Thomas Middleditch plays A10

FYI, came across this instagram post from Thomas Middleditch. (you might know him from Silicon Valley on HBO) Apparently all the fanboy kids at Blizzard threw some hate at him because he wasn't a good enough host for Blizzcon.

Well, he posted an awesome response on Instagram and I immediately wondered if he's here on SimHQ. I also would love to know if that's a custom made setup for his hotas, as I'd love to get something similar for my desk.



Anyway, just kind of something interesting I thought you guys would get a kick out of.

Looks custom to me. Looks like just a post that goes up then holds the HOTAS. Can't be too stable even if that was metal.

I see where the hate comes from though... that doesn't look like a center-mounted stick at all! n00b!

He has MFG pedals I see! Good man!

I was gonna say "yeah, but no Cougar MFDs!! n00b!!" but then I spot them folded down under his monitor! Good man indeed!!

That makes me realize he's most likely using that second, smaller screen for cockpit display extraction! Hellz yeah!!

I do have to take off a point for still having the arrow stickers on the Warthog. But I guess that could be balanced by the fact that he has an extension with the 15 degree offset (and with that rotation, it has to be in the center.

Nah, I'm good with that.... because mine is still on after 5+ years! Haha! Just on the base though... the stick arrow had to come off. That also looks too high to be center-mounted....

If anything deserves taking a point OFF, it is that atrocious (lack of) cable management! That is definitely n00bz right there!

Awesome! Always good to see some simmers in the public eye. Might have to follow him now.

Now he just needs to get an Obutto cockpit and some cable management.

+1 on cable management. When reassembling my pit, routing and securing cables takes longer than anything else.

For some weird reason, I find doing cable management relaxing, like a zen thing. You know how some people cultivate bonsai trees or do sand patterns? That's what cable management feels like to me. Weird.

I agree, though I never thought of it that way. It is the satisfaction of creating order out of chaos. The insides of my PC's are the same way. More time/effort spent routing cables than doing the rest of the work but in the end it is neat and tidy which makes me enjoy using it more.

I learned years ago cable management is self-defeating. Many of these cables are improperly or poorly shielded. Bundling them all together is a good way to induce errors in neighboring cables.

Mine are tucked out of sight for the most part, but beyond that they criss-cross and lie about to prevent inadvertent signals.

As for whether or not there are many well-known people (I won't call them "stars" or "celebs" or "famous" because that's an opinion ) lurking or even posting here under names we don't associate with them, maybe. I will say, though, that many well-known people are notoriously left-leaning and this site is notoriously not.

Could they be on ED's site? On LOF? Frugal's back in the day? Who knows? If so, they are well-disciplined not to let slip who they are, so it's a moot point. All we know is what we see people type here for the most part.



The Jedi Master

Good and valid point. I have never worried about crosstalk very much, except with network cables, for which I only use good quality shielded cables. So far, I have never had problems that I could attribute to crosstalk but it is a valid concern.

OK about this i've often wondered why. They are naturally rich or at least financially well-off. Humble beginnings or their audience?


For SHQ i've seen rightier gaming sites. Like dedicated ww1/2/land combat.

By well known, in this case, we are talking about entertainment industry types, as opposed to well known business leaders, whose income isn't as dependant on the whims of the public. I think it is a matter of desired perception/acceptance rather than personal political beliefs.

Probably straying into PWEC territory now.

Well, most things just click into place nowadays so that greatly decreases install time. HDDs now click into a tray which clicks into an enclosure, DVD drives now just click into their bay... most of the "screwdriver work" is just attaching the mobo to the case then securing the GPU then securing the case fans. The rest --- cable management!


Is that still the case today? Advances have been made in many areas, I'm sure they'd have fixed or alleviated the issue by now?

Yes. It is still an issue. Well shielded cables are rare and the physics of crosstalk will not change. For most people, with average PC setups, it is not an issue, but when you start running half a dozen USB cables right next to each other, it can still be a factor. Serial busses, like USB, in contrast to parallel communication (like old school printers or EIDE disk drives) reduce the problem but do not eliminate it.

When I was maintaining racks of equipment, including satellite comms, for a major news wire service, those twisted pair cables were very important in terms of maintaining data integrity. We had hundreds of feet of them running in random piles in the subfloor with no shielding in between.

The only time I ever used, very expensive, shielded twisted pair cable was for 'mission critical' systems designed for specific DOD applications. I don't think I ever saw any used in the commercial field, due to the cost vs. reliability issues.

Translation: Unless you're DOD or Ironman, no need to worry about crosstalk?

I think he has no headtracking though. Or he has it on the back. Or VR...

about cable management... a tip:

Kinda hard to do that with three screens plus all the other simming hardware. Plus what abot inside your case?

Interesting mod on the G940.....I bought one when they were first released but didn't keep it for long. Is that to self-centre when FFB not enabled or to add extra resistance with FFB?

Agree. i think some of it also applies to the media.


tssk yah..

The biggest issue, inside your case is audio. Don't use front panel audio connections and that issue is mostly solved. The short SATA cables don't tend to be an issue in the first place and audio is really the only other data sitting on cables inside the box.



Indeed.

EDIT: Sorry Para, quoted the wrong post.

That's good, because you don't have large numbers of wires running parallel to each other.

However, if you need to open up the throttle to adjust that wire for the R2 wheel for the 10th time (yes, I have a G940 as well) it's more difficult when the wires have so little play.



The Jedi Master

Never did use the front panel jacks anyway. I have an el-cheapo Logitech 2.1 speaker system that plugs into the mobo audio jacks but the nice thing about this setup is that it has a volume knob that I bring out to within arms reach and the knob has two ports, one for a headphone and the other for the mic. I can easily switch between speakers and headphones this way.

I don't know what the controversy was, or who this dude is, but I feel like I know the guy just for what he wrote.

I often get labeled as close minded because I don't play MMOs and that I somehow put my self on a pedestal for playing flight sims... to which I always reply "because I'm not 15 anymore"... Of course I don't believe that, but hey, at war time, anything that can be thrown at the enemy then becomes ammo.

A friend of mine has always questioned me for not being interested in MMOs and that I'm not really a gamer... (still no idea what a "gamer" is supposed to be, tho)

Well, some time ago I got my self new ammo for the discussion, which is me being able to say this: you never invented your own programming language and wrote a compiler for it just to have a panel with buttons for your games. You're not a true gamer.

He never accused me of not being a gamer again.

Hehehe... PC Master Race FTW!! Then within that, there's the twitch-shooters, then the real-time strategy gamers, then the racers, then the turn-based strategy gamers, and all the way at the top are the combat flight simmers...

Kidding aside, this is why I could never play consoles for very long. I'm more the Civilization, Total War, BMS player type, stuff that doesn't exist on consoles. One of my co-workers just bought himself a PC and was all smug.... until I showed him a picture of my current setup. Hehehe...

For self centering, but I removed them... actually my cat did it...



I locked those cables years ago