Been on an Avenged Sevenfold kick lately, with a strong emphasis on songs like The Stage and Wicked End and most of their respective albums. I think it's technically progressive or symphonic metal, but it's got a pretty unique sound even within that category. Idk if 'theatric' makes sense, but I'm struggling to put to words what's setting their music apart in my head.

Anywho, I'm looking for more music that has a similar vibe, but running into the familiar problem of streaming services being trash when it comes to categorizing metal. Any recommendations?

I hit a critical milestone on the way home from school today.

I'm guessing the legal fuzziness is causing a reluctance to report from providers, but I'm having a hell of a time finding much of anything post RvW.

Specifically, I'm wanting to compare rates of IUFDs/stillbirths, speed and effectiveness of care following IUFDs/stillbirths, and maternal complications/deaths - all in states (or countries) that offer access to abortion care vs locations where that's restricted.

Hypothesis is that if someone needs an abortion and can't get one, they're more likely to have a IUFD/stillbirth, and since poor abortion access correlates with poor women's health in general, that they're more susceptible to sepsis or death as a result of delayed or insufficient care following the IUFD/stillbirth.

This is for a presentation that's ready to go as is, but with an election happening RIGHT NOW I'd really like to drive these points home.

Any pointers for sources of info on things like this would be much appreciated - thank you, all!

Nursing student here. I record lectures so review them at high playback speeds, and to share with classmates who aren't able to make it to class.

I've been using the small clip-on battery powered mics made for doing interviews, but last semester revealed a few weaknesses: The profs don't like to actually wear them, so I just clip them onto the lecture podium - works fine while they're standing at it, but they don't have good range, and most of the profs move around a lot as they lecture, so the volume of the recording is all over the place or completely silent if they stray too far away. Also 99% of the time a student asks a question, the mic doesn't capture it at all, so I just get a few seconds of silence followed by some random info with no context. The battery is also only enough to get through about 2/3 of a class period - fine if I remember to swap them out during a break, but not ideal.

Going forward, I'm hoping to find an option I can just plug into my laptop, sit near the front, and record. A normal desktop conferencing style mic stands out as a decent option, but thinking of the range issue I'm having with the portable mics, I suspect a conferencing type product will have the same issue since it's made to record sound coming from like two feet away from the mic.

I've seen like giant fuzzy mics used on movie sets - should I look for something like that?

And are there specific product recommendations you'd make that are on the less expensive end of the spectrum?

Thanks all!

Edit-

Thanks for all the feedback folks! Time to dig through reviews.

Made this for a comment reply to another thread; thought y'all would enjoy it too! \^_\

I visit this site probably more than I should, and when I browse, then come back a bit later to browse again, I'm seeing a LOT of repeat content.

The one and only feature I miss from that other site was being able to browse by reading a thread title to assess if its something I want to click on, if no hit 'H' to hide it, and it's gone; next one bumps up, and repeat.

So I'd skim by pressing H... H... H... H... "Ooh that one looks cool!" read the article, comment w/e, H... H... H... H... then I'd pop back in an hour later, and those threads would still be gone.

Unsure if that was a built-in feature or part of the RES thing. ...is there an RES -or- 'LES' for Lemmy?

The laptop I'll be recording them with is running Windows 11 Pro.

Not loving the 'Camera' app that comes stock with Windows.

Tried recording just with my cellphone, but ran into issues with audio quality and battery life. I have an old webcam, and just ordered a tiny bluetooth microphone that I'm hoping to either plant near or literally pin onto the prof if they're cool with it.

Not looking for anything fancy... ability to choose both video and audio device, record/pause, and save so that I can upload to YouTube and forward it to the class. (side question... best video format for this?).

Not really familiar with this kind of software... I recall one of my gaming buddies being a fan of OBS Studio, but unsure if that's just on-screen capture for gaming/streaming or if it can do webcam-only too - DL'ing right now to experiment. In the mean time, taking all suggestions!

Thanks, all!

Edit -

Took about 5 mins to get all the shit on my wishlist figured out in OBS (https://obsproject.com/), and if my dumb ass can figure it out that quick, that is some GOOD software!! Kinda wish I'd have tried first before asking, but was not expecting it to be that easy. I'll leave the thread up just incase its helpful for someone else later.

Follow-up to this thread - this is way more specific, so hopefully worthy of its own thread. I think wildcards are the best option for my skill level (basically none), and have gotten a good chunk of what I wanted to accomplish done with those.

An issue I've run into and can't seem to google my way out is making TTS pronounce acronyms in a sensible way. For example "PACU" (post-anesthesia care unit) is usually vocalized as "pack-you" but my TTS software likes to say things like "pace-uh". Or "PO" (latin abbreviation for 'by mouth') is vocalized by just saying the letters, but TTS says "Poe". Stuff like that.

When the TTS comes across a capitol letter with a space on either side, it just pronounces the letter, so I'd still lose things like "pack-you" but at least hearing it spell out "pee ay see you" would make sense, vs "pace-uh" which is gibberish and confusing at high playback speeds.

Best I've come up with so far is <([A-Z]{2})> on the Find side, but that's only spotting the two character terms like PO, and ignoring the longer ones... I'd hoped it would see PACU and detect PA, AC, and CU as three distinct sets of two that could cobbled into "P A C U".

Nothing I've done on the Replace side comes close to working. It either does nothing at all, or it'll do something like turn "PO" into <([A- Z]{2})>. Not sure if preserving the original characters is something A-Z is actually capable of - seems not, but I'm kind of an idiot with stuff like this, so any tips would be appreciated!

Thank you!

Nursing student here!

So we get a shit load of reading assignments, and since everything's digital nowadays, I've been leaning a lot on text-to-speech software that effectively converts reading assignments to listening assignments.

The problem is textbooks have a LOT of just... noise. Every image has something like "FIGURE 13.5 SURGICAL DISASTERS!" "FIGURE 13.6 YOU GOT SUMMONED TO COURT!" etc. In-text citations are EVERYWHERE, copyright info is EVERYWHERE... reading the content, you just skip over all that crap, but pasting it into a TTS service, all that trash gets spoken aloud and adds up to a huge time sink every chapter, and distracts from the actual lesson.

Googling it, the best I've been able to come up with is doing a find and replace in MS word for things like FIGURE **.*^13 with wildcards on and the replace field blank... but it's not very consistent - sometimes it works, sometimes not. Same with nuking parenthesis and the text within with \(*\)

All that said, I'm wondering if I'm approaching this wrong by using MS word in the first place. Would be absolutely amazing if I could save all the commands on standby, then run them at the same time. By end of the school program, we're talking like 100 chapters from multiple books, so anything that lets me just nuke huge batches of BS as quickly as possible and dive right into the listening would be a godsend.

Thanks all!!

Skip to the tldr if you don't want the novel explaining the reasoning.

A friend gifted me their old Razer Kraken headset a while ago. The leather Razer uses is some CHEAP shit, so the couple years in a closet leading up to it landing on my noggin left it in a state of deterioration that would sprinkle my head and ears with little bits of black leather.

The speakers are good though, and free is free, so no complaints: I hit it with some duct tape and peeled it off repeatedly until all the leather bits were freed up - the cloth layer underneath the leather is now the outermost layer, and no more black sprinkles all over, so yay.

Unfortunately the tape pulling on the ear cushions was a bit too much for whatever adhesive Razer uses to stick em on to their mounting plate, and they pretty much just pulled off. Also no biggie - replacements are pretty cheap on Amazon, so I got a set and lived happily ever after...

...but now I've got the old mounting plates (minus the cushions) and an idea.

!

So... I do a lot of gaming, wife watches a lot of TV. We do this in the same room, so I pretty much always have my headset on, which blocks most TV noises from getting to me, and most gaming noises from getting to her. Works great until she says something, and all I hear is muffled gibberish until I lift a speaker off my ear and hit her with "What?".

-----------TLDR---------------

My idea is to put... idk... something... on the mounting plate of the side facing her that's stable enough to keep the headphone in the correct position (and not pressing directly on my ear) but basically leaves the space completely open to the environment so that external sound coming from that side isn't muffled.

I'm thinking something like a plastic spiral hair tie, but with an inner diameter large enough to encircle my ear, and the spiral diameter roughly the same as the cussion, at least when its under tension against my head.

something like this:

!

!

...but ofc not just a cylindrical spring, but a donut shape. I kinda suck at photoshop, but you get the gist.

The spiral hair tie is the closest actual product I can think of to what I'm picturing, but those are far too small... ideas?

Mobo is MSI Pro Z790-P

Cooler is Aorus Waterforce X360

Tried orienting the radiator so the tubes go toward the front vs back of the case - both orientations land that tube joint right in the path of the closest RAM slot. The lines are too stiff to enable much wiggle room in either direction.

Never used a liquid cooler before... I've got 4 brand new RAM sticks, so I'd hate to drop one, but I don't see any options other than just flipping the radiator around, and neither position does the trick.

Any tips?

*trying to upload a pic, but it won't let me... Will try later.

I have my phone set to remember my car, my wife's car, and a pair of bluetooth headphones. When it's within range of one of them, it connects and all is well.... until it detects another one, then it changes to that.

On the way home from work yesterday, I passed my wife on the interstate. Didn't notice her car, but did notice my music suddenly stop... oh well; not gonna futz with bluetooth when I'm driving... guess it'll just be quiet for the rest of the trip.

Couple minutes later, it comes back. Yay!

Make it home, and as I'm getting out of the car, the wife pulls up, so I wait for her and we're chatting our way back to the apartment. She mentions her car randomly started playing heavy metal on the way home for a minute, then stopped. Now the gears are turning - I ask if it was around the area when mine went silent, and yup! I was a couple lanes over, but my phone detected her car and ditched mine to connect to it.

I've noticed it auto-hop from my car to my headphones or vice versa before, but car to car is a new one.

It's really annoying... and seems like the kind of thing that should be a check box in the settings, but I got nothing.

Phone is a Google Pixel 8 if that helps.

I'd really like it to connect when it comes in range of a recognized device ONLY if it's not already connected to another device...

Am I just stupid? This seems super basic...

Watched the first episode of The Acolyte on Disney+, and there so many ads that I swear the ad-to-star-wars radio was 1 to 1.

...so I set sail. I'm so sick this. But now I've got three video files on the comp (Windows 10), but I'm struggling to get them into the TV... We have a Roku, but apparently my comp doesn't support 'Miracast', and that seems to be a huge road block going by guides online.

Hoping to not spend an arm and a leg, but probably need some cable or something other than Roku. I'm probably the least techy person on Lemmy, so please idiot-proof any instructions.

Thanks all!

Previously I've been pretty gentle with modding that game - things like SkyUI to make it a bit more PC friendly, utility mods like the one limits soul gems to ONLY being filled with their highest tier (no more wasting a grand by filling it with a mudcrab). Also LockPick Pro to effectively skip lockpicking, cuz I hate Skyrim's (bring back Oblivion's model!)... that's kinda it.

Looking for mods that bring something new to the actual gameplay. I know there are a ton of them - what are your favorites?

Initial scrolling of the Steam Summer Sale seems pretty lackluster, but digging through the comments sections in other threads, a few gems have stood out, and it doesn't appear we have a thread dedicated to this yet, so post what you think are the best deals here!

Not mandatory ofc, but it'd be helpful if...

• One game per top level post, so comments stemming from it are focused on on just it.

• Hyperlink the game title to its Store Page

• Include both the normal and sale price / %off

• Include a short blurb about the game - if it's one you've played before, what did you like about it? If you're diving in blind, what grabbed your attention?

Good hunt'n!

Just switched to a new phone carrier, and they had a promotion that included a free phone: the Google Pixel 8. I'm not a fan of Google, but I am a fan of free, so I took the bait.

It's already bombarded me with pitches for their new AI bullshit. I've opted out of as much as the settings allow, but I'm under no illusion that doing so actually provides any real privacy.

So, damage control time.

On my previous device I used YouTube Vanced for music and videos, but I guess Vanced isn't around anymore, and I'm pretty out of date on what the current options are... any insight on streaming specifically?

 

*I'm a medic who's only surface-level competent with tech, so please idiot-proof any instructions.

Thanks all!

I've heard of things like Nair that make it fall out... if that was a one-and-done solution I'd be all for it, but I'm hoping for something that slows or stops it from growing.

I go clean shaven, but I get the '5 o-clock' shadow the second I put the razor down, and look homeless if I skip a day or two.

Tried growing a beard - looked alright, but the amount of product and effort I shoved into that thing was ridiculous. And it was maddeningly itchy the entire time (lasted about a year putting up with it).

I've spent the last couple years with the conclusion that hair is just annoying, and I want it gone with as little effort and expense as possible.

Kinda partial to keeping the eyebrows and lashes cuz they keep shit out of my eyes, but honestly if losing them is the cost of getting rid of the rest of it, I'd call that a fair trade.

Some initial searching shows there is a market for hair growth suppressants, but chewbaccoids like myself might not be among the target audience lol.

Anyone got a recommendation or cautionary tale?

Remember like Rooster Teeth's Red vs Blue?

Looking for something like that. Episodic use of a videogame for some light-hearted story driven cinema.

The only good modern example I can think of is Neebs Gaming's Subnautica series, but that's kind of an outlier in their channel since everything else they've done (that I've seen at least) is more of a "let's play" type of video than the kind of cinematic roleplay they do for Subnautica.

Hard to screen for quality on channels I'm not familiar with, since 99% of YouTube's gaming content is hot garbage.

Anywho, the combination of school and work is melting my brain... I don't trust my time management skills to dive back into actual gaming, but the occaisional episode to get that little half-hour-mind-vacation would be a godsend.

Thanks, all!

I just recently learned that this is a thing that exists. I've had a couple audiology tests that use these weird headphones with firm rubber balls where normally expect to see the speakers; the rubber balls sit on your temporal bone, and there's a metal bar the wraps around your head connecting them and giving them pressure to kinda squeeze your head.

The sound experience was pretty wild - my ears were completely open, so I could still hear ambient noises, but the sounds from the headphones were just kinda there... like it didn't sound like they were coming from anywhere, but like beamed directly into my brain.

I was curious if these were exclusive for audiology testing or if there were commercial variants for listening to music and such... hit the ol' search engine, and lo and behold: there are actually quite a few commercial variants!

\- TLDR -

Anywho, I'm intrigued as hell, and am curious if anyone here has experience with bone conduction headphones. Lots of questions:

Which brand/model are you using?

How's the sound quality?

How's the sound leak?

What kind of music do you use it to listen to? (my poison of choice is symphonic metal, with emphasis on the symphonic bits -- looking for that full range hit everything from the flutes to the howler monkeys :P)

Are they comfortable to wear? For how long?

Do you get any skin irritation or even breakdown where it contacts your temple?

Does the hook part wrap around your ears without any pressure points?

Does the behind-the-head band bounce around when you're walking or running?

How much space is between the band and the back of your head/neck? (I think my noggin is a bit on the smaller side, and I have basically no hair... one of the manufacturers makes one with a smaller sized band, which might be a good selling point for me)

How's the battery life?

How long have you had it?

When do you use it? (working out, at work, etc)

Do they stay put, or do you need to reposition them frequently?

Anything else to comment on?