All of the great events lately have been on the few days I'm totally not available. Watching the vods is cool, but I'll miss the live hype. ;$

music

not tf2

Huge recommendation to anyone going to check out Paul van Dyk's set. It's hard to think of other DJ's who really put that sort of actual work into a 'live' set, insanely talented guy.

Cool lineup, nice to see some hardstyle acts, I would have loved to see the pitcher a few years back. Have fun everyone~

Experiment with all of the frame improvement configs: dx8 high frames, dx8 max frames, dx9 high frames, etc. Different ones perform differently on different setups, so the best way to see which works best is by testing each of them.

There are reduced particles you can use that remove projectile trails, most smoke and explosions, and significantly reduce the amount of visuals going on. Though this won't work in matches with sv_pure, it should give you a noticeable frame boost in all other environments.

No-hats mod is also an essential for frame boosting, and isn't effected by sv_pure.

Also /experiment/ with different resolutions, not everyone's rig will handle things the same. For instance, I get the best frames @ 1280 x 720, compared to my native resolution (1440 x 900) and even lower resolutions (640 x 360). See what works best for you.

Keeping steam's use of your resources down to a minimum is important too, being this is the only other program you /have/ to have running while playing. Disabling notifications has removed a lot of frame stutters and freezes when they popup for me, as well as the in-game steam community.

Understand the rhythm of your PC, and when it performs best. For instance, I've gotten in the habit of restarting my machine, waiting 10 minutes to launch steam, watching my cpu temperature and usually turning on some additional fans in my room to lower the ambient temp, launching tf2 once I'm at my cpu's comfortable idle temperature, then grabbing an icepack and applying it about 1 minute into the program running. It took me a while to determine one of my main issues was overheating, killing my performance. Especially for those living in scorching, summery climate, it can be very difficult to keep the temperature of your room down to a level that doesn't also give your rig a heart attack. Watch your cpu's temp in relation to your pc, I feel insufficient cooling is a frequent issue, especially for laptop users.

If you do a lot of tweaking and spend time to see what combination of changes works best, you should definitely be able to get 60 fps, atleast /sometimes/. 35-50 isn't a bad starting point. Best of luck.

It's been years since I've thought about this kind of thing, but I would definitely search around/check out Film Riot. They've made hundreds of videos specifically pertaining to DSLR video shooting, and I recall a good dozen or so of DIY rig tutorials. Stuff that doesn't cost much more than a trip to home depot. You may have to dig a little bit, as the videos I am thinking of are now a few years old, but I'm sure you can find guides for anything you need there.

http://www.freewoodpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/NewtMoon.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTDPRvHR9Js

I used to do a fair bit of mix.nahl's about a year ago. The pugs weren't terrible when they started and it was generally good practice.

My main issue with hl pugs, at least from my experience in mix, are that people only pick their friends or who is popular. Skill wouldn't get you picked. No matter how well you've played in the pugs, if you weren't already in the "in-crowd", you have to just hope you get picked, and probably only do end up getting picked 25% of the time.

Also, idk if this happens in 6s pugs, but its annoying when people add on their joke off-classes and then get picked over all the people who added on their main for that class, play terribly, and no one cares.

When I got on a team that time last year, I realized how much infinitely better it was to pugging.

What I've been listening to in the past week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9URZGTHR3tA

http://sango.bandcamp.com/album/da-rocinha-2

http://hiatusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/free-download-the-crossing-ep

http://hithome.bandcamp.com/album/happily-ever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scf511auMKY&feature=kp *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSu8JrXpXIA *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSG_qqJw8h8 *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhbJpmKzYcM&feature=kp *

*The Andrew Bayer - Matt Lange goodness. It never ends.

ow my feelings

Not crazy similar, but Common's pretty cool. Take a listen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuUFIBnXj4Q&feature=kp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBZVbwmqKb0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OmxdXkdNM (dunno why some parts are censored, album version starts at about a minute on)

$$$hype

Hey, seen a few of your videos from time to time and they're a nice watch, thanks for posting looking for feedback, I hope some of this helps.

1. Quality sounds fine, and personally, the content you speak about will almost always supersede the quality of the microphone.
2. The commentary was interesting, but generally I'll describe to you the two things I find most motivating to watch a live commentary. I like commentary videos where the commentator is either telling a story or talking about something they experienced, or discussing game mechanics/strategies/metas and providing their insight on a matter.
3. I guess mostly, getting better at the game will help. What makes a lot of commentaries constantly interesting is the combination of gameplay thats nice to idly watch while the commentator talks about something. Also, like stated above, I struggle being entertained by these sort of videos where the commentator doesn't have a topic/story that they'd like to discuss. Honestly, I think it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on strategical aspects of the game, weapons, etc, because you are untarnished (for the most part) by the metagames of tf2.

Best of luck!

Favorite food, man. Tasty stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzy2dgEUOhY