this time or some shit. there are many distant lands that the games never take us. it would be much more doable that way. then you’d just have to change dialogue and maybe swap out a few characters.

    aaaanyway… yeah, anyone mad about her being the mc is a dumbass that doesn’t know shit about the story.









  • there’s a handful of general directions you could go with both camera and mic then.

    you could get a mic that plugs directly into the camera, but then you’ll be tethered. to it. you can get a mic that plugs into a little recorder, but you’ll need to sync your audio. you can get a wireless mic with a receiver that plugs into the camera, but that starts to get expensive. or a number of different options that can run things however you want. the most affordable option to start and remain convenient in my mind is a mic and a cheap recorder.

    something like a used one of these with a cheap lav mic could be a good option.

    as for camera, there’s two main paths. you could go mirrorless and get something more like the canon you already had, or you could get an actual camcorder.

    a mirrorless camera will give you the option of different lenses and will have a larger sensor. it will also allow you to shoot nice stills and give you room to grow. it will generally have a higher potential for better quality video in the long run, but will be harder to learn and use. I think you’d be well served by a micro 4/3rds camera. a used Panasonic gh4 can be had for around $300. that would be able to provide some fantastic quality for the price. it’ll also be able to use any m4/3 lenses out there. they have a standard mount used by all such cameras. Panasonic is generally the more video focused brand in the space. a larger sensor with give you shallower depth of field, but that’s not as necessary as many like to think you the kinds of content you’re looking to produce.

    the camcorder will be a much more streamlined out of the box solution. if you want something that will just work and be versatile without needing to spend money on additional hardware and learn all the ins and outs this will be a better option. it will likely have a highly versatile zoom lens and should still shoot plenty high enough quality for some simple explainer videos. it’s the less popular option these days, but I will think it has its place. I’m less familiar with these but I’m sure you can find a reasonable one with a little shopping around.

    what kind of budget are you thinking?


  • the lens is likely incompatible with newer hardware.

    I would recommend looking used. you can get a few generations old micro 4/3rds camera for very cheap. let me look through options tonight when i get home and I’ll probably be able to find you something for under $200 that will shoot modern looking decent quality video.

    a mic to go with it would be very important. there’s so many ways to go about that.

    -you can get a cheap on cameras shotgun that will sound decent, but pick up a good amount of room noise. this will be the easiest to use option.

    -you could get a lavaliere of some kind, but that takes a second to set up and will require additional tools unless you want to tether yourself to the actual camera. there’s also options that plug in to a phone, but that would require a phone with a headphone jack…

    -you could get a usb stick mic to record voiceover after the fact. this would give the highest fidelity Audio bang for the buck, but is the most cumbersome to use.

    additionally, a light will go very far for making things look nicer. most homes are not set to to have good video lighting at all. you can totally get away with a cheap lamp that you bounce off the wall or something. as long as you don’t have a lightbulb directly shining on you creating hard shadows.




  • there’s also the fact that dji released its first large form factor commercial lifting drones just a couple of years back. those things are big and bright and fast and typically used in areas where you wouldn’t expect to see drones otherwise. they’ve quickly been getting more and more popular for so many uses. from painting roofs and tall buildings to clearing snow from power lines. they’re starting to show up everywhere.

    i bet these alien conspiracy theorists would shit themselves if they saw one of those hauling a crate in the distance. or God forbid, spraying “mysterious” chemicals on our food supply (fertilizer).