hairylarry's blog

A bard's songbook is like a magician's spell book in that it contains words of power, songs for wind, songs for rain, songs to make the fire burn hotter and warm the room, songs of companionship to warm the heart.

https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/797

Ari and Caper worked on Caper's Song Book last night on Inspired Unreality.

First we worked on a list of songs.

Song to make people dance
Song to make people alert
Song to make people like me AKA the opening numbers
Song of reflection

Song of hope

We renamed Song to make people alert to

Song of perception
tin tin aree tin tin aroo
look about look about could be you
jump about jump about one and two
tin tin aree tin tin aroo

and we wrote the lyric.

To be sung by the whole party twice through to increases alertness and perception.

The bard leads the song. The party sings it twice around. Just that helps. Some DMs may give pluses or advantage on perception and other pertinent rolls.

We had a great time and I look forward to filling in more blank pages in Caper's Song Book in the future.

Next week, Monday, August 2, is the first Monday of the month and we will be discussing Fantasy and Science Fiction literature.

A bard's songbook is like a magician's spell book in that it contains words of power, songs for wind, songs for rain, songs to make the fire burn hotter and warm the room, songs of companionship to warm the heart.

I'm reading "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson. As they set sail to the frozen north he writes this.

"Let us away," said Mananaan. He and Skafloc stepped into the boat from the small dock and raised the glowing sail. The man took the steering oar while the godling struck a chord on his harp and sang:

  Wind I call you, old, unresting,
  from the deeps of sea and sky.
  Blow me outward on my questing,
  answer me with eager cry.
  From the hills of home behind you,
  out through shifting leagues of sea,
  blow wind blow! My song shall bind you.
  South wind, sea wind, come to me.
  Come to set my vessel free.

At his music, a strong breeze sprang up and the boat surged forth into waves of cold and green that threw salt spray onto their lips.

 - Poul Anderson, from "The Broken Sword"

I'm working on a song book for Caper. A song for wind, a song for rain, a song of warmth, a song of companionship, a song to give you courage.

If you have suggestions for Caper's book please leave them in the comments. Or if you have favorite bardsongs from fantasy literature or gaming point the way.

https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/796

Or join us tonight at Inspired Unreality as Ari and Caper work on Caper's song book. Inspired Unreality open game chat is held every Monday night in the Gamer+ chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. More info here.

https://gamerplus.org/index

Monday week will be August 2, the first Monday in August so we will be talking about fantasy and science fiction stories. If you enjoy great fantasy literature like "The Broken Sword" please join us. And join us tonight to help Caper fill his song book.

I was talking to Carl about the witch's chicken scratch that we are inventing to fill Ari's teas and potions book that Tude found and he come up with the perfect name. Wikkenscratch. As in, "He held the book sideways and upside down but it didn't help. Scratching his head he complained, 'I can't read this wikkenscratch'."

And Megan helped me come up with a subtitle for my new book. "Setting Up A Twitch Studio - Using Tech Creatively". The subtitle hints that the book is actually more than a twitch how to. In fact, the book will apply to almost any creative endeavor where technology is part of the picture.

Robert S. Conley posted a blog, "The one I write about the popularity of RPGs and the explosive growth of digital sales. Using numbers from DriveThruRPG."

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4176

So do you have a new blog post, vlog, or podcast about gaming? Let me know.

Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

A bard's songbook is like a magician's spell book in that it contains words of power, songs for wind, songs for rain, songs to make the fire burn hotter and warm the room, songs of companionship to warm the heart.

I'm reading "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson. As they set sail to the frozen north he writes this.

"Let us away," said Mananaan. He and Skafloc stepped into the boat from the small dock and raised the glowing sail. The man took the steering oar while the godling struck a chord on his harp and sang:

  Wind I call you, old, unresting,
  from the deeps of sea and sky.
  Blow me outward on my questing,
  answer me with eager cry.
  From the hills of home behind you,
  out through shifting leagues of sea,
  blow wind blow! My song shall bind you.
  South wind, sea wind, come to me.
  Come to set my vessel free.

At his music, a strong breeze sprang up and the boat surged forth into waves of cold and green that threw salt spray onto their lips.

 - Poul Anderson, from "The Broken Sword"

I'm working on a song book for Caper. A song for wind, a song for rain, a song of warmth, a song of companionship, a song to give you courage.

If you have suggestions for Caper's book please leave them in the comments. Or if you have favorite bardsongs from fantasy literature or gaming point the way.

As another famous bard sang in another era,

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

The answer is blowing in the wind.

 - B.Z.

Ari, Caper, and the Milyagon witch have been decyphring teas and potions from a book written in Witch's Chicken Scratch. They have been gathering their knowledge into an herbal listing medicinal herbs and teas found around Milyagon including magical plants found in Wilken Woods, a magic forest with fey inhabitants. Here's a start.

mint - refeshing tea good for stomach discomfort

rose hips - also good in tea with charismatic properties

rose buds - used in love potions

lavender - used in teas and creams, helps with sleep, skin, and pain

chax - used in teas and potions, good for muscle aches and relaxing

yaloleaf - used in teas and potions, good for congestion and head colds

yellow flax - used for pain, swelling, and as an appetite suppressant

red vermilion - a poison used in red paint for artists

sweet lemon - used in teas for flavor and stomach distress

panacea - a red berry growing on cliff walls, good for healing and nausea

nightmare - a dangerous herb that can cause hallucinations in battle

sleep seed - in a tea acts like a sleep spell

babble plant - in a tincture with alcohol makes you talkative

scratch grass - grows in great fields and causes itching, untreated it can cause damage

mushrooms harvested in the moonlight under the ancestor tree, used in a cream for the ogres bunions
lard - base for burn medicine
honey drop sap from the honey drop tree, The honey drop tree is called that because it exudes a golden sap, it is a good base for skin medicines
scarlet pimpernel - field of brilliant red flowers with an odor that makes you want to turn and run, boil in water and strain keeping the water to thicken and sweeten teas and potions, used for pain relief and nausea
opium  flowers - powerful pain relief, addictive
willow bark - used like aspirin for pain relief
cloves - used in teas an potions for nausea, colds, and pain
mead, wine, whiskey have their traditional medical uses

To be continued with Caper's help

mushrooms

smoking herbs

That is the herbal so far. Although some of the Milyagon herbs have real life equivalents most are just made out of whole cloth and the Milyagon Herbal should never be used for actual ailments.

Continuing with this project I plan on adding more recipes to Ari's book written in Witch's Chicken Scratch.

Welcome to Inspired Unreality. Well, come to Inspired Unreality. Anyway, see you there.

Inspired Unreality open game chat is held every Monday night at 9:00 in the gamerplus chat rooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. If you haven't been already here's an invite.

https://gamerplus.org/index

I'm not sure but I think Ari and the Milyagon witch may have some help from the brownies fixing up their teas and potions. I've been working on my Witch's Chicken Scratch and there could be some decoding at hand.

I enjoyed Follow Me And Die's blog post about "Just in time for tomorrow's 12th anniversary of my blog, I wrote an article about Garage Con." This is a great idea and an interesting read.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4170

Adjacent posts from Hairy Larry about a busy day.

No game tonight so I'm going to have to work on something. First backup/media/intraweb server. Second Setting Up A Twitch Studio series about technical creative endeavors.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4168

I also have a DIY project to write up and videoize. How to build a usb foot switch to change scenes in Streamlabs OBS or other programs that use programmable hotkeys.

Plus now reading Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword", his first fantasy novel.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4169

What are you reading? What's your favorite DIY? And as far as potions and teas?

Stay in touch.

Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Join us tonight at Inspired Unreality open game chat. Last week we talked about books. Before that Witch's Chicken Scratch, a cypher witches use to write down their recipes for teas and potions. And when we last left Ari and Caper they were in the Milyagon Witch's kitchen drinking love potion. The night before that the brownies had crowned Ari with a flowery garland.

Inspired Unreality open game chat is held in the gamerplus chat rooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. If you haven't been we have an invite for you here.

https://gamerplus.org/index

What will we be discussing tonight? Nobody knows. Because, like Megan, we do what we want. Bring your own topic. All gaming is on topic.

I posted, "We had a good chat last night about Science Fiction and Fantasy literature starting with a discussion about Science Fiction as a late nineteenth and twentieth century phenomenon where Fantasy literature encompasses all of literature going back to the earliest written words. Now they are often indistinguishable. Then we discussed the dystopian trend in Science Fiction. The Golden Age (thirties and forties) saw mostly optimistic science fiction stories but in the second half of the twentieth century starting with the New Wave through today there has been a darker trend with many dystopian and post apocalyptic stories. Then closing the chat we each discussed our first experiences in Science Fiction."

What are your first experiences with Fantasy and Science Fiction? Join the discussion here.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4153

ZDL shared a post about how we can let the kids improve our urban landscape.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4157

If you have ideas for our Fantasy and Science Fiction discussion post them here in the Related To Geeks Book Club group.

https://gamerplus.org/groups/28

Please post your links, game ideas, art, etc. to Gamer+. We want to know what you're doing. (Ok, that's not creepy at all.)

Stay in touch.

Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Join us tonight at the Inspired Unreality Open Game Chat where we will discuss Science Fiction and Fantasy literature. Soon to be a monthly feature at Inspired Unreality.

We've already got some discussion going in my announcement thread.

https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4145

We don't mind controversy over at Gamer+. As long as it's controversy about gaming. Everybody's got their own old school. Mine didn't start until the early nineties. Most old schools are older than mine.

https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/782

I added another post to my Setting Up A Twitch Studio series. Documentation. I try to teach by example. So, if you like to read documentation.

https://gamerplus.org/blogs/785

This series of articles has turned out to be broader in focus than I thought they would be and the ideas discussed pertain to any technical creative endeavor. I need to take a big top down view and decide where I'm going with this.

And here are our twitch streams.

https://www.twitch.tv/megantopia

https://www.twitch.tv/hairylarryland

Send me your links or post them to Gamer+.

Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com

Like workflow documentation isn't sexy. But also like workflow documentation is very important in any technical creative endeavor. Instead of waxing on about the joy of documentation I will include my Post Production and Upload document. Then at the end of the post I will address a few issues that the document raises.

HairyLarryLand Twitch Videos
Post Production And Upload Document
---
Log the show noting the songs in order.
Include song title, start time, end time, and other notes.
Star songs for video production. Three stars for extra promotion.
The show is logged from the twitch website so I am also doing quality control on the stream.

Produce videos of the starred songs in Openshot.
The assets are Title, Credits, and one or two clips.
Load a previously edited video as a starting point.
Save all the videos and the hard drive source recording in a dated folder, YYYY-MM-DD.
Videos are saved as song_name-YYYY-MM-DD.

https://www.openshot.org/

After rendering each video I do a full viewing for pre upload quality control. I have found problems but even when there are no real problems I benefit educationally by another close viewing of my best performances.

Rename the videos adding NN_ as a prefix numbering the videos in playlist order. The playlist of all the videos produced for a certain date is a document of my performance on the twitch stream.

Take a screen shot from the first video and save it in the same folder as the videos. This is for promotion on the Live Music Archive and anywhere a photo is needed.

Use VLC to create mp3 audio files of each video.
This is done as a batch using Open Multiple Files and Convert.
Rename the mp3 files artist-album_title-NN_song_title where the album title is the date performed.
I do this using Thunar bulk rename which makes it easy.
Normalize the mp3 files with MP3DirectCut.

https://www.videolan.org/

https://mpesch3.de/

Make the song list in list.txt.
I do this by executing ls 0*.mp4 > list.txt in a bash shell and then editing the file with two search and replaces and manual editing when needed.

Make the notes.txt file for the Live Music Archive upload.
Copy the last show's notes.txt to the current folder and edit it changing the date and the playlist.

I now have all the assets ready for my file uploads.

Upload the mp3 files, notes.txt and the screenshot to the Live Music Archive.
The item ID is hlYYYY-MM-DD because this is recommended. Then the link will be like archive.org/details/hl2012-06-29.

Add the songs to my KGPL on demand internet radio station, HairyLarryLand Livestreams, at kgpl.org. I use a program I wrote to make it easy to add an entire concert. I also wrote KGPL and KGPL is GPL.

https://kgpl.org/

Upload the mp4 files and notes.txt to another item on the live music archive.
I use hlYYYY-MM-DD.video for my video link.

The mp3 files upload fast. The mp4 videos take longer.

At peertube.hairylarry.rocks create a playlist for the performance.
The playlist is called twitch.tv/hairylarryland June 27, 2021 with the date corrected.

Upload the videos to peertube one at a time.
I use a song.txt template for the song information so I only have to correct the date and then search and replace on the song title for each song.
I always add tags to peertube and the Live Music Archive. jazz, blues, piano, hairylarryland, twitch, livestream, etc.
After the video is uploaded add the link to the description and add the song to the playlist.
After all the songs are uploaded check the playlist

https://peertube.hairylarry.rocks/

Create a folder on the HairyLarryLand Nextcloud for the performance date.

Add the mp3 files and mp4 files to Nextcloud for download by collaborators and others. Also upload notes.txt and the screenshot. I can share these files by sending a link and I also include the link in the peertube descriptions. Create a markdown text file for each mp4 file and copy and paste the peertube description to that file.

https://hairylarryland.com/nextcloud/index.php/s/Z9RFW4QS6XGa3qo

All of this seems like a lot but it actually goes pretty fast and much of the time consuming part is unattended. Start the upload. After it's done do the next thing. I manage to keep up and I do three livestreams a week for 4-5 hours of video content total. I have streamlined this workflow to make this possible.

Promote the songs on Youtube, the fediverse, other social networks, websites, and blogs using the song links, playlist links, and download links.


Additional notes, issues not part of but raised by the procedure above.
---
Licensing - I license my songs Creative Commons Attribution which means anyone can use my songs in their projects as long as they include me in the credits. That's just me. It's what I do. Make stuff and give it away. When you make your decision about licensing I suggest you read through the information provided at the Creative Commons website. All Rights Reserved may not be the best choice for you.

https://creativecommons.org/

Live Music Archive - I perform livestream concerts so the Live Music Archive works for me. If you are doing game streams, actual play, vlogs, cooking, or DIY archive.org also has a Community Video area which would probably be better for you. The Internet Archive is a library. Their service is free. They have embed code so you can share easily. They encourage sharing items on their site on other websites. All around double plus good.

https://archive.org/details/etree

https://archive.org/details/opensource_movies

Servers - Ok, I'm a computer geek. I did games and music before computers but computers were my career and they remain my hobby. I realize not everyone runs their own internet servers. So I recommend using archive.org as your primary server and then using Youtube and Tumblr or other web platforms for your daily updates and your pretty face. I also recommend the fediverse, programs like Mastodon, Friendica, Funkwhale, and Peertube. With these programs you can set up your own server but you don't have to. There are many fediverse instances with an existing lean to your area of interest that would be glad to have you participate.

If you want to run your own server I use two. The first is based on the famous LAMP stack, linux, apache, mysql, php. The second runs Yunohost.

https://yunohost.org/#/

Google lamp stack.

Best of luck in all your creatives endeavors.