Got the "final" table mockups back from the artist today, just confirming the printing size for the felt and hopefully we'll get something soon.



And a copy with the electronics shown for scaling purposes.



So, we're lookin' good folks, I hope.

man that table looks sexy, love the design.

Ok, there likely won't be video when anyone sees this, but...

http://singledollarblind.com/index.php/Live_Cam

This should be live once the processing finishes on the server. It's long, not 100% sure it'll go live, TBH.

Auto-focus was still turned on, so lots of that going on. Lots of us moving around, changing stuff, but plenty of live head's-up play.

Argh, well, I'll fix it later...

I regret I was out of town this weekend. It's looking sweet!

Well, last night's video will probably never see the light of day. I'm currently recording at about 2Mbytes/min, or what I think works out to about 275Kbits/sec; and I ran the camera (recording) for about 45 minutes. I lack the energy to break my 45 minute video up into the 4-5 pieces YouTube would require.

I'm torn on how to proceed with live camera broadcasts. To get any sort of affordable push-based streaming from a Windows Media Server hosting location, I need to get down to 128Kbits/sec. It's not hard to play with Video and Audio rates until you get something you like, but I'm trying to produce something good enough where the card displays are readable when hosted.

If I can get it down to 128k and have it look good, I'll move to 10-slot hosted WMS for a cheap price. Having multiple connections directly to my home IP doesn't excite me. I'm not worried about hacking or anything; I just only have so much upstream bandwidth -- thanks Cox! It's obviously free to host that way, but I think it'll disintegrate under load. I should, in theory have 5Mbps (5120Kbits) upload with Cox, which should be enough to sustain nearly 20 viewers (more than I think I'll ever have) at the current bandwidth rate. And, if I go to a slower rate, which I'd need for hosted services, I could host much more.

Since I suspect I'll only broadcast about 10 hours a week, I might just say broadcasting from my cable modem...

So, right now, the camera is on showing my living room and some signs that say we're not playing poker. If you stared long enough, you could likely see my sister in law wander by the table; and in a couple of hours, you'll see school-age kids wander around as they go from playing XBox to playing in the neighborhood.

The felt is done at the artist, but it still hasn't been printed. I'm at least printing and shipping away from a "real" game on the felt - even though the wife and I did a demo head's up game for a while live on cam last night. [Save the dirty jokes...] We had a couple of viewers. Was... ...interesting.

When running the camera, we see about a 20-second delay when on "no delay." I imagine a 2-3 minute delay is enough for live play, but there's no harm in making it 5+ minutes. It's not like web people are betting and then past-posting like this is The Sting.

I went to the link just now and saw nothing, felt like a failed cyberstalker, and left.

Although other people will be there, and you can probably catch others roaming around, you likely won't see anyone actually play at the table for a while.

I'll try to give notice if one/some of the local curious decide to stop by...

Why don't you use justin.tv or ******** to broadcast or post videos? I've read that ******** allows for long and high quality video uploads.

No, I meant I saw nothing. The plugin loaded and then the page was white, so something isn't working.

It shows up eventually. I think it's a factor of not much going on.

youtube note shows it was removed, a few minutes will give us an idea, 40 minutes aint gonna watch it! 4 or 5 mins works for now, let's see it

I tried it again after busting out tonight, and this time it worked. "Waiting for video" came up almost instantly, and video showed up maybe 30 seconds later. I saw the signs on the table, and heard what I presume was your wife's voice in the background. Then I really started getting that creepy cyberstalker feeling and closed it down.

I'm looking forward to railing a game from several states away.

Yup. ...unfortunately, I'm not going to re-process it.


...the wife and I are going to sit in front of it for a few minutes. She wants to avenge last night's loss.

So, live game in progress, sort of.

Ok, an 8-minute clip.

Auto-focus still enabled. Well, at least I turned it off now.

"It was only 50 cents. You bet a dollar."

720p looks good full screen. 1080p looked very good, of course. Video too large at the higher res?

Just playing with the settings. *shrug*

i'm digging it. much more responsive than i thought it would be. I would suggest ustream.tv as live streaming and archiving site. A lot of audio podcasts now are shooting live multicamera video and streaming it via ustream.

Finally got time to watch the video - it looks good. And Mrs. Pali has a tell: "C'mon, 50 cents?!?!"

The cards seem really thick & heavy. How do they compare to Modianos?

Change it back! Change it back! For the love of God, change it back!

That's one of the things I thought of when watching. They seem to plop down onto the table.

Well, tbh, part of that is the current table construction, and part of it is the cards. The cards are thick and heavy, but you can't get a grip on them with the table the way is it. Volara and painter's tape isn't a great surface for shuffling and moving cards around on.

I'll try to get a "game" going tonight on the raw surface, and I'll give notice if I can for those who want to see it live.