KakuJomics

Comic:

Kid, this is gonna hurt me literally twice as much as it hurts you.

There will be a timelapse of this comic up on my YouTube channel, this Monday (04/20)!

Lily had her first dentist appointment. She dreaded it up until the day of, at which point I think she had accepted her fate and was just ready to get it over with. But it was just a check-up, the dentist was extremely full-disclosure about everything before she did anything, which kept Lily extremely calm, and she walked away with no cavities and a bunch of little toys. ‘Wish my last dentist visit had gone like that…

Video Games:

EDIT (04-27-2015): Since this writing, Elgato has updated their Amazon store page to better reflect the HD60’s lack of PS3 compatibility! Hurrah for the consumers! And kudos to Elgato for correcting a bad situation!

I’ve been trying to find a way to stream more often. I’ve also been trying to find a way to get out of the office more. Recently, I had the idea to purchase an external capture card and stream console games from the living room, after the girls have gone to bed. “Kakujo Decaf”, I would call it. It would be a more relaxed, after-hours, winding-down type of affair. I play games at night a few nights a week anyway, so why not stream it? This year’s tax return left a little cash for me to spend, plus I could write a capture card off on next year’s taxes, so why not?

Now comes the part where I rant about a product sold by a company. If you’re not into that, scroll on down to the “Life” section where I talk about Lily’s first school playdate. She got a balloo– Oh, I’m sorry, she got two balloons.

I went to Amazon and bought the Elgato HD60, which, for all the marketing and page layout, seemed to be an upgraded version of the Elgato HD(sans the 60). I mean hell, it costs $40 more and boasts 1080p at 60fps. Sure, okay! My internal capture card can’t do that. I read reviews to make sure it could record the PS3, as the PS3 can’t be recorded through HDMI due to HDCP copyright protection bullcrap. The top review (and highlighted ad text) says “yes”, you can record the PS3 with a special cable they include. Awesome, it’s ordered and on its way.

I get it two days later (despite ordering one-day delivery because USPS is garbage), aaaand there’s no “special cable”. I google the issue and find a page on Elgato’s own site that says “PlayStation 3 (PS3) is not supported by Elgato Game Capture HD60”. Uh-hwaaaaat? I go back to the Amazon page and quadrouple-check the review that said it came with a cable, and finally realize the review is for the old “HD” and not the new “HD60”. The HD60 doesn’t even have the port to accept the PS3 cable. If you’re unfamiliar with Amazon’s odd ways, they lump a product and its various editions on one page and mix the reviews for all of them into one pile. I don’t know why this is a thing, but it is and it’s extremely difficult to tell which specific product a review is for.

But let’s step back a moment: They completely removed support for the PS3? I’m sorry, did I miss the bonfire we apparently chucked them all into when the PS4 came out? Nowhere does the HD60’s product description mention removing support for the PS3. So, I sent an email to their Support team to suggest they separate the product pages if possible, and to more clearly state that they dropped PS3 compatibility. Because really, I can just return the product and order the old HD for cheaper and at only the loss of 60fps only at 1080p (it does 720p 60fps just fine, and once the footage is shrunk down to fit my stream overlay it will hardly make a difference). But it’s a sneaky business practice. A similar thing happened when I bought my internal capture card. They remove obviously useful, even crucial features, so you’ll never have an all-in-one product and be forced to buy more crap. Not unlike Adobe with their crap: “Leave one thing out so they’ll have a need to buy the next overpriced thing we squelch out.” But PS3 support? AGAHELABG ::ahem:: I got a reply from Support the next day, passive-aggresively saying the product page clearly states it supports “PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360” and that they’re sorry I “assumed something about the product that was not true”. WOOPS I’M MAD AGAIN–

At least a hundred times, I have seen a product not list every single thing it supports. It also doesn’t say that it supports the Wii U, even though it does. Nowhere would someone see a product that’s presented as an upgrade from another product, for $40 more dollars, and think “Better check what they removed”. That’s all I’m sayin’. It’s garbage.

So I returned the HD60. Ordered the HD. It’s here. It has the “special cable”. Kakujo Decaf will be Mon/Tue/Wed after 11pm PST. If you also like to procrastinate going to sleep, settle in with me while I play Harvest Moon: Back to Nature on the gOD DANG PLAYSTATION THR– How ’bout we get to that thing about Lily and the balloons?

Life:

Lily had her first, for-real playdate this week! There were balloons, pocky, milk, a fluffy cat, etc. The other kid pulled something I’m all-too-familiar with: He had just been ungrounded from his Nintendo, so he spent most of the time playing it. Again, not hating. It’s not the most polite thing to do, but I did that sooooo many times to my friends when I was a lad. My mom would unground me just for the time I had friends over, so like, what else was I gonna do? Not that I don’t feel bad. Anyway, Lily seemed more interested in talking to his mom and playing with his toys, and in the end she had a lot of fun. ‘Can’t tell you how glad I am to possibly have someone else who might watch Lily every few months, too.

Closing Comments:

Until next comic…

See you then~

UPDATE (04-18-2015 1:04am PST): I have a flight in the morning to Oklahoma and I’ve lost track of time trying to get videos scheduled on YouTube, so this week’s comic will have to go up next Sunday. I’ll try to post a couple travel comics on my Facebook and my Twitter between now and then. Sorry, Bits and Bytes!