Category Archives: Videos

A.I. generated video content presents plenty of problems in the short and medium term: Job loss in the commercial, TV and film industries. False or misleading information. Dystopian idolatry of fake celebrities. But IMO people are missing the really frightening aspect of all of this. The road leads to bespoke content generated for each viewer in any given moment. Once it becomes cheap enough, why would a company spend 0.5 cents to create a commercial to show to 100 million people when they could create 100 million commercials to show to each person individually? And why wouldn’t streaming platforms create content on-the-fly to cater to each individual’s preferences? It’ll lead to cultural isolation wherein all of us consume only our … Continue reading

I gave up on the HPE Microserver in the previous video on this subject and decided to go with a custom build. That went.. well. It’s an iStarUSA D-300 case, ASRock Rack motherboard, Xeon Silver 4509Y, 64GB RAM and a Samsung 990 Pro NVMe. And, of course the Dell/IBM LTO-8 tape drive. Finding the right power supplies and fans was a bit of an issue due to my poor planning. The PSU originally was a Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W, but that full-size ATX form factor didn’t 100% fit so I ended up using a Corsair SF1000 SFX-sized PSU which was technically too small but whatever. The fans were almost completely replaced between the beginning and end. I went with Noctuas … Continue reading

I compare the superficial differences between the SmallRig VB99 and the Neweer Mini V-Mount batteries. I was looking for inexpensive V-Mounts and came across both of these on Amazon, and from the basic descriptions and product photos they seemed to only have cosmetic differences. They’re both ostensibly 99Wh battery packs with D-Tap out, USB A and C out (with charging on the C connector), as well as 8V and 12V barrel plug outputs (and, of course, the V-Mount connector). And they are in fact pretty much the same as far as features, weight, and capacity goes. Though, neither one was able to deliver the promised 99Wh (they got close at around 92Wh). The SmallRig was almost twice the price, so … Continue reading

I examine the SmokeNinja fog machine from the company of PMI (which stands for Practical Magic & Innovation, though the logo is largely illegible and they only mention what it means in a tiny font in one place for some baffling reason). Despite them being embarrassed by their own company name, it seems to be a very well-constructed, well-designed and well-implemented device. (That’s 3 out of 3 “wells”, my highest score yet on this new scoring system I’ll never use again.) It puts out a decent amount of smoke/fog, is easy to use, remote controllable, and has a user-swappable common type of lithium ion battery so you could use it extensively. They pitch it for photography/videography effects or theatrics, and … Continue reading

I’m not a terribly good gamer. I play Dark Souls and Elden Ring with a mouse and keyboard. It’s been my dream to actually be able to use a modern day controller, so I figured I’d force myself to by putting a “gaming” HTPC in the spare bedroom. Some kind of mini PC. That didn’t go to plan because I ended up getting distracted from this task by playing through Dark Souls 3 on my main PC. But regardless, in this video I open up an Intel NUC Enthusiast 11, stick in some RAM and an SSD, then other RAM, then yet other RAM… then eventually play some games to see what the performance is like. It’s not too bad … Continue reading

If you’re looking for a high-power charger/power supply that can also make toast and confections, the SlimQ 330W laptop power supply might be for you! I actually purchased this to use with a Starlink Mini and a USB-C laptop, and it should suffice for that. It seems like a really high quality unit, except that they’re trying to dissipate about 22W of power from this relatively small plastic case (at full load). Though it is around 93% efficient, that extra 7% has to go somewhere.

I make a really ugly cable/adapter thing to test battery charge capacity using a BK Precision 5335B (the actual battery tests will be in a different video, though). All it does is interrupt the VBus current path and provide a couple of voltage monitoring lines on a pair of USB-C connectors that are otherwise in parallel.

I laboriously go through the process of unboxing and testing the new-ish Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2, or BMMSC G2 as it’s slightly more easily said. It’s kinda a combo of the old BMMSC G1 and the Micro Cinema Camera. Also got two Mini Converters to apply LUTs to both cameras over SDI, also from Blackmagic Design, of course.

In this video I try to test out the Icy Dock ToughArmor M.2 NVMe Mobile Rack for PCIe slots. It supports 2 removable NVMe drives placed in the included sleds, and (almost) fits an x8 or x16 lane PCIe slot that supports bifurcation to get 4 juicy lanes to each of the SSDs. I test it out with Samsung 990 Pro and Western Digital SN850X 4TB drives. That being said, it turns out that not all bifurcation implementations are created equal, nor are all PCIe slots. Hence the frustrating aspect. Buy it with a generous return policy in place, if you buy it at all. Just to be 100% clear: This is not sponsored in any way. If you couldn’t … Continue reading

I got this LeCroy WaveRunner 64Xi-A-N Oscilloscope from eBay because I needed a faster scope than my best 200Mhz Siglent model. On eBay it looked super clean and in good cosmetic shape, and was shown and claimed to be working. When I received it, it would kinda start up, but the display was blank and overall it was unresponsive. When I went to make this video showing the investigation, it powered right up! Strange. So I figured I’d just be replacing the RTC battery and upgrading the HDD to an SSD. Turns out it already had an SSD and a new battery. The problem was that it would reboot every time the USB ports were even slightly jostled. After getting … Continue reading