April 6, 2013

Today I tried out using my Elgato with my PC and it was kind of a success. I didn't go through the effort of getting the sound to work so I won't count that against the Elgato. My test involved playing Saints Row: The Third and my first discovery was that I had to play in windowed mode, rather than full-screen. This left the little bar at the top of the screen which is kind of annoying. I know some games don't show that in windowed mode but Saints Row: The Third is not one of those games. There is software where you can select the area of the screen you want to record but I don't think that works with the Elgato. I'm thinking that is recording software which would defeat the purpose of the Elgato. Anyway, the game capture looked alright except when there was a lot of stuff happening on the screen or stuff was moving fast because that lead to a lot of screen-tearing. It wasn't as evident when I was playing but it was obnoxious when I was watching the playback. I had all the video settings on high so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. I am going to try tweaking those tomorrow to see if that helps. And maybe try out some other games. We'll see.

Tonight at work I finished an issue of National Geographic that I have had for several months now, and I started reading The Book Of The Dead: Lives Of The Justly Famous And The Undeservedly Obscure by John Mitchison and John Lloyd. It reminds me of the compilation scientist biography books I read in middle school. In those, each chapter was a short biography on a different scientist and I found those books fascinating. The Book Of The Dead is a compilation of a bunch of mini-biographies. Each chapter has a theme to it and includes several different famous or obscure people that had similar threads in their life. So far there was a chapter on people who had less than ideal childhoods and one about people who tended to be “glass half full” kind of people. It is a really interesting book. There is some stuff from it that I will probably add to my entry tomorrow because it is too late to add in tonight. Something to look forward to.