Gosh, I haven’t updated this website in close to a year! I’ve been so caught up in work, managing my game servers, and streaming that I forgot all of my older little “projects” like this website even existed.
The only notable change to my computer setup recently has been peripheral-related with the addition of a new
Das Model S Ultimate keyboard. Now, I know what you’re thinking:
“Wait a minute Raini, didn’t you already have a Das keyboard?” Well, yes, I did! But that keyboard used
Cherry MX Blue switches and this one uses
Cherry MX Brown switches. When my Twitch.tv viewers heard this they all
Kappa-nodded in approval. But my Dad’s snarky response was that
“only a girl would buy multiple keyboards just because the keys are a different color.” Haha! I tried to explain that this is a little different than buying the same purse in different colors because
switches affect the tactility of the keyboard. He’s a
Dragon Naturally Speaking user though, so I can’t expect him to appreciate my passion for all of this. He already thinks I’m strange enough for wanting to learn
DVORAK instead of
Stenography (which he thinks would be more practical as a working skill).
Here’s my Das Model S Ultimate in all his modest blank-key glory! Isn’t he gorgeous?
He’s nothing like those gigolo Razer keyboards and their billions of shameless LEDs!
My Twitch.tv stream also received some flattering promotion recently. I made a highlight video from my stream called “
DayZ – Making Friends” and
posted it on the DayZ mod forums in July. The mod creator, Rocket, surprisingly enjoyed my video and even promoted it via social media saying that he wanted to see it become a series! The video went viral and wound up on the front pages of
Kotaku and
ArmA II News on Steam. I am overwhelmed by the popularity of the video; but moreso by the fact that Rocket himself
saw and enjoyed it! I’ve actually felt somewhat intimidated about going back to post in the thread. I’ve uploaded new videos, but they’re not as popular on YouTube and I don’t know if it would be considered gratuitous for me to post them.
My video going viral has also introduced me to the quirky world of YouTube monetization. My “DayZ – Making Friends” video was at first approved for monetization, then temporarily put on review, and finally denied for monetization — permanently. I followed all of the necessary steps for approval on
Bohemia Interactive’s website for their game footage and also cited the licenses for my music, which are entirely public domain and/or licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 for commercial use. However, I couldn’t recall all of the sources for my public domain music (only the music licensed for commercial use under Attribution 3.0, since that was all I had to keep track of technically), so I assumed that this was why my video was denied.
When I recorded my
Ragnarok Online Love Story video, I made sure that the only music I used was by a single artist under a single license (Kevin MacLeod/Attribution 3.0) so that it would be easier to monetize. However, it too was placed under consideration and later denied permanently. Then I realized the obvious, which was that my HUD contained My Little Pony artwork of characters owned by Hasbro and used without permission. YouTube was unlikely to care about any argument I might have for the use of the characters in my HUD being transformative and fair use, so I removed them entirely. I’ve since commissioned someone to do artwork for me of an original pony character in a different style so that I won’t have this concern in the future.
My latest video, “DayZ – ATVenture”, once again only uses music by Kevin MacLeod and has a blank HUD (even the
HUD’s texture is free for commercial use). I’ve made sure to include the attributions for both Kevin MacLeod and Bohemia Interactive in the video description. I included both attributions and links to the license pages when YouTube put the video up for review and asked me for more information. I’ll just have to wait and see if this too gets refused permanently. I’ve given up on trying to monetize my videos for YouTube though. Their system is so arbitrary about what it flags and staff don’t care what you have to say once a video is denied. I especially find it frustrating that I have to divine what YouTube’s reasons are for rejecting most of these videos for monetization. If they’re automatically flagging it, why not automatically list the factors?
This experience has taught me to better archive my music and licenses. Whenever I find music on
Free Music Archive now, I make a separate folder for the artist and album. I make sure to take a screenshot of the album page showing the music license and I also save an HTML backup of the license page itself. I’ve also downloaded software to display my playlist on videos so that I won’t run into the same issue I had with “DayZ – Making Friends” and it will be easier for me to look up and cite every single source for public domain music.
All of this makes me wish that I didn’t have to rely on YouTube for hosting my videos. Twitch.tv allows us to edit pre-recorded footage and make highlights, but it doesn’t allow us to combine multiple highlights (or combine multiple segments for highlighting purposes); which is what I’ve needed to do for all of my YouTube videos. I could see such a system being too complex or too resource-hogging for Twitch.tv to provide. However, it would be nice if Partners had the option to upload video that we’ve edited ourselves to get around this. I would gladly ditch YouTube and use Twitch.tv to exclusively host and deliver my videos if uploading was possible.
